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diff --git a/old/60040-0.txt b/old/60040-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 938e933..0000000 --- a/old/60040-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,12441 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes on Novelists, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Notes on Novelists - With Some Other Notes - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: August 1, 2019 [EBook #60040] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON NOVELISTS *** - - - - -Produced by David T. Jones, Alex White & the online -Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at -http://www.pgdpcanada.net - - - - - - - - - - - NOTES ON NOVELISTS - - WITH SOME OTHER NOTES - - - - - - By HENRY JAMES - - - A SMALL BOY AND OTHERS - - NOTES OF A SON AND BROTHER - - NOTES ON NOVELISTS - WITH SOME OTHER NOTES - - - - - NOTES ON NOVELISTS - WITH SOME OTHER NOTES - - BY - - HENRY JAMES - - - - - - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1914 - - - - - Copyright, 1914, by - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - * * * * * - Published October, 1914 - - - - - CONTENTS - - PAGE - - Robert Louis Stevenson 1 - Émile Zola 26 - Gustave Flaubert 65 - Honoré de Balzac, 1902 109 - Honoré de Balzac, 1913 143 - George Sand, 1897 160 - George Sand, 1899 187 - George Sand, 1914 214 - Gabriele D’Annunzio, 1902 245 - Matilde Serao 294 - The New Novel, 1914 314 - Dumas the Younger, 1895 362 - The Novel in “The Ring and the Book,” 1912 385 - An American Art-Scholar: Charles Eliot Norton, 1908 412 - London Notes, January 1897 424 - London Notes, June 1897 428 - London Notes, July 1897 436 - London Notes, August 1897 446 - - - - - - NOTES ON NOVELISTS - - WITH SOME OTHER NOTES - - - - - NOTES ON NOVELISTS - - - - - ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON - - -It was the happy fortune of Robert Louis Stevenson to have created -beyond any man of his craft in our day a body of readers inspired with -the feelings that we for the most part place at the service only of -those for whom our affection is personal. There was no one who knew the -man, one may safely assert, who was not also devoted to the -writer—conforming in this respect to a general law (if law it be) that -shows us many exceptions; but, naturally and not inconveniently, it had -to remain far from true that all devotees of the writer were able to -approach the man. The case was nevertheless that the man somehow -approached _them_, and that to read him—certainly to read him with the -full sense of his charm—came to mean for many persons much the same as -to “meet” him. It was as if he wrote himself outright and altogether, -rose straight to the surface of his prose, and still more of his -happiest verse; so that these things gave out, besides whatever else, -his look and motions and voice, showed his life and manners, all that -there was of him, his “tremendous secrets” not excepted. We grew in -short to possess him entire, and the example is the more curious and -beautiful as he neither made a business of “confession” nor cultivated -most those forms through which the _ego_ shines. His great successes -were supposititious histories of persons quite different from himself, -and the objective, as we have learned to call it, was the ideal to which -he oftenest sacrificed. - -The effect of it all none the less was such that his Correspondence has -only seemed to administer delightfully a further push to a door already -half open and through which we enter with an extraordinary failure of -any sense of intrusion. We feel indeed that we are living with him, but -what is that but what we were doing before? Through his Correspondence -certainly the _ego_ does, magnificently, shine—which is much the best -thing that in any correspondence it can ever do. But even the “Vailima -Letters,” published by Mr. Sidney Colvin in 1895, had already both -established that and allayed our diffidence. “It came over me the other -day suddenly that this diary of mine to you would make good pickings -after I am dead, and a man could make some kind of book out of it -without much trouble. So, for God’s sake, don’t lose them.” - -Being on these terms with our author, and feeling as if we had always -been, we profit by freedoms that seem but the consecration of intimacy. -Not only have we no sense of intrusion, but we are so prepared to -penetrate further that when we come to limits we quite feel as if the -story were mutilated and the copy not complete. There it is precisely -that we seize the secret of our tie. Of course it was personal, for how -did it operate in any connection whatever but to make us live with him? -We had lived with him in “Treasure Island,” in “Kidnapped” and in -“Catriona,” just as we do, by the light of these posthumous volumes, in -the South Seas and at Vailima; and our present confidence comes from the -fact of a particularly charming continuity. It is not that his novels -were “subjective,” but that his life was romantic, and in the very same -degree in which his own conception, his own presentation, of that -element touches and thrills. If we want to know even more it is because -we are always and everywhere in the story. - -To this absorbing extension of the story then the two volumes of -Letters[1] now published by Mr. Sidney Colvin beautifully contribute. -The shelf of our library that contains our best letter-writers is -considerably furnished, but not overcrowded, and its glory is not too -great to keep Stevenson from finding there a place with the very first. -He will not figure among the writers—those apt in this line to enjoy -precedence—to whom only small things happen and who beguile us by -making the most of them; he belongs to the class who have both matter -and manner, substance and spirit, whom life carries swiftly before it -and who signal and communicate, not to say gesticulate, as they go. He -lived to the topmost pulse, and the last thing that could happen was -that he should find himself on any occasion with nothing to report. Of -all that he may have uttered on certain occasions we are inevitably not -here possessed—a fact that, as I have hinted above, affects us, -perversely, as an inexcusable gap in the story; but he never fails of -the thing that we most love letters for, the full expression of the -moment and the mood, the actual good or bad or middling, the thing in -his head, his heart or his house. Mr. Colvin has given us an admirable -“Introduction”—a characterisation of his friend so founded at once on -knowledge and on judgment that the whole sense of the man strikes us as -extracted in it. He has elucidated each group or period with notes that -leave nothing to be desired; and nothing remains that I can think of to -thank him for unless the intimation that we may yet look for another -volume—which, however much more free it might make us of the author’s -mystery, we should accept, I repeat, with the same absence of scruple. -Nothing more belongs to our day than this question of the inviolable, of -the rights of privacy and the justice of our claim to aid from editors -and other retailers in getting behind certain eminent or defiant -appearances; and the general knot so presented is indeed a hard one to -untie. Yet we may take it for a matter regarding which such publications -as Mr. Colvin’s have much to suggest. - -There is no absolute privacy—save of course when the exposed subject -may have wished or endeavoured positively to constitute it; and things -too sacred are often only things that are not perhaps at all otherwise -superlative. One may hold both that people—that artists perhaps in -particular—are well advised to cover their tracks, and yet that our -having gone behind, or merely stayed before, in a particular case, may -be a minor question compared with our having picked up a value. Personal -records of the type before us can at any rate obviously be but the -reverse of a deterrent to the urged inquirer. They are too happy an -instance—they positively make for the risked indiscretion. Stevenson -never covered his tracks, and the tracks prove perhaps to be what most -attaches us. We follow them here, from year to year and from stage to -stage, with the same charmed sense with which he has made us follow some -hunted hero in the heather. Life and fate and an early catastrophe were -ever at his heels, and when he at last falls fighting, sinks down in the -very act of valour, the “happy ending,” as he calls it for some of his -correspondents, is, though precipitated and not conventional, -essentially given us. - -His descent and his origin all contribute to the picture, which it seems -to me could scarce—since we speak of “endings”—have had a better -beginning had he himself prearranged it. Without prearrangements indeed -it was such a cluster of terms as could never be wasted on him, one of -those innumerable matters of “effect,” Scotch and other, that helped to -fill his romantic consciousness. Edinburgh, in the first place, the -“romantic town,” was as much his “own” as it ever was the great -precursor’s whom, in “Weir of Hermiston” as well as elsewhere, he -presses so hard; and this even in spite of continual absence—in virtue -of a constant imaginative reference and an intense intellectual -possession. The immediate background formed by the profession of his -family—the charge of the public lights on northern coasts—was a -setting that he could not have seen his way to better; while no less -happy a condition was met by his being all lonely in his father’s -house—the more that the father, admirably commemorated by the son and -after his fashion as strongly marked, was antique and strenuous, and -that the son, a genius to be and of frail constitution, was (in the -words of the charming anecdote of an Edinburgh lady retailed in one of -these volumes), if not exactly what could be called bonny, “pale, -penetrating and interesting.” The poet in him had from the first to be -pacified—temporarily, that is, and from hand to mouth, as is the manner -for poets; so that with friction and tension playing their part, with -the filial relation quite classically troubled, with breaks of tradition -and lapses from faith, with restless excursions and sombre returns, with -the love of life at large mixed in his heart with every sort of local -piety and passion and the unjustified artist fermenting on top of all in -the recusant engineer, he was as well started as possible toward the -character he was to keep. - -All this obviously, however, was the sort of thing that the story the -most generally approved would have had at heart to represent as the mere -wild oats of a slightly uncanny cleverness—as the life handsomely -reconciled in time to the common course and crowned, after a fling or -two of amusement, with young wedded love and civic responsibility. The -actual story, alas, was to transcend the conventional one, for it -happened to be a case of a hero of too long a wind and too well turned -out for his part. Everything was right for the discipline of Alan -Fairford but that the youth _was_ after all a phœnix. As soon as it -became a case of justifying himself for straying—as in the enchanting -“Inland Voyage” and the “Travels with a Donkey”—how was he to escape -doing so with supreme felicity? The fascination in him from the first is -the mixture, and the extraordinary charm of his letters is that they are -always showing this. It is the proportions moreover that are so -admirable—the quantity of each different thing that he fitted to each -other one and to the whole. The free life would have been all his dream -if so large a part of it had not been that love of letters, of -expression and form, which is but another name for the life of service. -Almost the last word about him, by the same law, would be that he had at -any rate consummately written, were it not that he seems still better -characterised by his having at any rate supremely lived. - -Perpetually and exquisitely amusing as he was, his ambiguities and -compatibilities yielded, for all the wear and tear of them, endless -“fun” even to himself; and no one knew so well with what linked -diversities he was saddled or, to put it the other way, how many horses -he had to drive at once. It took his own delightful talk to show how -more than absurd it might be, and, if convenient, how very obscurely so, -that such an incurable rover should have been complicated both with such -an incurable scribbler and such an incurable invalid, and that a man -should find himself such an anomaly as a drenched yachtsman haunted with -“style,” a shameless Bohemian haunted with duty, and a victim at once of -the personal hunger and instinct for adventure and of the critical, -constructive, sedentary view of it. He had everything all -round—adventure most of all; to feel which we have only to turn from -the beautiful flush of it in his text to the scarce less beautiful -vision of the great hilltop in Pacific seas to which he was borne after -death by islanders and chiefs. Fate, as if to distinguish him as -handsomely as possible, seemed to be ever treating him to some chance -for an act or a course that had almost nothing in its favour but its -inordinate difficulty. If the difficulty was in these cases not _all_ -the beauty for him it at least never prevented his finding in it—or our -finding, at any rate, as observers—so much beauty as comes from a great -risk accepted either for an idea or for simple joy. The joy of risks, -the more personal the better, was never far from him, any more than the -excitement of ideas. The most important step in his life was a signal -instance of this, as we may discern in the light of “The Amateur -Emigrant” and “Across the Plains,” the report of the conditions in which -he fared from England to California to be married. Here as always the -great note is the heroic mixture—the thing he _saw_, morally as well as -imaginatively; action and performance at any cost, and the cost made -immense by want of health and want of money, illness and anxiety of the -extremest kind, and by unsparing sensibilities and perceptions. He had -been launched in the world for a fighter with the organism say of a -“composer,” though also it must be added with a beautiful saving sanity. - -It is doubtless after his settlement in Samoa that his letters have most -to give, but there are things they throw off from the first that strike -the note above all characteristic, show his imagination always at play, -for drollery or philosophy, with his circumstances. The difficulty in -writing of him under the personal impression is to suggest enough how -directly his being the genius that he was kept counting in it. In 1879 -he writes from Monterey to Mr. Edmund Gosse, in reference to certain -grave symptoms of illness: “I may be wrong, but . . . I believe I must -go. . . . But death is no bad friend; a few aches and gasps, and we are -done; like the truant child, I am beginning to grow weary and timid in -this big, jostling city, and could run to my nurse, even although she -should have to whip me before putting me to bed.” This charming -renunciation expresses itself at the very time his talent was growing -finer; he was so fond of the sense of youth and the idea of play that he -saw whatever happened to him in images and figures, in the terms almost -of the sports of childhood. “Are you coming over again to see me some -day soon? I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of -Hades. I saw that gentleman between the eyes, and fear him less after -each visit. Only Charon and his rough boatmanship I somewhat fear.” - -The fear remained with him, sometimes greater, sometimes less, during -the first years after his marriage, those spent abroad and in England in -health resorts, and it marks constantly, as one may say, one end of the -range of his humour—the humour always busy at the other end with the -impatience of timidities and precautions and the vision and invention of -essentially open-air situations. It was the possibility of the open-air -situation that at last appealed to him as the cast worth staking all -for—on which, as usual in his admirable rashnesses, he was -extraordinarily justified. “No man but myself knew all my bitterness in -those days. Remember that, the next time you think I regret my -exile. . . . Remember the pallid brute that lived in Skerryvore like a -weevil in a biscuit.” - -He found after an extraordinarily adventurous quest the treasure island, -the climatic paradise that met, that enhanced his possibilities; and -with this discovery was ushered in his completely full and rich period, -the time in which—as the wondrous whimsicality and spontaneity of his -correspondence testify—his genius and his character most overflowed. He -had done as well for himself in his appropriation of Samoa as if he had -done it for the hero of a novel, only with the complications and -braveries actual and palpable. “I have no more hope in anything”—and -this in the midst of magnificent production—“than a dead frog; I go -into everything with a composed despair, and don’t mind—just as I -always go to sea with the conviction I am to be drowned, and like it -before all other pleasures.” He could go to sea as often as he liked and -not be spared such hours as one of these pages vividly evokes—those of -the joy of fictive composition in an otherwise prostrating storm, amid -the crash of the elements and with his grasp of his subject but too -needfully sacrificed, it might have appeared, to his clutch of seat and -ink-stand. “If only I could secure a violent death, what a fine success! -I wish to die in my boots; no more Land of Counterpane for me. To be -drowned, to be shot, to be thrown from a horse—aye, to be hanged rather -than pass again through that slow dissolution.” - -He speaks in one of the “Vailima Letters,” Mr. Colvin’s publication of -1895, to which it is an office of these volumes promptly to make us -return, of one of his fictions as a “long tough yarn with some pictures -of the manners of to-day in the greater world—not the shoddy sham world -of cities, clubs and colleges, but the world where men still live a -man’s life.” That is distinct, and in the same letter he throws off a -summary of all that in his final phase satisfied and bribed him which is -as significant as it is racy. His correspondent, as was inevitable now -and then for his friends at home, appears to have indulged in one of -those harmless pointings of the moral—as to the distant dangers he -_would_ court—by which we all were more or less moved to relieve -ourselves of the depressed consciousness that he could do beautifully -without us and that our collective tameness was far (which indeed was -distinctly the case) from forming his proper element. There is no -romantic life for which something amiable has not to be sweepingly -sacrificed, and of _us_ in our inevitable category the sweep practically -was clean. - - Your letter had the most wonderful “I told you so” I ever heard - in the course of my life. Why, you madman, I wouldn’t change my - present installation for any post, dignity, honour, or advantage - conceivable to me. It fills the bill; I have the loveliest time. - And as for wars and rumours of wars, you surely know enough of - me to be aware that I like that also a thousand times better - than decrepit peace in Middlesex. I do not quite like politics. - I am too aristocratic, I fear, for that. God knows I don’t care - who I chum with; perhaps like sailors best; but to go round and - sue and sneak to keep a crowd together—never. - -His categories satisfied him; he had got hold of “the world where men -still live a man’s life”—which was not, as we have just seen, that of -“cities, clubs and colleges.” He was supremely suited in short at -last—at the cost, it was to be said, of simplifications of view that, -intellectually, he failed quite exactly (it was one of his few -limitations) to measure; but in a way that ministered to his rare -capacity for growth and placed in supreme relief his affinity with the -universal romantic. It was not that anything could ever be for him plain -sailing, but that he had been able at forty to turn his life into the -fairytale of achieving, in a climate that he somewhere describes as “an -expurgated heaven,” such a happy physical consciousness as he had never -known. This enlarged in every way his career, opening the door still -wider to that real puss-in-the-corner game of opposites by which we have -critically the interest of seeing him perpetually agitated. Let me -repeat that these new volumes, from the date of his definite -expatriation, direct us for the details of the picture constantly to the -“Vailima Letters;” with as constant an effect of our thanking our -fortune—to say nothing of his own—that he should have had in these -years a correspondent and a confidant who so beautifully drew him out. -If he possessed in Mr. Sidney Colvin his literary chargé d’affaires at -home, the ideal friend and _alter ego_ on whom he could unlimitedly -rest, this is a proof the more—with the general rarity of such -cases—of what it was in his nature to make people wish to do for him. -To Mr. Colvin he is more familiar than to any one, more whimsical and -natural and frequently more inimitable—of all of which a just notion -can be given only by abundant citation. And yet citation itself is -embarrassed, with nothing to guide it but his perpetual spirits, -perpetual acuteness and felicity, restlessness of fancy and of judgment. -These things make him jump from pole to pole and fairly hum, at times, -among the objects and subjects that filled his air, like a charged bee -among flowers. - -He is never more delightful than when he is most egotistic, most -consciously charmed with something he has done. - - And the papers are some of them up to dick, and no mistake. I - agree with you, the lights seem a little turned down. - -When we learn that the articles alluded to are those collected in -“Across the Plains” we quite assent to this impression made by them -after a troubled interval, and envy the author who, in a far Pacific -isle, could see “The Lantern Bearers,” “A Letter to a Young Gentleman” -and “Pulvis et Umbra” float back to him as a guarantee of his faculty -and between covers constituting the book that is to live. Stevenson’s -masculine wisdom moreover, his remarkable final sanity, is always—and -it was not what made least in him for happy intercourse—close to his -comedy and next door to his slang. - - And however low the lights are, the stuff is true, and I believe - the more effective; after all, what I wish to fight is the best - fought by a rather cheerless presentation of the truth. The - world must return some day to the word “duty,” and be done with - the word “reward.” There are no rewards, and plenty duties. And - the sooner a man sees that and acts upon it, like a gentleman or - a fine old barbarian, the better for himself. - -It would perhaps be difficult to quote a single paragraph giving more -than that of the whole of him. But there is abundance of him in this -too: - - How do journalists fetch up their drivel? . . . It has taken me - two months to write 45,500 words; and, be damned to my wicked - prowess, I am proud of the exploit! . . . A respectable little - five-bob volume, to bloom unread in shop windows. After that - I’ll have a spank at fiction. And rest? I shall rest in the - grave, or when I come to Italy. If only the public will continue - to support me! I lost my chance not dying; there seems blooming - little fear of it now. I worked close on five hours this - morning; the day before, close on nine; and unless I finish - myself off with this letter I’ll have another hour and a half, - or _aiblins twa_, before dinner. Poor man, how you must envy me - as you hear of these orgies of work, and you scarce able for a - letter. But Lord! Colvin, how lucky the situations are not - reversed, for I have no situation, nor am fit for any. Life is a - steigh brae. Here, have at Knappe, and no more clavers! - -If he talked profusely—and this is perfect talk—if he loved to talk -above all of his work in hand, it was because, though perpetually frail, -he was never inert, and did a thing, if he did it at all, with passion. -He was not fit, he says, for a situation, but a situation overtook him -inexorably at Vailima, and doubtless at last indeed swallowed him up. -His position, with differences, comparing in some respects smaller -things to greater, and with fewer differences after all than likenesses, -his position resembles that of Scott at Abbotsford, just as, sound, -sensible and strong on each side in spite of the immense gift of -dramatic and poetic vision, the earlier and the later man had something -of a common nature. Life became bigger for each than the answering -effort could meet, and in their death they were not divided. Stevenson’s -late emancipation was a fairytale only because he himself was in his -manner a magician. He liked to handle many matters and to shrink from -none; nothing can exceed the impression we get of the things that in -these years he dealt with from day to day and as they came up, and the -things that, as well, almost without order or relief, he planned and -invented, took up and talked of and dropped, took up and talked of and -carried through. Had I space to treat myself to a clue for selection -from the whole record there is nothing I should better like it to be -than a tracking of his “literary opinions” and literary projects, the -scattered swarm of his views, sympathies, antipathies, _obiter dicta_, -as an artist—his flurries and fancies, imaginations, evocations, quick -infatuations, as a teller of possible tales. Here is a whole little -circle of discussion, yet such a circle that to engage one’s self at all -is to be too much engulfed. - -His overflow on such matters is meanwhile amusing enough as mere spirits -and sport—interesting as it would yet be to catch as we might, at -different moments, the congruity between the manner of his feeling a -fable in the germ and that of his afterwards handling it. There are -passages again and again that light strikingly what I should call his -general conscious method in this relation, were I not more tempted to -call it his conscious—for that is what it seems to come to—negation of -method. A whole delightful letter—to Mr. Colvin, February 1, 1892—is a -vivid type. (This letter, I may mention, is independently notable for -the drollery of its allusion to a sense of scandal—of all things in the -world—excited in some editorial breast by “The Beach of Falesà;” which -leads him to the highly pertinent remark that “this is a poison bad -world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it -by not having any women in it at all.” Then he remembers he had “The -Treasure of Franchard” refused as unfit for a family magazine and -feels—as well he may—“despair weigh upon his wrists.” The despair -haunts him and comes out on another occasion. “Five more chapters of -David. . . . All love affair; seems pretty good to me. Will it do for -the young person? I don’t know: since the Beach, I know nothing except -that men are fools and hypocrites, and I know less of them than I was -fond enough to fancy.”) Always a part of his physiognomy is the play, so -particularly salient, of his moral fluctuations, the way his spirits are -upset by his melancholy and his grand conclusions by his rueful doubts. - -He communicates to his confidant with the eagerness of a boy -confabulating in holidays over a Christmas charade; but I remember no -instance of his expressing a subject, as one may say, as a -subject—hinting at what novelists mainly know, one would imagine, as -the determinant thing in it, the idea out of which it springs. The form, -the envelope, is there with him, headforemost, _as_ the idea; titles, -names, that is, chapters, sequences, orders, while we are still asking -ourselves how it was that he primarily put to his own mind what it was -all to be about. He simply _felt_ this, evidently, and it is always the -one dumb sound, the stopped pipe or only unexpressed thing, in all his -contagious candour. He finds none the less in the letter to which I -refer one of the problems of the wonderful projected “Sophia Scarlet” -“exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist—for I have already a -better method—the kinetic—whereas he continually allowed himself to be -led into the static.” There we have him—Stevenson, not Balzac—at his -most overflowing, and after all radiantly capable of conceiving at -another moment that his “better method” would have been none at all for -Balzac’s vision of a subject, least of all of _the_ subject, the whole -of life. Balzac’s method was adapted to his notion of -presentation—which we may accept, it strikes me, under the protection -of what he presents. Were it not, in fine, as I may repeat, to embark in -a bigger boat than would here turn round I might note further that -Stevenson has elsewhere—was disposed in general to have—too short a -way with this master. There is an interesting passage in which he -charges him with having never known what to leave out, a passage which -has its bearing on condition of being read with due remembrance of the -class of performance to which “Le Colonel Chabert,” for instance, “Le -Curé de Tours,” “L’Interdiction,” “La Messe de l’Athée” (to name but a -few brief masterpieces in a long list) appertain. - -These, however, are comparatively small questions; _the_ impression, for -the reader of the later letters, is simply one of singular beauty—of -deepening talent, of happier and richer expression, and in especial of -an ironic desperate gallantry that burns away, with a finer and finer -fire, in a strange alien air and is only the more touching to us from -his own resolute consumption of the smoke. He had incurred great -charges, he sailed a ship loaded to the brim, so that the strain under -which he lived and wrought was immense; but the very grimness of it all -is sunny, slangy, funny, familiar; there is as little of the florid in -his flashes of melancholy as of the really grey under stress of his -wisdom. This wisdom had sometimes on matters of art, I think, its -lapses, but on matters of life it was really winged and inspired. He has -a soundness as to questions of the vital connection, a soundness all -liberal and easy and born of the manly experience, that it is a luxury -to touch. There are no compunctions nor real impatiences, for he had in -a singular degree got what he wanted, the life absolutely -discockneyfied, the situation as romantically “swagger” as if it had -been an imagination made real; but his practical anxieties necessarily -spin themselves finer, and it is just this production of the thing -imagined that has more and more to meet them. It all hung, the -situation, by _that_ beautiful golden thread, the swinging of which in -the wind, as he spins it in alternate doubt and elation, we watch with -much of the suspense and pity with which we sit at the serious drama. It -is serious in the extreme; yet the forcing of production, in the case of -a faculty so beautiful and delicate, affects us almost as the straining -of a nerve or the distortion of a feature. - - I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the nature of an - income that would come in—mine has all got to be gone and - fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is the - income that really comes in of itself, while all you have to do - is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs. . . . I should - probably amuse myself with works that would make your hair curl, - if you had any left. - -To read over some of his happiest things, to renew one’s sense of the -extraordinarily fine temper of his imagination, is to say to one’s self -“What a horse to have to ride every week to market!” We must all go to -market, but the most fortunate of us surely are those who may drive -thither, and on days not too frequent, nor by a road too rough, a ruder -and homelier animal. He touches in more than one place—and with notable -beauty and real authority in that little mine of felicities the “Letter -to a Young Gentleman”—on the conscience for “frugality” which should be -the artist’s finest point of honour: so that one of his complications -here was undoubtedly the sense that on this score his position had -inevitably become somewhat false. The literary romantic is by no means -necessarily expensive, but of the many ways in which the practical, the -active, has to be paid for this departure from frugality would be, it is -easy to conceive, not the least. And we perceive his recognising this as -he recognised everything—if not in time, then out of it; accepting -inconsistency, as he always did, with the gaiety of a man of -courage—not being, that is, however intelligent, priggish for logic and -the grocer’s book any more than for anything else. Only everything made -for keeping it up, and it was a great deal to keep up; though when he -throws off “The Ebb-Tide” and rises to “Catriona,” and then again to -“Weir of Hermiston,” as if he could rise to almost anything, we breathe -anew and look longingly forward. The latest of these letters contain -such admirable things, testify so to the reach of his intelligence and -in short vibrate so with genius and charm, that we feel him at moments -not only unexhausted but replenished, and capable perhaps, for all we -know to the contrary, of new experiments and deeper notes. The -intelligence and attention are so fine that he misses nothing from -unawareness; not a gossamer thread of the “thought of the time” that, -wafted to him on the other side of the globe, may not be caught in a -branch and played with; he puts such a soul into nature and such human -meanings, for comedy and tragedy, into what surrounds him, however -shabby or short, that he really lives in society by living in his own -perceptions and generosities or, as we say nowadays, his own atmosphere. -In this atmosphere—which seems to have had the gift of abounding the -more it was breathed by others—these pages somehow prompt us to see -almost every object on his tropic isle bathed and refreshed. - -So far at any rate from growing thin for want of London he can transmit -to London or to its neighbourhood communications such as it would scarce -know otherwise where to seek. A letter to his cousin, R. A. M. -Stevenson, of September 1894, touches so on all things and, as he would -himself have said, so adorns them, brimming over with its happy -extravagance of thought, that, far again from our feeling Vailima, in -the light of it, to be out of the world, it strikes us that the world -has moved for the time to Vailima. There is world enough everywhere, he -quite unconsciously shows, for the individual, the right one, to be what -we call a man of it. He has, like every one not convenienced with the -pleasant back-door of stupidity, to make his account with seeing and -facing more things, seeing and facing everything, with the unrest of new -impressions and ideas, the loss of the fond complacencies of youth. - - But as I go on in life, day by day, I become more of a - bewildered child; I cannot get used to this world, to - procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing; the commonest - things are a burthen. The prim obliterated polite face of life, - and the broad, bawdy and orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, - form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me; and “I could - wish my days to be bound each to each” by the same open-mouthed - wonder. They _are_ anyway, and whether I wish it or not. . . . I - remember very well your attitude to life—this conventional - surface of it. You have none of that curiosity for the social - stage directions, the trivial _ficelles_ of the business; it is - simian; but that is how the wild youth of man is captured. - -The whole letter is enchanting. - - But no doubt there is something great in the half success that - has attended the effort of turning into an emotional region Bald - Conduct without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, - mysterious and constitutive facts of life. Not that conduct is - not constitutive, but dear! it’s dreary! On the whole, conduct - is better dealt with on the cast-iron “gentleman” and duty - formula, with as little fervour and poetry as possible; stoical - and short. - -The last letter of all, it will have been abundantly noted, has, with -one of those characteristically thrown-out references to himself that -were always half a whim, half a truth and all a picture, a remarkable -premonition. It is addressed to Mr. Edmond Gosse. - - It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course it - has to be done. But for my part, give me a roaring toothache! I - do like to be deceived and to dream, but I have very little use - for either watching or meditation. I was not born for age. . . . - I am a childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted - youth. I have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy and - natural for you to descend the hill. I am going at it straight. - And where I have to go down it is a precipice. . . . You can - never write another dedication that can give the same pleasure - to the vanished Tusitala. - -Two days later he met his end in the happiest form, by the straight -swift bolt of the gods. It was, as all his readers know, with an -admirable unfinished thing in hand, scarce a quarter written—a -composition as to which his hopes were, presumably with much justice and -as they were by no means always, of the highest. Nothing is more -interesting than the rich way in which, in “Weir of Hermiston” and -“Catriona,” the predominant imaginative Scot reasserts himself after -gaps and lapses, distractions and deflections superficially extreme. -There are surely few backward jumps of this energy more joyous and _à -pieds joints_, or of a kind more interesting to a critic. The -imaginative vision is hungry and tender just in proportion as the actual -is otherwise beset; so that we must sigh always in vain for the quality -that this purified flame, as we call it, would have been able to give -the metal. And how many things for the critic the case suggests—how -many possible reflections cluster about it and seem to take light from -it! It was “romance” indeed, “Weir of Hermiston,” we feel, as we see it -only grow in assurance and ease when the reach to it over all the spaces -becomes more positively artificial. The case is _literary_ to intensity, -and, given the nature of the talent, only thereby the more beautiful: he -embroiders in silk and silver—in defiance of climate and nature, of -every near aspect, and with such another antique needle as was nowhere, -least of all in those latitudes, to be bought—in the intervals of -wondrous international and insular politics and of fifty material cares -and complications. His special stock of association, most personal style -and most unteachable trick fly away again to him like so many strayed -birds to nest, each with the flutter in its beak of some scrap of -document or legend, some fragment of picture or story, to be retouched, -revarnished and reframed. - -These things he does with a gusto, moreover, for which it must be -granted that his literary treatment of the islands and the island life -had ever vainly waited. Curious enough that his years of the tropics and -his fraternity with the natives never drew from him any such “rendered” -view as might have been looked for in advance. For the absent and -vanished Scotland he _has_ the image—within the limits (too narrow ones -we may perhaps judge) admitted by his particular poetic; but the law of -these things in him was, as of many others, amusingly, conscientiously -perverse. The Pacific, in which he materially delighted, made him -“descriptively” serious and even rather dry; with his own country, on -the other hand, materially impossible, he was ready to tread an endless -measure. He easily sends us back again here to our vision of his -mixture. There was only one thing on earth that he loved as much as -literature—which was the total absence of it; and to the present, the -immediate, whatever it was, he always made the latter offering. Samoa -was susceptible of no “style”—none of that, above all, with which he -was most conscious of an affinity—save the demonstration of its -rightness for life; and this left the field abundantly clear for the -Border, the Great North Road and the eighteenth century. I have been -reading over “Catriona” and “Weir” with the purest pleasure with which -we can follow a man of genius—that of seeing him abound in his own -sense. In “Weir” especially, like an improvising pianist, he -superabounds and revels, and his own sense, by a happy stroke, appeared -likely never more fully and brightly to justify him; to have become even -in some degree a new sense, with new chords and possibilities. It is the -“old game,” but it is the old game that he exquisitely understands. The -figure of Hermiston is creative work of the highest order, those of the -two Kirsties, especially that of the elder, scarce less so; and we ache -for the loss of a thing which could give out such touches as the quick -joy, at finding herself in falsehood, of the enamoured girl whose -brooding elder brother has told her that as soon as she has a lover she -will begin to lie (“ ‘Will I have gotten my jo now?’ she thought with -secret rapture”); or a passage so richly charged with imagination as -that in which the young lover recalls her as he has first seen and -desired her, seated at grey of evening on an old tomb in the moorland -and unconsciously making him think, by her scrap of song, both of his -mother, who sang it and whom he has lost, and - - of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, - their weapons buried with them, and of these strange - changelings, their descendants, who lingered a little in their - places and would soon be gone also, and perhaps sung of by - others at the gloaming hour. By one of the unconscious arts of - tenderness the two women were enshrined together in his memory. - Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes - indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from being - something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone - of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So - that, in all ways and on either side, Fate played his game - artfully with this poor pair of children. The generations were - prepared, the pangs were made ready, before the curtain rose on - the dark drama. - -It is not a tribute that Stevenson would at all have appreciated, but I -may not forbear noting how closely such a page recalls many another in -the tenderest manner of Pierre Loti. There would not, compared, be a pin -to choose between them. How, we at all events ask ourselves as we -consider “Weir,” could he have kept it up?—while the reason for which -he didn’t reads itself back into his text as a kind of beautiful rash -divination in him that he mightn’t have to. Among prose fragments it -stands quite alone, with the particular grace and sanctity of mutilation -worn by the marble morsels of masterwork in another art. This and the -other things of his best he left; but these things, lovely as, on -rereading many of them at the suggestion of his Correspondence, they -are, are not the whole, nor more than the half, of his abiding charm. -The finest papers in “Across the Plains,” in “Memories and Portraits,” -in “Virginibus Puerisque,” stout of substance and supremely silver of -speech, have both a nobleness and a nearness that place them, for -perfection and roundness, above his fictions, and that also may well -remind a vulgarised generation of what, even under its nose, English -prose can be. But it is bound up with his name, for our wonder and -reflection, that he is something other than the author of this or that -particular beautiful thing, or of all such things together. It has been -his fortune (whether or no the greatest that can befall a man of -letters) to have had to consent to become, by a process not purely -mystic and not wholly untraceable—what shall we call it?—a Figure. -Tracing is needless now, for the personality has acted and the -incarnation is full. There he is—he has passed ineffaceably into happy -legend. This case of the figure is of the rarest and the honour surely -of the greatest. In all our literature we can count them, sometimes with -the work and sometimes without. The work has often been great and yet -the figure _nil_. Johnson was one, and Goldsmith and Byron; and the two -former moreover not in any degree, like Stevenson, in virtue of the -element of grace. Was it this element that fixed the claim even for -Byron? It seems doubtful; and the list at all events as we approach our -own day shortens and stops. Stevenson has it at present—may we not -say?—pretty well to himself, and it is not one of the scrolls in which -he least will live. - ------ - -Footnote 1: - -“The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends. -Selected and Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by Sidney Colvin,” -1899. - - - - - ÉMILE ZOLA - - -If it be true that the critical spirit to-day, in presence of the rising -tide of prose fiction, a watery waste out of which old standards and -landmarks are seen barely to emerge, like chimneys and the tops of trees -in a country under flood—if it be true that the anxious observer, with -the water up to his chin, finds himself asking for the _reason_ of the -strange phenomenon, for its warrant and title, so we likewise make out -that these credentials rather fail to float on the surface. We live in a -world of wanton and importunate fable, we breathe its air and consume -its fruits; yet who shall say that we are able, when invited, to account -for our preferring it so largely to the world of fact? To do so would be -to make some adequate statement of the good the product in question does -us. What does it do for our life, our mind, our manners, our -morals—what does it do that history, poetry, philosophy may not do, as -well or better, to warn, to comfort and command the countless thousands -for whom and by whom it comes into being? We seem too often left with -our riddle on our hands. The lame conclusion on which we retreat is that -“stories” are multiplied, circulated, paid for, on the scale of the -present hour, simply because people “like” them. As to why people -_should_ like anything so loose and mean as the preponderant mass of the -“output,” so little indebted for the magic of its action to any mystery -in the making, is more than the actual state of our perceptions enables -us to say. - -This bewilderment might be our last word if it were not for the -occasional occurrence of accidents especially appointed to straighten -out a little our tangle. We are reminded that if the unnatural -prosperity of the wanton fable cannot be adequately explained, it can at -least be illustrated with a sharpness that is practically an argument. -An abstract solution failing we encounter it in the concrete. We catch -in short a new impression or, to speak more truly, recover an old one. -It was always there to be had, but we ourselves throw off an oblivion, -an indifference for which there are plenty of excuses. We become -conscious, for our profit, of a _case_, and we see that our -mystification came from the way cases had appeared for so long to fail -us. None of the shapeless forms about us for the time had attained to -the dignity of one. The one I am now conceiving as suddenly -effective—for which I fear I must have been regarding it as somewhat in -eclipse—is that of Émile Zola, whom, as a manifestation of the sort we -are considering, three or four striking facts have lately combined to -render more objective and, so to speak, more massive. His close -connection with the most resounding of recent public quarrels; his -premature and disastrous death; above all, at the moment I write, the -appearance of his last-finished novel, bequeathed to his huge public -from beyond the grave—these rapid events have thrust him forward and -made him loom abruptly larger; much as if our pedestrian critic, -treading the dusty highway, had turned a sharp corner. - -It is not assuredly that Zola has ever been veiled or unapparent; he -had, on the contrary been digging his field these thirty years, and for -all passers to see, with an industry that kept him, after the fashion of -one of the grand grim sowers or reapers of his brother of the brush, or -at least of the canvas, Jean-François Millet, duskily outlined against -the sky. He was there in the landscape of labour—he had always been; -but he was there as a big natural or pictorial feature, a spreading -tree, a battered tower, a lumpish round-shouldered useful hayrick, -confounded with the air and the weather, the rain and the shine, the day -and the dusk, merged more or less, as it were, in the play of the -elements themselves. We had got used to him, and, thanks in a measure -just to this stoutness of his presence, to the long regularity of his -performance, had come to notice him hardly more than the dwellers in the -marketplace notice the quarters struck by the town-clock. On top of all -accordingly, for our skeptical mood, the sense of his work—a sense -determined afresh by the strange climax of his personal history—rings -out almost with violence as a reply to our wonder. It is as if an -earthquake or some other rude interference had shaken from the -town-clock a note of such unusual depth as to compel attention. We -therefore once more give heed, and the result of this is that we feel -ourselves after a little probably as much enlightened as we can hope -ever to be. We have worked round to the so marked and impressive anomaly -of the adoption of the futile art by one of the stoutest minds and -stoutest characters of our time. This extraordinarily robust worker has -found it good enough for him, and if the fact is, as I say, anomalous, -we are doubtless helped to conclude that by its anomalies, in future, -the bankrupt business, as we are so often moved to pronounce it, will -most recover credit. - -What is at all events striking for us, critically speaking, is that, in -the midst of the dishonour it has gradually harvested by triumphant -vulgarity of practice, its pliancy and applicability can still plead for -themselves. The curious contradiction stands forth for our relief—the -circumstance that thirty years ago a young man of extraordinary brain -and indomitable purpose, wishing to give the measure of these endowments -in a piece of work supremely solid, conceived and sat down to Les -Rougon-Macquart rather than to an equal task in physics, mathematics, -politics or economics. He saw his undertaking, thanks to his patience -and courage, practically to a close; so that it is exactly neither of -the so-called constructive sciences that happens to have had the -benefit, intellectually speaking, of one of the few most constructive -achievements of our time. There then, provisionally at least, we touch -bottom; we get a glimpse of the pliancy and variety, the ideal of -vividness, on behalf of which our equivocal form may appeal to a strong -head. In the name of what ideal on its own side, however, does the -strong head yield to the appeal? What is the logic of its so deeply -committing itself? Zola’s case seems to tell us, as it tells us other -things. The logic is in its huge freedom of adjustment to the -temperament of the worker, which it carries, so to say, as no other -vehicle can do. It expresses fully and directly the whole man, and big -as he may be it can still be big enough for him without becoming false -to its type. We see this truth made strong, from beginning to end, in -Zola’s work; we see the temperament, we see the whole man, with his size -and all his marks, stored and packed away in the huge hold of Les -Rougon-Macquart as a cargo is packed away on a ship. His personality is -the thing that finally pervades and prevails, just as so often on a -vessel the presence of the cargo makes itself felt for the assaulted -senses. What has most come home to me in reading him over is that a -scheme of fiction so conducted is in fact a capacious vessel. It can -carry anything—with art and force in the stowage; nothing in this case -will sink it. And it is the only form for which such a claim can be -made. All others have to confess to a smaller scope—to selection, to -exclusion, to the danger of distortion, explosion, combustion. The novel -has nothing to fear but sailing too light. It will take aboard all we -bring in good faith to the dock. - -An intense vision of this truth must have been Zola’s comfort from the -earliest time—the years, immediately following the crash of the Empire, -during which he settled himself to the tremendous task he had mapped -out. No finer act of courage and confidence, I think, is recorded in the -history of letters. The critic in sympathy with him returns again and -again to the great wonder of it, in which something so strange is mixed -with something so august. Entertained and carried out almost from the -threshold of manhood, the high project, the work of a lifetime, -announces beforehand its inevitable weakness and yet speaks in the same -voice for its admirable, its almost unimaginable strength. The strength -was in the young man’s very person—in his character, his will, his -passion, his fighting temper, his aggressive lips, his squared shoulders -(when he “sat up”) and overweening confidence; his weakness was in that -inexperience of life from which he proposed not to suffer, from which he -in fact suffered on the surface remarkably little, and from which he was -never to suspect, I judge, that he had suffered at all. I may mention -for the interest of it that, meeting him during his first short visit to -London—made several years before his stay in England during the Dreyfus -trial—I received a direct impression of him that was more informing -than any previous study. I had seen him a little, in Paris, years before -that, when this impression was a perceptible promise, and I was now to -perceive how time had made it good. It consisted, simply stated, in his -fairly bristling with the betrayal that nothing whatever had happened to -him in life but to write Les Rougon-Macquart. It was even for that -matter almost more as if Les Rougon-Macquart had written _him_, written -him as he stood and sat, as he looked and spoke, as the long, -concentrated, merciless effort had made and stamped and left him. -Something very fundamental was to happen to him in due course, it is -true, shaking him to his base; fate was not wholly to cheat him of an -independent evolution. Recalling him from this London hour one strongly -felt during the famous “Affair” that his outbreak in connection with it -was the act of a man with arrears of personal history to make up, the -act of a spirit for which life, or for which at any rate freedom, had -been too much postponed, treating itself at last to a luxury of -experience. - -I welcomed the general impression at all events—I intimately -entertained it; it represented so many things, it suggested, just as it -was, such a lesson. You could neither have everything nor be -everything—you had to choose; you could not at once sit firm at your -job and wander through space inviting initiations. The author of Les -Rougon-Macquart had had all those, certainly, that this wonderful -company could bring him; but I can scarce express how it was implied in -him that his time had been fruitfully passed with _them_ alone. His -artistic evolution struck one thus as, in spite of its magnitude, -singularly simple, and evidence of the simplicity seems further offered -by his last production, of which we have just come into possession. -“Vérité” truly does give the measure, makes the author’s high maturity -join hands with his youth, marks the rigid straightness of his course -from point to point. He had seen his horizon and his fixed goal from the -first, and no cross-scent, no new distance, no blue gap in the hills to -right or to left ever tempted him to stray. “Vérité,” of which I shall -have more to say, is in fact, as a moral finality and the crown of an -edifice, one of the strangest possible performances. Machine-minted and -made good by an immense expertness, it yet makes us ask how, for -disinterested observation and perception, the writer had used so much -time and so much acquisition, and how he can all along have handled so -much material without some larger subjective consequence. We really rub -our eyes in other words to see so great an intellectual adventure as Les -Rougon-Macquart come to its end in deep desert sand. Difficult truly to -read, because showing him at last almost completely a prey to the danger -that had for a long time more and more dogged his steps, the danger of -the mechanical all confident and triumphant, the book is nevertheless -full of interest for a reader desirous to penetrate. It speaks with more -distinctness of the author’s temperament, tone and manner than if, like -several of his volumes, it achieved or enjoyed a successful life of its -own. Its heavy completeness, with all this, as of some prodigiously -neat, strong and complicated scaffolding constructed by a firm of -builders for the erection of a house whose foundations refuse to bear it -and that is unable therefore to rise—its very betrayal of a method and -a habit more than adequate, on past occasions, to similar ends, carries -us back to the original rare exhibition, the grand assurance and grand -patience with which the system was launched. - -If it topples over, the system, by its own weight in these last -applications of it, that only makes the history of its prolonged success -the more curious and, speaking for myself, the spectacle of its origin -more attaching. Readers of my generation will remember well the -publication of “La Conquête de Plassans” and the portent, indefinable -but irresistible, after perusal of the volume, conveyed in the general -rubric under which it was a first instalment, Natural and Social History -of a Family under the Second Empire. It squared itself there at its -ease, the announcement, from the first, and we were to learn promptly -enough what a fund of life it masked. It was like the mouth of a cave -with a signboard hung above, or better still perhaps like the big booth -at a fair with the name of the show across the flapping canvas. One -strange animal after another stepped forth into the light, each in its -way a monster bristling and spotted, each a curiosity of that “natural -history” in the name of which we were addressed, though it was doubtless -not till the issue of “L’Assommoir” that the true type of the monstrous -seemed to be reached. The enterprise, for those who had attention, was -even at a distance impressive, and the nearer the critic gets to it -retrospectively the more so it becomes. The pyramid had been planned and -the site staked out, but the young builder stood there, in his sturdy -strength, with no equipment save his two hands and, as we may say, his -wheelbarrow and his trowel. His pile of material—of stone, brick and -rubble or whatever—was of the smallest, but this he apparently felt as -the least of his difficulties. Poor, uninstructed, unacquainted, -unintroduced, he set up his subject wholly from the outside, proposing -to himself wonderfully to get into it, into its depths, as he went. - -If we imagine him asking himself what he knew of the “social” life of -the second Empire to start with, we imagine him also answering in all -honesty: “I have my eyes and my ears—I have all my senses: I have what -I’ve seen and heard, what I’ve smelled and tasted and touched. And then -I’ve my curiosity and my pertinacity; I’ve libraries, books, newspapers, -witnesses, the material, from step to step, of an _enquête_. And then -I’ve my genius—that is, my imagination, my passion, my sensibility to -life. Lastly I’ve my method, and that will be half the battle. Best of -all perhaps even, I’ve plentiful lack of doubt.” Of the absence in him -of a doubt, indeed of his inability, once his direction taken, to -entertain so much as the shadow of one, “Vérité” is a positive -monument—which again represents in this way the unity of his tone and -the meeting of his extremes. If we remember that his design was nothing -if not architectural, that a “majestic whole,” a great balanced façade, -with all its orders and parts, that a singleness of mass and a unity of -effect, in fine, were before him from the first, his notion of picking -up his bricks as he proceeded becomes, in operation, heroic. It is not -in the least as a record of failure for him that I note this particular -fact of the growth of the long series as on the whole the liveliest -interest it has to offer. “I don’t know my subject, but I must live into -it; I don’t know life, but I must learn it as I work”—that attitude and -programme represent, to my sense, a drama more intense on the worker’s -own part than any of the dramas he was to invent and put before us. - -It was the fortune, it was in a manner the doom, of Les Rougon-Macquart -to deal with things almost always in gregarious form, to be a picture of -_numbers_, of classes, crowds, confusions, movements, industries—and -this for a reason of which it will be interesting to attempt some -account. The individual life is, if not wholly absent, reflected in -coarse and common, in generalised terms; whereby we arrive precisely at -the oddity just named, the circumstance that, looking out somewhere, and -often woefully athirst, for the taste of fineness, we find it not in the -fruits of our author’s fancy, but in a different matter altogether. We -get it in the very history of his effort, the image itself of his -lifelong process, comparatively so personal, so spiritual even, and, -through all its patience and pain, of a quality so much more -distinguished than the qualities he succeeds in attributing to his -figures even when he most aims at distinction. There can be no question -in these narrow limits of my taking the successive volumes one by -one—all the more that our sense of the exhibition is as little as -possible an impression of parts and books, of particular “plots” and -persons. It produces the effect of a mass of imagery in which shades are -sacrificed, the effect of character and passion in the lump or by the -ton. The fullest, the most characteristic episodes affect us like a -sounding chorus or procession, as with a hubbub of voices and a -multitudinous tread of feet. The setter of the mass into motion, he -himself, in the crowd, figures best, with whatever queer idiosyncrasies, -excrescences and gaps, a being of a substance akin to our own. Taking -him as we must, I repeat, for quite heroic, the interest of detail in -him is the interest of his struggle at every point with his problem. - -The sense for crowds and processions, for the gross and the general, was -largely the _result_ of this predicament, of the disproportion between -his scheme and his material—though it was certainly also in part an -effect of his particular turn of mind. What the reader easily discerns -in him is the sturdy resolution with which breadth and energy supply the -place of penetration. He rests to his utmost on his documents, devours -and assimilates them, makes them yield him extraordinary appearances of -life; but in his way he too improvises in the grand manner, the manner -of Walter Scott and of Dumas the elder. We feel that he _has_ to -improvise for his moral and social world, the world as to which vision -and opportunity must come, if they are to come at all, unhurried and -unhustled—must take their own time, helped undoubtedly more or less by -blue-books, reports and interviews, by inquiries “on the spot,” but -never wholly replaced by such substitutes without a general -disfigurement. Vision and opportunity reside in a personal sense and a -personal history, and no short cut to them in the interest of plausible -fiction has ever been discovered. The short cut, it is not too much to -say, was with Zola the subject of constant ingenious experiment, and it -is largely to this source, I surmise, that we owe the celebrated element -of his grossness. He was _obliged_ to be gross, on his system, or -neglect to his cost an invaluable aid to representation, as well as one -that apparently struck him as lying close at hand; and I cannot withhold -my frank admiration from the courage and consistency with which he faced -his need. - -His general subject in the last analysis was the nature of man; in -dealing with which he took up, obviously, the harp of most numerous -strings. His business was to make these strings sound true, and there -were none that he did not, so far as his general economy permitted, -persistently try. What happened then was that many—say about half, and -these, as I have noted, the most silvered, the most golden—refused to -give out their music. They would only sound false, since (as with all -his earnestness he must have felt) he could command them, through want -of skill, of practice, of ear, to none of the right harmony. What -therefore was more natural than that, still splendidly bent on producing -his illusion, he should throw himself on the strings he might thump with -effect, and should work them, as our phrase is, for all they were worth? -The nature of man, he had plentiful warrant for holding, is an -extraordinary mixture, but the great thing was to represent a sufficient -part of it to show that it was solidly, palpably, commonly the nature. -With this preoccupation he doubtless fell into extravagance—there was -clearly so much to lead him on. The coarser side of his subject, based -on the community of all the instincts, was for instance the more -practicable side, a sphere the vision of which required but the general -human, scarcely more than the plain physical, initiation, and dispensed -thereby conveniently enough with special introductions or revelations. A -free entry into this sphere was undoubtedly compatible with a youthful -career as hampered right and left even as Zola’s own. - -He was in prompt possession thus of the range of sympathy that he -_could_ cultivate, though it must be added that the complete exercise of -that sympathy might have encountered an obstacle that would somewhat -undermine his advantage. Our friend might have found himself able, in -other words, to pay to the instinctive, as I have called it, only such -tribute as protesting taste (his own dose of it) permitted. Yet there it -was again that fortune and his temperament served him. Taste as he knew -it, taste as his own constitution supplied it, proved to have nothing to -say to the matter. His own dose of the precious elixir had no -perceptible regulating power. Paradoxical as the remark may sound, this -accident was positively to operate as one of his greatest felicities. -There are parts of his work, those dealing with romantic or poetic -elements, in which the inactivity of the principle in question is -sufficiently hurtful; but it surely should not be described as hurtful -to such pictures as “Le Ventre de Paris,” as “L’Assommoir,” as -“Germinal.” The conception on which each of these productions rests is -that of a world with which taste has nothing to do, and though the act -of representation may be justly held, as an artistic act, to involve its -presence, the discrimination would probably have been in fact, given the -particular illusion sought, more detrimental than the deficiency. There -was a great outcry, as we all remember, over the rank materialism of -“L’Assommoir,” but who cannot see to-day how much a milder infusion of -it would have told against the close embrace of the subject aimed at? -“L’Assommoir” is the nature of man—but not his finer, nobler, cleaner -or more cultivated nature; it is the image of his free instincts, the -better and the worse, the better struggling as they can, gasping for -light and air, the worse making themselves at home in darkness, -ignorance and poverty. The whole handling makes for emphasis and scale, -and it is not to be measured how, as a picture of conditions, the thing -would have suffered from timidity. The qualification of the painter was -precisely his stoutness of stomach, and we scarce exceed in saying that -to have taken in and given out again less of the infected air would, -with such a resource, have meant the waste of a faculty. - -I may add in this connection moreover that refinement of intention did -on occasion and after a fashion of its own unmistakably preside at these -experiments; making the remark in order to have done once for all with a -feature of Zola’s literary physiognomy that appears to have attached the -gaze of many persons to the exclusion of every other. There are judges -in these matters so perversely preoccupied that for them to see anywhere -the “improper” is for them straightway to cease to see anything else. -The said improper, looming supremely large and casting all the varieties -of the proper quite into the shade, suffers thus in their consciousness -a much greater extension than it ever claimed, and this consciousness -becomes, for the edification of many and the information of a few, a -colossal reflector and record of it. Much may be said, in relation to -some of the possibilities of the nature of man, of the nature in -especial of the “people,” on the defect of our author’s sense of -proportion. But the sense of proportion of many of those he has -scandalised would take us further yet. I recall at all events as -relevant—for it comes under a very attaching general head—two -occasions of long ago, two Sunday afternoons in Paris, on which I found -the question of intention very curiously lighted. Several men of letters -of a group in which almost every member either had arrived at renown or -was well on his way to it, were assembled under the roof of the most -distinguished of their number, where they exchanged free confidences on -current work, on plans and ambitions, in a manner full of interest for -one never previously privileged to see artistic conviction, artistic -passion (at least on the literary ground) so systematic and so -articulate. “Well, I on my side,” I remember Zola’s saying, “am engaged -on a book, a study of the _mœurs_ of the people, for which I am making a -collection of all the ‘bad words,’ the _gros mots_, of the language, -those with which the vocabulary of the people, those with which their -familiar talk, bristles.” I was struck with the tone in which he made -the announcement—without bravado and without apology, as an interesting -idea that had come to him and that he was working, really to arrive at -character and particular truth, with all his conscience; just as I was -struck with the unqualified interest that his plan excited. It was _on_ -a plan that he was working—formidably, almost grimly, as his fatigued -face showed; and the whole consideration of this interesting element -partook of the general seriousness. - -But there comes back to me also as a companion-piece to this another -day, after some interval, on which the interest was excited by the fact -that the work for love of which the brave license had been taken was -actually under the ban of the daily newspaper that had engaged to -“serialise” it. Publication had definitively ceased. The thing had run a -part of its course, but it had outrun the courage of editors and the -curiosity of subscribers—that stout curiosity to which it had evidently -in such good faith been addressed. The chorus of contempt for the ways -of such people, their pusillanimity, their superficiality, vulgarity, -intellectual platitude, was the striking note on this occasion; for the -journal impugned had declined to proceed and the serial, broken off, -been obliged, if I am not mistaken, to seek the hospitality of other -columns, secured indeed with no great difficulty. The composition so -qualified for future fame was none other, as I was later to learn, than -“L’Assommoir”; and my reminiscence has perhaps no greater point than in -connecting itself with a matter always dear to the critical spirit, -especially when the latter has not too completely elbowed out the -romantic—the matter of the “origins,” the early consciousness, early -steps, early tribulations, early obscurity, as so often happens, of -productions finally crowned by time. - -Their greatness is for the most part a thing that has originally begun -so small; and this impression is particularly strong when we have been -in any degree present, so to speak, at the birth. The course of the -matter is apt to tend preponderantly in that case to enrich our stores -of irony. In the eventual conquest of consideration by an abused book we -recognise, in other terms, a drama of romantic interest, a drama often -with large comic no less than with fine pathetic interweavings. It may -of course be said in this particular connection that “L’Assommoir” had -not been one of the literary things that creep humbly into the world. -Its “success” may be cited as almost insolently prompt, and the fact -remains true if the idea of success be restricted, after the inveterate -fashion, to the idea of circulation. What remains truer still, however, -is that for the critical spirit circulation mostly matters not the least -little bit, and it is of the success with which the history of Gervaise -and Coupeau nestles in _that_ capacious bosom, even as the just man -sleeps in Abraham’s, that I here speak. But it is a point I may better -refer to a moment hence. - -Though a summary study of Zola need not too anxiously concern itself -with book after book—always with a partial exception from this remark -for “L’Assommoir”—groups and varieties none the less exist in the huge -series, aids to discrimination without which no measure of the presiding -genius is possible. These divisions range themselves to my sight, -roughly speaking, however, as scarce more than three in number—I mean -if the ten volumes of the Œuvres Critiques and the Théâtre be left out -of account. The critical volumes in especial abound in the -characteristic, as they were also a wondrous addition to his sum of -achievement during his most strenuous years. But I am forced not to -consider them. The two groups constituted after the close of Les -Rougon-Macquart—“Les Trois Villes” and the incomplete “Quatre -Évangiles”—distribute themselves easily among the three types, or, to -speak more exactly, stand together under one of the three. This one, so -comprehensive as to be the author’s main exhibition, includes to my -sense all his best volumes—to the point in fact of producing an effect -of distinct inferiority for those outside of it, which are, luckily for -his general credit, the less numerous. It is so inveterately pointed out -in any allusion to him that one shrinks, in repeating it, from sounding -flat; but as he was admirably equipped from the start for the evocation -of number and quantity, so those of his social pictures that most easily -surpass the others are those in which appearances, the appearances -familiar to him, are at once most magnified and most multiplied. - -To make his characters swarm, and to make the great central thing they -swarm about “as large as life,” portentously, heroically big, that was -the task he set himself very nearly from the first, that was the secret -he triumphantly mastered. Add that the big central thing was always some -highly representative institution or industry of the France of his time, -some seated Moloch of custom, of commerce, of faith, lending itself to -portrayal through its abuses and excesses, its idol-face and great -devouring mouth, and we embrace main lines of his attack. In “Le Ventre -de Paris” he had dealt with the life of the huge Halles, the general -markets and their supply, the personal forces, personal situations, -passions, involved in (strangest of all subjects) the alimentation of -the monstrous city, the city whose victualling occupies so inordinately -much of its consciousness. Paris richly gorged, Paris sublime and -indifferent in her assurance (so all unlike poor Oliver’s) of “more,” -figures here the theme itself, lies across the scene like some vast -ruminant creature breathing in a cloud of parasites. The book was the -first of the long series to show the full freedom of the author’s hand, -though “La Curée” had already been symptomatic. This freedom, after an -interval, broke out on a much bigger scale in “L’Assommoir,” in “Au -Bonheur des Dames,” in “Germinal,” in “La Bête Humaine,” in “L’Argent,” -in “La Débâcle,” and then again, though more mechanically and with much -of the glory gone, in the more or less wasted energy of “Lourdes,” -“Rome,” “Paris,” of “Fécondité,” “Travail” and “Vérité.” - -“Au Bonheur des Dames” handles the colossal modern shop, traces the -growth of such an organisation as the Bon Marché or the -Magasin-du-Louvre, sounds the abysses of its inner life, marshals its -population, its hierarchy of clerks, counters, departments, divisions -and sub-divisions, plunges into the labyrinth of the mutual relations of -its staff, and above all traces its ravage amid the smaller fry of the -trade, of all the trades, pictures these latter gasping for breath in an -air pumped clean by its mighty lungs. “Germinal” revolves about the -coal-mines of Flemish France, with the subterranean world of the pits -for its central presence, just as “La Bête Humaine” has for its -protagonist a great railway and “L’Argent” presents in terms of human -passion—mainly of human baseness—the fury of the Bourse and the -monster of Credit. “La Débâcle” takes up with extraordinary breadth the -first act of the Franco-Prussian war, the collapse at Sedan, and the -titles of the six volumes of The Three Cities and the Four Gospels -sufficiently explain them. I may mention, however, for the last -lucidity, that among these “Fécondité” manipulates, with an amazing -misapprehension of means to ends, of remedies to ills, no less thickly -peopled a theme than that of the decline in the French birth-rate, and -that “Vérité” presents a fictive equivalent of the Dreyfus case, with a -vast and elaborate picture of the battle in France between lay and -clerical instruction. I may even further mention, to clear the ground, -that with the close of Les Rougon-Macquart the diminution of freshness -in the author’s energy, the diminution of intensity and, in short, of -quality, becomes such as to render sadly difficult a happy life with -some of the later volumes. Happiness of the purest strain never indeed, -in old absorptions of Zola, quite sat at the feast; but there was mostly -a measure of coercion, a spell without a charm. From these last-named -productions of the climax everything strikes me as absent but quantity -(“Vérité,” for instance, is, with the possible exception of “Nana,” the -longest of the list); though indeed there is something impressive in the -way his quantity represents his patience. - -There are efforts here at stout perusal that, frankly, I have been -unable to carry through, and I should verily like, in connection with -the vanity of these, to dispose on the spot of the sufficiently strange -phenomenon constituted by what I have called the climax. It embodies in -fact an immense anomaly; it casts back over Zola’s prime and his middle -years the queerest grey light of eclipse. Nothing moreover—nothing -“literary”—was ever so odd as in this matter the whole turn of the -case, the consummation so logical yet so unexpected. Writers have grown -old and withered and failed; they have grown weak and sad; they have -lost heart, lost ability, yielded in one way or another—the possible -ways being so numerous—to the cruelty of time. But the singular doom of -this genius, and which began to multiply its symptoms ten years before -his death, was to find, with life, at fifty, still rich in him, strength -only to undermine all the “authority” he had gathered. He had not grown -old and he had not grown feeble; he had only grown all too wrongly -insistent, setting himself to wreck, poetically, his so massive -identity—to wreck it in the very waters in which he had formally -arrayed his victorious fleet, (I say “poetically” on purpose to give him -the just benefit of all the beauty of his power.) The process of the -disaster, so full of the effect, though so without the intention, of -perversity, is difficult to trace in a few words; it may best be -indicated by an example or two of its action. - -The example that perhaps most comes home to me is again connected with a -personal reminiscence. In the course of some talk that I had with him -during his first visit to England I happened to ask him what opportunity -to travel (if any) his immense application had ever left him, and -whether in particular he had been able to see Italy, a country from -which I had either just returned or which I was luckily—not having the -Natural History of a Family on my hands—about to revisit. “All I’ve -done, alas,” he replied, “was, the other year, in the course of a little -journey to the south, to my own _pays_—all that has been possible was -then to make a little dash as far as Genoa, a matter of only a few -days.” “Le Docteur Pascal,” the conclusion of Les Rougon-Macquart, had -appeared shortly before, and it further befell that I asked him what -plans he had for the future, now that, still _dans la force de l’âge_, -he had so cleared the ground. I shall never forget the fine promptitude -of his answer—“Oh, I shall begin at once Les Trois Villes.” “And which -cities are they to be?” The reply was finer still—“Lourdes, Paris, -Rome.” - -It was splendid for confidence and cheer, but it left me, I fear, more -or less gaping, and it was to give me afterwards the key, critically -speaking, to many a mystery. It struck me as breathing to an almost -tragic degree the fatuity of those in whom the gods stimulate that vice -to their ruin. He was an honest man—he had always bristled with it at -every pore; but no artistic reverse was inconceivable for an adventurer -who, stating in one breath that his knowledge of Italy consisted of a -few days spent at Genoa, was ready to declare in the next that he had -planned, on a scale, a picture of Rome. It flooded his career, to my -sense, with light; it showed how he had marched from subject to subject -and had “got up” each in turn—showing also how consummately he had -reduced such getting-up to an artifice. He had success and a rare -impunity behind him, but nothing would now be so interesting as to see -if he could again play the trick. One would leave him, and welcome, -Lourdes and Paris—he had already dealt, on a scale, with his own -country and people. But was the adored Rome also to be his on such -terms, the Rome he was already giving away before possessing an inch of -it? One thought of one’s own frequentations, saturations—a history of -long years, and of how the effect of them had somehow been but to make -the subject too august. Was _he_ to find it easy through a visit of a -month or two with “introductions” and a Bædeker? - -It was not indeed that the Bædeker and the introductions didn’t show, to -my sense, at that hour, as extremely suggestive; they were positively a -part of the light struck out by his announcement. They defined the -system on which he had brought Les Rougon-Macquart safely into port. He -had had his Bædeker and his introductions for “Germinal,” for -“L’Assommoir,” for “L’Argent,” for “La Débâcle,” for “Au Bonheur des -Dames”; which advantages, which researches, had clearly been all the -more in character for being documentary, extractive, a matter of -_renseignements_, published or private, even when most mixed with -personal impressions snatched, with _enquêtes sur les lieux_, with facts -obtained from the best authorities, proud and happy to co-operate in so -famous a connection. That was, as we say, all right, all the more that -the process, to my imagination, became vivid and was wonderfully -reflected back from its fruits. There _were_ the fruits—so it hadn’t -been presumptuous. Presumption, however, was now to begin, and what omen -mightn’t there be in its beginning with such complacency? Well, time -would show—as time in due course effectually did. “Rome,” as the second -volume of The Three Cities, appeared with high punctuality a year or two -later; and the interesting question, an occasion really for the -moralist, was by that time not to recognise in it the mere triumph of a -mechanical art, a “receipt” applied with the skill of long practice, but -to do much more than this—that is really to give a name to the -particular shade of blindness that could constitute a trap for so great -an artistic intelligence. The presumptuous volume, without sweetness, -without antecedents, superficial and violent, has the minimum instead of -the maximum of _value_; so that it betrayed or “gave away” just in this -degree the state of mind on the author’s part responsible for its -inflated hollowness. To put one’s finger on the state of mind was to -find out accordingly what was, as we say, the matter with him. - -It seemed to me, I remember, that I found out as never before when, in -its turn, “Fécondité” began the work of crowning the edifice. -“Fécondité” is physiological, whereas “Rome” is not, whereas “Vérité” -likewise is not; yet these three productions joined hands at a given -moment to fit into the lock of the mystery the key of my meditation. -They came to the same thing, to the extent of permitting me to read into -them together the same precious lesson. This lesson may not, barely -stated, sound remarkable; yet without being in possession of it I should -have ventured on none of these remarks. “The matter with” Zola then, so -far as it goes, was that, as the imagination of the artist is in the -best cases not only clarified but intensified by his equal possession of -Taste (deserving here if ever the old-fashioned honour of a capital) so -when he has lucklessly never inherited that auxiliary blessing the -imagination itself inevitably breaks down as a consequence. There is -simply no limit, in fine, to the misfortune of being tasteless; it does -not merely disfigure the surface and the fringe of your performance—it -eats back into the very heart and enfeebles the sources of life. When -you have no taste you have no discretion, which is the conscience of -taste, and when you have no discretion you perpetrate books like “Rome,” -which are without intellectual modesty, books like “Fécondité,” which -are without a sense of the ridiculous, books like “Vérité,” which are -without the finer vision of human experience. - -It is marked that in each of these examples the deficiency has been -directly fatal. No stranger doom was ever appointed for a man so plainly -desiring only to be just than the absurdity of not resting till he had -buried the felicity of his past, such as it was, under a great flat -leaden slab. “Vérité” is a plea for science, as science, to Zola, is -_all_ truth, the mention of any other kind being mere imbecility; and -the simplification of the human picture to which his negations and -exasperations have here conducted him was not, even when all had been -said, credible in advance. The result is amazing when we consider that -the finer observation is the supposed basis of all such work. It is not -that even here the author has not a queer idealism of his own; this -idealism is on the contrary so present as to show positively for the -falsest of his simplifications. In “Fécondité” it becomes grotesque, -makes of the book the most muscular mistake of _sense_ probably ever -committed. Where was the judgment of which experience is supposed to be -the guarantee when the perpetrator could persuade himself that the -lesson he wished in these pages to convey could be made immediate and -direct, chalked, with loud taps and a still louder commentary, the sexes -and generations all convoked, on the blackboard of the “family -sentiment?” - -I have mentioned, however, all this time but one of his categories. The -second consists of such things as “La Fortune des Rougon” and “La -Curée,” as “Eugène Rougon” and even “Nana,” as “Pot-Bouille,” as -“L’Œuvre” and “La Joie de Vivre.” These volumes may rank as social -pictures in the narrowest sense, studies, comprehensively speaking, of -the manners, the morals, the miseries—for it mainly comes to that—of a -bourgeoisie grossly materialised. They deal with the life of individuals -in the liberal professions and with that of political and social -adventures, and offer the personal character and career, more or less -detached, as the centre of interest. “La Curée” is an evocation, violent -and “romantic,” of the extravagant appetites, the fever of the senses, -supposedly fostered, for its ruin, by the hapless second Empire, upon -which general ills and turpitudes at large were at one time so freely -and conveniently fathered. “Eugène Rougon” carries out this view in the -high colour of a political portrait, not other than scandalous, for -which one of the ministerial _âmes damnées_ of Napoleon III., M. Rouher, -is reputed, I know not how justly, to have sat. “Nana,” attaching itself -by a hundred strings to a prearranged table of kinships, heredities, -transmissions, is the vast crowded _epos_ of the daughter of the people -filled with poisoned blood and sacrificed as well as sacrificing on the -altar of luxury and lust; the panorama of such a “progress” as Hogarth -would more definitely have named—the progress across the high plateau -of “pleasure” and down the facile descent on the other side. “Nana” is -truly a monument to Zola’s patience; the subject being so ungrateful, so -formidably special, that the multiplication of illustrative detail, the -plunge into pestilent depths, represents a kind of technical -intrepidity. - -There are other plunges, into different sorts of darkness; of which the -esthetic, even the scientific, even the ironic motive fairly escapes -us—explorations of stagnant pools like that of “La Joie de Vivre,” as -to which, granting the nature of the curiosity and the substance -laboured in, the patience is again prodigious, but which make us wonder -what pearl of philosophy, of suggestion or just of homely recognition, -the general picture, as of rats dying in a hole, has to offer. Our -various senses, sight, smell, sound, touch, are, as with Zola always, -more or less convinced; but when the particular effect upon each of -these is added to the effect upon the others the mind still remains -bewilderedly unconscious of any use for the total. I am not sure indeed -that the case is in this respect better with the productions of the -third order—“La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret,” “Une Page d’Amour,” “Le Rêve,” -“Le Docteur Pascal”—in which the appeal is more directly, is in fact -quite earnestly, to the moral vision; so much, on such ground, was to -depend precisely on those discriminations in which the writer is least -at home. The volumes whose names I have just quoted are his express -tribute to the “ideal,” to the select and the charming—fair fruits of -invention intended to remove from the mouth so far as possible the -bitterness of the ugly things in which so much of the rest of his work -had been condemned to consist. The subjects in question then are -“idyllic” and the treatment poetic, concerned essentially to please on -the largest lines and involving at every turn that salutary need. They -are matters of conscious delicacy, and nothing might interest us more -than to see what, in the shock of the potent forces enlisted, becomes of -this shy element. Nothing might interest us more, literally, and might -positively affect us more, even very nearly to tears, though indeed -sometimes also to smiles, than to see the constructor of Les -Rougon-Macquart trying, “for all he is worth,” to be fine with fineness, -finely tender, finely true—trying to be, as it is called, -distinguished—in face of constitutional hindrance. - -The effort is admirably honest, the tug at his subject splendidly -strong; but the consequences remain of the strangest, and we get the -impression that—as representing discriminations unattainable—they are -somehow the price he paid. “Le Docteur Pascal,” for instance, which -winds up the long chronicle on the romantic note, on the note of invoked -beauty, in order to sweeten, as it were, the total draught—“Le Docteur -Pascal,” treating of the erotic ardour entertained for each other by an -uncle and his niece, leaves us amazed at such a conception of beauty, -such an application of romance, such an estimate of sweetness, a -sacrifice to poetry and passion so little in order. Of course, we -definitely remind ourselves, the whole long chronicle is explicitly a -scheme, solidly set up and intricately worked out, lighted, according to -the author’s pretension, by “science,” high, dry and clear, and with -each part involved and necessitated in all the other parts, each block -of the edifice, each “morceau de vie,” _physiologically_ determined by -previous combinations. “How can I help it,” we hear the builder of the -pyramid ask, “if experience (by which alone I proceed) shows me certain -plain results—if, holding up the torch of my famous ‘experimental -method,’ I find it stare me in the face that the union of certain types, -the conflux of certain strains of blood, the intermarriage, in a word, -of certain families, produces nervous conditions, conditions -temperamental, psychical and pathological, in which nieces _have_ to -fall in love with uncles and uncles with nieces? Observation and -imagination, for any picture of life,” he as audibly adds, “know no -light but science, and are false to all intellectual decency, false to -their own honour, when they fear it, dodge it, darken it. To pretend to -any other guide or law is mere base humbug.” - -That is very well, and the value, in a hundred ways, of a mass of -production conceived in such a spirit can never (when robust execution -has followed) be small. But the formula really sees us no further. It -offers a definition which is no definition. “Science” is soon said—the -whole thing depends on the ground so covered. Science accepts surely -_all_ our consciousness of life; even, rather, the latter closes -maternally round it—so that, becoming thus a force within us, not a -force outside, it exists, it illuminates only as we apply it. We do -emphatically apply it in art. But Zola would apparently hold that it -much more applies _us_. On the showing of many of his volumes then it -makes but a dim use of us, and this we should still consider the case -even were we sure that the article offered us in the majestic name is -absolutely at one with its own pretension. This confidence we can on too -many grounds never have. The matter is one of appreciation, and when an -artist answers for science who answers for the artist—who at the least -answers for art? Thus it is with the mistakes that affect us, I say, as -Zola’s penalties. We are reminded by them that the game of art has, as -the phrase is, to be played. It may not with any sure felicity for the -result be both taken and left. If you insist on the common you must -submit to the common; if you discriminate, on the contrary, you must, -however invidious your discriminations may be called, trust to them to -see you through. - -To the common then Zola, often with splendid results, inordinately -sacrifices, and this fact of its overwhelming him is what I have called -his paying for it. In “L’Assommoir,” in “Germinal,” in “La Débâcle,” -productions in which he must most survive, the sacrifice is ordered and -fruitful, for the subject and the treatment harmonise and work together. -He describes what he best feels, and feels it more and more as it -naturally comes to him—quite, if I may allow myself the image, as we -zoologically see some mighty animal, a beast of a corrugated hide and a -portentous snout, soaking with joy in the warm ooze of an African -riverside. In these cases everything matches, and “science,” we may be -permitted to believe, has had little hand in the business. The author’s -perceptions go straight, and the subject, grateful and responsive, gives -itself wholly up. It is no longer a case of an uncertain smoky torch, -but of a personal vision, the vision of genius, springing from an inward -source. Of this genius “L’Assommoir” is the most extraordinary record. -It contains, with the two companions I have given it, all the best of -Zola, and the three books together are solid ground—or would be could I -now so take them—for a study of the particulars of his power. His -strongest marks and features abound in them; “L’Assommoir” above all is -(not least in respect to its bold free linguistic reach, already glanced -at) completely genial, while his misadventures, his unequipped and -delusive pursuit of the life of the spirit and the tone of culture, are -almost completely absent. - -It is a singular sight enough this of a producer of illusions whose -interest for us is so independent of our pleasure or at least of our -complacency—who touches us deeply even while he most “puts us off,” who -makes us care for his ugliness and yet himself at the same time -pitilessly (pitilessly, that is, for _us_) makes a mock of it, who fills -us with a sense of the rich which is none the less never the rare. -Gervaise, the most immediately “felt,” I cannot but think, of all his -characters, is a lame washerwoman, loose and gluttonous, without will, -without any principle of cohesion, the sport of every wind that assaults -her exposed life, and who, rolling from one gross mistake to another, -finds her end in misery, drink and despair. But her career, as -presented, has fairly the largeness that, throughout the chronicle, we -feel as epic, and the intensity of her creator’s vision of it and of the -dense sordid life hanging about it is one of the great things the modern -novel has been able to do. It has done nothing more completely -constitutive and of a tone so rich and full and sustained. The tone of -“L’Assommoir” is, for mere “keeping up,” unsurpassable, a vast deep -steady tide on which every object represented is triumphantly borne. It -never shrinks nor flows thin, and nothing for an instant drops, dips or -catches; the high-water mark of sincerity, of the genial, as I have -called it, is unfailingly kept. - -For the artist in the same general “line” such a production has an -interest almost inexpressible, a mystery as to origin and growth over -which he fondly but rather vainly bends. How after all does it so get -itself _done_?—the “done” being admirably the sign and crown of it. The -light of the richer mind has been elsewhere, as I have sufficiently -hinted, frequent enough, but nothing truly in all fiction was ever built -so strong or made so dense as here. Needless to say there are a thousand -things with more charm in their truth, with more beguilement of every -sort, more prettiness of pathos, more innocence of drollery, for the -spectator’s sense of truth. But I doubt if there has ever been a more -totally _represented_ world, anything more founded and established, more -provided for all round, more organised and carried on. It is a world -practically workable, with every part as functional as every other, and -with the parts all chosen for direct mutual aid. Let it not be said -either that the equal constitution of parts makes for repletion or -excess; the air circulates and the subject blooms; deadness comes in -these matters only when the right parts are absent and there is vain -beating of the air in their place—the refuge of the fumbler incapable -of the thing “done” at all. - -The mystery I speak of, for the reader who reflects as he goes, is the -wonder of the scale and energy of Zola’s assimilations. This wonder -besets us above all throughout the three books I have placed first. How, -all sedentary and “scientific,” did he get so _near_? By what art, -inscrutable, immeasurable, indefatigable, did he arrange to make of his -documents, in these connections, a use so vivified? Say he was “near” -the subject of “L’Assommoir” in imagination, in more or less familiar -impression, in temperament and humour, he could not after all have been -near it in personal experience, and the copious personalism of the -picture, not to say its frank animalism, yet remains its note and its -strength. When the note had been struck in a thousand forms we had, by -multiplication, as a kind of cumulative consequence, the finished and -rounded book; just as we had the same result by the same process in -“Germinal.” It is not of course that multiplication and accumulation, -the extraordinary pair of legs on which he walks, are easily or directly -consistent with his projecting himself morally; this immense diffusion, -with its appropriation of everything it meets, affects us on the -contrary as perpetually delaying access to what we may call the private -world, the world of the individual. Yet since the individual—for it so -happens—is simple and shallow our author’s dealings with him, as met -and measured, maintain their resemblance to those of the lusty bee who -succeeds in plumping for an instant, of a summer morning, into every -flower-cup of the garden. - -Grant—and the generalisation may be emphatic—that the shallow and the -simple are _all_ the population of his richest and most crowded -pictures, and that his “psychology,” in a psychologic age, remains -thereby comparatively coarse, grant this and we but get another view of -the miracle. We see enough of the superficial among novelists at large, -assuredly, without deriving from it, as we derive from Zola at his best, -the concomitant impression of the solid. It is in general—I mean among -the novelists at large—the impression of the _cheap_, which the author -of Les Rougon-Macquart, honest man, never faithless for a moment to his -own stiff standard, manages to spare us even in the prolonged sandstorm -of “Vérité.” The Common is another matter; it is one of the forms of the -superficial—pervading and consecrating all things in such a book as -“Germinal”—and it only adds to the number of our critical questions. -How in the world is it made, this deplorable democratic malodorous -Common, so strange and so interesting? How is it taught to receive into -its loins the stuff of the epic and still, in spite of that association -with poetry, never depart from its nature? It is in the great lusty game -he plays with the shallow and the simple that Zola’s mastery resides, -and we see of course that when values are small it takes innumerable -items and combinations to make up the sum. In “L’Assommoir” and in -“Germinal,” to some extent even in “La Débâcle,” the values are all, -morally, personally, of the lowest—the highest is poor Gervaise -herself, richly human in her generosities and follies—yet each is as -distinct as a brass-headed nail. - -What we come back to accordingly is the unprecedented case of such a -combination of parts. Painters, of great schools, often of great talent, -have responded liberally on canvas to the appeal of ugly things, of -Spanish beggars, squalid and dusty-footed, of martyred saints or other -convulsed sufferers, tortured and bleeding, of boors and louts soaking a -Dutch proboscis in perpetual beer; but we had never before had to reckon -with so literary a treatment of the mean and vulgar. When we others of -the Anglo-Saxon race are vulgar we are, handsomely and with the best -conscience in the world, vulgar all through, too vulgar to be in any -degree literary, and too much so therefore to be critically reckoned -with at all. The French are different—they separate their sympathies, -multiply their possibilities, observe their shades, remain more or less -outside of their worst disasters. They mostly contrive to get the -_idea_, in however dead a faint, down into the lifeboat. They may lose -sight of the stars, but they save in some such fashion as that their -intellectual souls. Zola’s own reply to all puzzlements would have been, -at any rate, I take it, a straight summary of his inveterate -professional habits. “It is all very simple—I produce, roughly -speaking, a volume a year, and of this time some five months go to -preparation, to special study. In the other months, with all my _cadres_ -established, I write the book. And I can hardly say which part of the -job is stiffest.” - -The story was not more wonderful for him than that, nor the job more -complex; which is why we must say of his whole process and its results -that they constitute together perhaps the most extraordinary _imitation_ -of observation that we possess. Balzac appealed to “science” and -proceeded by her aid; Balzac had _cadres_ enough and a tabulated world, -rubrics, relationships and genealogies; but Balzac affects us in spite -of everything as personally overtaken by life, as fairly hunted and run -to earth by it. He strikes us as struggling and all but submerged, as -beating over the scene such a pair of wings as were not soon again to be -wielded by any visitor of his general air and as had not at all events -attached themselves to Zola’s rounded shoulders. His bequest is in -consequence immeasurably more interesting, yet who shall declare that -his adventure was in its greatness more successful? Zola “pulled it -off,” as we say, supremely, in that he never but once found himself -obliged to quit, to our vision, his magnificent treadmill of the -pigeonholed and documented—the region we may qualify as that of -experience by imitation. His splendid economy saw him through, he -laboured to the end within sight of his notes and his charts. - -The extraordinary thing, however, is that on the single occasion when, -publicly—as his whole manifestation was public—life did swoop down on -him, the effect of the visitation was quite perversely other than might -have been looked for. His courage in the Dreyfus connection testified -admirably to his ability to live for himself and out of the order of his -volumes—little indeed as living at all might have seemed a question for -one exposed, when his crisis was at its height and he was found guilty -of “insulting” the powers that were, to be literally torn to pieces in -the precincts of the Palace of Justice. Our point is that nothing was -ever so odd as that these great moments should appear to have been -wasted, when all was said, for his creative intelligence. “Vérité,” as I -have intimated, the production in which they might most have been -reflected, is a production unrenewed and unrefreshed by them, spreads -before us as somehow flatter and greyer, not richer and more relieved, -by reason of them. They really arrived, I surmise, too late in the day; -the imagination they might have vivified was already fatigued and spent. - -I must not moreover appear to say that the power to evoke and present -has not even on the dead level of “Vérité” its occasional minor -revenges. There are passages, whole pages, of the old full-bodied sort, -pictures that elsewhere in the series would in all likelihood have -seemed abundantly convincing. Their misfortune is to have been -discounted by our intensified, our finally fatal sense of the _procédé_. -Quarrelling with all conventions, defiant of them in general, Zola was -yet inevitably to set up his own group of them—as, for that matter, -without a sufficient collection, without their aid in simplifying and -making possible, how could he ever have seen his big ship into port? Art -welcomes them, feeds upon them always; no sort of form is practicable -without them. It is only a question of what particular ones we use—to -wage war on certain others and to arrive at particular forms. The -convention of the blameless being, the thoroughly “scientific” creature -possessed impeccably of all truth and serving as the mouthpiece of it -and of the author’s highest complacencies, this character is for -instance a convention inveterate and indispensable, without whom the -“sympathetic” side of the work could never have been achieved. Marc in -“Vérité,” Pierre Froment in “Lourdes” and in “Rome,” the wondrous -representatives of the principle of reproduction in “Fécondité,” the -exemplary painter of “L’Œuvre,” sublime in his modernity and paternity, -the patient Jean Macquart of “La Débâcle,” whose patience is as -guaranteed as the exactitude of a well-made watch, the supremely -enlightened Docteur Pascal even, as I recall him, all amorous nepotism -but all virtue too and all beauty of life—such figures show us the -reasonable and the good not merely in the white light of the old George -Sand novel and its improved moralities, but almost in that of our -childhood’s nursery and school-room, that of the moral tale of Miss -Edgeworth and Mr. Thomas Day. - -Yet let not these restrictions be my last word. I had intended, under -the effect of a reperusal of “La Débâcle,” “Germinal” and “L’Assommoir,” -to make no discriminations that should not be in our hero’s favour. The -long-drawn incident of the marriage of Gervaise and Cadet-Cassis and -that of the Homeric birthday feast later on in the laundress’s workshop, -each treated from beginning to end and in every item of their coarse -comedy and humanity, still show the unprecedented breadth by which they -originally made us stare, still abound in the particular kind and degree -of vividness that helped them, when they appeared, to mark a date in the -portrayal of manners. Nothing had then been so sustained and at every -moment of its grotesque and pitiful existence lived into as the nuptial -day of the Coupeau pair in especial, their fantastic processional -pilgrimage through the streets of Paris in the rain, their bedraggled -exploration of the halls of the Louvre museum, lost as in the labyrinth -of Crete, and their arrival at last, ravenous and exasperated, at the -_guinguette_ where they sup at so much a head, each paying, and where we -sit down with them in the grease and the perspiration and succumb, half -in sympathy, half in shame, to their monstrous pleasantries, acerbities -and miseries. I have said enough of the mechanical in Zola; here in -truth is, given the elements, almost insupportably the sense of life. -That effect is equally in the historic chapter of the strike of the -miners in “Germinal,” another of those illustrative episodes, viewed as -great passages to be “rendered,” for which our author established -altogether a new measure and standard of handling, a new energy and -veracity, something since which the old trivialities and poverties of -treatment of such aspects have become incompatible, for the novelist, -with either rudimentary intelligence or rudimentary self-respect. - -As for “La Débâcle,” finally, it takes its place with Tolstoi’s very -much more universal but very much less composed and condensed epic as an -incomparably human picture of war. I have been re-reading it, I confess, -with a certain timidity, the dread of perhaps impairing the deep -impression received at the time of its appearance. I recall the effect -it then produced on me as a really luxurious act of submission. It was -early in the summer; I was in an old Italian town; the heat was -oppressive, and one could but recline, in the lightest garments, in a -great dim room and give one’s self up. I like to think of the conditions -and the emotion, which melt for me together into the memory I fear to -imperil. I remember that in the glow of my admiration there was not a -reserve I had ever made that I was not ready to take back. As an -application of the author’s system and his supreme faculty, as a triumph -of what these things could do for him, how could such a performance be -surpassed? The long, complex, horrific, pathetic battle, embraced, -mastered, with every crash of its squadrons, every pulse of its thunder -and blood resolved for us, by reflection, by communication from two of -the humblest and obscurest of the military units, into immediate vision -and contact, into deep human thrills of terror and pity—this bristling -centre of the book was such a piece of “doing” (to come back to our -word) as could only shut our mouths. That doubtless is why a generous -critic, nursing the sensation, may desire to drop for a farewell no term -into the other scale. That our author was clearly great at congruous -subjects—this may well be our conclusion. If the others, subjects of -the private and intimate order, gave him more or less inevitably “away,” -they yet left him the great distinction that the more he could be -promiscuous and collective, the more even he could (to repeat my -imputation) illustrate our large natural allowance of health, heartiness -and grossness, the more he could strike us as penetrating and true. It -was a distinction not easy to win and that his name is not likely soon -to lose. - - - - - GUSTAVE FLAUBERT - - -The first thing I find to-day and on my very threshold[2] to say about -Gustave Flaubert is that he has been reported on by M. Émile Faguet in -the series of Les Grands Écrivains Français with such lucidity as may -almost be taken to warn off a later critic. I desire to pay at the -outset my tribute to M. Faguet’s exhaustive study, which is really in -its kind a model and a monument. Never can a critic have got closer to a -subject of this order; never can the results of the approach have been -more copious or more interesting; never in short can the master of a -complex art have been more mastered in his turn, nor his art more -penetrated, by the application of an earnest curiosity. That remark I -have it at heart to make, so pre-eminently has the little volume I refer -to not left the subject where it found it. It abounds in contributive -light, and yet, I feel on reflection that it scarce wholly dazzles -another contributor away. One reason of this is that, though I enter -into everything M. Faguet has said, there are things—things perhaps -especially of the province of the artist, the fellow-craftsman of -Flaubert—that I am conscious of his not having said; another is that -inevitably there are particular possibilities of reaction in our -English-speaking consciousness that hold up a light of their own. -Therefore I venture to follow even on a field so laboured, only paying -this toll to the latest and best work because the author has made it -impossible to do less. - -Flaubert’s life is so almost exclusively the story of his literary -application that to speak of his five or six fictions is pretty well to -account for it all. He died in 1880 after a career of fifty-nine years -singularly little marked by changes of scene, of fortune, of attitude, -of occupation, of character, and above all, as may be said, of mind. He -would be interesting to the race of novelists if only because, quite -apart from the value of his work, he so personally gives us the example -and the image, so presents the intellectual case. He was born a -novelist, grew up, lived, died a novelist, breathing, feeling, thinking, -speaking, performing every operation of life, only as that votary; and -this though his production was to be small in amount and though it -constituted all his diligence. It was not indeed perhaps primarily so -much that he was born and lived a novelist as that he was born and lived -literary, and that to be literary represented for him an almost -overwhelming situation. No life was long enough, no courage great -enough, no fortune kind enough to support a man under the burden of this -character when once such a doom had been laid on him. His case was a -doom because he felt of his vocation almost nothing but the difficulty. -He had many strange sides, but this was the strangest, that if we argued -from his difficulty to his work, the difficulty being registered for us -in his letters and elsewhere, we should expect from the result but the -smallest things. We should be prepared to find in it well-nigh a -complete absence of the signs of a gift. We should regret that the -unhappy man had not addressed himself to something he might have found -at least comparatively easy. We should singularly miss the consecration -supposedly given to a work of art by its having been conceived in joy. -That is Flaubert’s remarkable, his so far as I know unmatched -distinction, that he has left works of an extraordinary art even the -conception of which failed to help him to think in serenity. The chapter -of execution, from the moment execution gets really into the shafts, is -of course always and everywhere a troubled one—about which moreover too -much has of late been written; but we frequently find Flaubert cursing -his subjects themselves, wishing he had not chosen them, holding himself -up to derision for having done so, and hating them in the very act of -sitting down to them. He cared immensely for the medium, the task and -the triumph involved, but was himself the last to be able to say why. He -is sustained only by the rage and the habit of effort; the mere _love_ -of letters, let alone the love of life, appears at an early age to have -deserted him. Certain passages in his correspondence make us even wonder -if it be not hate that sustains him most. So, successively, his several -supremely finished and crowned compositions came into the world, and we -may feel sure that none others of the kind, none that were to have an -equal fortune, had sprung from such adversity. - -I insist upon this because his at once excited and baffled passion gives -the key of his life and determines its outline. I must speak of him at -least as I feel him and as in his very latest years I had the fortune -occasionally to see him. I said just now, practically, that he is for -many of our tribe at large _the_ novelist, intent and typical, and so, -gathered together and foreshortened, simplified and fixed, the lapse of -time seems to show him. It has made him in his prolonged posture -extraordinarily objective, made him even resemble one of his own -productions, constituted him as a subject, determined him as a figure; -the limit of his range, and above all of his reach, is after this -fashion, no doubt, sufficiently indicated, and yet perhaps in the event -without injury to his name. If our consideration of him cultivates a -certain tenderness on the double ground that he suffered supremely in -the cause and that there is endlessly much to be learned from him, we -remember at the same time that, indirectly, the world at large possesses -him not less than the _confrère_. He has fed and fertilised, has -filtered through others, and so arrived at contact with that public from -whom it was his theory that he was separated by a deep and impassable -trench, the labour of his own spade. He is none the less more -interesting, I repeat, as a failure however qualified than as a success -however explained, and it is as so viewed that the unity of his career -attaches and admonishes. Save in some degree by a condition of health (a -liability to epileptic fits at times frequent, but never so frequent as -to have been generally suspected,) he was not outwardly hampered as the -tribe of men of letters goes—an anxious brotherhood at the best; yet -the fewest possible things appear to have ever succeeded in happening to -him. The only son of an eminent provincial physician, he inherited a -modest ease and no other incumbrance than, as was the case for Balzac, -an over-attentive, an importunate mother; but freedom spoke to him from -behind a veil, and when we have mentioned the few apparent facts of -experience that make up his landmarks over and beyond his interspaced -publications we shall have completed his biography. Tall, strong, -striking, he caused his friends to admire in him the elder, the florid -Norman type, and he seems himself, as a man of imagination, to have -found some transmission of race in his stature and presence, his -light-coloured salient eyes and long tawny moustache. - -The central event of his life was his journey to the East in 1849 with -M. Maxime Du Camp, of which the latter has left in his “Impressions -Littéraires” a singularly interesting and, as we may perhaps say, -slightly treacherous report, and which prepared for Flaubert a state of -nostalgia that was not only never to leave him, but that was to work in -him as a motive. He had during that year, and just in sufficient -quantity, his revelation, the particular appropriate disclosure to which -the gods at some moment treat the artist unless they happen too -perversely to conspire against him: he tasted of the knowledge by which -he was subsequently to measure everything, appeal from everything, find -everything flat. Never probably was an impression so assimilated, so -positively transmuted to a function; he lived on it to the end and we -may say that in “Salammbô” and “La Tentation de Saint-Antoine” he almost -died of it. He made afterwards no other journey of the least importance -save a disgusted excursion to the Rigi-Kaltbad shortly before his death. -The Franco-German War was of course to him for the time as the valley of -the shadow itself; but this was an ordeal, unlike most of his other -ordeals, shared after all with millions. He never married—he declared, -toward the end, to the most comprehending of his confidants, that he had -been from the first “afraid of life”; and the friendliest element of his -later time was, we judge, that admirable comfortable commerce, in her -fullest maturity, with Madame George Sand, the confidant I just referred -to; which has been preserved for us in the published correspondence of -each. He had in Ivan Turgenieff a friend almost as valued; he spent each -year a few months in Paris, where (to mention everything) he had his -natural place, so far as he cared to take it, at the small literary -court of the Princess Mathilde; and, lastly, he lost toward the close of -his life, by no fault of his own, a considerable part of his modest -fortune. It is, however, in the long security, the almost unbroken -solitude of Croisset, near Rouen, that he mainly figures for us, gouging -out his successive books in the wide old room, of many windows, that, -with an intervening terrace, overlooked the broad Seine and the passing -boats. This was virtually a monastic cell, closed to echoes and -accidents; with its stillness for long periods scarce broken save by the -creak of the towing-chain of the tugs across the water. When I have -added that his published letters offer a view, not very refreshing, of -his youthful entanglement with Madame Louise Colet—whom we name -because, apparently not a shrinking person, she long ago practically -named herself—I shall have catalogued his personal vicissitudes. And I -may add further that the connection with Madame Colet, such as it was, -rears its head for us in something like a desert of immunity from such -complications. - -His complications were of the spirit, of the literary vision, and though -he was thoroughly profane he was yet essentially anchoretic. I perhaps -miss a point, however, in not finally subjoining that he was liberally -accessible to his friends during the months he regularly spent in Paris. -Sensitive, passionate, perverse, not less than _immediately_ -sociable—for if he detested his collective contemporaries this dropped, -thanks to his humanising shyness, before the individual encounter—he -was in particular and superexcellently not _banal_, and he attached men -perhaps more than women, inspiring a marked, a by no means colourless -shade of respect; a respect not founded, as the air of it is apt to be, -on the vague presumption, but addressed almost in especial to his -disparities and oddities and thereby, no doubt, none too different from -affection. His friends at all events were a rich and eager _cénacle_, -among whom he was on occasion, by his picturesque personality, a natural -and overtopping centre; partly perhaps because he was so much and so -familiarly at home. He wore, up to any hour of the afternoon, that long, -colloquial dressing-gown, with trousers to match, which one has always -associated with literature in France—the uniform really of freedom of -talk. Freedom of talk abounded by his winter fire, for the _cénacle_ was -made up almost wholly of the more finely distinguished among his -contemporaries; of philosophers, men of letters and men of affairs -belonging to his own generation and the next. He had at the time I have -in mind a small perch, far aloft, at the distant, the then almost -suburban, end of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where on Sunday afternoons, -at the very top of an endless flight of stairs, were to be encountered -in a cloud of conversation and smoke most of the novelists of the -general Balzac tradition. Others of a different birth and complexion -were markedly not of the number, were not even conceivable as present; -none of those, unless I misremember, whose fictions were at that time -“serialised” in the Revue des Deux Mondes. In spite of Renan and Taine -and two or three more, the contributor to the Revue would indeed at no -time have found in the circle in question his foot on his native heath. -One could recall if one would two or three vivid allusions to him, not -of the most quotable, on the lips of the most famous of -“naturalists”—allusions to him as represented for instance by M. Victor -Cherbuliez and M. Octave Feuillet. The author of these pages recalls a -concise qualification of this last of his fellows on the lips of Émile -Zola, which that absorbed auditor had too directly, too rashly asked -for; but which is alas not reproducible here. There was little else but -the talk, which had extreme intensity and variety; almost nothing, as I -remember, but a painted and gilded idol, of considerable size, a relic -and a memento, on the chimney-piece. Flaubert was huge and diffident, -but florid too and resonant, and my main remembrance is of a conception -of courtesy in him, an accessibility to the human relation, that only -wanted to be sure of the way taken or to take. The uncertainties of the -French for the determination of intercourse have often struck me as -quite matching the sharpness of their certainties, as we for the most -part feel these latter, which sometimes in fact throw the indeterminate -into almost touching relief. I have thought of them at such times as the -people in the world one may have to go more of the way to meet than to -meet any other, and this, as it were, through their being seated and -embedded, provided for at home, in a manner that is all their own and -that has bred them to the positive preacceptance of interest on their -behalf. We at least of the Anglo-American race, more abroad in the -world, perching everywhere, so far as grounds of intercourse are -concerned, more vaguely and superficially, as well as less -intelligently, are the more ready by that fact with inexpensive -accommodations, rather conscious that these themselves forbear from the -claim to fascinate, and advancing with the good nature that is the -mantle of our obtuseness to any point whatever where entertainment may -be offered us. My recollection is at any rate simplified by the fact of -the presence almost always, in the little high room of the Faubourg’s -end, of other persons and other voices. Flaubert’s own voice is clearest -to me from the uneffaced sense of a winter week-day afternoon when I -found him by exception alone and when something led to his reading me -aloud, in support of some judgment he had thrown off, a poem of -Théophile Gautier’s. He cited it as an example of verse intensely and -distinctively French, and French in its melancholy, which neither Goethe -nor Heine nor Leopardi, neither Pushkin nor Tennyson nor, as he said, -Byron, could at all have matched in _kind_. He converted me at the -moment to this perception, alike by the sense of the thing and by his -large utterance of it; after which it is dreadful to have to confess not -only that the poem was then new to me, but that, hunt as I will in every -volume of its author, I am never able to recover it. This is perhaps -after all happy, causing Flaubert’s own full tone, which was the note of -the occasion, to linger the more unquenched. But for the rhyme in fact I -could have believed him to be spouting to me something strange and -sonorous of his own. The thing really rare would have been to hear him -do that—hear him _gueuler_, as he liked to call it. Verse, I felt, we -had always with us, and almost any idiot of goodwill could give it a -value. The value of so many a passage of “Salammbô” and of “L’Éducation” -was on the other hand exactly such as gained when he allowed himself, as -had by the legend ever been frequent _dans l’intimité_, to “bellow” it -to its fullest effect. - -One of the things that make him most exhibitional and most describable, -so that if we had invented him as an illustration or a character we -would exactly so have arranged him, is that he was formed intellectually -of two quite distinct compartments, a sense of the real and a sense of -the romantic, and that his production, for our present cognisance, thus -neatly and vividly divides itself. The divisions are as marked as the -sections on the back of a scarab, though their distinctness is -undoubtedly but the final expression of much inward strife. M. Faguet -indeed, who is admirable on this question of our author’s duality, gives -an account of the romanticism that found its way for him into the real -and of the reality that found its way into the romantic; but he none the -less strikes us as a curious splendid insect sustained on wings of a -different coloration, the right a vivid red, say, and the left as frank -a yellow. This duality has in its sharp operation placed “Madame Bovary” -and “L’Éducation” on one side together and placed together on the other -“Salammbô” and “La Tentation.” “Bouvard et Pécuchet” it can scarce be -spoken of, I think, as having placed anywhere or anyhow. If it was -Flaubert’s way to find his subject impossible there was none he saw so -much in that light as this last-named, but also none that he appears to -have held so important for that very reason to pursue to the bitter end. -Posterity agrees with him about the impossibility, but rather takes upon -itself to break with the rest of the logic. We may perhaps, however, for -symmetry, let “Bouvard et Pécuchet” figure as the tail—if scarabs ever -have tails—of our analogous insect. Only in that case we should also -append as the very tip the small volume of the “Trois Contes,” -preponderantly of the deepest imaginative hue. - -His imagination was great and splendid; in spite of which, strangely -enough, his masterpiece is not his most imaginative work. “Madame -Bovary,” beyond question, holds that first place, and “Madame Bovary” is -concerned with the career of a country doctor’s wife in a petty Norman -town. The elements of the picture are of the fewest, the situation of -the heroine almost of the meanest, the material for interest, -considering the interest yielded, of the most unpromising; but these -facts only throw into relief one of those incalculable incidents that -attend the proceedings of genius. “Madame Bovary” was doomed by -circumstances and causes—the freshness of comparative youth and good -faith on the author’s part being perhaps the chief—definitely to take -its position, even though its subject was fundamentally a negation of -the remote, the splendid and the strange, the stuff of his fondest and -most cultivated dreams. It would have seemed very nearly to exclude the -free play of the imagination, and the way this faculty on the author’s -part nevertheless presides is one of those accidents, manœuvres, -inspirations, we hardly know what to call them, by which masterpieces -grow. He of course knew more or less what he was doing for his book in -making Emma Bovary a victim of the imaginative habit, but he must have -been far from designing or measuring the total effect which renders the -work so general, so complete an expression of himself. His separate -idiosyncrasies, his irritated sensibility to the life about him, with -the power to catch it in the fact and hold it hard, and his hunger for -style and history and poetry, for the rich and the rare, great -reverberations, great adumbrations, are here represented together as -they are not in his later writings. There is nothing of the near, of the -directly observed, though there may be much of the directly perceived -and the minutely detailed, either in “Salammbô” or in “Saint-Antoine,” -and little enough of the extravagance of illusion in that indefinable -last word of restrained evocation and cold execution “L’Éducation -Sentimentale.” M. Faguet has of course excellently noted this—that the -fortune and felicity of the book were assured by the stroke that made -the central figure an embodiment of helpless romanticism. Flaubert -himself but narrowly escaped being such an embodiment after all, and he -is thus able to express the romantic mind with extraordinary truth. As -to the rest of the matter he had the luck of having been in possession -from the first, having begun so early to nurse and work up his plan -that, familiarity and the native air, the native soil, aiding, he had -finally made out to the last lurking shade the small sordid sunny dusty -village picture, its emptiness constituted and peopled. It is in the -background and the accessories that the real, the real of his theme, -abides; and the romantic, the romantic of his theme, accordingly -occupies the front. Emma Bovary’s poor adventures are a tragedy for the -very reason that in a world unsuspecting, unassisting, unconsoling, she -has herself to distil the rich and the rare. Ignorant, unguided, -undiverted, ridden by the very nature and mixture of her consciousness, -she makes of the business an inordinate failure, a failure which in its -turn makes for Flaubert the most pointed, the most _told_ of anecdotes. - -There are many things to say about “Madame Bovary,” but an old admirer -of the book would be but half-hearted—so far as they represent reserves -or puzzlements—were he not to note first of all the circumstances by -which it is most endeared to him. To remember it from far back is to -have been present all along at a process of singular interest to a -literary mind, a case indeed full of comfort and cheer. The finest of -Flaubert’s novels is to-day, on the French shelf of fiction, one of the -first of the classics; it has attained that position, slowly but -steadily, before our eyes; and we seem so to follow the evolution of the -fate of a classic. We see how the thing takes place; which we rarely -can, for we mostly miss either the beginning or the end, especially in -the case of a consecration as complete as this. The consecrations of the -past are too far behind and those of the future too far in front. That -the production before us _should_ have come in for the heavenly crown -may be a fact to offer English and American readers a mystifying side; -but it is exactly our ground and a part moreover of the total interest. -The author of these remarks remembers, as with a sense of the way such -things happen, that when a very young person in Paris he took up from -the parental table the latest number of the periodical in which -Flaubert’s then duly unrecognised masterpiece was in course of -publication. The moment is not historic, but it was to become in the -light of history, as may be said, so unforgettable that every small -feature of it yet again lives for him: it rests there like the backward -end of the span. The cover of the old Revue de Paris was yellow, if I -mistake not, like that of the new, and “Madame Bovary: Mœurs de -Province,” on the inside of it, was already, on the spot, as a title, -mysteriously arresting, inscrutably charged. I was ignorant of what had -preceded and was not to know till much later what followed; but present -to me still is the act of standing there before the fire, my back -against the low beplushed and begarnished French chimney-piece and -taking in what I might of that instalment, taking it in with so -surprised an interest, and perhaps as well such a stir of faint -foreknowledge, that the sunny little salon, the autumn day, the window -ajar and the cheerful outside clatter of the Rue Montaigne are all now -for me more or less in the story and the story more or less in them. The -story, however, was at that moment having a difficult life; its fortune -was all to make; its merit was so far from suspected that, as Maxime Du -Camp—though verily with no excess of contrition—relates, its cloth of -gold barely escaped the editorial shears. This, with much more, -contributes for us to the course of things to come. The book, on its -appearance as a volume, proved a shock to the high propriety of the -guardians of public morals under the second Empire, and Flaubert was -prosecuted as author of a work indecent to scandal. The prosecution in -the event fell to the ground, but I should perhaps have mentioned this -agitation as one of the very few, of any public order, in his short -list. “Le Candidat” fell at the Vaudeville Theatre, several years later, -with a violence indicated by its withdrawal after a performance of but -two nights, the first of these marked by a deafening uproar; only if the -comedy was not to recover from this accident the misprised lustre of the -novel was entirely to reassert itself. It is strange enough at -present—so far have we travelled since then—that “Madame Bovary” -should in so comparatively recent a past have been to that extent a -cause of reprobation; and suggestive above all, in such connections, as -to the large unconsciousness of superior minds. The desire of the -superior mind of the day—that is the governmental, official, legal—to -distinguish a book with such a destiny before it is a case conceivable, -but conception breaks down before its design of making the distinction -purely invidious. We can imagine its knowing so little, however face to -face with the object, what it had got hold of; but for it to have been -so urged on by a blind inward spring to publish to posterity the extent -of its ignorance, that would have been beyond imagination, beyond -everything but pity. - -And yet it is not after all that the place the book has taken is so -overwhelmingly explained by its inherent dignity; for here comes in the -curiosity of the matter. Here comes in especially its fund of admonition -for alien readers. The dignity of its substance is the dignity of Madame -Bovary herself as a vessel of experience—a question as to which, -unmistakably, I judge, we can only depart from the consensus of French -critical opinion. M. Faguet for example commends the character of the -heroine as one of the most living and discriminated figures of women in -all literature, praises it as a field for the display of the romantic -spirit that leaves nothing to be desired. Subject to an observation I -shall presently make and that bears heavily in general, I think, on -Flaubert as a painter of life, subject to this restriction he is right; -which is a proof that a work of art may be markedly open to objection -and at the same time be rare in its kind, and that when it is perfect to -this point nothing else particularly matters. “Madame Bovary” has a -perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost -alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as -both excites and defies judgment. For it deals not in the least, as to -unapproachability, with things exalted or refined; it only confers on -its sufficiently vulgar elements of exhibition a final unsurpassable -form. The form is in _itself_ as interesting, as active, as much of the -essence of the subject as the idea, and yet so close is its fit and so -inseparable its life that we catch it at no moment on any errand of its -own. That verily is to _be_ interesting—all round; that is to be -genuine and whole. The work is a classic because the thing, such as it -is, is ideally _done_, and because it shows that in such doing eternal -beauty may dwell. A pretty young woman who lives, socially and morally -speaking, in a hole, and who is ignorant, foolish, flimsy, unhappy, -takes a pair of lovers by whom she is successively deserted; in the -midst of the bewilderment of which, giving up her husband and her child, -letting everything go, she sinks deeper into duplicity, debt, despair, -and arrives on the spot, on the small scene itself of her poor -depravities, at a pitiful tragic end. In especial she does these things -while remaining absorbed in romantic intention and vision, and she -remains absorbed in romantic intention and vision while fairly rolling -in the dust. That is the triumph of the book as the triumph stands, that -Emma interests us by the nature of her consciousness and the play of her -mind, thanks to the reality and beauty with which those sources are -invested. It is not only that they represent _her_ state; they are so -true, so observed and felt, and especially so shown, that they represent -the state, actual or potential, of all persons like her, persons -romantically determined. Then her setting, the medium in which she -struggles, becomes in its way as important, becomes eminent with the -eminence of art; the tiny world in which she revolves, the contracted -cage in which she flutters, is hung out in space for her, and her -companions in captivity there are as true as herself. - -I have said enough to show what I mean by Flaubert’s having in this -picture expressed something of his intimate self, given his heroine -something of his own imagination: a point precisely that brings me back -to the restriction at which I just now hinted, in which M. Faguet fails -to indulge and yet which is immediate for the alien reader. Our -complaint is that Emma Bovary, in spite of the nature of her -consciousness and in spite of her reflecting so much that of her -creator, is really too small an affair. This, critically speaking, is in -view both of the value and the fortune of her history, a wonderful -circumstance. She associates herself with Frédéric Moreau in -“L’Éducation” to suggest for us a question that can be answered, I hold, -only to Flaubert’s detriment. Emma taken alone would possibly not so -directly press it, but in her company the hero of our author’s second -study of the “real” drives it home. Why did Flaubert choose, as special -conduits of the life he proposed to depict, such inferior and in the -case of Frédéric such abject human specimens? I insist only in respect -to the latter, the perfection of Madame Bovary scarce leaving one much -warrant for wishing anything other. Even here, however, the general -scale and size of Emma, who is small even of her sort, should be a -warning to hyperbole. If I say that in the matter of Frédéric at all -events the answer is inevitably detrimental I mean that it weighs -heavily on our author’s general credit. He wished in each case to make a -picture of experience—middling experience, it is true—and of the world -close to him; but if he imagined nothing better for his purpose than -such a heroine and such a hero, both such limited reflectors and -registers, we are forced to believe it to have been by a defect of his -mind. And that sign of weakness remains even if it be objected that the -images in question were addressed to his purpose better than others -would have been: the purpose itself then shows as inferior. “L’Éducation -Sentimentale” is a strange, an indescribable work, about which there -would be many more things to say than I have space for, and all of them -of the deepest interest. It is moreover, to simplify my statement, very -much less satisfying a thing, less pleasing whether in its unity or its -variety, than its specific predecessor. But take it as we will, for a -success or a failure—M. Faguet indeed ranks it, by the measure of its -quantity of intention, a failure, and I on the whole agree with him—the -personage offered us as bearing the weight of the drama, and in whom we -are invited to that extent to interest ourselves, leaves us mainly -wondering what our entertainer could have been thinking of. He takes -Frédéric Moreau on the threshold of life and conducts him to the extreme -of maturity without apparently suspecting for a moment either our wonder -or our protest—“Why, why him?” Frédéric is positively too poor for his -part, too scant for his charge; and we feel with a kind of -embarrassment, certainly with a kind of compassion, that it is somehow -the business of a protagonist to prevent in his designer an excessive -waste of faith. When I speak of the faith in Emma Bovary as -proportionately wasted I reflect on M. Faguet’s judgment that she is -from the point of view of deep interest richly or at least roundedly -representative. Representative of what? he makes us ask even while -granting all the grounds of misery and tragedy involved. The plea for -her is the plea made for all the figures that live without evaporation -under the painter’s hand—that they are not only particular persons but -types of their kind, and as valid in one light as in the other. It is -Emma’s “kind” that I question for this responsibility, even if it be -inquired of me why I then fail to question that of Charles Bovary, in -its perfection, or that of the inimitable, the immortal Homais. If we -express Emma’s deficiency as the poverty of her consciousness for the -typical function, it is certainly not, one must admit, that she is -surpassed in this respect either by her platitudinous husband or by his -friend the pretentious apothecary. The difference is none the less -somehow in the fact that they are respectively studies but of their -character and office, which function in each expresses adequately _all_ -they are. It may be, I concede, because Emma is the only woman in the -book that she is taken by M. Faguet as _femininely_ typical, typical in -the larger illustrative way, whereas the others pass with him for images -specifically conditioned. Emma is this same for myself, I plead; she is -conditioned to such an excess of the specific, and the specific in her -case leaves out so many even of the commoner elements of conceivable -life in a woman when we are invited to see that life as pathetic, as -dramatic agitation, that we challenge both the author’s and the critic’s -scale of importances. The book is a picture of the middling as much as -they like, but does Emma attain even to _that_? Hers is a narrow -middling even for a little imaginative person whose “social” -significance is small. It is greater on the whole than her capacity of -consciousness, taking this all round; and so, in a word, we feel her -less illustrational than she might have been not only if the world had -offered her more points of contact, but if she had had more of these to -give it. - -We meet Frédéric first, we remain with him long, as a _moyen_, a -provincial bourgeois of the mid-century, educated and not without -fortune, thereby with freedom, in whom the life of his day reflects -itself. Yet the life of his day, on Flaubert’s showing, hangs together -with the poverty of Frédéric’s own inward or for that matter outward -life; so that, the whole thing being, for scale, intention and -extension, a sort of epic of the usual (with the Revolution of 1848 -introduced indeed as an episode,) it affects us as an epic without air, -without wings to lift it; reminds us in fact more than anything else of -a huge balloon, all of silk pieces strongly sewn together and patiently -blown up, but that absolutely refuses to leave the ground. The -discrimination I here make as against our author is, however, the only -one inevitable in a series of remarks so brief. What it really -represents—and nothing could be more curious—is that Frédéric enjoys -his position not only without the aid of a single “sympathetic” -character of consequence, but even without the aid of one with whom we -can directly communicate. Can we communicate with the central personage? -or would we really if we could? A hundred times no, and if he himself -can communicate with the people shown us as surrounding him this only -proves him of their kind. Flaubert on his “real” side was in truth an -ironic painter, and ironic to a tune that makes his final accepted -state, his present literary dignity and “classic” peace, superficially -anomalous. There is an explanation to which I shall immediately come; -but I find myself feeling for a moment longer in presence of -“L’Éducation” how much more interesting a writer may be on occasion by -the given failure than by the given success. Successes pure and simple -disconnect and dismiss him; failures—though I admit they must be a bit -qualified—keep him in touch and in relation. Thus it is that as the -work of a “grand écrivain” “L’Éducation,” large, laboured, immensely -“written,” with beautiful passages and a general emptiness, with a kind -of leak in its stored sadness, moreover, by which its moral dignity -escapes—thus it is that Flaubert’s ill-starred novel is a curiosity for -a literary museum. Thus it is also that it suggests a hundred -reflections, and suggests perhaps most of them directly to the intending -labourer in the same field. If in short, as I have said, Flaubert is the -novelist’s novelist, this performance does more than any other toward -making him so. - -I have to add in the same connection that I had not lost sight of Madame -Arnoux, the main ornament of “L’Éducation,” in pronouncing just above on -its deficiency in the sympathetic. Madame Arnoux is exactly the author’s -one marked attempt, here or elsewhere, to represent beauty otherwise -than for the senses, beauty of character and life; and what becomes of -the attempt is a matter highly significant. M. Faguet praises with -justice his conception of the figure and of the relation, the relation -that never bears fruit, that keeps Frédéric adoring her, through -hindrance and change, from the beginning of life to the end; that keeps -her, by the same constraint, forever immaculately “good,” from youth to -age, though deeply moved and cruelly tempted and sorely tried. Her -contacts with her adorer are not even frequent, in proportion to the -field of time; her conditions of fortune, of association and occupation -are almost sordid, and we see them with the march of the drama, such as -it is, become more and more so; besides which—I again remember that M. -Faguet excellently notes it—nothing in the nature of “parts” is -attributed to her; not only is she not presented as clever, she is -scarce invested with a character at all. Almost nothing that she says is -repeated, almost nothing that she does is shown. She is an image none -the less beautiful and vague, an image of passion cherished and abjured, -renouncing all sustenance and yet persisting in life. Only she has for -real distinction the extreme drawback that she is offered us quite -preponderantly through Frédéric’s vision of her, that we see her -practically in no other light. Now Flaubert unfortunately has not been -able not so to discredit Frédéric’s vision in general, his vision of -everyone and everything, and in particular of his own life, that it -makes a medium good enough to convey adequately a noble impression. -Madame Arnoux is of course ever so much the best thing in his -life—which is saying little; but his life is made up of such queer -material that we find ourselves displeased at her being “in” it on -whatever terms; all the more that she seems scarcely to affect, improve -or determine it. Her creator in short never had a more awkward idea than -this attempt to give us the benefit of such a conception in such a way; -and even though I have still something else to say about that I may as -well speak of it at once as a mistake that gravely counts against him. -It is but one of three, no doubt, in all his work; but I shall not, I -trust, pass for extravagant if I call it the most indicative. What makes -it so is its being the least superficial; the two others are, so to -speak, intellectual, while this is somehow moral. It was a mistake, as I -have already hinted, to propose to register in so mean a consciousness -as that of such a hero so large and so mixed a quantity of life as -“L’Éducation” clearly intends; and it was a mistake of the tragic sort -that is a theme mainly for silence to have embarked on “Bouvard et -Pécuchet” at all, not to have given it up sooner than be given up by it. -But these were at the worst not wholly compromising blunders. What _was_ -compromising—and the great point is that it remained so, that nothing -has an equal weight against it—is the unconsciousness of error in -respect to the opportunity that would have counted as his finest. We -feel not so much that Flaubert misses it, for that we could bear; but -that he doesn’t _know_ he misses it is what stamps the blunder. We do -not pretend to say how he might have shown us Madame Arnoux better—that -was his own affair. What is ours is that he really thought he was -showing her as well as he could, or as she might be shown; at which we -veil our face. For once that he had a conception quite apart, apart I -mean from the array of his other conceptions and more delicate than any, -he “went,” as we say, and spoiled it. Let me add in all tenderness, and -to make up for possibly too much insistence, that it is the only stain -on his shield; let me even confess that I should not wonder if, when all -is said, it is a blemish no one has ever noticed. - -Perhaps no one has ever noticed either what was present to me just above -as the partial makeweight there glanced at, the fact that in the midst -of this general awkwardness, as I have called it, there is at the same -time a danger so escaped as to entitle our author to full credit. I -scarce know how to put it with little enough of the ungracious, but I -think that even the true Flaubertist finds himself wondering a little -that some flaw of taste, some small but unfortunate lapse by the way, -_should_ as a matter of fact not somehow or somewhere have waited on the -demonstration of the platonic purity prevailing between this heroine and -her hero—so far as we do find that image projected. It is alike -difficult to indicate without offence or to ignore without unkindness a -fond reader’s apprehension here of a possibility of the wrong touch, the -just perceptibly false note. I would not have staked my life on -Flaubert’s security of instinct in such a connection—as an absolutely -fine and predetermined security; and yet in the event that felicity has -settled, there is not so much as the lightest wrong breath (speaking of -the matter in this light of tact and taste) or the shade of a crooked -stroke. One exclaims at the end of the question “Dear old Flaubert after -all—!” and perhaps so risks seeming to patronise for fear of not making -a point. The point made for what it is worth, at any rate, I am the more -free to recover the benefit of what I mean by critical “tenderness” in -our general connection—expressing in it as I do our general respect, -and my own particular, for our author’s method and process and history, -and my sense of the luxury of such a sentiment at such a vulgar literary -time. It is a respect positive and settled and the thing that has most -to do with consecrating for us that loyalty to him as the novelist of -the novelist—unlike as it is even the best feeling inspired by any -other member of the craft. He may stand for our operative conscience or -our vicarious sacrifice; animated by a sense of literary honour, -attached to an ideal of perfection, incapable of lapsing in fine from a -self-respect, that enable us to sit at ease, to surrender to the age, to -indulge in whatever comparative meannesses (and no meanness in art is so -mean as the sneaking economic,) we may find most comfortable or -profitable. May it not in truth be said that we practise our industry, -so many of us, at relatively little cost just _because_ poor Flaubert, -producing the most expensive fictions ever written, so handsomely paid -for it? It is as if this put it in our power to produce cheap and -thereby sell dear; as if, so expressing it, literary honour being by his -example effectively secure for the firm at large and the general -concern, on its whole esthetic side, floated once for all, we find our -individual attention free for literary and esthetic indifference. All -the while we thus lavish our indifference the spirit of the author of -“Madame Bovary,” in the cross-light of the old room above the Seine, is -trying to the last admiration for the thing itself. That production puts -the matter into a nutshell: “Madame Bovary,” subject to whatever -qualification, is absolutely the most literary of novels, so literary -that it covers us with its mantle. It shows us once for all that there -is no _intrinsic_ call for a debasement of the type. The mantle I speak -of is wrought with surpassing fineness, and we may always, under stress -of whatever charge of illiteracy, frivolity, vulgarity, flaunt it as the -flag of the guild. Let us therefore frankly concede that to surround -Flaubert with our consideration is the least return we can make for such -a privilege. The consideration moreover is idle unless it be real, -unless it be intelligent enough to measure his effort and his success. -Of the effort as mere effort I have already spoken, of the desperate -difficulty involved for him in making his form square with his -conception; and I by no means attach general importance to these secrets -of the workshop, which are but as the contortions of the fastidious muse -who is the servant of the oracle. They are really rather secrets of the -kitchen and contortions of the priestess of _that_ tripod—they are not -an upstairs matter. It is of their specially distinctive importance I am -now speaking, of the light shed on them by the results before us. - -They all represent the pursuit of a style, of the ideally right one for -its relations, and would still be interesting if the style had not been -achieved. “Madame Bovary,” “Salammbô,” “Saint-Antoine,” “L’Éducation” -are so written and so composed (though the last-named in a minor degree) -that the more we look at them the more we find in them, under this head, -a beauty of intention and of effect; the more they figure in the too -often dreary desert of fictional prose a class by themselves and a -little living oasis. So far as that desert is of the complexion of our -own English speech it supplies with remarkable rarity this particular -source of refreshment. So strikingly is that the case, so scant for the -most part any dream of a scheme of beauty in these connections, that a -critic betrayed at artless moments into a plea for composition may find -himself as blankly met as if his plea were for trigonometry. He makes -inevitably his reflections, which are numerous enough; one of them being -that if we turn our back so squarely, so universally to this order of -considerations it is because the novel is so preponderantly cultivated -among us by women, in other words by a sex ever gracefully, comfortably, -enviably unconscious (it would be too much to call them even -suspicious,) of the requirements of form. The case is at any rate -sharply enough made for us, or against us, by the circumstance that -women are held to have achieved on all our ground, in spite of this -weakness and others, as great results as any. The judgment is -undoubtedly founded: Jane Austen was instinctive and charming, and the -other recognitions—even over the heads of the ladies, some of them, -from Fielding to Pater—are obvious; without, however, in the least -touching my contention. For signal examples of what composition, -distribution, arrangement can do, of how they intensify the life of a -work of art, we have to go elsewhere; and the value of Flaubert for us -is that he admirably points the moral. This is the explanation of the -“classic” fortune of “Madame Bovary” in especial, though I may add that -also of Hérodias and Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier in the “Trois Contes,” -as well as an aspect of these works endlessly suggestive. I spoke just -now of the small field of the picture in the longest of them, the small -capacity, as I called it, of the vessel; yet the way the thing is done -not only triumphs over the question of value but in respect to it fairly -misleads and confounds us. Where else shall we find in anything -proportionately so small such an air of dignity of size? Flaubert _made_ -things big—it was his way, his ambition and his necessity; and I say -this while remembering that in “L’Éducation” (in proportion I mean -again,) the effect has not been produced. The subject of “L’Éducation” -is in spite of Frédéric large, but an indefinable shrinkage has -overtaken it in the execution. The exception so marked, however, is -single; “Salammbô” and “Saint-Antoine” are both at once very “heavy” -conceptions and very consistently and splendidly high applications of a -manner. - -It is in this assured manner that the lesson sits aloft, that the spell -for the critical reader resides; and if the conviction under which -Flaubert labours is more and more grossly discredited among us his -compact mass is but the greater. He regarded the work of art as -_existing_ but by its expression, and defied us to name any other -measure of its life that is not a stultification. He held style to be -accordingly an indefeasible part of it, and found beauty, interest and -distinction as dependent on it for emergence as a letter committed to -the post-office is dependent on an addressed envelope. Strange enough it -may well appear to us to have to apologise for such notions as -eccentric. There are persons who consider that style comes of itself—we -see and hear at present, I think, enough of them; and to whom he would -doubtless have remarked that it goes, of itself, still faster. The thing -naturally differs in fact with the nature of the imagination; the -question is one of proprieties and affinities, sympathy and proportion. -The sympathy of the author of “Salammbô” was all with the magnificent, -his imagination for the phrase as variously noble or ignoble in itself, -contribute or destructive, adapted and harmonious or casual and common. -The worse among such possibilities have been multiplied by the infection -of bad writing, and he denied that the better ever do anything so -obliging as to come of themselves. They scarcely indeed for Flaubert -“came” at all; their arrival was determined only by fasting and prayer -or by patience of pursuit, the arts of the chase, long waits and -watches, figuratively speaking, among the peaks or by the waters. The -production of a book was of course made inordinately slow by the fatigue -of these measures; in illustration of which his letters often record -that it has taken him three days[3] to arrive at one right sentence, -tested by the pitch of his ideal of the right for the suggestion aimed -at. His difficulties drew from the author, as I have mentioned, much -resounding complaint; but those voices have ceased to trouble us and the -final voice remains. No feature of the whole business is more edifying -than the fact that he in the first place never misses style and in the -second never appears to have beaten about for it. That betrayal is of -course the worst betrayal of all, and I think the way he has escaped it -the happiest form of the peace that has finally visited him. It was -truly a wonderful success to be so the devotee of the phrase and yet -never its victim. Fine as he inveterately desired it should be he still -never lost sight of the question Fine for what? It is always so related -and associated, so properly part of something else that is in turn part -of something other, part of a reference, a tone, a passage, a page, that -the simple may enjoy it for its least bearing and the initiated for its -greatest. That surely is to be a writer of the first order, to resemble -when in the hand and however closely viewed a shapely crystal box, and -yet to be seen when placed on the table and opened to contain -innumerable compartments, springs and tricks. One is ornamental either -way, but one is in the second way precious too. - -The crystal box then figures the style of “Salammbô” and “Saint-Antoine” -in a greater degree than that of “Bovary,” because, as the two former -express the writer’s romantic side, he had in them, while equally -covering his tracks, still further to fare and still more to hunt. -Beyond this allusion to their completing his duality I shall not attempt -closely to characterise them; though I admit that in not insisting on -them I press most lightly on the scale into which he had in his own view -cast his greatest pressure. He lamented the doom that drove him so -oddly, so ruefully, to choose his subjects, but he lamented it least -when these subjects were most pompous and most exotic, feeling as he did -that they had then after all most affinity with his special eloquence. -In dealing with the near, the directly perceived, he had to keep down -his tone, to make the eloquence small; though with the consequence, as -we have seen, that in spite of such precautions the whole thing mostly -insists on being ample. The familiar, that is, under his touch, took on -character, importance, extension, one scarce knows what to call it, in -order to carry the style or perhaps rather, as we may say, sit with -proper ease in the vehicle, and there was accordingly a limit to its -smallness; whereas in the romantic books, the preferred world of -Flaubert’s imagination, there was practically no need of compromise. The -compromise gave him throughout endless trouble, and nothing would be -more to the point than to show, had I space, why in particular it -distressed him. It was obviously his strange predicament that the only -spectacle open to him by experience and direct knowledge was the -bourgeois, which on that ground imposed on him successively his three so -intensely bourgeois themes. He was obliged to treat these themes, which -he hated, because his experience left him no alternative; his only -alternative was given by history, geography, philosophy, fancy, the -world of erudition and of imagination, the world especially of this -last. In the bourgeois sphere his ideal of expression laboured under -protest; in the other, the imagined, the projected, his need for facts, -for matter, and his pursuit of them, sat no less heavily. But as his -style all the while required a certain exercise of pride he was on the -whole more at home in the exotic than in the familiar; he escaped above -all in the former connection the associations, the disparities he -detested. He could be frankly noble in “Salammbô” and “Saint-Antoine,” -whereas in “Bovary” and “L’Éducation” he could be but circuitously and -insidiously so. He could in the one case cut his coat according to his -cloth—if we mean by his cloth his predetermined tone, while in the -other he had to take it already cut. Singular enough in his life the -situation so constituted: the comparatively meagre human -consciousness—for we must come back to that in him—struggling with the -absolutely large artistic; and the large artistic half wreaking itself -on the meagre human and half seeking a refuge from it, as well as a -revenge against it, in something quite different. - -Flaubert had in fact command of two refuges which he worked in turn. The -first of these was the attitude of irony, so constant in him that -“L’Éducation” bristles and hardens with it and “Bouvard et -Pécuchet”—strangest of “poetic” justices—is made as dry as sand and as -heavy as lead; the second only was, by processes, by journeys the most -expensive, to get away altogether. And we inevitably ask ourselves -whether, eschewing the policy of flight, he might not after all have -fought out his case a little more on the spot. Might he not have -addressed himself to the human still otherwise than in “L’Éducation” and -in “Bouvard”? When one thinks of the view of the life of his country, of -the vast French community and its constituent creatures, offered in -these productions, one declines to believe it could make up the _whole_ -vision of a man of his quality. Or when all was said and done was he -absolutely and exclusively condemned to irony? The second refuge I speak -of, the getting away from the human, the congruously and measurably -human, altogether, perhaps becomes in the light of this possibility but -an irony the more. Carthage and the Thebaid, Salammbô, Spendius, Matho, -Hannon, Saint Anthony, Hilarion, the Paternians, the Marcosians and the -Carpocratians, what are all these, inviting because queer, but a -confession of supreme impatience with the actual and the near, often -queer enough too, no doubt, but not consolingly, not transcendently? -Last remains the question whether, even if our author’s immediate as -distinguished from his remote view had had more reach, the particular -gift we claim for him, the perfection of arrangement and form, would -have had in certain directions the acquired flexibility. States of mind, -states of soul, of the simpler kind, the kinds supposable in the Emma -Bovarys, the Frédérics, the Bouvards and the Pécuchets, to say nothing -of the Carthaginians and the Eremites—for Flaubert’s eremites are -eminently artless—these conditions represent, I think, his proved -psychological range. And that throws us back remarkably, almost -confoundingly, upon another face of the general anomaly. The “gift” was -of the greatest, a force in itself, in virtue of which he is a -consummate writer; and yet there are whole sides of life to which it was -never addressed and which it apparently quite failed to suspect as a -field of exercise. If he never approached the complicated character in -man or woman—Emma Bovary is not the least little bit complicated—or -the really furnished, the finely civilised, was this because, -surprisingly, he could not? _L’âme française_ at all events shows in him -but ill. - -This undoubtedly marks a limit, but limits are for the critic familiar -country, and he may mostly well feel the prospect wide enough when he -finds something positively well enough done. By disposition or by -obligation Flaubert selected, and though his selection was in some -respects narrow he stops not too short to have left us three really -“cast” works and a fourth of several perfect parts, to say nothing of -the element of perfection, of the superlative for the size, in his three -_nouvelles_. What he attempted he attempted in a spirit that gives an -extension to the idea of the achievable and the achieved in a literary -thing, and it is by this that we contentedly gauge the matter. As -success goes in this world of the approximate it may pass for success of -the greatest. If I am unable to pursue the proof of my remark in -“Salammbô” and “Saint-Antoine” it is because I have also had to select -and have found the questions connected with their two companions more -interesting. There are numerous judges, I hasten to mention, who, -showing the opposite preference, lose themselves with rapture in the -strange bristling archæological picture—yet all amazingly vivified and -co-ordinated—of the Carthaginian mercenaries in revolt and the sacred -veil of the great goddess profaned and stolen; as well in the still more -peopled panorama of the ancient sects, superstitions and mythologies -that swim in the desert before the fevered eyes of the Saint. One may be -able, however, at once to breathe more freely in “Bovary” than in -“Salammbô” and yet to hope that there is no intention of the latter that -one has missed. The great intention certainly, and little as we may be -sweetly beguiled, holds us fast; which is simply the author’s -indomitable purpose of fully pervading his field. There are countries -beyond the sea in which tracts are allowed to settlers on condition that -they will really, not nominally, cultivate them. Flaubert is on his -romantic ground like one of these settlers; he makes good with all his -might his title to his tract, and in a way that shows how it is not only -for him a question of safety but a question of honour. Honour demands -that he shall set up his home and his faith there in such a way that -every inch of the surface be planted or paved. He would have been -ashamed merely to encamp and, after the fashion of most other -adventurers, knock up a log hut among charred stumps. This was not what -would have been for him taking artistic possession, it was not what -would have been for him even personal honour, let alone literary; and -yet the general lapse from integrity was a thing that, wherever he -looked, he saw not only condoned but acclaimed and rewarded. He lived, -as he felt, in an age of mean production and cheap criticism, the -practical upshot of which took on for him a name that was often on his -lips. He called it the hatred of literature, a hatred in the midst of -which, the most literary of men, he found himself appointed to suffer. I -may not, however, follow him in that direction—which would take us far; -and the less that he was for himself after all, in spite of groans and -imprecations, a man of resources and remedies, and that there was always -his possibility of building himself in. - -This he did equally in all his books—built himself into literature by -means of a material put together with extraordinary art; but it leads me -again to the question of what such a stiff ideal imposed on him for the -element of exactitude. This element, in the romantic, was his merciless -law; it was perhaps even in the romantic that—if there could indeed be -degrees for him in such matters—he most despised the loose and the -more-or-less. To be intensely definite and perfectly positive, to know -so well what he meant that he could at every point strikingly and -conclusively verify it, was the first of his needs; and if in addition -to being thus synthetically final he could be strange and sad and -terrible, and leave the cause of these effects inscrutable, success then -had for him its highest savour. We feel the inscrutability in those -memorable few words that put before us Frédéric Moreau’s start upon his -vain course of travel, “Il connût alors la mélancholie des paquebots;” -an image to the last degree comprehensive and embracing, but which -haunts us, in its droll pathos, without our quite knowing why. But he -was really never so pleased as when he could be both rare and precise -about the dreadful. His own sense of all this, as I have already -indicated, was that beauty comes with expression, that expression is -creation, that it _makes_ the reality, and only in the degree in which -it _is_, exquisitely, expression; and that we move in literature through -a world of different values and relations, a blest world in which we -know nothing except by style, but in which also everything is saved by -it, and in which the image is thus always superior to the thing itself. -This quest and multiplication of the image, the image tested and -warranted and consecrated for the occasion, was accordingly his high -elegance, to which he too much sacrificed and to which “Salammbô” and -partly “Saint-Antoine” are monstrous monuments. Old cruelties and -perversities, old wonders and errors and terrors, endlessly appealed to -him; they constitute the unhuman side of his work, and if we have not -the bribe of curiosity, of a lively interest in method, or rather in -evocation just _as_ evocation, we tread our way among them, especially -in “Salammbô,” with a reserve too dry for our pleasure. To my own view -the curiosity and the literary interest are equal in dealing with the -non-romantic books, and the world presented, the aspects and agents, are -less deterrent and more amenable both to our own social and expressional -terms. Style itself moreover, with all respect to Flaubert, never -_totally_ beguiles; since even when we are so queerly constituted as to -be ninety-nine parts literary we are still a hundredth part something -else. This hundredth part may, once we possess the book—or the book -possesses us—make us imperfect as readers, and yet without it should we -want or get the book at all? The curiosity at any rate, to repeat, is -even greatest for me in “Madame Bovary,” say, for here I can measure, -can more directly appreciate, the terms. The aspects and impressions -being of an experience conceivable to me I am more touched by the -beauty; my interest gets more of the benefit of the beauty even though -this be not intrinsically greater. Which brings back our appreciation -inevitably at last to the question of our author’s lucidity. - -I have sufficiently remarked that I speak from the point of view of his -interest to a reader of his own craft, the point of view of his -extraordinary technical wealth—though indeed when I think of the -general power of “Madame Bovary” I find myself desiring not to narrow -the ground of the lesson, not to connect the lesson, to its prejudice, -with that idea of the “technical,” that question of the way a thing is -done, so abhorrent, as a call upon attention, in whatever art, to the -wondrous Anglo-Saxon mind. Without proposing Flaubert as the type of the -newspaper novelist, or as an easy alternative to golf or the bicycle, we -should do him less than justice in failing to insist that a masterpiece -like “Madame Bovary” may benefit even with the simple-minded by the way -it has been done. It derives from its firm roundness that sign of all -rare works that there is something in it for every one. It may be read -ever so attentively, ever so freely, without a suspicion of how it is -written, to say nothing of put together; it may equally be read under -the excitement of these perceptions alone, one of the greatest known to -the reader who is fully open to them. Both readers will have been -transported, which is all any can ask. Leaving the first of them, -however that may be, to state the case for himself, I state it yet again -for the second, if only on this final ground. The book and its -companions represent for us a practical solution, Flaubert’s own -troubled but settled one, of the eternal dilemma of the painter of life. -From the moment this rash adventurer deals with his mysterious matter at -all directly his desire is not to deal with it stintedly. It at the same -time remains true that from the moment he desires to produce forms in -which it shall be preserved, he desires that these forms, things of -_his_ creation, shall not be, as testifying to his way with them, weak -or ignoble. He must make them complete and beautiful, of satisfactory -production, intrinsically interesting, under peril of disgrace with -those who know. Those who don’t know of course don’t count for him, and -it neither helps nor hinders him to say that every one knows about life. -Every one does not—it is distinctly the case of the few; and if it were -in fact the case of the many the knowledge still might exist, on the -evidence around us, even in an age of unprecedented printing, without -attesting itself by a multiplication of masterpieces. The question for -the artist can only be of doing the artistic utmost, and thereby of -_seeing_ the general task. When it is seen with the intensity with which -it presented itself to Flaubert a lifetime is none too much for fairly -tackling it. It must either be left alone or be dealt with, and to leave -it alone is a comparatively simple matter. - -To deal with it is on the other hand to produce a certain number of -finished works; there being no other known method; and the quantity of -life depicted will depend on this array. What will this array, however, -depend on, and what will condition the number of pieces of which it is -composed? The “finish,” evidently, that the formula so glibly postulates -and for which the novelist is thus so handsomely responsible. He has on -the one side to feel his subject and on the other side to render it, and -there are undoubtedly two ways in which his situation may be expressed, -especially perhaps by himself. The more he feels his subject the more he -_can_ render it—that is the first way. The more he renders it the more -he _can_ feel it—that is the second way. This second way was -unmistakeably Flaubert’s, and if the result of it for him was a bar to -abundant production he could only accept such an incident as part of the -game. He probably for that matter would have challenged any easy -definition of “abundance,” contested the application of it to the -repetition, however frequent, of the thing not “done.” What but the -“doing” makes the thing, he would have asked, and how can a positive -result from a mere iteration of negatives, or wealth proceed from the -simple addition of so many instances of penury? We should here, in -closer communion with him, have got into his highly characteristic and -suggestive view of the fertilisation of subject by form, penetration of -the sense, ever, by the expression—the latter reacting creatively on -the former; a conviction in the light of which he appears to have -wrought with real consistency and which borrows from him thus its high -measure of credit. It would undoubtedly have suffered if his books had -been things of a loose logic, whereas we refer to it not only without -shame but with an encouraged confidence by their showing of a logic so -close. Let the phrase, the form that the whole is at the given moment -staked on, be beautiful and related, and the rest will take care of -itself—such is a rough indication of Flaubert’s faith; which has the -importance that it was a faith sincere, active and inspiring. I hasten -to add indeed that we must most of all remember how in these matters -everything hangs on definitions. The “beautiful,” with our author, -covered for the phrase a great deal of ground, and when every sort of -propriety had been gathered in under it and every relation, in a -complexity of such, protected, the idea itself, the presiding thought, -ended surely by being pretty well provided for. - -These, however, are subordinate notes, and the plain question, in the -connection I have touched upon, is of whether we would really wish him -to have written more books, say either of the type of “Bovary” or of the -type of “Salammbô,” and not have written them so well. When the -production of a great artist who has lived a length of years has been -small there is always the regret; but there is seldom, any more than -here, the conceivable remedy. For the case is doubtless predetermined by -the particular kind of great artist a writer happens to be, and this -even if when we come to the conflict, to the historic case, deliberation -and delay may not all have been imposed by temperament. The admirable -George Sand, Flaubert’s beneficent friend and correspondent, is exactly -the happiest example we could find of the genius constitutionally -incapable of worry, the genius for whom style “came,” for whom the -sought effect was ever quickly and easily struck off, the book freely -and swiftly written, and who consequently is represented for us by -upwards of ninety volumes. If the comparison were with this lady’s great -contemporary the elder Dumas the disparity would be quadrupled, but that -ambiguous genius, somehow never really caught by us in the _fact_ of -composition, is out of our concern here: the issue is of those -developments of expression which involve a style, and as Dumas never so -much as once grazed one in all his long career, there was not even -enough of that grace in him for a fillip of the finger-nail. Flaubert is -at any rate represented by six books, so that he may on that estimate -figure as poor, while Madame Sand, falling so little short of a hundred, -figures as rich; and yet the fact remains that I can refer the congenial -mind to him with confidence and can do nothing of the sort for it in -respect to Madame Sand. She is loose and liquid and iridescent, as -iridescent as we may undertake to find her; but I can imagine -compositions quite without virtue—the virtue I mean, of sticking -together—begotten by the impulse to emulate her. She had undoubtedly -herself the benefit of her facility, but are we not left wondering to -what extent _we_ have it? There is too little in her, by the literary -connection, for the critical mind, weary of much wandering, to rest -upon. Flaubert himself wandered, wandered far, went much roundabout and -sometimes lost himself by the way, but how handsomely he provided for -our present repose! He found the French language inconceivably difficult -to write with elegance and was confronted with the equal truths that -elegance is the last thing that languages, even as they most mature, -seem to concern themselves with, and that at the same time taste, -asserting rights, insists on it, to the effect of showing us in a -boundless circumjacent waste of effort what the absence of it may mean. -He saw the less of this desert of death come back to that—that -everything at all saved from it for us since the beginning had been -saved by a soul of elegance within, or in other words by the last -refinement of selection, by the indifference on the part of the very -idiom, huge quite other than “composing” agent, to the individual -pretension. Recognising thus that to carry through the individual -pretension is at the best a battle, he adored a hard surface and -detested a soft one—much more a muddled; regarded a style without -rhythm and harmony as in a work of pretended beauty no style at all. He -considered that the failure of complete expression so registered made of -the work of pretended beauty a work of achieved barbarity. It would take -us far to glance even at his fewest discriminations; but rhythm and -harmony were for example most menaced in his scheme by repetition—when -repetition had not a positive grace; and were above all most at the -mercy of the bristling particles of which our modern tongues are mainly -composed and which make of the desired surface a texture pricked -through, from beneath, even to destruction, as by innumerable thorns. - -On these lines production was of course slow work for him—especially as -he met the difficulty, met it with an inveteracy which shows how it -_can_ be met; and full of interest for readers of English speech is the -reflection he causes us to make as to the possibility of success at all -comparable among ourselves. I have spoken of his groans and -imprecations, his interminable waits and deep despairs; but what would -these things have been, what would have become of him and what of his -wrought residuum, had he been condemned to deal with a form of speech -consisting, like ours, as to one part, of “that” and “which”; as to a -second part, of the blest “it,” which an English sentence may repeat in -three or four opposed references without in the least losing caste; as -to a third face of all the “tos” of the infinitive and the preposition; -as to a fourth of our precious auxiliaries “be” and “do”; and as to a -fifth, of whatever survives in the language for the precious art of -pleasing? Whether or no the fact that the painter of “life” among us has -to contend with a medium intrinsically indocile, on certain sides, like -our own, whether this drawback accounts for his having failed, in our -time, to treat us, arrested and charmed, to a single case of crowned -classicism, there is at any rate no doubt that we in some degree owe -Flaubert’s counter-weight for that deficiency to _his_ having, on his -own ground, more happily triumphed. By which I do not mean that “Madame -Bovary” is a classic because the “thats,” the “its” and the “tos” are -made to march as Orpheus and his lute made the beasts, but because the -element of order and harmony works as a symbol of everything else that -is preserved for us by the history of the book. The history of the book -remains the lesson and the important, the delightful thing, remains -above all the drama that moves slowly to its climax. It is what we come -back to for the sake of what it shows us. We see—from the present to -the past indeed, never alas from the present to the future—how a -classic almost inveterately grows. Unimportant, unnoticed, or, so far as -noticed, contested, unrelated, alien, it has a cradle round which the -fairies but scantly flock and is waited on in general by scarce a hint -of significance. The significance comes by a process slow and small, the -fact only that one perceptive private reader after another discovers at -his convenience that the book is rare. The addition of the perceptive -private readers is no quick affair, and would doubtless be a vain one -did they not—while plenty of other much more remarkable books come and -go—accumulate and count. They count by their quality and continuity of -attention; so they have gathered for “Madame Bovary,” and so they are -held. That is really once more the great circumstance. It is always in -order for us to feel yet again what it is we are held by. Such is my -reason, definitely, for speaking of Flaubert as the novelist’s novelist. -Are we not moreover—and let it pass this time as a happy hope!—pretty -well all novelists now? - ------ - -Footnote 2: - -On the occasion of these prefatory remarks to a translation of “Madame -Bovary,” appearing in A Century of French Romance, under the auspices of -Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. William Heinemann, in 1902. - -Footnote 3: - -It was true, delightfully true, that, extravagance in this province of -his life, though apparently in no other, being Flaubert’s necessity and -law, he deliberated and hung fire, wrestled, retreated and returned, -indulged generally in a tragi-comedy of waste; which I recall a charming -expression of on the lips of Edmond de Goncourt, who quite recognised -the heroic legend, but prettily qualified it: “Il faut vous dire qu’il y -avait là-dedans beaucoup de coucheries et d’école buissonière.” And he -related how on the occasion of a stay with his friend under the roof of -the Princess Mathilde, the friend, missed during the middle hours of a -fine afternoon, was found to have undressed himself and gone to bed to -think! - - - - - HONORÉ DE BALZAC - 1902 - - - I - -Stronger than ever, even than under the spell of first acquaintance and -of the early time, is the sense—thanks to a renewal of intimacy and, I -am tempted to say, of loyalty—that Balzac stands signally apart, that -he is the first and foremost member of his craft, and that above all the -Balzac-lover is in no position till he has cleared the ground by saying -so. The Balzac-lover alone, for that matter, is worthy to have his word -on so happy an occasion as this[4] about the author of “La Comédie -Humaine,” and it is indeed not easy to see how the amount of attention -so inevitably induced could at the worst have failed to find itself -turning to an act of homage. I have been deeply affected, to be frank, -by the mere refreshment of memory, which has brought in its train -moreover consequences critical and sentimental too numerous to figure -here in their completeness. The authors and the books that have, as we -say, done something for us, become part of the answer to our curiosity -when our curiosity had the freshness of youth, these particular agents -exist for us, with the lapse of time, as the substance itself of -knowledge: they have been intellectually so swallowed, digested and -assimilated that we take their general use and suggestion for granted, -cease to be aware of them because they have passed out of sight. But -they have passed out of sight simply by having passed into our lives. -They have become a part of our personal history, a part of ourselves, -very often, so far as we may have succeeded in best expressing -ourselves. Endless, however, are the uses of great persons and great -things, and it may easily happen in these cases that the connection, -even as an “excitement”—the form mainly of the connections of youth—is -never really broken. We have largely been living on our -benefactor—which is the highest acknowledgment one can make; only, -thanks to a blest law that operates in the long run to rekindle -excitement, we are accessible to the sense of having neglected him. Even -when we may not constantly have read him over the neglect is quite an -illusion, but the illusion perhaps prepares us for the finest emotion we -are to have owed to the acquaintance. Without having abandoned or denied -our author we yet come expressly back to him, and if not quite in -tatters and in penitence like the Prodigal Son, with something at all -events of the tenderness with which we revert to the parental threshold -and hearthstone, if not, more fortunately, to the parental presence. The -beauty of this adventure, that of seeing the dust blown off a relation -that had been put away as on a shelf, almost out of reach, at the back -of one’s mind, consists in finding the precious object not only fresh -and intact, but with its firm lacquer still further figured, gilded and -enriched. It is all overscored with traces and impressions—vivid, -definite, almost as valuable as itself—of the recognitions and -agitations it originally produced in us. Our old—that is our -young—feelings are very nearly what page after page most gives us. The -case has become a case of authority _plus_ association. If Balzac in -himself is indubitably wanting in the sufficiently common felicity we -know as charm, it is this association that may on occasion contribute -the grace. - -The impression then, confirmed and brightened, is of the mass and weight -of the figure and of the extent of ground it occupies; a tract on which -we might all of us together quite pitch our little tents, open our -little booths, deal in our little wares, and not materially either -diminish the area or impede the circulation of the occupant. I seem to -see him in such an image moving about as Gulliver among the pigmies, and -not less good-natured than Gulliver for the exercise of any function, -without exception, that can illustrate his larger life. The first and -the last word about the author of “Les Contes Drolatiques” is that of -all novelists he is the most serious—by which I am far from meaning -that in the human comedy as he shows it the comic is an absent quantity. -His sense of the comic was on the scale of his extraordinary senses in -general, though his expression of it suffers perhaps exceptionally from -that odd want of elbow-room—the penalty somehow of his close-packed, -pressed-down contents—which reminds us of some designedly beautiful -thing but half-disengaged from the clay or the marble. It is the scheme -and the scope that are supreme in him, applying this moreover not to -mere great intention, but to the concrete form, the proved case, in -which we possess them. We most of us aspire to achieve at the best but a -patch here and there, to pluck a sprig or a single branch, to break -ground in a corner of the great garden of life. Balzac’s plan was simply -to do everything that could be done. He proposed to himself to “turn -over” the great garden from north to south and from east to west; a -task—immense, heroic, to this day immeasurable—that he bequeathed us -the partial performance of, a prodigious ragged clod, in the twenty -monstrous years representing his productive career, years of -concentration and sacrifice the vision of which still makes us ache. He -had indeed a striking good fortune, the only one he was to enjoy as an -harassed and exasperated worker: the great garden of life presented -itself to him absolutely and exactly in the guise of the great garden of -France, a subject vast and comprehensive enough, yet with definite edges -and corners. This identity of his universal with his local and national -vision is the particular thing we should doubtless call his greatest -strength were we preparing agreeably to speak of it also as his visible -weakness. Of Balzac’s weaknesses, however, it takes some assurance to -talk; there is always plenty of time for them; they are the last signs -we know him by—such things truly as in other painters of manners often -come under the head of mere exuberance of energy. So little in short do -they earn the invidious name even when we feel them as defects. - -What he did above all was to read the universe, as hard and as loud as -he could, _into_ the France of his time; his own eyes regarding his work -as at once the drama of man and a mirror of the mass of social phenomena -the most rounded and registered, most organised and administered, and -thereby most exposed to systematic observation and portrayal, that the -world had seen. There are happily other interesting societies, but these -are for schemes of such an order comparatively loose and incoherent, -with more extent and perhaps more variety, but with less of the great -enclosed and exhibited quality, less neatness and sharpness of -arrangement, fewer categories, sub-divisions, juxtapositions. Balzac’s -France was both inspiring enough for an immense prose epic and reducible -enough for a report or a chart. To allow his achievement all its dignity -we should doubtless say also treatable enough for a history, since it -was as a patient historian, a Benedictine of the actual, the living -painter of his living time, that he regarded himself and handled his -material. All painters of manners and fashions, if we will, are -historians, even when they least don the uniform: Fielding, Dickens, -Thackeray, George Eliot, Hawthorne among ourselves. But the great -difference between the great Frenchman and the eminent others is that, -with an imagination of the highest power, an unequalled intensity of -vision, he saw his subject in the light of science as well, in the light -of the bearing of all its parts on each other, and under pressure of a -passion for exactitude, an appetite, the appetite of an ogre, for _all_ -the kinds of facts. We find I think in the union here suggested -something like the truth about his genius, the nearest approach to a -final account of him. Of imagination on one side all compact, he was on -the other an insatiable reporter of the immediate, the material, the -current combination, and perpetually moved by the historian’s impulse to -fix, preserve and explain them. One asks one’s self as one reads him -what concern the poet has with so much arithmetic and so much criticism, -so many statistics and documents, what concern the critic and the -economist have with so many passions, characters and adventures. The -contradiction is always before us; it springs from the inordinate scale -of the author’s two faces; it explains more than anything else his -eccentricities and difficulties. It accounts for his want of grace, his -want of the lightness associated with an amusing literary form, his -bristling surface, his closeness of texture, so rough with richness, yet -so productive of the effect we have in mind when we speak of not being -able to see the wood for the trees. - -A thorough-paced votary, for that matter, can easily afford to declare -at once that this confounding duality of character does more things -still, or does at least the most important of all—introduces us without -mercy (mercy for ourselves I mean) to the oddest truth we could have -dreamed of meeting in such a connection. It was certainly _a priori_ not -to be expected we should feel it of him, but our hero is after all not -in his magnificence totally an artist: which would be the strangest -thing possible, one must hasten to add, were not the smallness of the -practical difference so made even stranger. His endowment and his effect -are each so great that the anomaly makes at the most a difference only -by adding to his interest for the critic. The critic worth his salt is -indiscreetly curious and wants ever to know how and why—whereby Balzac -is thus a still rarer case for him, suggesting that exceptional -curiosity may have exceptional rewards. The question of what makes the -artist on a great scale is interesting enough; but we feel it in -Balzac’s company to be nothing to the question of what on an equal scale -frustrates him. The scattered pieces, the _disjecta membra_ of the -character are here so numerous and so splendid that they prove -misleading; we pile them together, and the heap assuredly is monumental; -it forms an overtopping figure. The genius this figure stands for, none -the less, is really such a lesson to the artist as perfection itself -would be powerless to give; it carries him so much further into the -special mystery. Where it carries him, at the same time, I must not in -this scant space attempt to say—which would be a loss of the fine -thread of my argument. I stick to our point in putting it, more -concisely, that the artist of the Comédie Humaine is half smothered by -the historian. Yet it belongs as well to the matter also to meet the -question of whether the historian himself may not be an artist—in which -case Balzac’s catastrophe would seem to lose its excuse. The answer of -course is that the reporter, however philosophic, has one law, and the -originator, however substantially fed, has another; so that the two laws -can with no sort of harmony or congruity make, for the finer sense, a -common household. Balzac’s catastrophe—so to name it once again—was in -this perpetual conflict and final impossibility, an impossibility that -explains his defeat on the classic side and extends so far at times as -to make us think of his work as, from the point of view of beauty, a -tragic waste of effort. - -What it would come to, we judge, is that the irreconcilability of the -two kinds of law is, more simply expressed, but the irreconcilability of -two different ways of composing one’s effect. The principle of -composition that his free imagination would have, or certainly might -have, handsomely imposed on him is perpetually dislocated by the quite -opposite principle of the earnest seeker, the inquirer to a useful end, -in whom nothing is free but a born antipathy to his yoke-fellow. Such a -production as “Le Curé de Village,” the wonderful story of Madame -Graslin, so nearly a masterpiece yet so ultimately not one, would be, in -this connection, could I take due space for it, a perfect illustration. -If, as I say, Madame Graslin’s creator was confined by his doom to -patches and pieces, no piece is finer than the first half of the book in -question, the half in which the picture is determined by his unequalled -power of putting people on their feet, planting them before us in their -habit as they lived—a faculty nourished by observation as much as one -will, but with the inner vision all the while wide-awake, the vision for -which ideas are as living as facts and assume an equal intensity. This -intensity, greatest indeed in the facts, has in Balzac a force all its -own, to which none other in any novelist I know can be likened. His -touch communicates on the spot to the object, the creature evoked, the -hardness and permanence that certain substances, some sorts of stone, -acquire by exposure to the air. The hardening medium, for the image -soaked in it, is the air of his mind. It would take but little more to -make the peopled world of fiction as we know it elsewhere affect us by -contrast as a world of rather gray pulp. This mixture of the solid and -the vivid is Balzac at his best, and it prevails without a break, -without a note not admirably true, in “Le Curé de Village”—since I have -named that instance—up to the point at which Madame Graslin moves out -from Limoges to Montégnac in her ardent passion of penitence, her -determination to expiate her strange and undiscovered association with a -dark misdeed by living and working for others. Her drama is a -particularly inward one, interesting, and in the highest degree, so long -as she herself, her nature, her behaviour, her personal history and the -relations in which they place her, control the picture and feed our -illusion. The firmness with which the author makes them play this part, -the whole constitution of the scene and of its developments from the -moment we cross the threshold of her dusky stuffy old-time birth-house, -is a rare delight, producing in the reader that sense of local and -material immersion which is one of Balzac’s supreme secrets. What -characteristically befalls, however, is that the spell accompanies us -but part of the way—only until, at a given moment, his attention -ruthlessly transfers itself from inside to outside, from the centre of -his subject to its circumference. - -This is Balzac caught in the very fact of his monstrous duality, caught -in his most complete self-expression. He is clearly quite unwitting that -in handing over his _data_ to his twin-brother the impassioned economist -and surveyor, the insatiate general inquirer and reporter, he is in any -sort betraying our confidence, for his good conscience at such times, -the spirit of edification in him, is a lesson even to the best of us, -his rich robust temperament nowhere more striking, no more marked -anywhere the great push of the shoulder with which he makes his theme -move, overcharged though it may be like a carrier’s van. It is not -therefore assuredly that he loses either sincerity or power in putting -before us to the last detail such a matter as, in this case, his -heroine’s management of her property, her tenantry, her economic -opportunities and visions, for these are cases in which he never shrinks -nor relents, in which positively he stiffens and terribly towers—to -remind us again of M. Taine’s simplifying word about his being an artist -doubled with a man of business. Balzac was indeed doubled if ever a -writer was, and to that extent that we almost as often, while we read, -feel ourselves thinking of him as a man of business doubled with an -artist. Whichever way we turn it the oddity never fails, nor the wonder -of the ease with which either character bears the burden of the other. I -use the word burden because, as the fusion is never complete—witness in -the book before us the fatal break of “tone,” the one unpardonable sin -for the novelist—we are beset by the conviction that but for this -strangest of dooms one or other of the two partners might, to our relief -and to his own, have been disembarrassed. The disembarrassment, for -each, by a more insidious fusion, would probably have conduced to the -mastership of interest proceeding from form, or at all events to the -search for it, that Balzac fails to embody. Perhaps the possibility of -an artist constructed on such strong lines is one of those fine things -that are not of this world, a mere dream of the fond critical spirit. -Let these speculations and condonations at least pass as the amusement, -as a result of the high spirits—if high spirits be the word—of the -reader feeling himself again in touch. It was not of our author’s -difficulties—that is of his difficulty, the great one—that I proposed -to speak, but of his immense clear action. Even that is not truly an -impression of ease, and it is strange and striking that we are in fact -so attached by his want of the unity that keeps surfaces smooth and -dangers down as scarce to feel sure at any moment that we shall not come -back to it with most curiosity. We are never so curious about successes -as about interesting failures. The more reason therefore to speak -promptly, and once for all, of the scale on which, in its own quarter of -his genius, success worked itself out for him. - -It is to that I _should_ come back—to the infinite reach in him of the -painter and the poet. We can never know what might have become of him -with less importunity in his consciousness of the machinery of life, of -its furniture and fittings, of all that, right and left, he causes to -assail us, sometimes almost to suffocation, under the general rubric of -_things_. Things, in this sense with him, are at once our delight and -our despair; we pass from being inordinately beguiled and convinced by -them to feeling that his universe fairly smells too much of them, that -the larger ether, the diviner air, is in peril of finding among them -scarce room to circulate. His landscapes, his “local colour”—thick in -his pages at a time when it was to be found in his pages almost -alone—his towns, his streets, his houses, his Saumurs, Angoulêmes, -Guérandes, his great prose Turner-views of the land of the Loire, his -rooms, shops, interiors, details of domesticity and traffic, are a short -list of the terms into which he saw the real as clamouring to be -rendered and into which he rendered it with unequalled authority. It -would be doubtless more to the point to make our profit of this -consummation than to try to reconstruct a Balzac planted more in the -open. We hardly, as the case stands, know most whether to admire in such -an example as the short tale of “La Grenadière” the exquisite feeling -for “natural objects” with which it overflows like a brimming wine-cup, -the energy of perception and description which so multiplies them for -beauty’s sake and for the love of their beauty, or the general wealth of -genius that can calculate, or at least count, so little and spend so -joyously. The tale practically exists for the sake of the enchanting -aspects involved—those of the embowered white house that nestles on its -terraced hill above the great French river, and we can think, frankly, -of no one else with an equal amount of business on his hands who would -either have so put himself out for aspects or made them almost by -themselves a living subject. A born son of Touraine, it must be said, he -pictures his province, on every pretext and occasion, with filial -passion and extraordinary breadth. The prime aspect in his scene all the -while, it must be added, is the money aspect. The general money question -so loads him up and weighs him down that he moves through the human -comedy, from beginning to end, very much in the fashion of a camel, the -ship of the desert, surmounted with a cargo. “Things” for him are francs -and centimes more than any others, and I give up as inscrutable, -unfathomable, the nature, the peculiar avidity of his interest in them. -It makes us wonder again and again what then is the use on Balzac’s -scale of the divine faculty. The imagination, as we all know, may be -employed up to a certain point in inventing uses for money; but its -office beyond that point is surely to make us forget that anything so -odious exists. This is what Balzac never forgot; his universe goes on -expressing itself for him, to its furthest reaches, on its finest sides, -in the terms of the market. To say these things, however, is after all -to come out where we want, to suggest his extraordinary scale and his -terrible completeness. I am not sure that he does not see character too, -see passion, motive, personality, as quite in the order of the “things” -we have spoken of. He makes them no less concrete and palpable, handles -them no less directly and freely. It is the whole business in fine—that -grand total to which he proposed to himself to do high justice—that -gives him his place apart, makes him, among the novelists, the largest -weightiest presence. There are some of his obsessions—that of the -material, that of the financial, that of the “social,” that of the -technical, political, civil—for which I feel myself unable to judge -him, judgment losing itself unexpectedly in a particular shade of pity. -The way to judge him is to try to walk all round him—on which we see -how remarkably far we have to go. He is the only member of his order -really monumental, the sturdiest-seated mass that rises in our path. - ------ - -Footnote 4: - -The appearance of a translation of the “Deux Jeunes Mariées” in A -Century of French Romance. - - - II - -We recognise none the less that the finest consequence of these -re-established relations is linked with just that appearance in him, -that obsession of the actual under so many heads, that makes us look at -him, as we would at some rare animal in captivity, between the bars of a -cage. It amounts to a sort of suffered doom, since to be solicited by -the world from all quarters at once, what is that for the spirit but a -denial of escape? We feel his doom to be his want of a private door, and -that he felt it, though more obscurely, himself. When we speak of his -want of charm therefore we perhaps so surrender the question as but to -show our own poverty. If charm, to cut it short, is what he lacks, how -comes it that he so touches and holds us that—above all if we be actual -or possible fellow-workers—we are uncomfortably conscious of the -disloyalty of almost any shade of surrender? We are lodged perhaps by -our excited sensibility in a dilemma of which one of the horns is a -compassion that savours of patronage; but we must resign ourselves to -that by reflecting that our partiality at least takes nothing away from -him. It leaves him solidly where he is and only brings us near, brings -us to a view of _all_ his formidable parts and properties. The -conception of the Comédie Humaine represents them all, and represents -them mostly in their felicity and their triumph—or at least the -execution does: in spite of which we irresistibly find ourselves -thinking of him, in reperusals, as most essentially the victim of a -cruel joke. The joke is one of the jokes of fate, the fate that rode him -for twenty years at so terrible a pace and with the whip so constantly -applied. To have wanted to do so much, to have thought it possible, to -have faced and in a manner resisted the effort, to have felt life -poisoned and consumed by such a bravery of self-committal—these things -form for us in him a face of trouble that, oddly enough, is not -appreciably lighted by the fact of his success. It was the having wanted -to do so much that was the trap, whatever possibilities of glory might -accompany the good faith with which he fell into it. What accompanies -_us_ as we frequent him is a sense of the deepening ache of that good -faith with the increase of his working consciousness, the merciless -development of his huge subject and of the rigour of all the conditions. -We see the whole thing quite as if Destiny had said to him: “You want to -‘do’ France, presumptuous, magnificent, miserable man—the France of -revolutions, revivals, restorations, of Bonapartes, Bourbons, republics, -of war and peace, of blood and romanticism, of violent change and -intimate continuity, the France of the first half of your century? Very -well; you most distinctly _shall_, and you shall particularly let me -hear, even if the great groan of your labour do fill at moments the -temple of letters, how you like the job.” We must of course not appear -to deny the existence of a robust joy in him, the joy of power and -creation, the joy of the observer and the dreamer who finds a use for -his observations and his dreams as fast as they come. The “Contes -Drolatiques” would by themselves sufficiently contradict us, and the -savour of the “Contes Drolatiques” is not confined to these productions. -His work at large tastes of the same kind of humour, and we feel him -again and again, like any other great healthy producer of these matters, -beguiled and carried along. He would have been, I dare say, the last not -to insist that the artist has pleasures forever indescribable; he lived -in short in his human comedy with the largest life we can attribute to -the largest capacity. There are particular parts of his subject from -which, with our sense of his enjoyment of them, we have to check the -impulse to call him away—frequently as I confess in this relation that -impulse arises. - -The relation is with the special element of his spectacle from which he -never fully detaches himself, the element, to express it succinctly, of -the “old families” and the great ladies. Balzac frankly revelled in his -conception of an aristocracy—a conception that never succeeded in -becoming his happiest; whether, objectively, thanks to the facts -supplied him by the society he studied, or through one of the strangest -deviations of taste that the literary critic is in an important -connection likely to encounter. Nothing would in fact be more -interesting than to attempt a general measure of the part played in the -total comedy, to his imagination, by the old families; and one or two -contributions to such an attempt I must not fail presently to make. I -glance at them here, however, the delectable class, but as most -representing on the author’s part free and amused creation; by which too -I am far from hinting that the amusement is at all at their expense. It -is in their great ladies that the old families most shine out for him, -images of strange colour and form, but “felt” as we say, to their -finger-tips, and extraordinarily interesting as a mark of the high -predominance—predominance of character, of cleverness, of will, of -general “personality”—that almost every scene of the Comedy attributes -to women. It attributes to them in fact a recognised, an uncontested -supremacy; it is through them that the hierarchy of old families most -expresses itself; and it is as surrounded by them even as some -magnificent indulgent pasha by his overflowing seraglio that Balzac sits -most at his ease. All of which reaffirms—if it be needed—that his -inspiration, and the sense of it, were even greater than his task. And -yet such betrayals of spontaneity in him make for an old friend at the -end of the chapter no great difference in respect to the pathos—since -it amounts to that—of his genius-ridden aspect. It comes to us as we go -back to him that his spirit had fairly made of itself a cage in which he -was to turn round and round, always unwinding his reel, much in the -manner of a criminal condemned to hard labour for life. The cage is -simply the complicated but dreadfully definite French world that built -itself so solidly in and roofed itself so impenetrably over him. - -It is not that, caught there with him though we be, we ourselves -prematurely seek an issue: we throw ourselves back, on the contrary, for -the particular sense of it, into his ancient superseded comparatively -_rococo_ and quite patriarchal France—patriarchal in spite of social -and political convulsions; into his old-time antediluvian Paris, all -picturesque and all workable, full, to the fancy, of an amenity that has -passed away; into his intensely differentiated sphere of _la province_, -evoked in each sharpest or faintest note of its difference, described -systematically as narrow and flat, and yet attaching us if only by the -contagion of the author’s overflowing sensibility. He feels in his vast -exhibition many things, but there is nothing he feels with the -communicable shocks and vibrations, the sustained fury of -perception—not always a fierceness of judgment, which is another -matter—that _la province_ excites in him. Half our interest in him -springs still from our own sense that, for all the convulsions, the -revolutions and experiments that have come and gone, the order he -describes is the old order that our sense of the past perversely recurs -to as to something happy we have irretrievably missed. His pages bristle -with the revelation of the lingering earlier world, the world in which -places and people still had their queerness, their strong marks, their -sharp type, and in which, as before the platitude that was to come, the -observer with an appetite for the salient could by way of precaution -fill his lungs. Balzac’s appetite for the salient was voracious, yet he -came, as it were, in time, in spite of his so often speaking as if what -he sees about him is but the last desolation of the modern. His -conservatism, the most entire, consistent and convinced that ever -was—yet even at that much inclined to whistling in the dark as if to -the tune of “Oh how mediæval I _am_!”—was doubtless the best point of -view from which he could rake his field. But if what he sniffed from -afar in that position was the extremity of change, we in turn feel both -subject and painter drenched with the smell of the past. It is preserved -in his work as nowhere else—not vague nor faint nor delicate, but as -strong to-day as when first distilled. - -It may seem odd to find a conscious melancholy in the fact that a great -worker succeeded in clasping his opportunity in such an embrace, this -being exactly our usual measure of the felicity of great workers. I -speak, I hasten to reassert, all in the name of sympathy—without which -it would have been detestable to speak at all; and the sentiment puts -its hand instinctively on the thing that makes it least futile. This -particular thing then is not in the least Balzac’s own hold of his -terrible mass of matter; it is absolutely the convolutions of the -serpent he had with a magnificent courage invited to wind itself round -him. We must use the common image—he had created his Frankenstein -monster. It is the fellow-craftsman who can most feel for him—it being -apparently possible to read him from another point of view without -getting really into his presence. We undergo with him from book to book, -from picture to picture, the convolutions of the serpent, we especially -whose refined performances are given, as we know, but with the small -common or garden snake. I stick to this to justify my image just above -of his having been “caged” by the intensity with which he saw his -general matter as a whole. To see it always as a whole is our wise, our -virtuous effort, the very condition, as we keep in mind, of superior -art. Balzac was in this connection then wise and virtuous to the most -exemplary degree; so that he doubtless ought logically but to prompt to -complacent reflections. No painter ever saw his general matter nearly so -much as a whole. Why is it then that we hover about him, if we are real -Balzacians, not with cheerful chatter, but with a consideration deeper -in its reach than any mere moralising? The reason is largely that if you -wish with absolute immaculate virtue to look at your matter as a whole -and yet remain a theme for cheerful chatter, you must be careful to take -some quantity that will not hug you to death. Balzac’s active intention -was, to vary our simile, a beast with a hundred claws, and the spectacle -is in the hugging process of which, as energy against energy, the beast -was capable. Its victim died of the process at fifty, and if what we see -in the long gallery in which it is mirrored is not the defeat, but the -admirable resistance, we none the less never lose the sense that the -fighter is shut up with his fate. He has locked himself in—it is -doubtless his own fault—and thrown the key away. Most of all perhaps -the impression comes—the impression of the adventurer committed and -anxious, but with no retreat—from the so formidably concrete nature of -his plastic stuff. When we work in the open, as it were, our material is -not classed and catalogued, so that we have at hand a hundred ways of -being loose, superficial, disingenuous, and yet passing, to our no small -profit, for remarkable. Balzac had no “open”; he held that the great -central normal fruitful country of his birth and race, overarched with -its infinite social complexity, yielded a sufficiency of earth and sea -and sky. We seem to see as his catastrophe that the sky, all the same, -came down on him. He couldn’t keep it up—in more senses than one. These -are perhaps fine fancies for a critic to weave about a literary figure -of whom he has undertaken to give a plain account; but I leave them so -on the plea that there are relations in which, for the Balzacian, -criticism simply drops out. That is not a liberty, I admit, ever to be -much encouraged; critics in fact are the only people who have a right -occasionally to take it. There is no such plain account of the Comédie -Humaine as that it makes us fold up our yard-measure and put away our -note-book quite as we do with some extraordinary character, some -mysterious and various stranger, who brings with him his own standards -and his own air. There is a kind of eminent presence that abashes even -the interviewer, moves him to respect and wonder, makes him, for -consideration itself, not insist. This takes of course a personage sole -of his kind. But such a personage precisely is Balzac. - - - III - -By all of which have I none the less felt it but too clear that I must -not pretend in this place to take apart the pieces of his immense -complicated work, to number them or group them or dispose them about. -The most we can do is to pick one up here and there and wonder, as we -weigh it in our hand, at its close compact substance. That is all even -M. Taine could do in the longest and most penetrating study of which our -author has been the subject. Every piece we handle is so full of stuff, -condensed like the edibles provided for campaigns and explorations, -positively so charged with distilled life, that we find ourselves -dropping it, in certain states of sensibility, as we drop an object -unguardedly touched that startles us by being animate. We seem really -scarce to want anything to _be_ so animate. It would verily take Balzac -to detail Balzac, and he has had in fact Balzacians nearly enough -affiliated to affront the task with courage. The “Répertoire de la -Comédie Humaine” of MM. Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Christophe is a -closely-printed octavo of 550 pages which constitutes in relation to his -characters great and small an impeccable biographical dictionary. His -votaries and expositors are so numerous that the Balzac library of -comment and research must be, of its type, one of the most copious. M. -de Lovenjoul has laboured all round the subject; his “Histoire des -Œuvres” alone is another crowded octavo of 400 pages; in connection with -which I must mention Miss Wormeley, the devoted American translator, -interpreter, worshipper, who in the course of her own studies has so -often found occasion to differ from M. de Lovenjoul on matters of fact -and questions of date and of appreciation. Miss Wormeley, M. Paul -Bourget and many others are examples of the passionate piety that our -author can inspire. As I turn over the encyclopedia of his characters I -note that whereas such works usually commemorate but the ostensibly -eminent of a race and time, every creature so much as named in the -fictive swarm is in this case preserved to fame: so close is the -implication that to have _been_ named by such a dispenser of life and -privilege is to be, as we say it of baronets and peers, created. He -infinitely divided moreover, as we know, he subdivided, altered and -multiplied his heads and categories—his “Vie Parisienne,” his “Vie de -Province,” his “Vie Politique,” his “Parents Pauvres,” his “Études -Philosophiques,” his “Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes,” his -“Envers de l’Histoire Contemporaine” and all the rest; so that nominal -reference to them becomes the more difficult. Yet without prejudice -either to the energy of conception with which he mapped out his theme as -with chalk on a huge blackboard, or to the prodigious patience with -which he executed his plan, practically filling in with a wealth of -illustration, from sources that to this day we fail to make out, every -compartment of his table, M. de Lovenjoul draws up the list, year by -year, from 1822 to 1848, of his mass of work, giving us thus the measure -of the tension represented for him by almost any twelvemonth. It is -wholly unequalled, considering the quality of Balzac’s show, by any -other eminent abundance. - -I must be pardoned for coming back to it, for seeming unable to leave -it; it enshrouds so interesting a mystery. How was so solidly systematic -a literary attack on life to be conjoined with whatever workable minimum -of needful intermission, of free observation, of personal experience? -Some small possibility of personal experience and disinterested life -must, at the worst, from deep within or far without, feed and fortify -the strained productive machine. These things were luxuries that Balzac -appears really never to have tasted on any appreciable scale. His -published letters—the driest and most starved of those of any man of -equal distinction—are with the exception of those to Madame de Hanska, -whom he married shortly before his death, almost exclusively the audible -wail of a galley-slave chained to the oar. M. Zola, in our time, among -the novelists, has sacrificed to the huge plan in something of the same -manner, yet with goodly modern differences that leave him a -comparatively simple instance. His work assuredly has been more nearly -dried up by the sacrifice than ever Balzac’s was—so miraculously, given -the conditions, was Balzac’s to escape the anti-climax. Method and -system, in the chronicle of the tribe of Rougon-Macquart, an economy in -itself certainly of the rarest and most interesting, have spread so from -centre to circumference that they have ended by being almost the only -thing we feel. And then M. Zola has survived and triumphed in his -lifetime, has continued and lasted, has piled up and, if the remark be -not frivolous, enjoyed in all its _agréments_ the reward for which -Balzac toiled and sweated in vain. On top of which he will have had also -his literary great-grandfather’s heroic example to start from and profit -by, the positive heritage of a _fils de famille_ to enjoy, spend, save, -waste. Balzac had frankly no heritage at all but his stiff subject, and -by way of model not even in any direct or immediate manner that of the -inner light and kindly admonition of his genius. Nothing adds more to -the strangeness of his general performance than his having failed so -long to find his inner light, groped for it almost ten years, missed it -again and again, moved straight away from it, turned his back on it, -lived in fine round about it, in a darkness still scarce penetrable, a -darkness into which we peep only half to make out the dreary little -waste of his numerous _œuvres de jeunesse_. To M. Zola was vouchsafed -the good fortune of settling down to the Rougon-Macquart with the -happiest promptitude; it was as if time for one look about him—and I -say it without disparagement to the reach of his look—had sufficiently -served his purpose. Balzac moreover might have written five hundred -novels without our feeling in him the faintest hint of the breath of -doom, if he had only been comfortably capable of conceiving the short -cut of the fashion practised by others under his eyes. As Alexandre -Dumas and George Sand, illustrious contemporaries, cultivated a personal -life and a disinterested consciousness by the bushel, having, for their -easier duration, not too consistently known, as the true painter knows -it, the obsession of the thing to be done, so Balzac was condemned by -his constitution itself, by his inveterately seeing this “thing to be -done” as part and parcel, as of the very essence, of his enterprise. The -latter existed for him, as the process worked and hallucination settled, -in the form, and the form only, of the thing done, and not in any -hocus-pocus about doing. There was no kindly convenient escape for him -by the little swinging back-door of the thing _not_ done. He desired—no -man more—to get out of his obsession, but only at the other end, that -is by boring through it. “How then, thus deprived of the outer air -almost as much as if he were gouging a passage for a railway through an -Alp, _did_ he live?” is the question that haunts us—with the -consequence for the most part of promptly meeting its fairly tragic -answer. He did _not_ live—save in his imagination, or by other aid than -he could find there; his imagination was all his experience; he had -provably no time for the real thing. This brings us to the rich if -simple truth that his imagination alone did the business, carried -through both the conception and the execution—as large an effort and as -proportionate a success, in all but the vulgar sense, as the faculty -when equally handicapped was ever concerned in. Handicapped I say -because this interesting fact about him, with the claim it makes, rests -on the ground, the high distinction, that more than all the rest of us -put together he went in, as we say, for detail, circumstance and -specification, proposed to himself _all_ the connections of every part -of his matter and the full total of the parts. The whole thing, it is -impossible not to keep repeating, was what he deemed treatable. One -really knows in all imaginative literature no undertaking to compare -with it for courage, good faith and sublimity. There, once more, was the -necessity that rode him and that places him apart in our homage. It is -no light thing to have been condemned to become provably sublime. And -looking through, or trying to, at what is beneath and behind, we are -left benevolently uncertain if the predominant quantity be audacity or -innocence. - -It is of course inevitable at this point to seem to hear the colder -critic promptly take us up. He undertook the whole thing—oh exactly, -the ponderous person! But _did_ he “do” the whole thing, if you please, -any more than sundry others of fewer pretensions? The retort to this it -can only be a positive joy to make, so high a note instantly sounds as -an effect of the inquiry. Nothing is more interesting and amusing than -to find one’s self recognising both that Balzac’s pretensions were -immense, portentous, and that yet, taking him—and taking -_them_—altogether, they but minister in the long run to our fondness. -They affect us not only as the endearing eccentricities of a person we -greatly admire, but fairly as the very condition of his having become -such a person. We take them thus in the first place for the very terms -of his plan, and in the second for a part of that high robustness and -that general richness of nature which made him in face of such a project -believe in himself. One would really scarce have liked to see such a job -as La Comédie Humaine tackled without swagger. To think of the thing -really as practicable _was_ swagger, and of the very rarest order. So to -think assuredly implied pretensions, pretensions that risked showing as -monstrous should the enterprise fail to succeed. It is for the colder -critic to take the trouble to make out that of the two parties to it the -body of pretension remains greater than the success. One may put it -moreover at the worst for him, may recognise that it is in the matter of -opinion still more than in the matter of knowledge that Balzac offers -himself as universally competent. He has flights of judgment—on -subjects the most special as well as the most general—that are -vertiginous and on his alighting from which we greet him with a special -indulgence. We can easily imagine him to respond, confessing -humorously—if he had only time—to such a benevolent understanding -smile as would fain hold our own eyes a moment. Then it is that he would -most show us his scheme and his necessities and how in operation they -all hang together. _Naturally_ everything about everything, though how -he had time to learn it is the last thing he has time to tell us; which -matters the less, moreover, as it is not over the question of his -knowledge that we sociably invite him, as it were (and remembering the -two augurs behind the altar) to wink at us for a sign. His convictions -it is that are his great pardonable “swagger”; to them in particular I -refer as his general operative condition, the constituted terms of his -experiment, and not less as his consolation, his support, his amusement -by the way. They embrace everything in the world—that is in his world -of the so parti-coloured France of his age: religion, morals, politics, -economics, physics, esthetics, letters, art, science, sociology, every -question of faith, every branch of research. They represent thus his -equipment of ideas, those ideas of which it will never do for a man who -aspires to constitute a State to be deprived. He must take them with him -as an ambassador extraordinary takes with him secretaries, uniforms, -stars and garters, a gilded coach and a high assurance. Balzac’s -opinions are his gilded coach, in which he is more amused than anything -else to feel himself riding, but which is indispensably concerned in -getting him over the ground. What more inevitable than that they should -be intensely Catholic, intensely monarchical, intensely saturated with -the real genius—as between 1830 and 1848 he believed it to be—of the -French character and French institutions? - -Nothing is happier for us than that he should have enjoyed his outlook -before the first half of the century closed. He could then still treat -his subject as comparatively homogeneous. Any country could have a -Revolution—every country _had_ had one. A Restoration was merely what a -revolution involved, and the Empire had been for the French but a -revolutionary incident, in addition to being by good luck for the -novelist an immensely pictorial one. He was free therefore to arrange -the background of the comedy in the manner that seemed to him best to -suit anything so great; in the manner at the same time prescribed -according to his contention by the noblest traditions. The church, the -throne, the noblesse, the bourgeoisie, the people, the peasantry, all in -their order and each solidly kept in it, these were precious things, -things his superabundant insistence on the price of which is what I -refer to as his exuberance of opinion. It was a luxury for more reasons -than one, though one, presently to be mentioned, handsomely -predominates. The meaning of that exchange of intelligences in the rear -of the oracle which I have figured for him with the perceptive friend -bears simply on his pleading guilty to the purport of the friend’s -discrimination. The point the latter makes with him—a beautiful cordial -critical point—is that he truly cares for nothing in the world, thank -goodness, so much as for the passions and embroilments of men and women, -the free play of character and the sharp revelation of type, all the -real stuff of drama and the natural food of novelists. Religion, morals, -politics, economics, esthetics would be thus, as systematic matter, very -well in their place, but quite secondary and subservient. Balzac’s -attitude is again and again that he cares for the adventures and -emotions because, as his last word, he cares for the good and the -greatness of the State—which is where his swagger, with a whole society -on his hands, comes in. What we on our side in a thousand places -gratefully feel is that he cares for his monarchical and hierarchical -and ecclesiastical society because it rounds itself for his mind into -the most congruous and capacious theatre for the repertory of his -innumerable comedians. It has above all, for a painter abhorrent of the -superficial, the inestimable benefit of the accumulated, of strong marks -and fine shades, contrasts and complications. There had certainly been -since 1789 dispersals and confusions enough, but the thick tradition, no -more at the most than half smothered, lay under them all. So the whole -of his faith and no small part of his working omniscience were neither -more nor less than that historic sense which I have spoken of as the -spur of his invention and which he possessed as no other novelist has -done. We immediately feel that to name it in connection with him is to -answer every question he suggests and to account for each of his -idiosyncrasies in turn. The novel, the tale, however brief, the passage, -the sentence by itself, the situation, the person, the place, the motive -exposed, the speech reported—these things were in his view history, -with the absoluteness and the dignity of history. This is the source -both of his weight and of his wealth. What is the historic sense after -all but animated, but impassioned knowledge seeking to enlarge itself? I -have said that his imagination did the whole thing, no other -explanation—no reckoning of the possibilities of personal -saturation—meeting the mysteries of the case. Therefore his imagination -achieved the miracle of absolutely resolving itself into multifarious -knowledge. Since history proceeds by documents he constructed, as he -needed them, the documents too—fictive sources that imitated the actual -to the life. It was of course a terrible business, but at least in the -light of it his claims to creatorship are justified—which is what was -to be shown. - - - IV - -It is very well even in the sketchiest attempt at a portrait of his -genius to try to take particulars in their order: one peeps over the -shoulder of another at the moment we get a feature into focus. The loud -appeal not to be left out prevails among them all, and certainly with -the excuse that each as we fix it seems to fall most into the picture. I -have so indulged myself as to his general air that I find a whole list -of vivid contributive marks almost left on my hands. Such a list, in any -study of Balzac, is delightful for intimate edification as well as for -the fine humour of the thing; we proceed from one of the items of his -breathing physiognomy to the other with quite the same sense of life, -the same active curiosity, with which we push our way through the thick -undergrowth of one of the novels. The difficulty is really that the -special point for which we at the moment observe him melts into all the -other points, is swallowed up before our eyes in the formidable mass. -The French apply the happiest term to certain characters when they speak -of them as _entiers_, and if the word had been invented for Balzac it -could scarce better have expressed him. He is “entire” as was never a -man of his craft; he moves always in his mass; wherever we find him we -find him in force; whatever touch he applies he applies it with his -whole apparatus. He is like an army gathered to besiege a cottage -equally with a city, and living voraciously in either case on all the -country about. It may well be, at any rate, that his infatuation with -the idea of the social, the practical primacy of “the sex” is the -article at the top of one’s list; there could certainly be no better -occasion than this of a rich reissue of the “Deux Jeunes Mariées” for -placing it there at a venture. Here indeed precisely we get a sharp -example of the way in which, as I have just said, a capital illustration -of one of his sides becomes, just as we take it up, a capital -illustration of another. The correspondence of Louise de Chaulieu and -Renée de Maucombe is in fact one of those cases that light up with a -great golden glow all his parts at once. We needn’t mean by this that -such parts are themselves absolutely all golden—given the amount of -tinsel for instance in his view, supereminent, transcendent here, of the -old families and the great ladies. What we do convey, however, is that -his creative temperament finds in such _data_ as these one of its best -occasions for shining out. Again we fondly recognise his splendid, his -attaching swagger—that of a “bounder” of genius and of feeling; again -we see how, with opportunity, its elements may vibrate into a perfect -ecstasy of creation. - -Why shouldn’t a man swagger, he treats us to the diversion of asking -ourselves, who has created from top to toe the most brilliant, the most -historic, the most insolent, above all the most detailed and -discriminated of aristocracies? Balzac carried the uppermost class of -his comedy, from the princes, dukes, and unspeakable duchesses down to -his poor barons _de province_, about in his pocket as he might have -carried a tolerably befingered pack of cards, to deal them about with a -flourish of the highest authority whenever there was the chance of a -game. He knew them up and down and in and out, their arms, infallibly -supplied, their quarterings, pedigrees, services, intermarriages, -relationships, ramifications and other enthralling attributes. This -indeed is comparatively simple learning; the real wonder is rather when -we linger on the ground of the patrician consciousness itself, the -innermost, the esoteric, the spirit, temper, tone—tone above all—of -the titled and the proud. The questions multiply for every scene of the -comedy; there is no one who makes us walk in such a cloud of them. The -clouds elsewhere, in comparison, are at best of questions not worth -asking. _Was_ the patrician consciousness that figured as our author’s -model so splendidly fatuous as he—almost without irony, often in fact -with a certain poetic sympathy—everywhere represents it? His -imagination lives in it, breathes its scented air, swallows this element -with the smack of the lips of the connoisseur; but I feel that we never -know, even to the end, whether he be here directly historic or only -quite misguidedly romantic. The romantic side of him has the extent of -all the others; it represents in the oddest manner his escape from the -walled and roofed structure into which he had built himself—his longing -for the vaguely-felt outside and as much as might be of the rest of the -globe. But it is characteristic of him that the most he could do for -this relief was to bring the fantastic into the circle and fit it -somehow to his conditions. Was his tone for the duchess, the marquise -but the imported fantastic, one of those smashes of the window-pane of -the real that reactions sometimes produce even in the stubborn? or are -we to take it as observed, as really reported, as, for all its -difference from our notion of the natural—and, quite as much, of the -artificial—in another and happier strain of manners, substantially -true? The whole episode, in “Les Illusions Perdues,” of Madame de -Bargeton’s “chucking” Lucien de Rubempré, on reaching Paris with him, -under pressure of Madame d’Espard’s shockability as to his coat and -trousers and other such matters, is either a magnificent lurid document -or the baseless fabric of a vision. The great wonder is that, as I -rejoice to put in, we can never really discover which, and that we feel -as we read that we can’t, and that we suffer at the hands of no other -author this particular helplessness of immersion. It is _done_—we are -always thrown back on that; we can’t get out of it; all we can do is to -say that the true itself can’t be more than done and that if the false -in this way equals it we must give up looking for the difference. Alone -among novelists Balzac has the secret of an insistence that somehow -makes the difference nought. He warms his facts into life—as witness -the certainty that the episode I just cited has absolutely as much of -that property as if perfect matching had been achieved. If the great -ladies in question _didn’t_ behave, wouldn’t, couldn’t have behaved, -like a pair of nervous snobs, why so much the worse, we say to -ourselves, for the great ladies in question. We _know_ them so—they owe -their being to our so seeing them; whereas we never can tell ourselves -how we should otherwise have known them or what quantity of being they -would on a different footing have been able to put forth. - -The case is the same with Louise de Chaulieu, who besides coming out of -her convent school, as a quite young thing, with an amount of -sophistication that would have chilled the heart of a horse-dealer, -exhales—and to her familiar friend, a young person of a supposedly -equal breeding—an extravagance of complacency in her “social position” -that makes us rub our eyes. Whereupon after a little the same phenomenon -occurs; we swallow her bragging, against our better reason, or at any -rate against our startled sense, under coercion of the total intensity. -We do more than this, we cease to care for the question, which loses -itself in the hot fusion of the whole picture. He has “gone for” his -subject, in the vulgar phrase, with an avidity that makes the attack of -his most eminent rivals affect us as the intercourse between introduced -indifferences at a dull evening party. He squeezes it till it cries out, -we hardly know whether for pleasure or pain. In the case before us for -example—without wandering from book to book, impossible here, I make -the most of the ground already broken—he has seen at once that the -state of marriage itself, sounded to its depths, is, in the connection, -his real theme. He sees it of course in the conditions that exist for -him, but he weighs it to the last ounce, feels it in all its dimensions, -as well as in all his own, and would scorn to take refuge in any -engaging side-issue. He gets, for further intensity, into the very skin -of his _jeunes mariées_—into each alternately, as they are different -enough; so that, to repeat again, any other mode of representing women, -or of representing anybody, becomes, in juxtaposition, a thing so void -of the active contortions of truth as to be comparatively wooden. He -bears children with Madame de l’Estorade, knows intimately how she -suffers for them, and not less intimately how her correspondent suffers, -as well as enjoys, without them. Big as he is he makes himself small to -be handled by her with young maternal passion and positively to handle -her in turn with infantile innocence. These things are the very -flourishes, the little technical amusements of his penetrating power. -But it is doubtless in his hand for such a matter as the jealous passion -of Louise de Chaulieu, the free play of her intelligence and the almost -beautiful good faith of her egotism, that he is most individual. It is -one of the neatest examples of his extraordinary leading gift, his -art—which is really moreover not an art—of working the exhibition of a -given character up to intensity. I say it is not an art because it acts -for us rather as a hunger on the part of his nature to take on in all -freedom another nature—take it by a direct process of the senses. Art -is for the mass of us who have only the process of art, comparatively so -stiff. The thing amounts with him to a kind of shameless personal, -physical, not merely intellectual, duality—the very spirit and secret -of transmigration. - - - - - HONORÉ DE BALZAC - 1913 - - -It is a pleasure to meet M. Émile Faguet[5] on the same ground of -mastered critical method and in the same air of cool deliberation and -conclusion that so favoured his excellent study of Flaubert in the rich -series to which the present volume belongs. It was worth while waiting -these many years for a Balzac to get it at last from a hand of so firm a -grip, if not quite of the very finest manipulative instinct. It can -scarce ever be said of M. Faguet that he tends to play with a subject, -at least a literary one; but nobody is better for circling his theme in -sound and easy pedestrian fashion, for taking up each of its aspects in -order, for a sense, above all, of the order in which they _should_ be -taken, and for then, after doing them successively justice, reaching the -point from which they appear to melt together. He thus gives us one of -those literary portraits the tradition of which, so far at least as they -are the fruit of method, has continued scantily to flourish among -ourselves. We cannot help thinking indeed that an ideally authoritative -portrait of Balzac would be the work of some pondering painter able to -measure the great man’s bequest a little more from within or by a -coincidence of special faculty, or that in other words the particular -initiation and fellow-feeling of some like—that is not too -unlike—imaginative projector as well are rather wanted here to warm and -colour the critical truth to the right glow of appreciation. Which comes -to saying, we quite acknowledge, that a “tribute” to Balzac, of however -embracing an intention, may still strike us as partly unachieved if we -fail to catch yearning and shining through it, like a motive in a -musical mixture or a thread of gold in a piece of close weaving, the all -but overriding sympathy of novelist with novelist. M. Faguet’s -intelligence at any rate sweeps his ground clear of the anecdotal, the -question-begging reference to odds and ends of the personal and -superficial, in a single short chapter, and, having got so promptly over -this second line of defence, attacks at once the issue of his author’s -general ideas—matters apt to be, in any group of contributors to a -“series” of our own, exactly what the contributor most shirks -considering. - -It is true that few writers, and especially few novelists, bring up that -question with anything like the gross assurance and systematic -confidence of Balzac, who clearly took for involved in his plan of a -complete picture of the manners and aspects of his country and his -period that he should have his confident “say” about as many things as -possible, and who, throughout his immense work, appears never for an -instant or in any connection to flinch from that complacency. Here it is -easy to await him, waylay him and catch him in the act, with the -consequence, for the most part, of our having to recognise almost with -compassion the disparity between the author of “La Cousine Bette” -exercising his genius, as Matthew Arnold said of Ruskin, in making a -like distinction, and the same writer taking on a character not in the -least really rooted in that soil. The fact none the less than his -generalising remains throughout so markedly inferior to his -particularising—which latter element and very essence of the novelist’s -art it was his greatness to carry further and apply more consistently -than any member of the craft, without exception, has felt the impulse, -to say nothing of finding the way, to do—by no means wholly destroys -the interest of the habit itself or relieves us of a due attention to -it; so characteristic and significant, so suggestive even of his special -force, though in a manner indirect, are the very folds and redundancies -of this philosopher’s robe that flaps about his feet and drags along the -ground like an assumed official train. The interest here—where it is -exactly that a whole face of his undertaking would be most illumined for -the fellow-artist we imagine trying to exhibit him—depends much less on -what his reflection and opinion, his irrepressible _obiter dicta_ and -monstrous _suffisances_ of judgment may be, than on the part played in -his scheme by his holding himself ready at every turn and at such short -notice to judge. For this latter fact probably lights up more than any -other his conception of the range of the novel, the fashion after which, -in his hands, it had been felt as an all-inclusive form, a form without -rift or leak, a tight mould, literally, into which everything relevant -to a consideration of the society surrounding him—and the less relevant -unfortunately, as well as the more—might be poured in a stream of -increasing consistency, the underlapping subject stretched, all so -formidably, to its own constituted edge and the compound appointed to -reproduce, as in finest and subtlest relief, its every minutest feature, -overlying and corresponding with it all round to the loss of no fraction -of an inch. - -It is thus the painter’s aspiring and rejoicing consciousness of the -great square swarming picture, the picture of France from side to side -and from top to bottom, which he proposes to copy—unless we see the -collective quantity rather as the vast primary model or sitter that he -is unprecedentedly to portray, it is this that, rendering him enviable -in proportion to his audacity and his presumption, gives a dignity to -everything that makes the consciousness whole. The result is a state of -possession of his material unlike that of any other teller of tales -whatever about a circumjacent world, and the process of his gain of -which opens up well-nigh the first of those more or less baffling -questions, parts indeed of the great question of the economic rule, the -practical secret, of his activity, that beset us as soon as we study -him. To fit what he was and what he did, that is the measure of how he -used himself and how he used every one and everything else, into his -after all so brief career (for twenty years cover the really productive -term of it) is for ourselves, we confess, to renounce any other solution -than that of his having proceeded by a sense for facts, the -multitudinous facts of the scene about him, that somehow involved a -preliminary, a pre-experiential inspiration, a straightness of intuition -truly impossible to give an account of and the like of which had never -before been shown. He had not to learn things in order to know them; and -even though he multiplied himself in more ways than we can reckon up, -going hither and thither geographically, leading his life with violence, -as it were, though always with intention, and wasting almost nothing -that had ever touched him, the natural man, the baptised and registered -Honoré, let loose with harsh promptitude upon a world formed from the -first moment to excite his voracity, can only have been _all_ the -exploiting agent, the pushing inquirer, the infallible appraiser, the -subject of an _arrière-pensée_ as merciless, in spite of being otherwise -genial, as the black care riding behind the horseman. There was thus -left over for him less of mere human looseness, of mere emotion, of mere -naturalness, or of any curiosity whatever, that didn’t “pay”—and the -extent to which he liked things to pay, to see them, think of them, and -describe them as prodigiously paying, is not to be expressed—than -probably marks any recorded relation between author and subject as we -know each of these terms. - -So it comes that his mastership of whatever given identity might be in -question, and much more of the general identity of his rounded (for the -artistic vision), his compact and containing France, the fixed, felt -frame to him of the vividest items and richest characteristics of human -life, can really not be thought of as a matter of degrees of confidence, -as acquired or built up or cumbered with verifying fears. He _was_ the -given identity and, on the faintest shade of a hint about it caught up, -became one with it and lived it—this in the only way in which he could -live, anywhere or at any time: which was by losing himself in its -relation to his need or to what we call his voracity. Just so his mind, -his power of apprehension, worked _naturally_ in the interest of a -society disclosed to that appetite; on the mere approach to the display -he inhaled information, he recognised himself as what he might best be -known for, an historian unprecedented, an historian documented as none -had not only ever been, but had ever dreamed of being—and even if the -method of his documentation can leave us for the most part but -wondering. The method of his use of it, or of a portion of it, we more -or less analyse and measure; but the wealth of his provision or outfit -itself, the crammed store of his categories and _cadres_, leaves us the -more stupefied as we feel it to have been honestly come by. All this is -what it is impossible not to regard as in itself a fundamental felicity -as no _confrère_ had known; so far, indeed, as Balzac suffered -_confrères_ or as the very nature of his faculty could be thought of for -them. M. Brunetière’s monograph of some years ago, which is but a couple -of degrees less weighty, to our sense, than this of M. Faguet before us, -justly notes that, whatever other felicity may have graced the exercise -of such a genius, for instance, as that rare contemporary George Sand, -she was reduced well-nigh altogether to drawing upon resources and -enjoying advantages comparatively vague and unassured. She had of course -in a manner her special resource and particular advantage, which -consisted, so to speak, in a finer feeling about what she did possess -and could treat of with authority, and particularly in a finer command -of the terms of expression, than any involved in Balzac’s “happier” -example. But her almost fatal weakness as a novelist—an exponent of the -art who has waned exactly as, for our general long-drawn appreciation, -Balzac has waxed—comes from her having had to throw herself upon ground -that no order governed, no frame, as we have said, enclosed, and no -safety attended; safety of the sort, we mean, the safety of the -constitutive, illustrative fact among facts, which we find in her rival -as a warm socialised air, an element supremely assimilable. - -It may freely be pronounced interesting that whereas, in her instinct -for her highest security, she threw herself upon the consideration of -love as the _type_ attraction or most representable thing in the human -scene, so, assuredly, no student of that field has, in proportion to the -thoroughness of his study, felt he could afford to subordinate or almost -even to neglect it to anything like the tune in which we see it put and -kept in its place through the parts of the Comédie Humaine that most -count. If this passion but too often exhales a tepid breath in much -other fiction—much other of ours at least—that is apt to come -decidedly less from the writer’s sense of proportion than from his -failure of art, or in other words of intensity. It is rarely absent by -intention or by intelligence, it is pretty well always there as the -theoretic principal thing—any difference from writer to writer being -mostly in the power to put the principal thing effectively forward. It -figures as a pressing, an indispensable even if a perfunctory motive, -for example, in every situation devised by Walter Scott; the case being -simply that if it doesn’t in fact attractively occupy the foreground -this is because his hand has had so native, so much greater, an ease for -other parts of the picture. What makes Balzac so pre-eminent and -exemplary that he was to leave the novel a far other and a vastly more -capacious and significant affair than he found it, is his having felt -his fellow-creatures (almost altogether for him his contemporaries) as -quite failing of reality, as swimming in the vague and the void and the -abstract, unless their social conditions, to the last particular, their -generative and contributive circumstances, of every discernible sort, -enter for all these are “worth” into his representative attempt. This -great compound of the total looked into and starting up in its element, -as it always does, to meet the eye of genius and patience half way, -bristled for him with all its branching connections, those thanks to -which any figure could _be_ a figure but by showing for endlessly -entangled in them. - -So it was then that his huge felicity, to re-emphasise our term, was in -his state of circulating where recognitions and identifications didn’t -so much await as rejoicingly assault him, having never yet in all the -world, grudged or at the best suspected feeders as they were at the -board where sentiment occupied the head, felt themselves so finely -important or subject to such a worried intention. They hung over a scene -as to which it was one of the forces of his inspiration that history had -lately been there at work, with incomparable energy and inimitable art, -to pile one upon another, not to say squeeze and dovetail violently into -each other, after such a fashion as might defy competition anywhere, her -successive deposits and layers of form and order, her restless -determinations of appearance—so like those of the different “states” of -an engraver’s impression; all to an effect which _should_ have -constituted, as by a miracle of coincidence it did, the paradise of an -extraordinary observer. Balzac lived accordingly, extraordinary since he -was, in an earthly heaven so near perfect for his kind of vision that he -could have come at no moment more conceivably blest to him. The later -part of the eighteenth century, with the Revolution, the Empire and the -Restoration, had inimitably conspired together to scatter abroad their -separate marks and stigmas, their separate trails of character and -physiognomic hits—for which advantage he might have arrived too late, -as his hapless successors, even his more or less direct imitators, -visibly have done. The fatal fusions and uniformities inflicted on our -newer generations, the running together of all the differences of form -and tone, the ruinous liquefying wash of the great industrial brush over -the old conditions of contrast and colour, doubtless still have left the -painter of manners much to do, but have ground him down to the sad fact -that his ideals of differentiation, those inherent oppositions from type -to type, in which drama most naturally resides, have well-nigh perished. -They pant for life in a hostile air; and we may surely say that their -last successful struggle, their last bright resistance to eclipse among -ourselves, was in their feverish dance to the great fiddling of Dickens. -Dickens made them dance, we seem to see, caper and kick their heels, -wave their arms, and above all agitate their features, for the simple -reason that he couldn’t make them stand or sit _at once_ quietly and -expressively, couldn’t make them look straight out as for -themselves—quite in fact as through his not daring to, not feeling he -could afford to, in a changing hour when ambiguities and the wavering -line, droll and “dodgy” dazzlements and the possibly undetected -factitious alone, might be trusted to keep him right with an incredibly -uncritical public, a public blind to the difference between a shade and -a patch. - -Balzac on the other hand, born as we have seen to confidence, the tonic -air of his paradise, might make character, in the sense in which we use -it, that of the element exposable to the closest verification, sit or -stand for its “likeness” as still as ever it would. It is true that he -could, as he often did, resort to fond extravagance, since he was apt at -his worst to plunge into agitation for mere agitation’s sake—which is a -course that, by any turn, may cast the plunger on the barrenest strand. -But he is at his best when the conditions, the whole complex of -subdivisible form and pressure, are virtually themselves the situation, -the action and the interest, or in other words when these things exhaust -themselves, as it were, in expressing the persons we are concerned with, -agents and victims alike, and when by such vivified figures, whether -victims or agents, they are themselves completely expressed. The three -distinguished critics who have best studied him, Taine, Brunetière and -now (as well as before this) M. Faguet—the first the most eloquent but -the loosest, and the last the closest even if the dryest—are in -agreement indeed as to the vast quantity of waste in him, inevitably -judging the romanticist as whom he so frequently, speculatively, -desperately paraded altogether inferior to the realist whose function he -could still repeatedly and richly and for his greater glory exercise. -This estimate of his particularly greater glory is of a truth not wholly -shared by M. Taine; but the three are virtually at one, where we of -course join them, or rather go further than they, as to the enviability, -so again to call it (and by which we mean the matchless freedom of -play), of his harvesting sense when he gave himself up in fullest -measure to his apprehension of the dense wholeness of reality. It was -this that led him on and kept him true to that happily largest side of -his labour by which he must massively live; just as it is this, the -breath of his real geniality, when every abatement is made, that stirs -to loyalty those who under his example also take his direction and find -their joy in watching him thoroughly at work. We see then how, when -social character and evolved type are the prize to be grasped, the facts -of observation and certification, unrestingly social and historic too, -that form and fondle and retouch it, never relaxing their action, are so -easily and blessedly absolute to him that this is what we mean by their -virtue. - -When there were enough of these quantities and qualities flowering into -the definite and the absolute for him to feed on, feed if not to satiety -at least to the largest loosening of his intellectual belt, there were -so many that we may even fall in with most of M. Faguet’s -discriminations and reserves about him and yet find his edifice rest on -proportioned foundations. For it is his assimilation of things and -things, of his store of them and of the right ones, the right for -representation, that leaves his general image, even with great chunks of -surface surgically, that is critically, removed, still coherent and -erect. There are moments when M. Faguet—most surgical he!—seems to -threaten to remove so much that we ask ourselves in wonder what may be -left; but no removal matters while the principle of observation -animating the mass is left unattacked. Our present critic for instance -is “down”—very understandingly down as seems to us—on some of the -sides of his author’s rich temperamental vulgarity; which is accompanied -on those sides by want of taste, want of wit, want of style, want of -knowledge of ever so many parts of the general subject, too -precipitately proposed, and want of fineness of feeling about ever so -many others. We agree with him freely enough, subject always to this -reserve already glanced at, that a novelist of a high esthetic -sensibility must always find more in any other novelist worth -considering seriously at all than he can perhaps hope to impart even to -the most intelligent of critics pure and simple his subtle reasons for. -This said, we lose ourselves, to admiration, in such a matter for -example as the tight hug of the mere material, the supremely important -if such ever was, represented by the appeal to us on behalf of the -money-matters of César Birotteau. - -This illustration gains logically, much more than loses, from the rank -predominance of the money-question, the money-vision, throughout all -Balzac. There are lights in which it can scarce not appear to us that -his own interest is greater, his possibilities of attention truer, in -these pressing particulars than in all other questions put together; -there could be no better sign of the appreciation of “things,” exactly, -than so never relaxed a grasp of the part played in the world by just -these. Things for things, the franc, the shilling, the dollar, are the -very most underlying and conditioning, even dramatically, even -poetically, that call upon him; and we have everywhere to recognise how -little he feels himself to be telling us of this, that and the other -person unless he has first given us full information, with every detail, -either as to their private means, their income, investments, savings, -losses, the state in fine of their pockets, or as to their immediate -place of habitation, their home, their outermost shell, with its windows -and doors, its outside appearance and inside plan, its rooms and -furniture and arrangements, its altogether intimate facts, down to its -very smell. This prompt and earnest evocation of the shell and its -lining is but another way of testifying with due emphasis to economic -conditions. The most personal shell of all, the significant dress of the -individual, whether man or woman, is subject to as sharp and as deep a -notation—it being no small part of his wealth of luck that the age of -dress differentiated and specialised from class to class and character -to character, not least moreover among men, could still give him -opportunities of choice, still help him to define and intensify, or -peculiarly to _place_ his apparitions. The old world in which costume -had, to the last refinement of variety, a social meaning happily -lingered on for him; and nothing is more interesting, nothing goes -further in this sense of the way the social concrete could minister to -him, than the fact that “César Birotteau,” to instance that masterpiece -again, besides being a money-drama of the closest texture, the very epic -of retail bankruptcy, is at the same time the all-vividest exhibition of -the habited and figured, the representatively stamped and countenanced, -buttoned and buckled state of the persons moving through it. No livelier -example therefore can we name of the triumphant way in which any given, -or as we should rather say taken, total of conditions works out under -our author’s hand for accentuation of type. The story of poor Birotteau -is just in this supreme degree a hard total, even if every one’s -money-relation does loom larger, for his or her case, than anything -else. - -The main thing doubtless to agree with M. Faguet about, however, is the -wonder of the rate at which this genius for an infatuated grasp of the -environment could multiply the creatures swarming, and swarming at their -best to perfection, in that jungle of elements. A jungle certainly the -environment, the rank many-coloured picture of France, would have been -had it not really created in our observer the joy, thanks to his need of -a clear and marked order, of its becoming so arrangeable. Nothing could -interest us more than to note with our critic that such -multiplications—taken after all at such a rush—have to be paid for by -a sort of limitation of quality in each, the quality that, beyond a -certain point and after a certain allowance, ever looks askance at any -approach to what it may be figured as taking for _insolence_ of -quantity. Some inquiry into the general mystery of such laws of payment -would beckon us on had we the space—whereby we might glance a little at -the wondrous why and wherefore of the sacrifice foredoomed, the loss, -greater or less, of those ideals now compromised by the tarnished names -of refinement and distinction, yet which we are none the less, at our -decentest, still ashamed too entirely to turn our backs on, in the -presence of energies that, shaking the air by their embrace of the -common, tend to dispossess the rare of a certified place in it. -Delightful to the critical mind to estimate the point at which, in the -picture of life, a sense for the element of the rare ceases to consort -with a sense, necessarily large and lusty, for the varieties of the real -that super-abound. Reducible perhaps to some exquisite measure is this -point of fatal divergence. It declared itself, the divergence, in the -heart of Balzac’s genius; for nothing about him is less to be gainsaid -than that on the other or further side of a certain line of rareness -drawn his authority, so splendid on the hither or familiar side, is -sadly liable to lapse. It fails to take in whatever fine truth -experience may have vouchsafed to us about the highest kinds of temper, -the inward life of the mind, the _cultivated_ consciousness. His truest -and vividest people are those whom the conditions in which they are so -palpably embedded have simplified not less than emphasised; simplified -mostly to singleness of motive and passion and interest, to quite -measurably finite existence; whereas his ostensibly higher spirits, -types necessarily least observed and most independently thought out, in -the interest of their humanity, as we would fain ourselves think them, -are his falsest and weakest and show most where his imagination and his -efficient sympathy break down. - -To say so much as this is doubtless to provoke the question of where and -how then, under so many other restrictions, he is so great—which -question is answered simply by our claim for his unsurpassed mastery of -the “middling” sort, so much the most numerous in the world, the -middling sort pressed upon by the vast variety of their dangers. These -it is in their multitude whom he makes individually living, each with a -clustered bunch of concomitants, as no one, to our mind, has equalled -him in doing—above all with the amount of repetition of the feat -considered. Finer images than the middling, but so much fewer, other -creative talents have thrown off; swarms of the common, on the other -hand, have obeyed with an even greater air of multitude perhaps than in -Balzac’s pages the big brandished enumerative wand—only with a signal -forfeiture in this case of that gift of the sharply separate, the really -rounded, personality which he untiringly conferred. Émile Zola, by so -far the strongest example of his influence, mustered groups and crowds -beyond even the master’s own compass; but as throughout Zola we live and -move for the most part but in crowds (he thinking his best but in terms -of crowdedness), so in Balzac, where he rises highest, we deal, whether -or no more for our sense of ugliness than of beauty, but with memorable -person after person. He thought, on his side—when he thought at least -to good purpose—in terms the most expressively personal, in such as -could even eventuate in monsters and forms of evil the most finished we -know; so that if he too has left us a multitude of which we may say that -it stands alone for solidity, it nevertheless exists by addition and -extension, not by a chemical shaking-together, a cheapening or -diminishing fusion. - -It is not that the series of the Rougon-Macquart has not several -distinct men and women to show—though they occur, as a fact, almost in -“L’Assommoir” alone; it is not either that Zola did not on occasion try -for the cultivated consciousness, a thing of course, so far as ever -achieved anywhere, necessarily separate and distinguished; it is that he -tried, on such ground, with a futility only a shade less marked than -Balzac’s, and perhaps would have tried with equal disaster had he -happened to try oftener. If we find in his pages no such spreading waste -as Balzac’s general picture of the classes “enjoying every advantage,” -that is of the socially highest—to the elder writer’s success in -depicting particularly the female members of which Sainte-Beuve, and -Brunetière in his footsteps, have rendered such strange and stupefying -homage—the reason may very well be that such groups could not in the -nature of the case figure to him after the fashion in which he liked -groups to figure, as merely herded and compressed. To Balzac they were -groups in which individualisation might be raised to its very finest; -and it is by this possibility in them that we watch him and his fertile -vulgarity, his peccant taste, so fallible for delicacies, so unerring -for simplicities, above all doubtless the homeliest, strongest and -grimmest, wofully led astray. But it is fairly almost a pleasure to our -admiration, before him, to see what we have permitted ourselves to call -the “chunks” of excision carted off to the disengagement of the values -that still live. The wondrous thing is that they live best where his -grand vulgarity—since we are not afraid of the word—serves him rather -than betrays; which it _has_ to do, we make out, over the greater part -of the field of any observer for whom man is on the whole cruelly, -crushingly, deformedly conditioned. We grant _that_ as to Balzac’s view, -and yet feel the view to have been at the same time incomparably active -and productively genial; which are by themselves somehow qualities and -reactions that redress the tragedy and the doom. The vulgarity was at -any rate a force that simply got nearer than any other could have done -to the whole detail, the whole intimate and evidenced story, of -submission and perversion, and as such it could but prove itself -immensely human. It is on all this considered ground that he has for so -many years stood firm and that we feel him by reason of it and in spite -of them, in spite of all that has come and gone, not to have yielded, -have “given,” an inch. - ------ - -Footnote 5: - -Balzac. Par Émile Faguet, de l’Académie Française. Les Grands Écrivains -Français. Paris, Hachette, 1913. - - - - - GEORGE SAND - 1897 - - -I have been reading in the Revue de Paris for November 1st, 1896, some -fifty pages, of an extraordinary interest, which have had in respect to -an old admiration a remarkable effect. Undoubtedly for other admirers -too who have come to fifty year—admirers, I mean, once eager, of the -distinguished woman involved—the perusal of the letters addressed by -George Sand to Alfred de Musset in the course of a famous friendship -will have stirred in an odd fashion the ashes of an early ardour. I -speak of ashes because early ardours for the most part burn themselves -out, while the place they hold in our lives varies, I think, mainly -according to the degree of tenderness with which we gather up and -preserve their dust; and I speak of oddity because in the present case -it is difficult to say whether the agitation of the embers results at -last in a returning glow or in a yet more sensible chill. That indeed is -perhaps a small question compared with the simple pleasure of the -reviving emotion. One reads and wonders and enjoys again, just for the -sake of the renewal. The small fry of the hour submit to further -shrinkage, and we revert with a sigh of relief to the free genius and -large life of one of the greatest of all masters of expression. Do -people still handle the works of this master—people other than young -ladies studying French with La “Mare au Diable” and a dictionary? Are -there persons who still read “Valentine”? Are there others capable of -losing themselves in “Mauprat”? Has “André,” the exquisite, dropped out -of knowledge, and is any one left who remembers “Teverino”? I ask these -questions for the mere sweet sound of them, without the least -expectation of an answer. I remember asking them twenty years ago, after -Madame Sand’s death, and not then being hopeful of the answer of the -future. But the only response that matters to us perhaps is our own, -even if it be after all somewhat ambiguous. “André” and “Valentine” then -are rather on our shelves than in our hands, but in the light of what is -given us in the “Revue de Paris” who shall say that we do not, and with -avidity, “read” George Sand? She died in 1876, but she lives again -intensely in these singular pages, both as to what in her spirit was -most attaching and what most disconcerting. We are vague as to what they -may represent for the generation that has come to the front since her -death; nothing, I dare say, very imposing or even very pleasing. But -they give out a great deal to a reader for whom thirty years ago—the -best time to have taken her as a whole—she was a high clear figure, a -great familiar magician. This impression is a strange mixture, but -perhaps not quite incommunicable; and we are steeped as we receive it in -one of the most curious episodes in the annals of the literary race. - - - I - -It is the great interest of such an episode that, apart from its -proportionate place in the unfolding of a personal life it has a -wonderful deal to say on the relation between experience and art at -large. It constitutes an eminent special case, in which the workings of -that relation are more or less uncovered; a case too of which one of the -most striking notes is that we are in possession of it almost -exclusively by the act of one of the persons concerned. Madame Sand at -least, as we see to-day, was eager to leave nothing undone that could -make us further acquainted than we were before with one of the liveliest -chapters of her personal history. We cannot, doubtless, be sure that her -conscious purpose in the production of “Elle et Lui” was to show us the -process by which private ecstasies and pains find themselves transmuted -in the artist’s workshop into promising literary material—any more than -we can be certain of her motive for making toward the end of her life -earnest and complete arrangements for the ultimate publication of the -letters in which the passion is recorded and in which we can remount to -the origin of the volume. If “Elle et Lui” had been the inevitable -picture, postponed and retouched, of the great adventure of her youth, -so the letters show us the crude primary stuff from which the moral -detachment of the book was distilled. Were they to be given to the world -for the encouragement of the artist-nature—as a contribution to the -view that no suffering is great enough, no emotion tragic enough to -exclude the hope that such pangs may sooner or later be esthetically -assimilated? Was the whole proceeding, in intention, a frank plea for -the intellectual and in some degree even the commercial profit, to a -robust organism, of a store of erotic reminiscence? Whatever the reasons -behind the matter, that is to a certain extent the moral of the strange -story. - -It may be objected that this moral is qualified to come home to us only -when the relation between art and experience really proves a happier one -than it may be held to have proved in the combination before us. The -element in danger of being most absent from the process is the element -of dignity, and its presence, so far as that may ever at all be hoped -for in an appeal from a personal quarrel, is assured only in proportion -as the esthetic event, standing on its own feet, represents a noble -gift. It was vain, the objector may say, for our author to pretend to -justify by so slight a performance as “Elle et Lui” that sacrifice of -all delicacy which has culminated in this supreme surrender. “If you -sacrifice all delicacy,” I hear such a critic contend, “show at least -that you were right by giving us a masterpiece. The novel in question is -no more a masterpiece,” I even hear him proceed, “than any other of the -loose liquid lucid works of its author. By your supposition of a great -intention you give much too fine an account on the one hand of a -personal habit of incontinence and on the other of a literary habit of -egotism. Madame Sand, in writing her tale and in publishing her -love-letters, obeyed no prompting more exalted than that of exhibiting -her personal (in which I include her verbal) facility, and of doing so -at the cost of whatever other persons might be concerned; and you are -therefore—and you might as well immediately confess it—thrown back for -the element of interest on the attraction of her general eloquence, the -plausibility of her general manner and the great number of her -particular confidences. You are thrown back on your mere curiosity or -sympathy—thrown back from any question of service rendered to ‘art.’ ” -One might be thrown back doubtless still further even than such remarks -would represent if one were not quite prepared with the confession they -propose. It is only because such a figure is interesting—in every -manifestation—that its course is marked for us by vivid footprints and -possible lessons. And to enable us to find these it scarcely need have -aimed after all so extravagantly high. George Sand lived her remarkable -life and drove her perpetual pen, but the illustration that I began by -speaking of is for ourselves to gather—if we can. - -I remember hearing many years ago in Paris an anecdote for the truth of -which I am far from vouching, though it professed to come direct—an -anecdote that has recurred to me more than once in turning over the -revelations of the Revue de Paris, and without the need of the special -reminder (in the shape of an allusion to her intimacy with the hero of -the story) contained in those letters to Sainte-Beuve which are -published in the number of November 15th. Prosper Mérimée was said to -have related—in a reprehensible spirit—that during a term of -association with the author of “Lélia” he once opened his eyes, in the -raw winter dawn, to see his companion, in a dressing-gown, on her knees -before the domestic hearth, a candlestick beside her and a red _madras_ -round her head, making bravely, with her own hands, the fire that was to -enable her to sit down betimes to urgent pen and paper. The story -represents him as having felt that the spectacle chilled his ardour and -tried his taste; her appearance was unfortunate, her occupation an -inconsequence and her industry a reproof—the result of all of which was -a lively irritation and an early rupture. To the firm admirer of Madame -Sand’s prose the little sketch has a very different value, for it -presents her in an attitude which is the very key to the enigma, the -answer to most of the questions with which her character confronts us. -She rose early because she was pressed to write, and she was pressed to -write because she had the greatest instinct of expression ever conferred -on a woman; a faculty that put a premium on all passion, on all pain, on -all experience and all exposure, on the greatest variety of ties and the -smallest reserve about them. The really interesting thing in these -posthumous _laideurs_ is the way the gift, the voice, carries its -possessor through them and lifts her on the whole above them. It gave -her, it may be confessed at the outset and in spite of all magnanimities -in the use of it, an unfair advantage in every connection. So at least -we must continue to feel till—for our appreciation of this particular -one—we have Alfred de Musset’s share of the correspondence. For we -shall have it at last, in whatever faded fury or beauty it may still -possess—to that we may make up our minds. Let the galled jade wince, it -is only a question of time. The greatest of literary quarrels will in -short, on the general ground, once more come up—the quarrel beside -which all others are mild and arrangeable, the eternal dispute between -the public and the private, between curiosity and delicacy. - -This discussion is precisely all the sharper because it takes place for -each of us within as well as without. When we wish to know at all we -wish to know everything; yet there happen to be certain things of which -no better description can be given than that they are simply none of our -business. “What _is_ then forsooth of our business?” the genuine analyst -may always ask; and he may easily challenge us to produce any rule of -general application by which we shall know when to push in and when to -back out. “In the first place,” he may continue, “half the ‘interesting’ -people in the world have at one time or another set themselves to drag -us in with all their might; and what in the world in such a relation is -the observer that he should absurdly pretend to be in more of a flutter -than the object observed? The mannikin, in all schools, is at an early -stage of study of the human form inexorably superseded by the man. Say -that we are to give up the attempt to understand: it might certainly be -better so, and there would be a delightful side to the new arrangement. -But in the name of common-sense don’t say that the continuity of life is -not to have some equivalent in the continuity of pursuit, the renewal of -phenomena in the renewal of notation. There is not a door you can lock -here against the critic or the painter, not a cry you can raise or a -long face you can pull at him, that are not quite arbitrary things. The -only thing that makes the observer competent is that he is neither -afraid nor ashamed; the only thing that makes him decent—just -think!—is that he is not superficial.” All this is very well, but -somehow we all equally feel that there is clean linen and soiled and -that life would be intolerable without some acknowledgment even by the -pushing of such a thing as forbidden ground. M. Émile Zola, at the -moment I write, gives to the world his reasons for rejoicing in the -publication of the physiological _enquête_ of Dr. Toulouse—a marvellous -catalogue or handbook of M. Zola’s outward and inward parts, which -leaves him not an inch of privacy, so to speak, to stand on, leaves him -nothing about himself that is _for_ himself, for his friends, his -relatives, his intimates, his lovers, for discovery, for emulation, for -fond conjecture or flattering deluded envy. It is enough for M. Zola -that everything is for the public and no sacrifice worth thinking of -when it is a question of presenting to the open mouth of that apparently -gorged but still gaping monster the smallest spoonful of truth. The -truth, to his view, is never either ridiculous or unclean, and the way -to a better life lies through telling it, so far as possible, about -everything and about every one. - -There would probably be no difficulty in agreeing to this if it didn’t -seem on the part of the speaker the result of a rare confusion between -give and take, between “truth” and information. The true thing that most -matters to us is the true thing we have most use for, and there are -surely many occasions on which the truest thing of all is the necessity -of the mind, its simple necessity of feeling. Whether it feels in order -to learn or learns in order to feel, the event is the same: the side on -which it shall most feel will be the side to which it will most incline. -If it feels more about a Zola functionally undeciphered it will be -governed more by that particular truth than by the truth about his -digestive idiosyncrasies, or even about his “olfactive perceptions” and -his “arithmomania or impulse to count.” An affirmation of our “mere -taste” may very supposedly be our individual contribution to the general -clearing up. Nothing often is less superficial than to ignore and -overlook, or more constructive (for living and feeling at all) than to -want impatiently to choose. If we are aware that in the same way as -about a Zola undeciphered we should have felt more about a George Sand -unexposed, the true thing we have gained becomes a poor substitute for -the one we have lost; and I scarce see what difference it makes that the -view of the elder novelist appears in this matter quite to march with -that of the younger. I hasten to add that as to being of course asked -why in the world with such a leaning we have given time either to M. -Zola’s physician or to Musset’s correspondent, this is only another -illustration of the bewildering state of the subject. - -When we meet on the broad highway the rueful denuded figure we need some -presence of mind to decide whether to cut it dead or to lead it gently -home, and meanwhile the fatal complication easily occurs. We have -_seen_, in a flash of our own wit, and mystery has fled with a shriek. -These encounters are indeed accidents which may at any time take place, -and the general guarantee in a noisy world lies, I judge, not so much in -any hope of really averting them as in a regular organisation of the -struggle. The reporter and the reported have duly and equally to -understand that they carry their life in their hands. There are secrets -for privacy and silence; let them only be cultivated on the part of the -hunted creature with even half the method with which the love of -sport—or call it the historic sense—is cultivated on the part of the -investigator. They have been left too much to the natural, the -instinctive man; but they will be twice as effective after it begins to -be observed that they may take their place among the triumphs of -civilisation. Then at last the game will be fair and the two forces face -to face; it will be “pull devil, pull tailor,” and the hardest pull will -doubtless provide the happiest result. Then the cunning of the inquirer, -envenomed with resistance, will exceed in subtlety and ferocity anything -we to-day conceive, and the pale forewarned victim, with every track -covered, every paper burnt and every letter unanswered, will, in the -tower of art, the invulnerable granite, stand, without a sally, the -siege of all the years. - - - II - -It was not in the tower of art that George Sand ever shut herself up; -but I come back to a point already made in saying that it is in the -citadel of style that, notwithstanding rash _sorties_, she continues to -hold out. The outline of the complicated story that was to cause so much -ink to flow gives, even with the omission of a hundred features, a -direct measure of the strain to which her astonishing faculty was -exposed. In the summer of 1833, as a woman of nearly thirty, she -encountered Alfred de Musset, who was six years her junior. In spite of -their youth they were already somewhat bowed by the weight of a troubled -past. Musset, at twenty-three, had that of his confirmed libertinism—so -Madame Arvède Barine, who has had access to materials, tells us in the -admirable short biography of the poet contributed to the rather markedly -unequal but very interesting series of Hachette’s Grands Écrivains -Français. Madame Sand had a husband, a son and a daughter, and the -impress of that succession of lovers—Jules Sandeau had been one, -Prosper Mérimée another—to which she so freely alludes in the letters -to Sainte-Beuve, a friend more disinterested than these and qualified to -give much counsel in exchange for much confidence. It cannot be said -that the situation of either of our young persons was of good omen for a -happy relation, but they appear to have burnt their ships with much -promptitude and a great blaze, and in the December of that year they -started together for Italy. The following month saw them settled, on a -frail basis, in Venice, where the elder companion remained till late in -the summer of 1834 and where she wrote, in part, “Jacques” and the -“Lettres d’un Voyageur,” as well as “André” and “Léone-Léoni,” and -gathered the impressions to be embodied later in half-a-dozen stories -with Italian titles—notably in the delightful “Consuelo.” The journey, -the Italian climate, the Venetian winter at first agreed with neither of -the friends; they were both taken ill—the young man very gravely—and -after a stay of three months Musset returned, alone and much ravaged, to -Paris. - -In the meantime a great deal had happened, for their union had been -stormy and their security small. Madame Sand had nursed her companion in -illness (a matter-of-course office, it must be owned) and her companion -had railed at his nurse in health. A young physician, called in, had -become a close friend of both parties, but more particularly a close -friend of the lady, and it was to his tender care that on quitting the -scene Musset solemnly committed her. She took up life with Pietro -Pagello—the transition is startling—for the rest of her stay, and on -her journey back to France he was no inconsiderable part of her luggage. -He was simple, robust and kind—not a man of genius. He remained, -however, but a short time in Paris; in the autumn of 1834 he returned to -Italy, to live on till our own day but never again, so far as we know, -to meet his illustrious mistress. Her intercourse with her poet was, in -all its intensity, one may almost say its ferocity, promptly renewed, -and was sustained in that key for several months more. The effect of -this strange and tormented passion on the mere student of its records is -simply to make him ask himself what on earth is the matter with the -subjects of it. Nothing is more easy than to say, as I have intimated, -that it has no need of records and no need of students; but this leaves -out of account the thick medium of genius in which it was foredoomed to -disport itself. It was self-registering, as the phrase is, for the -genius on both sides happened to be the genius of eloquence. It is all -rapture and all rage and all literature. The “Lettres d’un Voyageur” -spring from the thick of the fight; “La Confession d’un Enfant du -Siècle” and “Les Nuits” are immediate echoes of the concert. The lovers -are naked in the market-place and perform for the benefit of society. -The matter with them, to the perception of the stupefied spectator, is -that they entertained for each other every feeling in life but the -feeling of respect. What the absence of that article may do for the -passion of hate is apparently nothing to what it may do for the passion -of love. - -By our unhappy pair at any rate the luxury in question—the little -luxury of plainer folk—was not to be purchased, and in the comedy of -their despair and the tragedy of their recovery nothing is more striking -than their convulsive effort either to reach up to it or to do without -it. They would have given for it all else they possessed, but they only -meet in their struggle the inexorable _never_. They strain and pant and -gasp, they beat the air in vain for the cup of cold water of their hell. -They missed it in a way for which none of their superiorities could make -up. Their great affliction was that each found in the life of the other -an armoury of weapons to wound. Young as they were, young as Musset was -in particular, they appeared to have afforded each other in that -direction the most extraordinary facilities; and nothing in the matter -of the mutual consideration that failed them is more sad and strange -than that even in later years, when their rage, very quickly, had -cooled, they never arrived at simple silence. For Madame Sand, in her so -much longer life, there was no hush, no letting alone; though it would -be difficult indeed to exaggerate the depth of relative indifference -from which, a few years after Musset’s death, such a production as “Elle -et Lui” could spring. Of course there had been floods of tenderness, of -forgiveness; but those, for all their beauty of expression, are quite -another matter. It is just the fact of our sense of the ugliness of so -much of the episode that makes a wonder and a force of the fine style, -all round, in which it is offered us. That force is in its turn a sort -of clue to guide, or perhaps rather a sign to stay, our feet in paths -after all not the most edifying. It gives a degree of importance to the -somewhat squalid and the somewhat ridiculous story, and, for the old -George-Sandist at least, lends a positive spell to the smeared and -yellowed paper, the blotted and faded ink. In this twilight of -association we seem to find a reply to our own challenge and to be able -to tell ourselves why we meddle with such old dead squabbles and waste -our time with such grimacing ghosts. If we were superior to the -weakness, moreover, how should we make our point (which we must really -make at any cost) as to the so valuable vivid proof that a great talent -is the best guarantee—that it may really carry off almost anything? - -The rather sorry ghost that beckons us on furthest is the rare -personality of Madame Sand. Under its influence—or that of old memories -from which it is indistinguishable—we pick our steps among the -_laideurs_ aforesaid: the misery, the levity, the brevity of it all, the -greatest ugliness in particular that this life shows us, the way the -devotions and passions that we see heaven and earth called to witness -are over before we can turn round. It may be said that, for what it was, -the intercourse of these unfortunates surely lasted long enough; but the -answer to that is that if it had only lasted longer it wouldn’t have -been what it was. It was not only preceded and followed by intimacies, -on one side and the other, as unadorned by the stouter sincerity, but -was mixed up with them in a manner that would seem to us dreadful if it -didn’t still more seem to us droll, or rather perhaps if it didn’t -refuse altogether to come home to us with the crudity of contemporary -things. It is antediluvian history, a queer vanished world—another -Venice from the actually, the deplorably familiarised, a Paris of -greater bonhomie, an inconceivable impossible Nohant. This relegates it -to an order agreeable somehow to the imagination of the fond -quinquegenarian, the reader with a fund of reminiscence. The vanished -world, the Venice unrestored, the Paris unextended, is a bribe to his -judgment; he has even a glance of complacency for the lady’s liberal -_foyer_. Liszt, one lovely year at Nohant, “jouait du piano au -rez-de-chaussée, et les rossignols, ivres de musique et de soleil, -s’égosillaient avec rage sur les lilas environnants.” The beautiful -manner confounds itself with the conditions in which it was exercised, -the large liberty and variety overflow into admirable prose, and the -whole thing makes a charming faded medium in which Chopin gives a hand -to Consuelo and the small Fadette has her elbows on the table of -Flaubert. - -There is a terrible letter of the autumn of 1834 in which our heroine -has recourse to Alfred Tattet on a dispute with the bewildered -Pagello—a disagreeable matter that involved a question of money. “À -Venise il comprenait,” she somewhere says, “à Paris il ne comprend -plus.” It was a proof of remarkable intelligence that he did understand -in Venice, where he had become a lover in the presence and with the -exalted approval of an immediate predecessor—an alternate -representative of the part, whose turn had now, on the removal to Paris, -come round again and in whose resumption of office it was looked to him -to concur. This attachment—to Pagello—had lasted but a few months; yet -already it was the prey of complication and change, and its sun appears -to have set in no very graceful fashion. We are not here in truth among -very graceful things, in spite of superhuman attitudes and great -romantic flights. As to these forced notes Madame Arvède Barine -judiciously says that the picture of them contained in the letters to -which she had had access, and some of which are before us, “presents an -example extraordinary and unmatched of what the romantic spirit could do -with beings who had become its prey.” She adds that she regards the -records in question, “in which we follow step by step the ravages of the -monster,” as “one of the most precious psychological documents of the -first half of the century.” That puts the story on its true footing, -though we may regret that it should not divide these documentary honours -more equally with some other story in which the monster has not quite so -much the best of it. But it is the misfortune of the comparatively short -and simple annals of conduct and character that they should ever seem to -us somehow to cut less deep. Scarce—to quote again his best -biographer—had Musset, at Venice, begun to recover from his illness -than the two lovers were seized afresh by _le vertige du sublime et de -l’impossible_. “Ils imaginèrent les déviations de sentiment les plus -bizarres, et leur intérieur fut le théâtre de scènes qui égalaient en -étrangeté les fantaisies les plus audacieuses de la littérature -contemporaine;” that is of the literature of their own day. The register -of virtue contains no such lively items—save indeed in so far as these -contortions and convulsions were a conscious tribute to virtue. - -Ten weeks after Musset has left her in Venice his relinquished but not -dissevered mistress writes to him in Paris: “God keep you, my friend, in -your present disposition of heart and mind. Love is a temple built by -the lover to an object more or less worthy of his worship, and what is -grand in the thing is not so much the god as the altar. Why should you -be afraid of the risk?”—of a new mistress she means. There would seem -to be reasons enough why he should have been afraid, but nothing is more -characteristic than her eagerness to push him into the arms of another -woman—more characteristic either of her whole philosophy in these -matters or of their tremendous, though somewhat conflicting, effort to -be good. She is to be good by showing herself so superior to jealousy as -to stir up in him a new appetite for a new object, and he is to be so by -satisfying it to the full. It appears not to occur to either one that in -such an arrangement his own honesty is rather sacrificed. Or is it -indeed because he has scruples—or even a sense of humour—that she -insists with such ingenuity and such eloquence? “Let the idol stand long -or let it soon break, you will in either case have built a beautiful -shrine. Your soul will have lived in it, have filled it with divine -incense, and a soul like yours must produce great works. The god will -change perhaps, the temple will last as long as yourself.” “Perhaps,” -under the circumstances, was charming. The letter goes on with the ample -flow that was always at the author’s command—an ease of suggestion and -generosity, of beautiful melancholy acceptance, in which we foresee, on -her own horizon, the dawn of new suns. Her simplifications are -delightful—they remained so to the end; her touch is a wondrous -sleight-of-hand. The whole of this letter in short is a splendid -utterance and a masterpiece of the shade of sympathy, not perhaps the -clearest, which consists of wishing another to feel as you feel -yourself. To feel as George Sand felt, however, one had to be, like -George Sand, of the true male inwardness; which poor Musset was far from -being. This, we surmise, was the case with most of her lovers, and the -truth that makes the idea of her _liaison_ with Mérimée, who _was_ of a -consistent virility, sound almost like a union against nature. She -repeats to her correspondent, on grounds admirably stated, the -injunction that he is to give himself up, to let himself go, to take his -chance. That he took it we all know—he followed her advice only too -well. It is indeed not long before his manner of doing so draws from her -a cry of distress. “Ta conduite est déplorable, impossible. Mon Dieu, à -quelle vie vais-je te laisser? l’ivresse, le vin, les filles, et encore -et toujours!” But apprehensions were now too late; they would have been -too late at the very earliest stage of this celebrated connection. - - - III - -The great difficulty was that, though they were sublime, the couple were -really not serious. But on the other hand if on a lady’s part in such a -relation the want of sincerity or of constancy is a grave reproach the -matter is a good deal modified when the lady, as I have mentioned, -happens to be—I may not go so far as to say a gentleman. That George -Sand just fell short of this character was the greatest difficulty of -all; because if a woman, in a love affair, may be—for all she is to -gain or to lose—what she likes, there is only one thing that, to carry -it off with any degree of credit, a man may be. Madame Sand forgot this -on the day she published “Elle et Lui”; she forgot it again more gravely -when she bequeathed to the great snickering public these present shreds -and relics of unutterably personal things. The aberration refers itself -to the strange lapses of still other occasions—notably to the -extraordinary absence of scruples with which she in the delightful -“Histoire de ma Vie” gives away, as we say, the character of her -remarkable mother. The picture is admirable for vividness, for breadth -of touch; it would be perfect from any hand not a daughter’s, and we ask -ourselves wonderingly how through all the years, to make her capable of -it, a long perversion must have worked and the filial fibre—or rather -the general flower of sensibility—have been battered. Not this -particular anomaly, however, but many another, yields to the reflection -that as just after her death a very perceptive person who had known her -well put it to the author of these remarks, she was a woman quite by -accident. Her immense plausibility was almost the only sign of her sex. -She needed always to prove that she had been in the right; as how indeed -could a person fail to who, thanks to the special equipment I have -named, might prove it so brilliantly? It is not too much to say of her -gift of expression—and I have already in effect said so—that from -beginning to end it floated her over the real as a high tide floats a -ship over the bar. She was never left awkwardly straddling on the -sandbank of fact. - -For the rest, in any case, with her free experience and her free use of -it, her literary style, her love of ideas and questions, of science and -philosophy, her comradeship, her boundless tolerance, her intellectual -patience, her personal good-humour and perpetual tobacco (she smoked -long before women at large felt the cruel obligation), with all these -things and many I don’t mention she had more of the inward and outward -of the other sex than of her own. She had above all the mark that, to -speak at this time of day with a freedom for which her action in the -matter of publicity gives us warrant, the history of her personal -passions reads singularly like a chronicle of the ravages of some male -celebrity. Her relations with men closely resembled those relations with -women that, from the age of Pericles or that of Petrarch, have been -complacently commemorated as stages in the unfolding of the great -statesman and the great poet. It is very much the same large list, the -same story of free appropriation and consumption. She appeared in short -to have lived through a succession of such ties exactly in the manner of -a Goethe, a Byron or a Napoleon; and if millions of women, of course, of -every condition, had had more lovers, it was probable that no woman -independently so occupied and so diligent had had, as might be said, -more unions. Her fashion was quite her own of extracting from this sort -of experience all that it had to give her and being withal only the more -just and bright and true, the more sane and superior, improved and -improving. She strikes us as in the benignity of such an intercourse -even more than maternal: not so much the mere fond mother as the -supersensuous grandmother of the wonderful affair. Is not that -practically the character in which Thérèse Jacques studies to present -herself to Laurent de Fauvel? the light in which “Lucrezia Floriani” (a -memento of a friendship for Chopin, for Liszt) shows the heroine as -affected toward Prince Karol and his friend? George Sand is too -inveterately moral, too preoccupied with that need to do good which is -in art often the enemy of doing well; but in all her work the -story-part, as children call it, has the freshness and good faith of a -monastic legend. It is just possible indeed that the moral idea was the -real mainspring of her course—I mean a sense of the duty of avenging on -the unscrupulous race of men their immemorial selfish success with the -plastic race of women. Did she wish above all to turn the tables—to -show how the sex that had always ground the other in the volitional mill -was on occasion capable of being ground? - -However this may be, nothing is more striking than the inward impunity -with which she gave herself to conditions that are usually held to -denote or to involve a state of demoralisation. This impunity (to speak -only of consequences or features that concern us) was not, I admit, -complete, but it was sufficiently so to warrant us in saying that no one -was ever less demoralised. She presents a case prodigiously discouraging -to the usual view—the view that there is no surrender to -“unconsecrated” passion that we escape paying for in one way or another. -It is frankly difficult to see where this eminent woman conspicuously -paid. She positively got off from paying—and in a cloud of fluency and -dignity, benevolence, competence, intelligence. She sacrificed, it is -true, a handful of minor coin—suffered by failing wholly to grasp in -her picture of life certain shades and certain delicacies. What she paid -was this irrecoverable loss of her touch for them. That is undoubtedly -one of the reasons why to-day the picture in question has perceptibly -faded, why there are persons who would perhaps even go so far as to say -that it has really a comic side. She doesn’t know, according to such -persons, her right hand from her left, the crooked from the straight and -the clean from the unclean: it was a sense she lacked or a tact she had -rubbed off, and her great work is by the fatal twist quite as lopsided a -monument as the leaning tower of Pisa. Some readers may charge her with -a graver confusion still—the incapacity to distinguish between fiction -and fact, the truth straight from the well and the truth curling in -steam from the kettle and preparing the comfortable tea. There is no -word oftener on her pen, they will remind us, than the verb to -“arrange.” She arranged constantly, she arranged beautifully; but from -this point of view, that of a general suspicion of arrangements, she -always proved too much. Turned over in the light of it the story of -“Elle et Lui” for instance is an attempt to prove that the mistress of -Laurent de Fauvel was little less than a prodigy of virtue. What is -there not, the intemperate admirer may be challenged to tell us, an -attempt to prove in “L’Histoire de ma Vie”?—a work from which we gather -every delightful impression but the impression of an impeccable -veracity. - -These reservations may, however, all be sufficiently just without -affecting our author’s peculiar air of having eaten her cake and had it, -been equally initiated in directions the most opposed. Of how much cake -she partook the letters to Musset and Sainte-Beuve well show us, and yet -they fall in at the same time, on other sides, with all that was noble -in her mind, all that is beautiful in the books just mentioned and in -the six volumes of the general “Correspondance: 1812-1876,” out of which -Madame Sand comes so immensely to her advantage. She had, as liberty, -all the adventures of which the dots are so put on the i’s by the -documents lately published, and then she had, as law, as honour and -serenity, all her fine reflections on them and all her splendid busy -literary use of them. Nothing perhaps gives more relief to her masculine -stamp than the rare art and success with which she cultivated an -equilibrium. She made from beginning to end a masterly study of -composure, absolutely refusing to be upset, closing her door at last -against the very approach of irritation and surprise. She had arrived at -her quiet elastic synthesis—a good-humour, an indulgence that were an -armour of proof. The great felicity of all this was that it was neither -indifference nor renunciation, but on the contrary an intense partaking; -imagination, affection, sympathy and life, the way she had found for -herself of living most and living longest. However well it all agreed -with her happiness and her manners, it agrees still better with her -style, as to which we come back with her to the sense that this was -really her _point d’appui_ or sustaining force. Most people have to say, -especially about themselves, only what they can; but she said—and we -nowhere see it better than in the letters to Musset—everything in life -that she wanted. We can well imagine the effect of that consciousness on -the nerves of this particular correspondent, his own poor gift of -occasional song (to be so early spent) reduced to nothing by so -unequalled a command of the last word. We feel it, I hasten to add, this -last word, in all her letters: the occasion, no matter which, gathers it -from her as the breeze gathers the scent from the garden. It is always -the last word of sympathy and sense, and we meet it on every page of the -voluminous “Correspondance.” These pages are not so “clever” as those, -in the same order, of some other famous hands—the writer always denied, -justly enough, that she had either wit or presence of mind—and they are -not a product of high spirits or of a marked avidity for gossip. But -they have admirable ease, breadth and generosity; they are the clear -quiet overflow of a very full cup. They speak above all for the author’s -great gift, her eye for the inward drama. Her hand is always on the -fiddle-string, her ear is always at the heart. It was in the soul, in a -word, that she saw the drama begin, and to the soul that, after whatever -outward flourishes, she saw it confidently come back. She herself lived -with all her perceptions and in all her chambers—not merely in the -showroom of the shop. This brings us once more to the question of the -instrument and the tone, and to our idea that the tone, when you are so -lucky as to possess it, may be of itself a solution. - -By a solution I mean a secret for saving not only your reputation but -your life—that of your soul; an antidote to dangers which the unendowed -can hope to escape by no process less uncomfortable or less inglorious -than that of prudence and precautions. The unendowed must go round -about, the others may go straight through the wood. Their weaknesses, -those of the others, shall be as well redeemed as their books shall be -well preserved; it may almost indeed be said that they are made wise in -spite of themselves. If you have never in all your days _had_ a weakness -worth mentioning, you can be after all no more, at the very most, than -large and cheerful and imperturbable. All these things Madame Sand -managed to be on just the terms she had found, as we see, most -convenient. So much, I repeat, does there appear to be in a tone. But if -the perfect possession of one made her, as it well might, an optimist, -the action of it is perhaps more consistently happy in her letters and -her personal records than in her “creative” work. Her novels to-day have -turned rather pale and faint, as if the image projected—not intense, -not absolutely concrete—failed to reach completely the mind’s eye. And -the odd point is that the wonderful charm of expression is not really a -remedy for this lack of intensity, but rather an aggravation of it -through a sort of suffusion of the whole thing by the voice and speech -of the author. These things set the subject, whatever it be, afloat in -the upper air, where it takes a happy bath of brightness and vagueness -or swims like a soap-bubble kept up by blowing. This is no drawback when -she is on the ground of her own life, to which she is tied by a certain -number of tangible threads; but to embark on one of her confessed -fictions is to have—after all that has come and gone, in our time, in -the trick of persuasion—a little too much the feeling of going up in a -balloon. We are borne by a fresh cool current and the car delightfully -dangles; but as we peep over the sides we see things—as we usually know -them—at a dreadful drop beneath. Or perhaps a better way to express the -sensation is to say what I have just been struck with in the re-perusal -of “Elle et Lui”; namely that this book, like others by the same hand, -affects the reader—and the impression is of the oddest—not as a first -but as a second echo or edition of the immediate real, or in other words -of the subject. The tale may in this particular be taken as typical of -the author’s manner; beautifully told, but told, as if on a last remove -from the facts, by some one repeating what he has read or what he has -had from another and thereby inevitably becoming more general and -superficial, missing or forgetting the “hard” parts and slurring them -over and making them up. Of everything but feelings the presentation is -dim. We recognise that we shall never know the original narrator and -that the actual introducer is the only one we can deal with. But we sigh -perhaps as we reflect that we may never confront her with her own -informant. - -To that, however, we must resign ourselves; for I remember in time that -the volume from which I take occasion to speak with this levity is the -work that I began by pronouncing a precious illustration. With the aid -of the disclosures of the Revue de Paris it was, as I hinted, to show us -that no mistakes and no pains are too great to be, in the air of art, -triumphantly convertible. Has it really performed this function? I thumb -again my copy of the limp little novel and wonder what, alas, I shall -reply. The case is extreme, for it was the case of a suggestive -experience particularly dire, and the literary flower that has bloomed -upon it is not quite the full-blown rose. “Oeuvre de rancune” Arvède -Barine pronounces it, and if we take it as that we admit that the -artist’s distinctness from her material was not ideally complete. Shall -I not better the question by saying that it strikes me less as a work of -rancour than—in a peculiar degree—as a work of egotism? It becomes in -that light at any rate a sufficiently happy affirmation of the author’s -infallible form. This form was never a more successful vehicle for the -conveyance of sweet reasonableness. It is all superlatively calm and -clear; there never was a kinder, balmier last word. Whatever the measure -of justice of the particular representation, moreover, the picture has -only to be put beside the recent documents, the “study,” as I may call -them, to illustrate the general phenomenon. Even if “Elle et Lui” is not -the full-blown rose we have enough here to place in due relief an -irrepressible tendency to bloom. In fact I seem already to discern that -tendency in the very midst of the storm; the “tone” in the letters too -has its own way and performs on its own account—which is but another -manner of saying that the literary instinct, in the worst shipwreck, is -never out of its depth. The worker observed at the fire by Mérimée could -be drowned but in an ocean of ink. Is that a sufficient account of what -I have called the laying bare of the relation between experience and -art? With the two elements, the life and the genius, face to face—the -smutches and quarrels at one end of the chain and the high luminosity at -the other—does some essential link still appear to be missing? How do -the graceless facts after all confound themselves with the beautiful -spirit? They do so, incontestably, before our eyes, and the -mystification remains. We try to trace the process, but before we break -down we had better perhaps hasten to grant that—so far at least as -George Sand is concerned—some of its steps are impenetrable secrets of -the grand manner. - - - - - GEORGE SAND - 1899 - - -Those among us comfortably conscious of our different usage—aware, some -would say, of our better conscience—may well have remarked the general -absence from French practice of biographic commemoration of extinct -worthies. The Life as we understand it, the prompt pious spacious record -and mirror of the eminent career, rarely follows the death. The ghost of -the great man, when he happens to have been a Frenchman, “sits” for such -portraiture, we gather, with a confidence much less assured than among -ourselves, and with fewer relatives and friends to surround the chair. -The manner in which even for persons of highest mark among our -neighbours biography either almost endlessly hangs back or altogether -fails, suggests that the approach is even when authorised too often -difficult. This general attitude toward the question, it would thus -appear, implies for such retrospects the predominance of doors bolted -and barred. Hesitation is therefore fairly logical, for it rests on the -assumption that men and women of great gifts will have lived with -commensurate intensity, and that as regards some of the forms of this -intensity the discretion of the inquirer may well be the better part of -his enthusiasm. The critic can therefore only note with regret so much -absent opportunity for the play of perception and the art of -composition. The race that produced Balzac—to say nothing of -Sainte-Beuve—would surely have produced a Boswell, a Lockhart and a -Trevelyan if the fashion had not set so strongly against it. We have -lately had a capital example of the encounter of an admirable English -portraitist and an admirable English subject. It is not irrelevant to -cite such a book as Mr. Mackail’s “Life of William Morris” as our -high-water mark—a reminder of how we may be blessed on both faces of -the question. Each term of the combination appears supposable in France, -but only as distinct from the other term. The artist, we gather, would -there have lost his chance and the sitter his ease. - -It completes in an interesting way these observations, which would bear -much expansion, to perceive that when we at last have a Life of George -Sand—a celebrity living with the imputed intensity, if ever a celebrity -did—we are indebted for it to the hand of a stranger. No fact could -more exactly point the moral of my few remarks. Madame Sand’s genius and -renown would have long ago made her a subject at home if alacrity in -such a connection had been to be dreamed of. There is no more -significant sign of the general ban under which alacrity rests. -Everything about this extraordinary woman is interesting, and we can -easily imagine the posthumous honours we ourselves would have hastened -to assure to a part taken, in literature and life, with such brilliancy -and sincerity. These demonstrations, where we should most look for them, -have been none the less as naught—save indeed, to be exact, for the -publication of a number of volumes of letters. It is just Madame Sand’s -letters, however—letters interesting and admirable, peculiarly -qualified to dispose the reader in her favour—that in England or in -America would have quickened the need for the rest of the evidence. But -now that, as befalls, we do at last have the rest of the evidence as we -never have had it before, we are of course sufficiently enlightened as -to the reasons for a special application of the law of reserves and -delays. It is not in fact easy to see how a full study of our heroine -could have been produced earlier; and even at present there is a -sensible comfort in its being produced at such a distance as practically -assigns the act to a detached posterity. Contemporaneously it was wise -to forbear; but to-day, and in Russia, by good luck, it is permitted to -plunge. - -Mme. Wladimir Karénine’s extraordinarily diffuse, but scarcely less -valuable, biography, of which the first instalment,[6] in two large -volumes, brings the story but to the year 1838, reaches us in a French -version, apparently from the author’s own hand, of chapters patiently -contributed to Russian periodicals. Were it not superficially ungrateful -to begin with reserves about a book so rich and full, there might be -some complaint to make of this wonderful tribute on grounds of form and -taste. Ponderous and prolix, the author moves in a mass, escorted by all -the penalties of her indifference to selection and compression. She -insists and repeats, she wanders wide; her subject spreads about her, in -places, as rather a pathless waste. Above all she has produced a book -which manages to be at once remarkably expert and singularly provincial. -Our innocence is perhaps at fault, but we are moved to take the mixture -for characteristically Russian. Would indeed any but that admirable -“Slav” superiority to prejudice of which we have lately heard so much -have availed to handle the particular facts in this large free way? -Nothing is at all events more curious than the union, on the part of our -biographer, of psychological intelligence and a lame esthetic. The -writer’s literary appreciations lag in other words half a century behind -her human and social. She treats us to endless disquisitions on pages of -her author to which we are no longer in any manageable relation at -all—disquisitions pathetic, almost grotesque, in their misplaced good -faith. But her attitude to her subject is admirable, her thoroughness -exemplary, the spirit of service in her of the sort that builds the -monument stone by stone. When we see it reared to the summit, as we are -clearly to do, we shall feel the structure to be solid if not shapely. -Nothing is more possible meanwhile than that a culture more -homogeneous—a French hand or a German—could not have engaged in the -work with anything like the same sincerity. An English hand—and the -fact, for _our_ culture, means much—would have been incapable of -touching it. The present scale of it at all events is certainly an -exotic misconception. But we can take of it what concerns us. - -The whole thing of course, we promptly reflect, concerns at the best -only those of us who can remount a little the stream of time. The author -of “L’Histoire de ma Vie” died in 1876, and the light of actuality rests -to-day on very different heads. It may seem to belittle her to say that -to care for her at all one must have cared for her from far back, for -such is not in general the proviso we need to make on behalf of the -greatest figures. It describes Madame Sand with breadth, but not with -extravagance, to speak of her as a sister to Goethe, and we feel that -for Goethe it can never be too late to care. But the case exemplifies -perhaps precisely the difference even in the most brilliant families -between sisters and brothers. She was to have the family spirit, but she -was to receive from the fairies who attended at her cradle the silver -cup, not the gold. She was to write a hundred books but she was not to -write “Faust.” She was to have all the distinction but not all the -perfection; and there could be no better instance of the degree in which -a woman may achieve the one and still fail of the other. When it is a -question of the rare originals who have either she confirms us, -masculine as she is, in believing that it takes a still greater -masculinity to have both. What she had, however, she had in profusion; -she was one of the deepest voices of that great mid-century concert -against the last fine strains of which we are more and more banging the -doors. Her work, beautiful, plentiful and fluid, has floated itself out -to sea even as the melting snows of the high places are floated. To feel -how she has passed away as a “creator” is to feel anew the immense waste -involved in the general ferment of an age, and how much genius and -beauty, let alone the baser parts of the mixture, it takes to produce a -moderate quantity of literature. Smaller people have conceivably ceased -to count; but it is strange for a member of the generation immediately -succeeding her own that she should have had the same fate as smaller -people: all the more that such a mourner may be ruefully conscious of -contributing not a little himself to the mishap. Does he still read, -re-read, can he to-day at all deal with, this wonderful lady’s novels? -It only half cheers him up that on the occasion of such a publication as -I here speak of he finds himself as much interested as ever. - -The grounds of the interest are difficult to give—they presuppose so -much of the old impression. If the old impression therefore requires -some art to sustain and justify itself we must be content, so far as we -are still under the charm, to pass, though only at the worst, for -eccentric. The work, whether we still hold fast to it or not, has twenty -qualities and would still have an immense one if it had only its style; -but what I suppose it has paid for in the long-run is its want of -plastic intensity. Does any work of representation, of imitation, live -long that is predominantly loose? It may live in spite of looseness; but -that, we make out, is only because closeness has somewhere, where it has -most mattered, played a part. It is hard to say of George Sand’s -productions, I think, that they show closeness anywhere; the sense of -that fluidity which is more than fluency is what, in speaking of them, -constantly comes back to us, and the sense of fluidity is fundamentally -fatal to the sense of particular truth. The thing presented by intention -is never the stream of the artist’s inspiration; it is the deposit of -the stream. For the things presented by George Sand, for the general -picture, we must look elsewhere, look at her life and her nature, and -find them in the copious documents in which these matters and many -others are now reflected. All _this_ mass of evidence it is that -constitutes the “intensity” we demand. The mass has little by little -become large, and our obligation to Madame Karénine is that she makes it -still larger. She sets our face, and without intending to, more and more -in the right direction. Her injudicious analyses of forgotten fictions -only confirm our discrimination. We feel ourselves in the presence of -the extraordinary author of the hundred tales, and yet also feel it to -be not by reason of them that she now presents herself as one of the -most remarkable of human creatures. By reason then of what? Of -everything that determined, accompanied, surrounded their appearance. -They formed all together a great feature in a career and a character, -but the career and the character are the real thing. - -Such is far from usually the case, I hasten to recognise, with the -complete and consistent artist. Poor is the art, a thing positively to -be ashamed of, that, generally speaking, is not far more pressing for -this servant of the altar than anything else, anything outside the -church, can possibly be. To have been the tempered and directed hammer -that makes the metal hard: if that be not good enough for such a -ministrant, we may know him by whatever he has found better—we shall -not know him by the great name. The immense anomaly in Madame Sand was -that she freely took the form of being, with most zest, quite another -sort of hammer. It testifies sufficiently to her large endowment that, -given the wide range of the rest of her appetite, she should seem to us -to-day to have sacrificed even superficially to _any_ form of objective -expression. She had in spite of herself an imagination almost of the -first order, which overflowed and irrigated, turning by its mere swift -current, without effort, almost without direction, every mill it -encountered, and launching as it went alike the lightest skiff and the -stateliest ship. She had in especial the gift of speech, speech supreme -and inspired, to which we particularly owe the high value of the “case” -she presents. For the case was definitely a bold and direct experiment, -not at all in “art,” not at all in literature, but conspicuously and -repeatedly in the business of living; so that our profit of it is before -anything else that it was conscious, articulate, vivid—recorded, -reflected, imaged. The subject of the experiment became also at first -hand the journalist—much of her work being simply splendid -journalism—commissioned to bring it up to date. She interviewed nobody -else, but she admirably interviewed herself, and this is exactly our -good fortune. Her autobiography, her letters, her innumerable prefaces, -all her expansive parentheses and excursions, make up the generous -report. We have in this form accordingly a literary title for her far -superseding any derived from her creative work. But that is the result -of a mere betrayal, not the result of an intention. Her masterpiece, by -a perversity of fate, is the thing she least sat down to. It -consists—since she is a case—in the mere notation of her symptoms, in -help given to the study of them. To this has the author of “Consuelo” -come. - -But how in the world indeed was the point so indicated _not_ to be the -particular cross-road at which the critic should lie in wait for a poor -child of the age whom preceding ages and generations had almost -infernally conspired to trap for him, to give up, candidly astray, to -his hands? If the element of romance for which our heroine’s name stands -is best represented by her personal sequences and solutions, it is -sufficiently visible that her heredity left her a scant alternative. -Space fails me for the story of this heredity, queer and complicated, -the very stuff that stories are made of—a chain of generations -succeeding each other in confidence and joy and with no aid asked of -legal or other artificial sanctions. The facts are, moreover, -sufficiently familiar, though here as elsewhere Madame Karénine adds to -our knowledge. Presented, foreshortened, stretching back from the quiet -Nohant funeral of 1876 to the steps of the throne of King Augustus the -Strong of Poland, father of Maurice de Saxe, great-great-grandfather of -Aurore Dupin, it all hangs together as a cluster of components more -provocative than any the great novelist herself ever handled. Her -pre-natal past was so peopled with _dramatis personæ_ that her future -was really called on to supply them in such numbers as would preserve -the balance. The tide of illegitimacy sets straight through the series. -No one to speak of—Aurore’s father is an exception—seems to have had a -“regular” paternity. Aurore herself squared with regularity but by a -month or two; the marriage of her parents gave her a bare escape. She -was brought up by her paternal grandmother between a son of her father -and a daughter of her mother born out of wedlock. It all moves before us -as a vivid younger world, a world on the whole more amused and more -amusing than ours. The period from the Restoration to the events of 1848 -is the stretch of time in which, for more reasons than we can now go -into, French life gives out to those to whom its appeal never fails most -of its charm—most, at all events, of its ancient sociability. Happy is -our sense of the picturesque Paris unconscious of a future all “avenues” -and exhibitions; happy our sense of these middle years of a great -generation, easy and lusty despite the ensanguined spring that had gone -before. They live again, piecing themselves ever so pleasantly and -strangely together, in Madame Sand’s records and references; almost as -much as the conscious close of the old régime so vaunted by Talleyrand -they strike us as a season it would have been indispensable to know for -the measure of what intercourse could richly be. - -The time was at any rate unable to withhold from the wonderful young -person growing up at Nohant the conditions she was so freely to use as -measures of her own. Though the motto of her autobiography is _Wahrheit -und Dichtung_ quite as much as it had been that of Goethe’s, there is a -truth beyond any projected by her more regular compositions in her -evocation of the influences of her youth. Upon these influences Madame -Karénine, who has enjoyed access through her heroine’s actual -representatives to much evidence hitherto unpublished, throws a hundred -interesting lights. Madame Dupin de Francueil and Madame Dupin the -younger survive and perform for us, “convince” us as we say, better than -any Lélia or any Consuelo. Our author’s whole treatment of her -remarkable mother’s figure and history conveniently gives the critic the -pitch of the great fact about her—the formation apparently at a given -moment, yet in very truth, we may be sure, from far back, of the -capacity and the determination to live with high consistency for -herself. What she made of this resolve to allow her nature all its -chances and how she carried on the process—these things are, thanks to -the immense illustration her genius enabled her to lend them, the -essence of her story; of which the full adumbration is in the detached -pictorial way she causes her mother to live for us. Motherhood, -daughterhood, childhood, embarrassed maturity, were phenomena she early -encountered in her great adventure, and nothing is more typical of her -energy and sincerity than the short work we can scarce help feeling she -makes of them. It is not that she for a moment blinks or dodges them; -she weaves them straight in—embarks with them indeed as her principal -baggage. We know to-day from the pages before us everything we need to -know about her marriage and the troubled years that followed; about M. -Casimir Dudevant and his possible points of view, about her separation, -her sharp secession, rather, as it first presents itself, and her -discovery, at a turn of the road as it can only be called, of her -genius. - -She stumbled on this principle, we see, quite by accident and as a -consequence of the attempt to do the very humblest labour, to support -herself from day to day. It would be difficult to put one’s finger more -exactly upon a case of genius unaided and unprompted. She embarked, as I -have called it, on her great voyage with no grounds of confidence -whatever; she had obscurely, unwittingly the spirit of Columbus, but not -so much even as his exiguous outfit. She found her gift of -improvisation, found her tropic wealth, by leaping—a surprised -_conquistador_ of “style”—straight upon the coral strand. No awakened -instinct, probably, was ever such a blessing to a writer so much in -need. This instinct was for a long time all her initiation, practically -all her equipment. The curious thing is that she never really arrived at -the fruit of it as the result of a process, but that she started with -the whole thing as a Patti or a Mario starts with a voice which _is_ a -method, which _is_ music, and that it was simply the train in which she -travelled. It was to render her as great a service as any supreme -faculty ever rendered its possessor, quite the same service as the -strategic eye renders a commander in the field or instant courage the -attacking soldier: it was to carry her through life still more -inimitably than through the career of authorship. Her books are all rich -and resonant with it, but they profit by it meagrely compared with her -character. She walks from first to last in music, that is in literary -harmonies, of her own making, and it is in truth sometimes only, with -her present biographer to elbow us a little the way, that these -triumphant sounds permit us a near enough approach to the procession to -make out quite exactly its course. - -No part of her career is to my sense so curious as this particular -sudden bound into the arena. Nothing but the indescribable heredity I -have spoken of appears traceably to have prepared it. We have on one -side the mere poverty and provinciality of her marriage and her early -contacts, the crudity of her youth and her ignorance (which included so -small a view of herself that she had begun by looking for a future in -the bedaubing, for fancy-shops, of little boxes and fans); and on the -other, at a stride, the full-blown distinction of “Valentine” and -“Jacques,” which had had nothing to lead up to it, we seem to make out, -but the very rough sketch of a love-affair with M. Jules Sandeau. I -spoke just now of the possible points of view of poor M. Dudevant; at -which, had we space, it might be of no small amusement to glance—of an -amusement indeed large and suggestive. We see him, surely, in the light -of these records, as the most “sold” husband in literature, and not at -all, one feels, by his wife’s assertion of her freedom, but simply by -her assertion of her mind. He appears to have married her for a nobody -approved and guaranteed, and he found her, on his hands, a sister, as we -have seen, of Goethe—unless it be but a figure to say that he ever -“found” her anything. He appears to have lived to an advanced age -without having really—in spite of the lawsuits he lost—comprehended -his case; not the least singular feature of which had in fact positively -been the deceptive delay of his fate. It was not till after several -years of false calm that it presented itself in its special form. We see -him and his so ruthlessly superseded name, never to be gilded by the -brilliant event, we see him reduced, like a leaf in a whirlwind, to a -mere vanishing-point. - -We deal here, I think, with something very different from the usual -tittle-tattle about “private” relations, for the simple reason that we -deal with relations foredoomed to publicity by the strange economy -involved in the play of genius itself. Nothing was ever less wasted, -from beginning to end, than all this amorous experience and all this -luxury of woe. The parties to it were to make an inveterate use of it, -the principal party most of all; and what therefore on that marked -ground concerns the critic is to see what they were appreciably to get -out of it. The principal party, the constant one through all mutations, -was alone qualified to produce the extract that affects us as final. It -was by the publication four years since of her letters to Alfred de -Musset and to Sainte-Beuve, by the appearance also of Madame Arvède -Barine’s clear compact biography of Musset, that we began to find her -personal history brought nearer to us than her own communications had in -her lifetime already brought it. The story of her relations with Musset -is accordingly so known that I need only glance at the fact of her -having—shortly after the highest degree of intimacy between them had, -in the summer of 1833, established itself in Paris—travelled with him -to Italy, settled with him briefly in Venice, and there passionately -quarrelled and parted with him—only, however, several months later, on -their return to France, to renew again, to quarrel and to part again, -all more passionately, if possible, even than before. Madame Karénine, -besides supplying us with all added light on this episode, keeps us -abreast of others that were to follow, leaves us no more in the dark -about Michel de Bourges, Félicien Mallefille and Chopin than we had -already been left about their several predecessors. She is commendably -lucid on the subject of Franz Liszt, impartially examines the case and -authoritatively dismisses it. Her second volume brings her heroine to -the eve of the historic departure with Chopin for Majorca. We have thus -in a convenient form enough for one mouthful of entertainment, as well -as for superabundant reflection. - -We have indeed the whole essence of what most touches us, for this -consists not at all of the quantity of the facts, nor even of their -oddity: they are practically all there from the moment the heroine’s -general attitude defines itself. That is the solid element—the details -to-day are smoke. Yet I hasten to add that it was in particular by -taking her place of an autumn evening in the southward-moving diligence -with Alfred de Musset, it was on this special occasion that she gave -most the measure of her choice of the consistent, even though it so -little meant the consequent, life. She had reached toward such a life -obviously in quitting the conjugal roof in 1831—had attacked the -experiment clumsily, but according to her light, by throwing herself on -such material support as faculties yet untested might furnish, and on -such moral as several months of the _intimité_ of Jules Sandeau and a -briefer taste of that of Prosper Mérimée might further contribute. She -had done, in other words, what she could; subsequent lights show it as -not her fault that she had not done better. With Musset her future took -a long stride; emotionally speaking it “looked up.” Nothing was wanting -in this case—independently of what might then have appeared her -friend’s equal genius—quite ideally to qualify it. He was several years -her junior, and as she had her husband and her children, he had, in the -high degree of most young Frenchmen of sensibility, his mother. It is -recorded that with this lady on the eve of the celebrated step she quite -had the situation, as the phrase is, out; which is a note the more in -the general, the intellectual lucidity. The only other note in fact to -be added is that of the absence of funds for the undertaking. Neither -partner had a penny to spare; the plan was wholly to “make money,” on a -scale, as they went. A great deal was in the event, exactly speaking, to -be made—but the event was at the time far from clear to them. The -enterprise was in consequence purely and simply, with a rounded -perfection that gives it its value for the critic, an affair of the -heart. That the heart, taking it as a fully representative organ, should -fail of no good occasion completely and consistently to engage itself -was the definite and, as appeared, the promising assumption on which -everything rested. The heart was real life, frank, fearless, intelligent -and even, so far as might be, intelligible life; everything else was -stupid as well as poor, muddle as well as misery. The heart of course -might be misery, for nothing was more possible than that life -predominantly was; but it was at all events the misery that is least -ignoble. - -This was the basis of Madame Sand’s personal evolution, of her immense -moral energy, for many a year; it was a practical system, applied and -reapplied, and no “inquiry” concerning her has much point save as -settling what, for our enlightenment and our esteem, she made of it. The -answer meets us, I think, after we have taken in the facts, promptly -enough and with great clearness, so long as we consider that it is not, -that it cannot be in the conditions, a simple one. She made of it then -intellectually a splendid living, but she was able to do this only -because she was an altogether exceptional example of our human stuff. It -is here that her famous heredity comes in: we see what a -race-accumulation of “toughness” had been required to build her up. -Monstrous monarchs and bastards of kings, great generals and bastards of -bastards, courtesans, dancers supple and hard, accomplished men and -women of the old dead great world, seasoned young soldiers of the -Imperial epic, grisettes of the _pavé de Paris_, Parisian to the core; -the mixture was not quite the blood of people in general, and obviously -such a final flower of such a stem might well fix the attention and -appeal to the vigilance of those qualified to watch its development. -These persons would, doubtless, however, as a result of their -observation, have acquired betimes a sense of the high vitality of their -young friend. Formed essentially for independence and constructed for -resistance and survival she was to be trusted, as I have hinted, to take -care of herself: this was always the residuary fact when a passion was -spent. She took care of Musset, she took care of Chopin, took care, in -short, through her career, of a whole series of nurslings, but never -failed, under the worst ingratitude, to be by her own elasticity still -better taken care of. This is why we call her anomalous and deprecate -any view of her success that loses sight of the anomaly. The success was -so great that but _for_ the remainder she would be too encouraging. She -was one in a myriad, and the cluster of circumstances is too unlikely to -recur. - -It is by her success, none the less, we must also remember, that we know -her; it is this that makes her interesting and calls for study. She had -all the illumination that sensibility, that curiosity, can give, and -that so ingeniously induces surrender to it; but the too numerous -weaknesses, vulgarities and penalties of adventure and surrender she had -only in sufficient degree to complete the experience before they shaped -themselves into the eloquence into which she could always reascend. Her -eloquence—it is the simplest way to explain her—fairly _made_ her -success; and eloquence is superlatively rare. When passion can always -depend upon it to vibrate passion becomes to that extent action, and -success is nothing but action repeated and confirmed. In Madame Sand’s -particular case the constant recurrence of the malady of passion -promoted in the most extraordinary way the superior appearance, the -general expression, of health. It is of course not to be denied that -there are in her work infirmities and disfigurements, odd smutches even, -or unwitting drolleries, which show a sense on some sides enfeebled. The -sense of her characters themselves for instance is constantly a confused -one; they are too often at sea as to what is possible and what -impossible for what we roughly call decent people. Her own categories, -loose and liberal, are yet ever positive enough; when they err it is by -excess of indulgence and by absence of the humorous vision, a nose for -the ridiculous—the fatal want, this last almost always, we are -reminded, the heel of Achilles, in the sentimental, the romantic -estimate. The general validity of her novels, at any rate, I leave -impugned, and the feature I have just noted in them is but one of the -points at which they fail of reality. I stick to the history of her -personal experiment, as the now so numerous documents show it; for it is -here, and here only, that her felicity is amusing and confounding; -amusing by the quaintness of some of the facts exposed, and yet -confounding by reason of the beauty mixed with them. - -The “affair” with Musset for example has come to figure, thanks to the -talent of both parties, as one of the great affairs in the history of -letters; and yet on the near view of it now enjoyed we learn that it -dragged out scarce more than a year. Even this measure indeed is -excessive, so far as any measure serves amid so much that is incoherent. -It supposed itself to have dropped for upwards of six months, during -which another connection, another imperious heart-history, reigned in -its stead. The enumeration of these trifles is not, I insist, futile; so -that while we are about it we shall find an interest in being clear. The -events of Venice, with those that immediately preceded and followed -them, distinctly repay inspection as an epitome, taken together, of the -usual process. They appear to contain, as well as an intensity all their -own, the essence of all that of other occasions. The young poet and the -young novelist met then, appear to have met for the first time, toward -the end of June 1833, and to have become finally intimate in the month -of August of that year. They started together for Italy at the beginning -of the winter and were settled—if settled be not too odd a word to -use—by the end of January in Venice. I neglect the question of Musset’s -serious illness there, though it is not the least salient part of the -adventure, and observe simply that by the end of March he had started to -return to Paris, while his friend, remaining behind, had yielded to a -new affection. This new affection, the connection with Pietro Pagello, -dates unmistakably from before Musset’s departure; and, with the -completion of “Jacques” and the composition of the beautiful “André,” -the wonderful “Léone-Léoni” and some of the most interesting of the -“Lettres d’un Voyageur,” constituted the main support of our heroine -during the spring and early summer. By midsummer she had left Italy with -Pagello, and they arrive in Paris on August 14th. This arrival marks -immediately the term of their relations, which had by that time lasted -some six or seven months. Pagello returned to Italy, and if they ever -met again it was the merest of meetings and after long years. - -In October, meanwhile, the connection with Musset was renewed, and -renewed—this is the great point—because the sentiments still -entertained by each (in spite of Pagello, in spite of everything) are -stronger even than any awkwardness of which either might have been -conscious. The whole business really is one in which we lose our measure -alike of awkwardness and of grace. The situation is in the hands of -comedy—or _would_ be, I should rather say, were it not so distinctly -predestined to fall, as I have noted, into those of the nobler form. It -is prolonged till the following February, we make out, at furthest, and -only after having been more than once in the interval threatened with -violent extinction. It bequeaths us thus in a handful of dates a picture -than which probably none other in the annals of “passion” was ever more -suggestive. The passion is of the kind that is called “immortal”—and so -called, wonderful to say, with infinite reason and justice. The poems, -the letters, the diaries, the novels, the unextinguished accents and -lingering echoes that commemorate it are among the treasures of the -human imagination. The literature of the world is appreciably the richer -for it. The noblest forms, in a word, on both sides, marked it for their -own; it was born, according to the adage, with a silver spoon in its -mouth. It was an affection in short transcendent and sublime, and yet -the critic sees it come and go before he can positively turn round. The -brief period of some seventeen or eighteen months not only affords it -all its opportunity, but places comfortably in its lap a relation -founded on the same elements and yet wholly distinct from it. Musset -occupied in fact but two-thirds of his mistress’s time. Pagello -overlapped him because Pagello also appealed to the heart; but Pagello’s -appeal to the heart was disposed of as expeditiously. Musset, in the -same way, succeeded Pagello at the voice of a similar appeal, and this -claim, in its turn, was polished off in yet livelier fashion. - -Liveliness is of course the tune of the “gay” career; it has always been -supposed to relegate to comedy the things to which it puts its mark—so -that as a series of sequences amenable mainly to satire the -approximations I have made would fall neatly into place. The anomaly -here, as on other occasions of the same sort in Madame Karénine’s -volumes, is that the facts, as we are brought near to them, strike us as -so out of relation to the beautiful tone. The effect and the achieved -dignity are those of tragedy—tragedy rearranging, begetting afresh, in -its own interest, all the elements of ecstasy and despair. How can it -not be tragedy when this interest is just the interest, which I have -touched on, of exemplary eloquence? There are lights in which the -material, with its want of nobleness, want of temper, want even of -manners, seems scarcely life at all, as the civilised conscience -understands life; and yet it is as the most magnanimous of surrenders to -life that the whole business is triumphantly reflected in the documents. -It is not only that “La Nuit d’Octobre” is divine, that Madame Sand’s -letters are superb and that nothing can exceed, in particular, the high -style of the passage that we now perceive Musset to have borrowed from -one of them for insertion in “On ne Badine pas avec l’Amour”—to the -extreme profit of the generation which was, for many years thereafter, -to hear Delaunay exquisitely declaim it at the Théâtre Français; it is -that, strange to say, almost the finest flower of the bouquet is the -now-famous written “declaration” addressed to Pagello one evening by the -lady. Musset was ill in bed; he was the attendant doctor; and while, -watching and ignorant of French, he twirled his thumbs or dipped into a -book, his patient’s companion, on the other side of the table and with -the lamp between them, dashed off (it took time) a specimen of her -finest prose, which she then folded and handed to him, and which, for -perusal more at leisure, he carried off in his pocket. It proved neither -more nor less than one of the pontoon bridges which a force engaged in -an active campaign holds itself ready at any time to throw across a -river, and was in fact of its kind a stout and beautiful structure. It -happily spanned at all events the gulf of a short acquaintance. - -The incident bears a family resemblance to another which our biographer -finds in her path in the year 1837. Having to chronicle the close of the -relation with Michel de Bourges, from which again her heroine had so -much to suffer, she has also to mention that this catastrophe was -precipitated, to all appearance, by the contemporaneous dawn of an -affection “plus douce, moins enthousiaste, moins âpre aussi, et j’espère -plus durable.” The object of this affection was none other than the -young man then installed at Nohant as preceptor to Madame Sand’s -children—but as to whom in the event we ask ourselves what by this time -her notion of measure or durability can have become. It is just this -element that has positively least to do, we seem to make out, with -“affection” as so practised. Affection in any sense worth speaking of -_is_ durability; and it is the repeated impermanence of those -manifestations of it on behalf of which the high horse of “passion” is -ridden so hard that makes us wonder whether such loves and such -licences, in spite of the quality of free experience they represent, had -really anything to do with it. It was surely the last thing they -contained. Félicien Mallefille may be, to his heart’s content, of 1837 -and even of a portion of 1838; it is Chopin who is of the rest of the -year and—let us hope our biographer will have occasion to show us—of -at least the whole of the following. It is here that, as I have -mentioned, she pauses. - -One of the most interesting contributions to her subject is the long -letter from Balzac to his future wife, Madame Hanska, now reproduced in -the most substantial of the few volumes of his correspondence (“Lettres -à l’Étrangère, 1833-1842,” published 1899) and printed by Madame -Karénine. The author, finding himself near Nohant in the spring of 1838, -went over to pay his illustrious colleague a visit and spent more than a -day in sustained conversation with her. He had the good fortune to find -her alone, so that they could endlessly talk and smoke by the fire, and -nothing can be all at once more vivid, more curious and more judicious -than his immediate report of the occasion. It lets into the whole -question of his hostess’s character and relations—inevitably more or -less misrepresented by the party most involved—air and light and truth; -it fixes points and re-establishes proportions. It shows appearances -confronted, in a word, with Balzac’s strong sense of the real and offers -the grateful critic still another chance to testify for that precious -gift. This same critic’s mind, it must be added, rests with complacency -on the vision thus evoked, the way that for three days, from five -o’clock in the afternoon till five in the morning, the wonderful friends -must have had things out. For once, we feel sure, fundamental questions -were not shirked. As regards his comrade at any rate Balzac puts his -finger again and again on the truth and the idiosyncrasy. “She is not -_aimable_ and in consequence will always find it difficult to be loved.” -He adds—and it is here that he comes nearest straightening the -question—that she has in character all the leading marks of the man and -as few as possible those of his counterpart. He implies that, though -judged as a woman she may be puzzling enough, she hangs together -perfectly if judged as a man. She _is_ a man, he repeats, “and all the -more that she wants to be, that she has sunk the woman, that she isn’t -one. Women attract, and she repels; and, as I am much of a man, if this -is the effect she produces on me she must produce it on men who are like -me—so that she will always be unhappy.” He qualifies as justly, I may -parenthesise, her artistic side, the limits of which, he moreover -intimates, she had herself expressed to him. “She has neither intensity -of conception, nor the constructive gift, nor the faculty of reaching -the truth”—Balzac’s own deep dye of the truth—“nor the art of the -pathetic. But she holds that, without knowing the French language, she -has _style_. And it’s true.” - -The light of mere evidence, the light of such researches as Madame -Karénine’s, added to her so copious correspondence and autobiography, -makes Madame Sand so much of a riddle that we grasp at Balzac’s -authoritative word as at an approach to a solution. It is, strange to -say, by reading another complexity into her image that we finally -simplify it. The riddle consists in the irreconcilability of her -distinction and her vulgarity. Vulgar somehow in spite of everything is -the record of so much taking and tasting and leaving, so much publicity -and palpability of “heart,” so much experience reduced only to the terms -of so many more or less greasy males. And not only vulgar but in a -manner grotesque—from the moment, that is, that the experience is -presented to us with any emphasis in the name of terror and pity. It was -not a passive but an active situation, that of a nature robust and not -too fastidious, full at all times of resistance and recovery. No history -gives us really more ground to protest against the new fashion, rife in -France, of transporting “love,” as there mainly represented, to the air -of morals and of melancholy. The fashion betrays only the need to -rejuvenate, at a considerable cost of falsity, an element in connection -with which levity is felt either to have exhausted itself or to look -thin as a motive. It is in the light of levity that many of the facts -presented by Madame Karénine are most intelligible, and that is the -circumstance awkward for sensibility and for all the graces it is -invited to show. - -The scene quite changes when we cease to expect these graces. As a man -Madame Sand was admirable—especially as a man of the dressing-gown and -slippers order, easy of approach and of _tutoiement_, rubbing shoulders -with queer company and not superstitiously haunted by the conception of -the gentleman. There have been many men of genius, delightful, prodigal -and even immortal, who squared but scantly with that conception, and it -is a company to which our heroine is simply one of the most interesting -of recruits. She has in it all her value and loses none of her charm. -Above all she becomes in a manner comprehensible, as any frank Bohemian -is comprehensible. We have only to imagine the Bohemian really endowed, -the Bohemian, that is, both industrious and wise, to get almost all her -formula. She keeps here and there a feminine streak—has at moments an -excess of volubility and too great an insistence on having been in the -right; but for the rest, as Balzac says, the character, confronted with -the position, is an explanation. “Son mâle,” he tells Madame Hanska, -“était rare”—than which nothing could have been more natural. Yet for -this masculine counterpart—so difficult to find—she ingenuously spent -much of her early life in looking. That the search was a mistake is what -constitutes, in all the business of which the Musset episode is the -type, the only, the real melancholy, the real moral tragedy. - -For all such mistakes, none the less, the whole lesson of the picture is -precisely in the disconcerting success of her system. Everything was at -the start against that presumption; but everything at the end was to -indicate that she was not to have been defeated. Others might well have -been, and the banks of the stream of her career are marked, not -invisibly, with mouldering traces of the less lucky or the less buoyant; -but her attitude as life went on was more and more that of showing how -she profited of all things for wisdom and sympathy, for a general -expertness and nobleness. These forces, all clarified to an admirable -judgment, kept her to the last day serene and superior, and they are one -of the reasons why the monument before us is felt not to be misplaced. -There should always be a monument to those who have achieved a prodigy. -What greater prodigy than to have bequeathed in such mixed elements, to -have principally made up of them, the affirmation of an unprecedented -intensity of life? For though this intensity was one that broke down in -each proposed exhibition the general example remains, incongruously, -almost the best we can cite. And all we can say is that this brings us -back once more to the large manner, the exceptional energy and well-nigh -monstrous vitality, of the individual concerned. Nothing is so absurd as -a half-disguise, and Madame Sand’s abiding value will probably be in her -having given her sex, for its new evolution and transformation, the real -standard and measure of change. This evolution and this transformation -are all round us unmistakable; the change is in the air; women are -turned more and more to looking at life as men look at it and to getting -from it what men get. In this direction their aim has been as yet -comparatively modest and their emulation low; the challenge they have -hitherto picked up is but the challenge of the “average” male. The -approximation of the extraordinary woman has been practically, in other -words, to the ordinary man. George Sand’s service is that she planted -the flag much higher—her own approximation at least was to the -extraordinary. She reached him, she surpassed him, and she showed how, -with native dispositions, the thing could be done. So far as we have -come these new records will live as the precious text-book of the -business. - ------ - -Footnote 6: - -“George Sand, sa Vie et ses Œuvres, 1804-1876.” Paris, 1899. - - - - - GEORGE SAND - 1914 - - -It has much occurred to us, touching those further liberations of the -subordinate sex which fill our ears just now with their multitudinous -sound, that the promoters of the great cause make a good deal less than -they might of one of their very first contentious “assets,” if it may -not indeed be looked at as quite the first; and thereby fail to pass -about, to the general elation, a great vessel of truth. Is this because -the life and example of George Sand are things unknown or obscure to the -talkers and fighters of to-day—present and vivid as they were to those -of the last mid-century, or because of some fear that to invoke victory -in her name might, for particular, for even rueful reasons, not be -altogether a safe course? It is difficult to account otherwise for the -fact that so ample and embossed a shield, and one that shines too at -last with a strong and settled lustre, is rather left hanging on the -wall than seen to cover advances or ward off attacks in the fray. -Certain it is that if a lapse of tradition appeared at one time to have -left a little in the lurch the figure of the greatest of all women of -letters, of Letters in truth most exactly, as we hold her surely to have -been, that explanation should have begun to fail, some fourteen years -ago, with the publication of the first volume of Madame Wladimir -Karénine’s biography, and even in spite of the fact that this singularly -interesting work was not till a twelvemonth ago to arrive at the dignity -of a third,[7] which leaves it, for all its amplitude, still incomplete. -The latest instalment, now before us, follows its predecessors after an -interval that had alarmed us not a little for the proper consummation; -and the story is even now carried but to the eve of the Revolution of -1848, after which its heroine (that of the Revolution, we may almost -say, as well as of the narrative) was to have some twenty-seven years to -live. Madame Karénine appears to be a Russian critic writing under a -pseudonym; portions of her overbrimming study have appeared dispersedly, -we gather, in Russian periodicals, but the harmonious French idiom, of -which she is all-sufficient mistress, welds them effectively together, -and the result may already be pronounced a commemorative monument of all -but the first order. The first order in such attempts has for its sign a -faculty of selection and synthesis, not to say a sense of composition -and proportion, which neither the chronicler nor the critic in these too -multiplied pages is able consistently to exhibit; though on the other -hand they represent quite the high-water mark of patience and -persistence, of the ideal biographic curiosity. They enjoy further the -advantage of the documented state in a degree that was scarce to have -been hoped for, every source of information that had remained in -reserve—and these proved admirably numerous—having been opened to our -inquirer by the confidence of the illustrious lady’s two -great-granddaughters, both alive at the time the work was begun. Add to -this that there has grown up in France a copious George Sand literature, -a vast body of illustrative odds and ends, relics and revelations, on -which the would-be propagator of the last word is now free to -draw—always with discrimination. Ideally, well-nigh overwhelmingly -informed we may at present therefore hold ourselves; and were that state -all that is in question for us nothing could exceed our advantage. - ------ - -Footnote 7: - -George Sand, sa Vie et ses Œuvres, vol. iii. (1838-1848). Par Wladimir -Karénine. Paris, Plon, 1912. - - - I - -Just the beauty and the interest of the case are, however, that such a -condition by no means exhausts our opportunity, since in no like -connection could it be less said that to know most is most easily or -most complacently to conclude. May we not decidedly feel the sense and -the “lesson,” the suggestive spread, of a career as a thing scarce -really to be measured when the effect of more and more acquaintance with -it is simply to make the bounds of appreciation recede? This is why the -figure now shown us, blazed upon to the last intensity by the lamplight -of investigation, and with the rank oil consumed in the process fairly -filling the air, declines to let us off from an hour of that -contemplation which yet involves discomfiture for us so long as certain -lucidities on our own part, certain serenities of assurance, fail -correspondingly to play up. We feel ourselves so outfaced, as it were; -we somehow want in any such case to meet and match the assurances with -which the subject himself or herself immitigably bristles, and are -nevertheless by no means certain that our bringing up premature forces -or trying to reply with lights of our own may not check the current of -communication, practically without sense for us unless flowing at its -fullest. At our biographer’s rate of progress we shall still have much -to wait for; but it can meanwhile not be said that we have not plenty to -go on with. To this may be added that the stretch of “life,” apart from -the more concrete exhibition, already accounted for by our three volumes -(if one may discriminate between “production” and life to a degree that -is in this connection exceptionally questionable), represents to all -appearance the most violently and variously agitated face of the career. -The establishment of the Second Empire ushered in for Madame Sand, we -seem in course of preparation to make out, the long period already more -or less known to fame, that is to criticism, as the period of her great -placidity, her more or less notorious appeasement; a string of afternoon -hours as hazily golden as so many reigns of Antonines, when her genius -had mastered the high art of acting without waste, when a happy play of -inspiration had all the air, so far as our spectatorship went, of -filling her large capacity and her beautiful form to the brim, and when -the gathered fruit of what she had dauntlessly done and been heaped -itself upon her table as a rich feast for memory and philosophy. So she -came in for the enjoyment of all the _sagesse_ her contemporaries (with -only such exceptions as M. Paul de Musset and Madame Louise Colet and -the few discordant pleaders for poor Chopin) finally rejoiced on their -side to acclaim; the sum of her aspects “composing,” arranging -themselves in relation to each other, with a felicity that nothing could -exceed and that swept with great glosses and justifications every aspect -of the past. To few has it been given to “pay” so little, according to -_our_ superstition of payment, in proportion to such enormities of -ostensibly buying or borrowing—which fact, we have to recognise, left -an existence as far removed either from moral, or intellectual, or even -social bankruptcy as if it had proceeded from the first but on the most -saving lines. - -That is what remains on the whole most inimitable in the picture—the -impression it conveys of an art of life by which the rough sense of the -homely adage that we may not both eat our cake and have it was to be -signally falsified; this wondrous mistress of the matter strikes us so -as having consumed _her_ refreshment, her vital supply, to the last -crumb, so far as the provision meant at least freedom and ease, and yet -having ever found on the shelf the luxury in question undiminished. -Superlatively interesting the idea of how this result was, how it -_could_ be, achieved—given the world as we on our side of the water -mainly know it; and it is as meeting the mystery that the monument -before us has doubtless most significance. We shall presently see, in -the light of our renewed occasion, how the question is solved; yet we -may as well at once say that this will have had for its conclusion to -present our heroine—mainly figuring as a novelist of the romantic or -sentimental order once pre-eminent but now of shrunken credit—simply as -a supreme case of the successful practice of life itself. We have to -distinguish for this induction after a fashion in which neither Madame -Sand nor her historian has seemed at all positively concerned to -distinguish; the indifference on the historian’s part sufficiently -indicated, we feel, by the complacency with which, to be thorough, she -explores even the most thankless tracts of her author’s fictional -activity, telling the tales over as she comes to them on much the same -scale on which she unfolds the situations otherwise documented. The -writer of “Consuelo” and “Claudie” and a hundred other things is to this -view a literary genius whose output, as our current term so gracefully -has it, the exercise of an inordinate personal energy happens to mark; -whereas the exercise of personal energy is for ourselves what most -reflects the genius—recorded though this again chances here to be -through the inestimable fact of the possession of style. Of the action -of that perfect, that only real preservative in face of other perils -George Sand is a wondrous example; but her letters alone suffice to show -it, and the style of her letters is no more than the breath of her -nature, her so remarkable one, in which expression and aspiration were -much the same function. That is what it is really to _have_ style—when -you set about performing the act of life. The forms taken by this latter -impulse then cover everything; they serve for your adventures not less -than they may serve at their most refined pitch for your Lélias and your -Mauprats. - -This means accordingly, we submit, that those of us who at the present -hour “feel the change,” as the phrase is, in the computation of the -feminine range, with the fullest sense of what it may portend, shirk at -once our opportunity and our obligation in not squeezing for its last -drop of testimony such an exceptional body of illustration as we here -possess. It has so much to say to any view—whether, in the light of old -conventions, the brightest or the darkest—of what may either glitter or -gloom in a conquest of every license by our contemporaries of the -contending sex, that we scarce strain a point in judging it a provision -of the watchful fates for this particular purpose and profit: its -answers are so full to most of our uncertainties. It is to be noted of -course that the creator of Lélia and of Mauprat was on the one hand a -woman of an extraordinary gift and on the other a woman resignedly and -triumphantly voteless—doing without that boon so beautifully, for free -development and the acquisition and application of “rights,” that we -seem to see her sardonically smile, before our present tumults, as at a -rumpus about nothing; as if women need set such preposterous machinery -in motion for obtaining things which she had found it of the first -facility, right and left, to stretch forth her hand and take. There it -is that her precedent stands out—apparently to a blind generation; so -that some little insistence on the method of her appropriations would -seem to be peculiarly in place. It was a method that may be summed up -indeed in a fairly simple, if comprehensive, statement: it consisted in -her dealing with life exactly as if she had been a man—exactly not -being too much to say. Nature certainly had contributed on her behalf to -this success; it had given her a constitution and a temperament, the -kind of health, the kind of mind, the kind of courage, that might most -directly help—so that she had but to convert these strong matters into -the kind of experience. The writer of these lines remembers how a -distinguished and intimate friend of her later years, who was a very -great admirer, said of her to him just after her death that her not -having been born a man seemed, when one knew her, but an awkward -accident: she had been to all intents and purposes so fine and frank a -specimen of the sex. This anomalous native turn, it may be urged, can -have no general application—women cannot be men by the mere trying or -by calling themselves “as good”; they must have been provided with what -we have just noted as the outfit. The force of George Sand’s exhibition -consorts, we contend, none the less perfectly with the logic of the -consummation awaiting us, if a multitude of signs are to be trusted, in -a more or less near future: that effective repudiation of the -_distinctive_, as to function and opportunity, as to working and playing -activity, for which the definite removal of immemorial disabilities is -but another name. We are in presence already of a practical shrinkage of -the distinctive, at the rapidest rate, and that it must shrink till -nothing of it worth mentioning be left, what is this but a war-cry -(presenting itself also indeed as a plea for peace) with which our ears -are familiar? Unless the suppression of the distinctive, however, is to -work to the prejudice, as we may fairly call it, of men, drawing them -over to the feminine type rather than drawing women over to -theirs—which is not what seems most probable—the course of the -business will be a virtual undertaking on the part of the half of -humanity acting ostensibly for the first time in freedom to annex the -male identity, that of the other half, so far as may be at all -contrivable, to its own cluster of elements. Individuals are in great -world and race movements negligible, and if that undertaking must -inevitably appeal to different recruits with a differing cogency, its -really enlisting its army or becoming reflected, to a perfectly -conceivable vividness, in the mass, is all our demonstration requires. -At that point begins the revolution, the shift of the emphasis from the -idea of woman’s weakness to the idea of her strength—which is where the -emphasis has lain, from far back, by his every tradition, on behalf of -man; and George Sand’s great value, as we say, is that she gives us the -vision, gives us the particular case, of the shift achieved, displayed -with every assurance and working with every success. - -The answer of her life to the question of what an effective annexation -of the male identity may amount to, amount to in favouring conditions -certainly, but in conditions susceptible to the highest degree of -encouragement and cultivation, leaves nothing to be desired for -completeness. This is the moral of her tale, the beauty of what she does -for us—that at no point whatever of her history or her character do -their power thus to give satisfaction break down; so that what we in -fact on the whole most recognise is not the extension she gives to the -feminine nature, but the richness that she adds to the masculine. It is -not simply that she could don a disguise that gaped at the seams, that -she could figure as a man of the mere carnival or pantomime variety, but -that she made so virile, so efficient and homogeneous a one. Admirable -child of the old order as we find her, she was far from our late-coming -theories and fevers—by the reason simply of her not being reduced to -them; as to which nothing about her is more eloquent than her living at -such ease with a conception of the main relevance of women that is -viewed among ourselves as antiquated to “quaintness.” She could afford -the traditional and sentimental, the old romantic and historic theory of -the function most natural to them, since she entertained it exactly as a -man would. It is not that she fails again and again to represent her -heroines as doing the most unconventional things—upon these they freely -embark; but they never in the least do them for themselves, themselves -as the “sex,” they do them altogether for men. Nothing could well be -more interesting thus than the extraordinary union of the pair of -opposites in her philosophy of the relation of the sexes—than the -manner in which her immense imagination, the imagination of a man for -range and abundance, intervened in the whole matter for the benefit, -absolutely, of the so-called stronger party, or to liberate her sisters -up to the point at which men may most gain and least lose by the -liberation. She read the relation essentially in the plural term—the -relations, and her last word about these was as far as possible from -being that they are of minor importance to women. Nothing in her view -could exceed their importance to women—it left every other far behind -it; and nothing that could make for authority in her, no pitch of tone, -no range of personal inquiry nor wealth of experience, no acquaintance -with the question that might derive light from free and repeated -adventure, but belonged to the business of driving this argument home. - - - II - -Madame Karénine’s third volume is copiously devoted to the period of her -heroine’s intimacy with Chopin and to the events surrounding this -agitated friendship, which largely fill the ten years precedent to ’48. -Our author is on all this ground overwhelmingly documented, and enlisted -though she is in the service of the more successful party to the -association—in the sense of Madame Sand’s having heartily outlived and -survived, not to say professionally and brilliantly “used,” it—the -great composer’s side of the story receives her conscientious attention. -Curious and interesting in many ways, these reflections of George Sand’s -middle life afford above all the most pointed illustration of the turn -of her personal genius, her aptitude for dealing with men, in the -intimate relation, exactly after the fashion in which numberless -celebrated men have contributed to their reputation, not to say crowned -their claim to superiority, by dealing with women. This being above all -the note of her career, with its vivid show of what such dealing could -mean for play of mind, for quickening of gift, for general experience -and, as we say, intellectual development, for determination of -philosophic bent and education of character and fertilisation of fancy, -we seem to catch the whole process in the fact, under the light here -supplied us, as we catch it nowhere else. It gives us in this -application endlessly much to consider—it is in itself so replete and -rounded a show; we at once recognise moreover how comparatively little -it matters that such works as “Lucrezia Floriani” and “Un Hiver à -Majorque” should have proceeded from it, cast into the shade as these -are, on our biographer’s evidence, by a picture of concomitant energies -still more attaching. It is not here by the force of her gift for rich -improvisation, beautiful as this was, that the extraordinary woman holds -us, but by the force of her ability to act herself out, given the -astounding quantities concerned in this self. That energy too, we feel, -was in a manner an improvisation—so closely allied somehow are both the -currents, the flow of literary composition admirably instinctive and -free, and the handling power, as we are constantly moved to call it, the -flow of a splendid intelligence all the while at its fullest -expressional ease, for the _actual_ situations created by her, for -whatever it might be that vitally confronted her. Of how to bring about, -or at the least find one’s self “in for,” an inordinate number of -situations, most of them of the last difficulty, and then deal with them -on the spot, in the narrowest quarters as it were, with an eloquence and -a plausibility that does them and one’s own nature at once a sort of -ideal justice, the demonstration here is the fullest—as of what it was -further to have her unfailing verbal as well as her unfailing moral -inspiration. What predicament could have been more of an hourly strain -for instance, as we cannot but suppose, than her finding herself -inevitably accompanied by her two children during the stay at Majorca -made by Chopin in ’38 under her protection? The victory of assurance and -of the handling power strikes us as none the less never an instant in -doubt, that being essentially but over the general _kind_ of -inconvenience or embarrassment involved for a mother and a friend in any -real consistency of attempt to carry things off male fashion. We do not, -it is true, see a man as a mother, any more than we easily see a woman -as a gentleman—and least of all perhaps in either case as an awkwardly -placed one; but we see Madame Sand as a sufficiently bustling, though -rather a rough and ready, father, a father accepting his charge and -doing the best possible under the circumstances; the truth being of -course that the circumstances never _can_ be, even at the worst, or -still at the best, the best for parental fondness, so awkward for him as -for a mother. - -What call, again, upon every sort of presence of mind could have been -livelier than the one made by the conditions attending and following the -marriage of young Solange Dudevant to the sculptor Clésinger in 1846, -when our heroine, summoned by the stress of events both to take -responsible action and to rise to synthetic expression, in a situation, -that is in presence of a series of demonstrations on her daughter’s -part, that we seem to find imaginable for a perfect dramatic adequacy -only in that particular home circle, fairly surpassed herself by her -capacity to “meet” everything, meet it much incommoded, yet undismayed, -unabashed and unconfuted, and have on it all, to her great advantage, -the always prodigious last word? The elements of this especial crisis -claim the more attention through its having been, as a test of her -powers, decidedly the most acute that she was in her whole course of -life to have traversed, more acute even, because more complicated, than -the great occasion of her rupture with Alfred de Musset, at Venice in -’35, on which such a wealth of contemplation and of ink has been -expended. Dramatic enough in their relation to each other certainly -those immortal circumstances, immortal so far as immortalised on either -side by genius and passion: Musset’s return, ravaged and alone, to -Paris; his companion’s transfer of her favour to Pietro Pagello, whom -she had called in to attend her friend medically in illness and whose -intervention, so far from simplifying the juncture, complicated it in a -fashion probably scarce paralleled in the history of the erotic -relation; her retention of Pagello under her protection for the rest of -her period in Venice; her marvellously domesticated state, in view of -the literary baggage, the collection of social standards, even taking -these but at what they were, and the general amplitude of personality, -that she brought into residence with her; the conveyance of Pagello to -Paris, on her own return, and the apparent signification to him at the -very gate that her countenance was then and there withdrawn. This was a -brilliant case for her—of coming off with flying colours; but it -strikes us as a mere preliminary flourish of the bow or rough practice -of scales compared to the high virtuosity which Madame Karénine’s new -material in respect to the latter imbroglio now enables us ever so -gratefully to estimate. The protagonist’s young children were in the -Venetian crisis quite off the scene, and on occasions subsequent to the -one we now glance at were old enough and, as we seem free to call it, -initiated enough not to solicit our particular concern for them; whereas -at the climax of the connection with Chopin they were of the perfect age -(which was the fresh marriageable in the case of Solange) to engage our -best anxiety, let alone their being of a salience of sensibility and -temper to leave no one of their aspects negligible. That their parent -should not have found herself conclusively “upset,” sickened beyond -repair, or otherwise morally bankrupt, on her having to recognise in her -daughter’s hideous perversity and depravity, as we learn these things to -have been, certain inevitabilities of consequence from the social air of -the maternal circle, is really a monumental fact in respect to our great -woman’s elasticity, her instinct for never abdicating by mere -discouragement. Here in especial we get the broad male note—it being so -exactly the manly part, and so very questionably the womanly, not to -have to draw from such imputations of responsibility too crushing a -self-consciousness. Of the extent and variety of danger to which the -enjoyment of a moral tone could be exposed and yet superbly survive -Madame Karénine’s pages give us the measure; they offer us in action the -very ideal of an exemplary triumph of character and mind over one of the -very highest tides of private embarrassment that it is well possible to -conceive. And it is no case of that _passive_ acceptance of deplorable -matters which has abounded in the history of women, even distinguished -ones, whether to the pathetic or to the merely scandalous effect; the -acceptance is active, constructive, almost exhilarated by the resources -of affirmation and argument that it has at its command. The whole -instance is sublime in its sort, thanks to the acuteness of _all_ its -illustrative sides, the intense interest of which loses nothing in the -hands of our chronicler; who perhaps, however, reaches off into the vast -vague of Chopin’s native affiliations and references with an energy with -which we find it a little difficult to keep step. - -In speaking as we have done of George Sand’s “use” of each twist of her -road as it came—a use which we now recognise as the very thriftiest—we -touch on that principle of vital health in her which made nothing that -might by the common measure have been called one of the graver dilemmas, -that is one of the checks to the continuity of life, really matter. What -this felicity most comes to in fact is that doing at any cost the work -that lies to one’s hand shines out again and yet again as the saving -secret of the soul. She affirmed her freedom right and left, but her -most characteristic assertion of it throughout was just in the luxury of -labour. The exhaustive account we at any rate now enjoy of the family -life surrounding her during the years here treated of and as she had -constituted it, the picture of all the queer conflicting sensibilities -engaged, and of the endless ramifications and reflections provided for -these, leaves us nothing to learn on that congested air, that -obstructive medium for the range of the higher tone, which the lady of -Nohant was so at her “objective” happiest, even if at her superficially, -that is her nervously, most flurried and depressed, in bravely -breasting. It is as if the conditions there and in Paris during these -several years had been consistently appointed by fate to throw into -relief the applications of a huge facility, a sort of universal -readiness, with a rare intelligence to back it. Absolutely nothing was -absent, or with all the data _could_ have been, that might have -bewildered a weaker genius into some lapse of eloquence or of industry; -everything that might have overwhelmed, or at least have disconcerted, -the worker who could throw off the splendid “Lucrezia Floriani” in the -thick of battle came upon her at once, inspiring her to show that on her -system of health and cheer, of experiential economy, as we may call it, -to be disconcerted was to be lost. To be lacerated and calumniated was -in comparison a trifle; with a certain sanity of reaction these things -became as naught, for the sanity of reaction was but the line of -consistency, the theory and attitude of sincerity kept at the highest -point. The artist in general, we need scarcely remind ourselves, is in a -high degree liable to arrive at the sense of what he may have seen or -felt, or said or suffered, by working it out as a subject, casting it -into some form prescribed by his art; but even here he in general knows -limits—unless perchance he be loose as Byron was loose, or possess such -a power of disconnection, such a clear stand-off of the intelligence, as -accompanied the experiments of Goethe. Our own experiments, we commonly -feel, are comparatively timid, just as we can scarce be said, in the -homely phrase, to serve our esthetic results of them hot and hot; we are -too conscious of a restrictive instinct about the conditions we may, in -like familiar language let ourselves in for, there being always the -question of what we should be able “intellectually” to show for them. -The life of the author of “Lucrezia Floriani” at its most active may -fairly be described as an immunity from restrictive instincts more ably -cultivated than any we know. Again and yet again we note the positive -premium so put upon the surrender to sensibility, and how, since the -latter was certain to spread to its maximum and to be admired in -proportion to its spread, some surrender was always to have been worth -while. “Lucrezia Floriani” ought to have been rather measurably -bad—lucidity, harmony, maturity, definiteness of sense, being so likely -to fail it in the troubled air in which it was born. Yet how can we do -less than applaud a composition throwing off as it goes such a passage -as the splendid group of pages cited by Madame Karénine from the -incident of the heroine’s causing herself to be rowed over to the island -in her Italian lake on that summer afternoon when the sense of her -situation had become sharp for her to anguish, in order to take stock of -the same without interruption and see, as we should say to-day, where -she is? The whole thing has the grand manner and the noblest eloquence, -reaching out as it does on the spot to the lesson and the moral of the -convulsions that have been prepared in the first instance with such -complacency, and illustrating in perfection the author’s faculty for the -clear re-emergence and the prompt or, as we may call it, the paying -reaction. The case is put for her here as into its final nutshell: you -may “live” exactly as you like, that is live in perfect security and -fertility, when such breadth of rendering awaits your simply sitting -down to it. Is it not true, we say, that without her breadth our -wonderful woman would have been “nowhere”?—whereas with it she is -effectively and indestructibly at any point of her field where she may -care to pretend to stand. - -This biographer, I must of course note, discriminates with delicacy -among her heroine’s felicities and mistakes, recognising that some of -the former, as a latent awkwardness in them developed, inevitably parted -with the signs that distinguished them from the latter; but I think we -feel, as the instances multiply, that no regret could have equalled for -us that of our not having the display vivid and complete. Once all the -elements of the scarce in advance imaginable were there it would have -been a pity that they should not offer us the show of their full -fruition. What more striking show, for example, than that, as recorded -by Madame Karénine in a footnote, the afflicted parent of Solange should -have lived to reproduce, or rather, as she would herself have said, to -“arrange” the girlish character and conduct of that young person, so -humiliating at the time to any near relation, let alone a mother, in the -novel of “Mademoiselle Merquem,” where the truth to the original facts -and the emulation of the graceless prime “effects” are such as our -author can vouch for? The fiction we name followed indeed after long -years, but during the lifetime of the displeasing daughter and with an -ease of reference to the past that may fairly strike us as the last word -of superiority to blighting association. It is quite as if the close and -amused matching of the character and its play in the novel with the -wretched old realities, those that had broken in their day upon the -scared maternal vision, had been a work of ingenuity attended with no -pang. The example is interesting as a measure of the possible victory of -time in a case where we might have supposed the one escape to have been -by forgetting. Madame Sand remembers to the point of -gratefully—gratefully as an artist—reconstituting; we in fact feel -her, as the irrepressible, the “healthy” artist, positively to enjoy so -doing. Thus it clearly defined itself for her in the fulness of time -that, humiliating, to use our expression, as the dreadful Solange might -have been and have incessantly remained, she herself had never in the -least consented to the stupidity or sterility of humiliation. So it -could be that the free mind and the free hand were ever at her service. -A beautiful indifferent agility, a power to cast out that was at least -proportioned to the power to take in, hangs about all this and meets us -in twenty connections. Who of her readers has forgotten the harmonious -dedication—her inveterate dedications have always, like her clear light -prefaces, the last grace—of “Jeanne,” so anciently, so romantically -readable, to her faithful Berrichon servant who sits spinning by the -fire? “Vous ne savez pas lire, ma paisible amie,” but that was not to -prevent the association of her name with the book, since both her own -daughter and the author’s are in happy possession of the art and will be -able to pass the entertainment on to her. This in itself is no more than -a sign of the writer’s fine democratic ease, which she carried at all -times to all lengths, and of her charming habit of speech; but it -somehow becomes further illustrational, testifying for the manner in -which genius, if it be but great enough, lives its life at small cost, -when we learn that after all, by a turn of the hand, the “paisible amie” -was, under provocation, bundled out of the house as if the beautiful -relation had not meant half of what appeared. Françoise and her presence -were dispensed with, but the exquisite lines remain, which we would not -be without for the world. - - - III - -The various situations determined for the more eminent of George Sand’s -intimate associates would always be independently interesting, thanks to -the intrinsic appeal of these characters and even without the light -reflected withal on the great agent herself; which is why poor Chopin’s -figuration in the events of the year 1847, as Madame Karénine so fully -reconstitutes them, is all that is wanted to point their almost -nightmare quality. Without something of a close view of them we fail of -a grasp of our heroine’s genius—her genius for keeping her head in deep -seas morally and reflectively above water, though but a glance at them -must suffice us for averting this loss. The old-world quality of drama, -which throughout so thickens and tones the air around her, finds -remarkable expression in the whole picture of the moment. Every -connection involved bristles like a conscious consequence, tells for all -it is worth, as we say, and the sinister complexity of reference—for -all the golden clearings-up that awaited it on the ideal plane—leaves -nothing to be desired. The great and odd sign of the complications and -convulsions, the alarms and excursions recorded, is that these are all -the more or less direct fruits of sensibility, which had primarily been -indulged in, under the doom of a preparation of them which no -preparation of anything else was to emulate, with a good faith fairly -touching in presence of the eventual ugliness. Madame Sand’s wonderful -mother, commemorated for us in “L’Histoire de ma Vie” with the truth -surely attaching in a like degree to no mother in all the literature of -so-called confession, had had for cousin a “fille entretenue” who had -married a mechanic. This Adèle Brault had had in the course of her -adventures a daughter in whom, as an unfortunate young relative, Madame -Dupin had taken an interest, introducing her to the heiress of Nohant, -who viewed her with favour—she appears to have been amiable and -commendable—and eventually associated her with her own children. She -was thus the third member of that illegitimate progeny with which the -Nohant scene was to have become familiar, George Sand’s natural brother -on her father’s side and her natural sister on her mother’s representing -this element from the earlier time on. The young Augustine, fugitive -from a circle still less edifying, was thus made a companion of the son -and the daughter of the house, and was especially held to compare with -the latter to her great advantage in the matter of character, docility -and temper. These young persons formed, as it were, with his more -distinguished friend, the virtual family of Chopin during those years of -specifically qualified domestication which affect us as only less of a -mystification to taste than that phase of the unrestricted which had -immediately preceded them. Hence a tangled tissue of relations within -the circle that became, as it strikes us, indescribable for difficulty -and “delicacy,” not to say for the perfection of their impracticability, -and as to which the great point is that Madame Sand’s having taken them -so robustly for granted throws upon her temperamental genius a more -direct light than any other. The whole case belongs doubtless even more -to the hapless history of Chopin himself than to that of his terrible -friend—terrible for her power to flourish in conditions sooner or later -fatal to weaker vessels; but is in addition to this one of the most -striking illustrations possible of that view or theory of social life -handed over to the reactions of sensibility almost alone which, while -ever so little the ideal of the Anglo-Saxon world, has largely governed -the manners of its sister societies. It has been our view, very -emphatically, in general, that the sane and active social body—or, for -that matter, the sane and active individual, addressed to the natural -business of life—goes wrongly about it to _encourage_ sensibility, or -to do anything on the whole but treat it as of no prime importance; the -traps it may lay for us, however, being really of the fewest in a race -to which the very imagination of it may be said, I think, to have been -comparatively denied. The imagination of it sat irremovably, on the -other hand, and as a matter of course, at the Nohant fireside; where -indeed we find the play and the ravage chiefly interesting through our -thus seeing the delicate Chopin, whose semi-smothered appeal remains -peculiarly pathetic, all helpless and foredoomed at the centre of the -whirl. Nothing again strikes us more in the connection than the familiar -truth that interesting persons make everything that concerns them -interesting, or seldom fail to redeem from what might in another air -seem but meanness and vanity even their most compromised states and -their greatest wastes of value. Every one in the particular Nohant drama -here exposed loses by the exposure—so far as loss could be predicated -of amounts which, in general, excepting the said sensibility, were so -scant among them; every one, that is, save the ruling spirit of all, -with the extraordinary mark in her of the practical defiance of waste -and of her inevitable enrichment, for our measure, as by reflection from -the surrounding shrinkage. One of the oddest aspects of the scene is -also one of the wretchedest, but the oddity makes it interesting, by the -law I just glanced at, in spite of its vulgar side. How could it not be -interesting, we ask as we read, to feel that Chopin, though far from the -one man, was the one gentleman of the association, the finest set of -nerves and scruples, and yet to see how little that availed him, in -exasperated reactions, against mistakes of perverted sympathy? It is -relevant in a high degree to our view of his great protectress as -reducible at her best to male terms that she herself in this very light -fell short, missed the ideal safeguard which for her friend had been -preinvolved—as of course may be the peril, ever, with the creature so -transmuted, and as is so strikingly exemplified, in the pages before us, -when Madame Karénine ingenuously gives us chapter and verse for her -heroine’s so unqualified demolition of the person of Madame d’Agoult, -devotee of Liszt, mother to be, by that token, of Richard Wagner’s -second wife, and sometime intimate of the author of “Isidora,” in which -fiction we are shown the parody perpetrated. If women rend each other on -occasion with sharper talons than seem to belong on the whole to the -male hand, however intendingly applied, we find ourselves reflect -parenthetically that the loss of this advantage may well be a matter for -them to consider when the new approximation is the issue. - -The great sign of the Nohant circle on all this showing, at any rate, is -the intense personalism, as we may call it, reigning there, or in other -words the vivacity, the acuity and irritability of the personal -relations—which flourished so largely, we at the same time feel, by -reason of the general gift for expression, that gift to which we owe the -general superiority of every letter, from it scarce matters whom, laid -under contribution by our author. How could people not feel with acuity -when they could, when they had to, write with such point and such -specific intelligence?—just indeed as one asks how letters could fail -to remain at such a level among them when they incessantly generated -choice matter for expression. Madame Sand herself is of course on this -ground easily the most admirable, as we have seen; but every one “knows -how” to write, and does it well in proportion as the matter in hand most -demands and most rewards proper saying. Much of all this stuff of -history seems indeed to have been susceptible of any amount of force of -statement; yet we note all the while how in the case of the great -mistress of the pen at least some shade of intrinsic beauty attends even -the presentation of quite abominable facts. We can only see it as -abominable, at least, so long as we have Madame Sand’s words—which are -somehow a different thing from her word—for it, that Chopin had from -the first “sided” with the atrocious Solange in that play of her genius -which is characterised by our chronicler as wickedness for the sake of -wickedness, as art for the sake of art, without other logic or other -cause. “Once married,” says Madame Karénine, “she made a double use of -this wickedness. She had always hated Augustine; she wished, one doesn’t -know why, to break off her marriage, and by calumnies and insinuations -she succeeded. Then angry with her mother she avenged herself on her as -well by further calumnies. Thereupon took place at Nohant such events -that”—that in fine we stop before them with this preliminary shudder. -The cross-currents of violence among them would take more keeping apart -than we have time for, the more that everything comes back, for -interest, to the intrinsic weight of the tone of the principal sufferer -from them—as we see her, as we wouldn’t for the world not see her, in -spite of the fact that Chopin was to succumb scarce more than a year -later to multiplied lacerations, and that she was to override and -reproduce and pre-appointedly flourish for long years after. If it is -interesting, as I have pronounced it, that Chopin, again, should have -consented to be of the opinion of Solange that the relations between her -brother Maurice and the hapless Augustine were of the last impropriety, -I fear I can account no better for this than by our sense that the more -the _genius loci_ has to feed her full tone the more our faith in it, as -such a fine thing in itself, is justified. Almost immediately after the -precipitated marriage of the daughter of the house has taken place, the -Clésinger couple, avid and insolent, of a breadth of old time impudence -in fact of which our paler day has lost the pattern, are back on the -mother’s hands, to the effect of a vividest picture of Maurice well-nigh -in a death-grapple with his apparently quite monstrous “bounder” of a -brother-in-law, a picture that further gives us Madame Sand herself -smiting Clésinger in the face and receiving from him a blow in the -breast, while Solange “coldly,” with an iciness indeed peculiarly her -own, fans the rage and approves her husband’s assault, and while the -divine composer, though for that moment much in the background, approves -the wondrous approval. He still approves, to all appearance, the -daughter’s interpretation of the mother’s wish to “get rid” of him as -the result of an amorous design on the latter’s part in respect of a -young man lately introduced to the circle as Maurice’s friend and for -the intimate relation with whom it is thus desirable that the coast -shall be made clear. How else than through no fewer consistencies of the -unedifying on the part of these provokers of the expressional reaction -should we have come by innumerable fine epistolary passages, passages -constituting in themselves verily such adornments of the tale, such -notes in the scale of all the damaged dignity redressed, that we should -be morally the poorer without them? One of the vividest glimpses indeed -is not in a letter but in a few lines from “L’Histoire de ma Vie,” the -composition of which was begun toward the end of this period and while -its shadow still hung about—early in life for a projected -autobiography, inasmuch as the author had not then reached her -forty-fifth year. Chopin at work, improvising and composing, was apt to -become a prey to doubts and depressions, so that there were times when -to break in upon these was to render him a service. - - But it was not always possible to induce him to leave the piano, - often so much more his torment than his joy, and he began - gradually to resent my proposing he should do so. I never - ventured on these occasions to insist. Chopin in displeasure was - appalling, and as with me he always controlled himself it was as - if he might die of suffocation. - -It is a vision of the possibilities of vibration in such organisms that -does in fact appal, and with the clash of vibrations, those both of -genius and of the general less sanctioned sensibility, the air must have -more than sufficiently resounded. Some eight years after the beginning -of their friendship and the year after the final complete break in it -she writes to Madame Pauline Viardot: - - Do you see Chopin? Tell me about his health. I have been unable - to repay his fury and his hatred by hatred and fury. I think of - him as of a sick, embittered, bewildered child. I saw much of - Solange in Paris, the letter goes on, and made her my constant - occupation, but without finding anything but a stone in the - place of her heart. I have taken up my work again while waiting - for the tide to carry me elsewhere. - -All the author’s “authority” is in these few words, and in none more -than in the glance at the work and the tide. The work and the tide rose -ever as high as she would to float her, and wherever we look there is -always the authority. “I find Chopin _magnificent_,” she had already -written from the thick of the fray, “to keep seeing, frequenting and -approving Clésinger, who struck me because I snatched from his hands the -hammer he had raised upon Maurice—Chopin whom every one talks of as my -most faithful and devoted friend.” Well indeed may our biographer have -put it that from a certain date in May 1847 “the two _Leitmotive_ which -might have been called in the terms of Wagner the _Leitmotif_ of -soreness and the _Leitmotif_ of despair—Chopin, Solange—sound together -now in fusion, now in a mutual grip, now simply side by side, in all -Madame Sand’s unpublished letters and in the few (of the moment) that -have been published. A little later a third joins in—Augustine Brault, -a motive narrowly and tragically linked to the _basso obligato_ of -Solange.” To meet such a passage as the following under our heroine’s -hand again is to feel the whole temper of intercourse implied slip -straight out of our analytic grasp. The allusion is to Chopin and to the -“defection” of which he had been guilty, to her view, at the time when -it had been most important that she might count on him. What we have -first, as outsiders, to swallow down, as it were, is the state of -things, the hysteric pitch of family life, in which any ideal of -reticence, any principle, as we know it, of minding one’s business, for -mere dignity’s sake if for none other, had undergone such collapse. - - I grant you I am not sorry that he has withdrawn from me the - government of his life, for which both he and his friends wanted - to make me responsible in so much too absolute a fashion. His - temper kept growing in asperity, so that it had come to his - constantly blowing me up, from spite, ill-humour and jealousy, - in presence of my friends and my children. Solange made use of - it with the astuteness that belongs to her, while Maurice began - to give way to indignation. Knowing and seeing _la chasteté de - nos rapports_, he saw also that the poor sick soul took up, - without _wanting to_ and perhaps without being able to help it, - the attitude of the lover, the husband, the proprietor of my - thoughts and actions. He was on the point of breaking out and - telling him to his face that he was making me play, at - forty-three years of age, a ridiculous part, and that it was an - abuse of my kindness, my patience, and my pity for his nervous - morbid state. A few months more, a few days perhaps, of this - situation, and an impossible frightful struggle would have - broken out between them. Foreseeing the storm, I took advantage - of Chopin’s predilection for Solange and left him to sulk, - without an effort to bring him round. We have not for three - months exchanged a word in writing, and I don’t know how such a - cooling-off will end. - -She develops the picture of the extravagance of his sick irritability; -she accepts with indifference the certainty that his friends will accuse -her of having cast him out to take a lover; the one thing she “minds” is -the force of evil in her daughter, who is the centre of all the -treachery. “She will come back to me when she needs me, that I know. But -her return will be neither tender nor consoling.” Therefore it is when -at the beginning of the winter of this same dreadful year she throws off -the free rich summary of what she has been through in the letter to M. -Charles Poncy already published in her Correspondence we are swept into -the current of sympathy and admiration. The preceding months had been -the heaviest and most painful of her life. - - I all but broke down under them utterly, though I had for long - seen them coming. But you know how one is not always overhung by - the evil portent, however clear one may read it—there are days, - weeks, even whole months, when one lives on illusion and fondly - hopes to divert the blow that threatens. It is always at last - the most probable ill that surprises us unarmed and unprepared. - To this explosion of unhappy underground germs joined themselves - sundry contributive matters, bitter things too and quite - unexpected; so that I am broken by grief in body and soul. I - believe my grief incurable, for I never succeed in throwing it - off for a few hours without its coming upon me again during the - next in greater force and gloom. I nevertheless struggle against - it without respite, and if I don’t hope for a victory which - would have to consist of not feeling at all, at least I have - reached that of still bearing with life, of even scarcely - feeling ill, of having recovered my taste for work and of not - showing my distress. I have got back outside calm and cheer, - which are so necessary for others, and everything in my life - seems to go on well. - -We had already become aware, through commemorations previous to the -present, of that first or innermost line of defence residing in George -Sand’s splendid mastery of the letter, the gift that was always so to -assure her, on every issue, the enjoyment of the first chance with -posterity. The mere cerebral and manual activity represented by the -quantity no less than the quality of her outflow through the post at a -season when her engagements were most pressing and her anxieties of -every sort most cruel is justly qualified by Madame Karénine as -astounding; the new letters here given to the world heaping up the -exhibition and testifying even beyond the finest of those gathered in -after the writer’s death—the mutilations, suppressions and other -freedoms then used, for that matter, being now exposed. If no plot of -her most bustling fiction ever thickened at the rate at which those -agitations of her inner circle at which we have glanced multiplied upon -her hands through the later ’forties, so we are tempted to find her -rather less in possession of her great _moyens_ when handling the -artificial presentation than when handling what we may call the natural. -It is not too much to say that the long letter addressed to the cynical -Solange in April ’52, and which these pages give us _in extenso_, would -have made the fortune of any mere interesting “story” in which one of -the characters might have been presented as writing it. It is a document -of the highest psychological value and a practical summary of all the -elements of the writer’s genius, of all her indefeasible advantages; it -is verily the gem of her biographer’s collection. Taken in connection -with a copious communication to her son, of the previous year, on the -subject of his sister’s character and vices, and of their common -experience of these, it offers, in its ease of movement, its -extraordinary frankness and lucidity, its splendid apprehension and -interpretation of realities, its state, as it were, of saturation with -these, exactly the kind of interest for which her novels were held -remarkable, but in a degree even above their maximum. Such a letter is -an effusion of the highest price; none of a weight so baffling to -estimation was probably ever inspired in a mother by solicitude for a -clever daughter’s possibilities. Never surely had an accomplished -daughter laid under such contribution a mother of high culture; never -had such remarkable and pertinent things had to flow from such a source; -never in fine was so urgent an occasion so admirably, so inimitably -risen to. Marvellous through it all is the way in which, while a common -recognition of the “facts of life,” as between two perfectly intelligent -men of the world, gives the whole diapason, the abdication of moral -authority and of the rights of wisdom never takes place. The tone is a -high implication of the moral advantages that Solange had inveterately -enjoyed and had decided none the less to avail herself of so little; -which advantages we absolutely believe in as we read—_there_ is the -prodigious part: such an education of the soul, and in fact of every -faculty, such a claim for the irreproachable, it would fairly seem, do -we feel any association with the great fluent artist, in whatever -conditions taking place, inevitably, necessarily to have been. If we put -ourselves questions we yet wave away doubts, and with whatever remnants -of prejudice the writer’s last word may often have to clash, our own is -that there is nothing for grand final rightness like a sufficiently -_general_ humanity—when a particularly beautiful voice happens to serve -it. - - - - - GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO - 1902 - - -The great feast-days of all, for the restless critic, are those much -interspaced occasions of his really meeting a “case,” as he soon enough -learns to call, for his convenience and assistance, any supremely -contributive or determinant party to the critical question. These are -recognitions that make up for many dull hours and dry contacts, many a -thankless, a disconcerted gaze into faces that have proved -expressionless. Always looking, always hoping for his happiest chance, -the inquirer into the reasons of things—by which I mean especially into -the reasons of books—so often misses it, so often wastes his steps and -withdraws his confidence, that he inevitably works out for himself, -sooner or later, some handy principle of recognition. It may be a rough -thing, a mere home-made tool of his trade, but it serves his purpose if -it keeps him from beginning with mistakes. He becomes able to note in -its light the signs and marks of the possible precious identity, able to -weigh with some exactitude the appearances that make for its reality. He -ends, through much expenditure of patience, by seeing when, how, why, -the “case” announces and presents itself, and he perhaps even feels that -failure and felicity have worked together to produce in him a sense for -it that may at last be trusted as an instinct. He thus arrives at a view -of all the candidates, frequently interesting enough, who fall short of -the effective title, because he has at need, perhaps even from afar, -scented along the wind the strongest member of the herd. He may perhaps -not always be able to give us the grounds of his certainty, but he is at -least never without knowing it in presence of one of the full-blown -products that are the joy of the analyst. He recognises as well how the -state of being full-blown comes above all from the achievement of -consistency, of that last consistency which springs from the -unrestricted enjoyment of freedom. - -Many of us will doubtless not have forgotten how we were witnesses a -certain number of years since to a season and a society that had found -themselves of a sudden roused, as from some deep drugged sleep, to the -conception of the “esthetic” law of life; in consequence of which this -happy thought had begun to receive the honours of a lively appetite and -an eager curiosity, but was at the same time surrounded and manipulated -by as many different kinds of inexpertness as probably ever huddled -together on a single pretext. The spectacle was strange and finally was -wearisome, for the simple reason that the principle in question, once it -was proclaimed—a principle not easily formulated, but which we may -conveniently speak of as that of beauty at any price, beauty appealing -alike to the senses and to the mind—was never felt to fall into its -place as really adopted and efficient. It remained for us a queer -high-flavoured fruit from overseas, grown under another sun than ours, -passed round and solemnly partaken of at banquets organised to try it, -but not found on the whole really to agree with us, not proving -thoroughly digestible. It brought with it no repose, brought with it -only agitation. We were not really, not fully convinced, for the state -of conviction is quiet. This was to have been the state itself—that is -the state of mind achieved and established—in which we were to know -ugliness no more, to make the esthetic consciousness feel at home with -us, or learn ourselves at any rate to feel at home with _it_. That would -have been the reign of peace, the supreme beatitude; but stability -continued to elude us. We had mustered a hundred good reasons for it, -yet the reasons but lighted up our desert. They failed to flower into a -single concrete esthetic “type.” One authentic, one masterful specimen -would have done wonders for us, would at least have assuaged our -curiosity. But we were to be left till lately with our curiosity on our -hands. - -This is a yearning, however, that Signor D’Annunzio may at last strike -us as supremely formed to gratify; so promptly we find in him as a -literary figure the highest expression of the reality that our own -conditions were to fail of making possible. He has immediately the value -of giving us by his mere logical unfolding the measure of our -shortcomings in the same direction, that of our timidities and penuries -and failures. He throws a straighter and more inevitable light on the -esthetic consciousness than has, to my sense, in our time, reached it -from any other quarter; and there is many a mystery that properly -interrogated he may help to clear up for us, many an explanation of our -misadventure that—as I have glanced at it—he may give. He starts with -the immense advantage of enjoying the invoked boon by grace and not by -effort, of claiming it under another title than the sweat of his brow -and the aspiration of his culture. He testifies to the influence of -things that have had time to get themselves taken for granted. Beauty at -any price is an old story to him; art and form and style as the aim of -the superior life are a matter of course; and it may be said of him, I -think, that, thanks to these transmitted and implanted instincts and -aptitudes, his individual development begins where the struggle of the -mere earnest questioner ends. Signor D’Annunzio is earnest in his way, -quite extraordinarily—which is a feature of his physiognomy that we -shall presently come to and about which there will be something to say; -but we feel him all the while in such secure possession of his heritage -of favouring circumstance that his sense of intellectual responsibility -is almost out of proportion. This is one of his interesting special -marks, the manner in which the play of the esthetic instinct in him -takes on, for positive extravagance and as a last refinement of freedom, -the crown of solicitude and anxiety. Such things but make with him for -ornament and parade; they are his tribute to civility; the essence of -the matter is meanwhile in his blood and his bones. No mistake was -possible from the first as to his being of the inner literary camp—a -new form altogether of perceptive and expressive energy; the question -was settled by the intensity and variety, to say nothing of the -precocity, of his early poetic production. - -Born at Pescara, in the Regno, the old kingdom of Naples, “toward” 1863, -as I find noted by a cautious biographer, he had while scarce out of his -teens allowed his lyric genius full opportunity of scandalising even the -moderately austere. He defined himself betimes very much as he was to -remain, a rare imagination, a poetic, an artistic intelligence of -extraordinary range and fineness concentrated almost wholly on the life -of the senses. For the critic who simplifies a little to state clearly, -the only ideas he urges upon us are the erotic and the plastic, which -have for him about an equal intensity, or of which it would be doubtless -more correct to say that he makes them interchangeable faces of the same -figure. He began his career by playing with them together in verse, to -innumerable light tunes and with an extraordinary general effect of -curiosity and brilliancy. He has continued still more strikingly to play -with them in prose; they have remained the substance of his intellectual -furniture. It is of his prose only, however, that, leaving aside the -Intermezzo, L’Isottèo, La Chimera, Odi Navali and other such matters, I -propose to speak, the subject being of itself ample for one occasion. -His five novels and his four plays have extended his fame; they suggest -by themselves as many observations as we shall have space for. The group -of productions, as the literary industry proceeds among us to-day, is -not large, but we may doubt if a talent and a temperament, if indeed a -whole “view of life,” ever built themselves up as vividly for the reader -out of so few blocks. The writer is even yet enviably young; but this -solidity of his literary image, as of something already seated on time -and accumulation, makes him a rare example. Precocity is somehow an -inadequate name for it, as precocity seldom gets away from the element -of promise, and it is not exactly promise that blooms in the hard -maturity of such a performance as “The Triumph of Death.” There are -certain expressions of experience, of the experience of the whole man, -that are like final milestones, milestones for his possible fertility if -not for his possible dexterity; a truth that has not indeed prevented -“Il Fuoco,” with its doubtless still ampler finality, from following the -work just mentioned. And we have had particularly before us, in verse, I -must add, “Francesca da Rimini,” with the great impression a great -actress has enabled this drama to make. - -Only I must immediately in this connection also add that Signor -D’Annunzio’s plays are, beside his novels, of decidedly minor weight; -testifying abundantly to his style, his romantic sense and his command -of images, but standing in spite of their eloquence only for half of his -talent, largely as he yet appears in “Il Fuoco” to announce himself by -implication as an intending, indeed as a pre-eminent dramatist. The -example is interesting when we catch in the fact the opportunity for -comparing with the last closeness the capacity of the two rival -canvases, as they become for the occasion, on which the picture of life -may be painted. The closeness is never so great, the comparison never so -pertinent, as when the separate efforts are but different phases of the -same talent. It is not at any rate under this juxtaposition that the -infinitely greater amplitude of portrayal resident in the novel strikes -us least. It in fact strikes us the more, in this quarter, for Signor -D’Annunzio, that his plays have been with one exception successes. We -must none the less take “Francesca” but for a success of curiosity; on -the part of the author I mean even more than on the part of the public. -It is primarily a pictorial and ingenious thing and, as a picture of -passion, takes, in the total collection, despite its felicities of -surface and arrangement, distinctly a “back seat.” Scarcely less than -its companions it overflows with the writer’s plenitude of verbal -expression, thanks to which, largely, the series will always prompt a -curiosity and even a tenderness in any reader interested precisely in -this momentous question of “style in a play”—interested in particular -to learn by what esthetic chemistry a play would as a work of art -propose to eschew it. It is in any such connection so inexpugnable that -we have only to be cheated of it in one place to feel the subject cry -aloud for it, like a sick man forsaken, in another. - -I may mention at all events the slightly perverse fact that, thanks, on -this side, to the highest watermark of translation, Signor D’Annunzio -makes his best appeal to the English public as a dramatist. Of each of -the three English versions of other examples of his work whose titles -are inscribed at the beginning of these remarks it may be said that they -are adequate and respectable considering the great difficulty -encountered. The author’s highest good fortune has nevertheless been at -the hands of his French interpreter, who has managed to keep constantly -close to him—allowing for an occasional inconsequent failure of courage -when the directness of the original _brave l’honnêteté_—and yet to -achieve a tone not less idiomatic, and above all not less marked by -“authority,” than his own. Mr. Arthur Symons, among ourselves, however, -has rendered the somewhat insistent eloquence of “La Gioconda” and the -intricate and difficult verse of “Francesca” with all due sympathy, and -in the latter case especially—a highly arduous task—with remarkably -patient skill. It is not his fault, doubtless, if the feet of his -English text strike us as moving with less freedom than those of his -original; such being the hard price paid always by the translator who -tries for correspondence from step to step, tries for an identical -order. Even less is he responsible for its coming still more home to us -in a translation that the meagre anecdote here furnishing the subject, -and on which the large superstructure rests, does not really lend itself -to those developments that make a full or an interesting tragic -complexity. Behind the glamour of its immense literary association the -subject of “Francesca” is for purposes of essential, of enlarged -exhibition delusive and “short.” - -These, however, are for the moment side-issues; what is more relevant is -the stride taken by our author’s early progress in his first novel and -his second, “Il Piacere” and “L’Innocente”; a pair from the freshness, -the direct young energy of which he was, for some of his admirers, too -promptly and to markedly to decline. We may take it as characteristic of -the intensity of the literary life in him that his brief career falls -already thus into periods and supplies a quantity of history sufficient -for those differences among students by which the dignity of history -appears mainly to be preserved. The nature of his prime inspiration I -have already glanced at; and we are helped to a characterisation if I -say that the famous enthroned “beauty” which operates here, so straight, -as the great obsession, is not in any perceptible degree moral beauty. -It would be difficult perhaps to find elsewhere in the same compass so -much expression of the personal life resting so little on any picture of -the personal character and the personal will. It is not that Signor -D’Annunzio has not more than once pushed his furrow in this latter -direction; but nothing is exactly more interesting, as we shall see, -than the seemingly inevitable way in which the attempt falls short. - -“Il Piacere,” the first in date of the five tales, has, though with -imperfections, the merit of giving us strongly at the outset the -author’s scale and range of view, and of so constituting a sort of -prophetic summary of his elements. All that is done in the later things -is more or less done here, and nothing is absent here that we are not -afterwards also to miss. I propose, however, that it shall not be -prematurely a question with us of what we miss; no intelligible -statement of which, for that matter, in such considerations as these, is -ever possible till there has been some adequate statement of what we -find. Count Andrea Sperelli is a young man who pays, pays heavily, as we -take it that we are to understand, for an unbridled surrender to the -life of the senses; whereby it is primarily a picture of that life that -the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately, as quite -monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs and that -finally is to be held, we suppose, to engulf him; and it is a tribute to -the truth with which his endowment is presented that we should scarce -know where else to look for so complete and convincing an account of -such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely more -copious, but his autobiography is cheap loose journalism compared with -the directed, finely-condensed iridescent epic of Count Andrea. - -This young man’s years have run but half their course from twenty to -thirty when he meets and becomes entangled with a woman more infernally -expert even than himself in the matters in which he is most expert—and -he is given us as a miracle of social and intellectual -accomplishment—the effect of whom is fatally to pervert and poison his -imagination. As his imagination is applied exclusively to the -employments of “love,” this means, for him, a frustration of all -happiness, all comfortable consistency, in subsequent relations of the -same order. The author’s view—this is fundamental—is all of a world in -which relations of any other order whatever mainly fail to offer -themselves in any attractive form. Andrea Sperelli, loving, -accordingly—in the manner in which D’Annunzio’s young men love and to -which we must specifically return—a woman of good faith, a woman as -different as possible from the creature of evil communications, finds -the vessel of his spirit itself so infected and disqualified that it -falsifies and dries up everything that passes through it. The idea that -has virtually determined the situation appears in fact to be that the -hero _would_ have loved in another manner, or would at least have wished -to, but that he had too promptly put any such fortune, so far as his -capacity is concerned, out of court. We have our reasons, presently -manifest, for doubting the possibility itself; but the theory has -nevertheless given its direction to the fable. - -For the rest the author’s three sharpest signs are already unmistakable: -first his rare notation of states of excited sensibility; second his -splendid visual sense, the quick generosity of his response to the -message, as we nowadays say, of aspects and appearances, to the beauty -of places and things; third his ample and exquisite style, his curious, -various, inquisitive, always active employment of language as a means of -communication and representation. So close is the marriage between his -power of “rendering,” in the light of the imagination, and whatever he -sees and feels, that we should much mislead in speaking of his manner as -a thing distinct from the matter submitted to it. The fusion is complete -and admirable, so that, though his work is nothing if not “literary,” we -see at no point of it where literature or where life begins or ends: we -swallow our successive morsels with as little question as we swallow -food that has by proper preparation been reduced to singleness of -savour. It is brought home to us afresh that there is no complete -creation without style any more than there is complete music without -sound; also that when language becomes as closely applied and impressed -a thing as for the most part in the volumes before us the fact of -artistic creation is registered at a stroke. It is never more present -than in the thick-sown illustrative images and figures that fairly bloom -under D’Annunzio’s hand. I find examples in “Il Piacere,” as elsewhere, -by simply turning the pages. “His will”—of the hero’s -weakness—“useless as a sword of base temper hung at the side of a -drunkard or a dullard.” Or of his own southern land in September: “I -scarce know why, looking at the country in this season, I always think -of some beautiful woman after childbirth, who lies back in her white -bed, smiling with a pale astonished inextinguishable smile.” Or the -incision of this: “Where for him now were those unclean short-lived -loves that left in the mouth the strange acidity of fruit cut with a -steel knife?” Or the felicity of the following, of a southern night seen -and felt from the terrace of a villa. “Clear meteors at intervals -streaked the motionless air, running over it as lightly and silently as -drops of water on a crystal pane.” “The sails on the sea,” he says of -the same look-out by day, “were as pious and numberless as the wings of -cherubim on the gold grounds of old Giottesque panels.” - -But it is above all here for two things that his faculty is admirable; -one of them his making us feel through the windows of his situation, or -the gaps, as it were, of his flowering wood, the golden presence of -Rome, the charm that appeals to him as if he were one of the pilgrims -from afar, save that he reproduces it with an authority in which, as we -have seen, the pilgrims from afar have mainly been deficient. The other -is the whole category of the phenomena of “passion,” as passion prevails -between his men and his women—and scarcely anything else prevails; the -states of feeling, of ecstasy and suffering engendered, the play of -sensibility from end to end of the scale. In this direction he has left -no dropped stitches for any worker of like tapestries to pick up. We -shall here have made out that many of his “values” are much to be -contested, but that where they are true they are as fresh as -discoveries; witness the passage where Sperelli, driving back to Rome -after a steeplechase in which he has been at the supreme moment worsted, -meets nothing that does not play with significance into his vision and -act with force on his nerves. He has before the race had “words,” almost -blows, on the subject of one of the ladies present, with one of the -other riders, of which the result is that they are to send each other -their seconds; but the omens are not for his adversary, in spite of the -latter’s success on the course. - - From the mail-coach, on the return, he overtook the flight - toward Rome of Giannetto Rutolo, seated in a small two-wheeled - trap, behind the quick trot of a great roan, over whom he bent - with tight reins, holding his head down and his cigar in his - teeth, heedless of the attempts of policemen to keep him in - line. Rome, in the distance, stood up dark against a zone of - light as yellow as sulphur; and the statues crowning St. John - Lateran looked huge, above the zone, in their violet sky. _Then - it was that Andrea fully knew the pain he was making another - soul suffer._ - -Nothing could be more characteristic of the writer than the way what has -preceded flowers into that last reality; and equally in his best manner, -doubtless, is such a passage as the following from the same volume, -which treats of the hero’s first visit to the sinister great lady whose -influence on his soul and his senses is to become as the trail of a -serpent. She receives him, after their first accidental meeting, with -extraordinary promptitude and the last intimacy, receives him in the -depths of a great Roman palace which the author, with a failure of taste -that is, unfortunately for him, on ground of this sort, systematic, -makes a point of naming. “Then they ceased to speak. Each felt the -presence of the other flow and mingle with his own, with her own, very -blood; till it was _her_ blood at last that seemed to have become his -life, and his that seemed to have become hers. The room grew larger in -the deep silence; the crucifix of Guido Reni made the shade of the -canopy and curtains religious; the rumour of the city came to them like -the murmur of some far-away flood.” Or take for an instance of the -writer’s way of showing the consciousness as a full, mixed cup, of -touching us ourselves with the mystery at work in his characters, the -description of the young man’s leaving the princely apartments in -question after the initiation vouchsafed to him. He has found the great -lady ill in bed, with remedies and medicine-bottles at her side, but not -too ill, as we have seen, to make him welcome. “Farewell,” she has said. -“Love me! Remember!” - - It seemed to him, crossing the threshold again, that he heard - behind him a burst of sobs. But he went on, a little uncertain, - wavering like a man who sees imperfectly. The odour of the - chloroform clung to his sense like some fume of intoxication; - but at each step something intimate passed away from him, - wasting itself in the air, so that, impulsively, instinctively, - he would have kept himself as he was, have closed himself in, - have wrapped himself up to prevent the dispersion. The rooms in - front of him were deserted and dumb. At one of the doors - “Mademoiselle” appeared, with no sound of steps, with no rustle - of skirts, standing there like a ghost. “This way, signor conte. - You won’t find it.” She had an ambiguous, irritating smile, and - her curiosity made her grey eyes more piercing. Andrea said - nothing. The woman’s presence again disconcerted and troubled - him, affected him with a vague repugnance, stirred indeed his - wrath. - -Even the best things suffer by detachment from their context; but so it -is that we are in _possession_ of the young man’s exit, so it is that -the act interests us. Fully announced from the first, among these -things, was D’Annunzio’s signal gift of never approaching the thing -particularly to be done, the thing that so presents itself to the -painter, without consummately doing it. Each of his volumes offers thus -its little gallery of episodes that stand out like the larger pearls -occurring at intervals on a string of beads. The steeplechase in “Il -Piacere,” the auction sale of precious trinkets in Via Sistina on the -wet afternoon, the morning in the garden at Schifanoia, by the southern -sea, when Donna Maria, the new revelation, first comes down to Andrea, -who awaits her there in the languor of convalescence from the almost -fatal wound received in the duel of which the altercation on the -race-course has been the issue: the manner of such things as these has -an extraordinary completeness of beauty. But they are, like similar -pages in “Il Trionfo” and “Il Fuoco,” not things for adequate citation, -not things that lend themselves as some of the briefer felicities. Donna -Maria, on the September night at Schifanoia, has been playing for Andrea -and their hostess certain old quaint gavottes and toccatas. - - It lived again wondrously beneath her fingers, the - eighteenth-century music, so melancholy in its - dance-tunes—tunes that might have been composed to be danced, - on languid afternoons of some St. Martin’s summer, in a deserted - park, among hushed fountains and pedestals without their - statues, over carpets of dead roses, by pairs of lovers soon to - love no more. - -Autobiographic in form, “L’Innocente” sticks closely to its theme, and -though the form is on the whole a disadvantage to it the texture is -admirably close. The question is of nothing less than a young husband’s -relation to the illegitimate child of his wife, born confessedly as -such, and so born, marvellous to say, in spite of the circumstance that -the wife adores him, and of the fact that, though long grossly, brutally -false to her, he also adores his wife. To state these data is -sufficiently to express the demand truly made by them for superiority of -treatment; they require certainly two or three almost impossible -postulates. But we of course never play the fair critical game with an -author, never get into relation with him at all, unless we grant him his -postulates. His subject is what is given him—given him by influences, -by a process, with which we have nothing to do; since what art, what -revelation, can ever really make such a mystery, such a passage in the -private life of the intellect, adequately traceable for us? His -treatment of it, on the other hand, is what he actively gives; and it is -with what he gives that we are critically concerned. If there is nothing -in him that effectually induces us to make the postulate, he is then -empty for us altogether, and the sooner we have done with him the -better; little as the truly curious critic enjoys, as a general thing, -having publicly to throw up the sponge. - -Tullio Hermil, who finally compasses the death of the little “innocent,” -the small intruder whose presence in the family life has become too -intolerable, retraces with a master’s hand each step of the process by -which he has arrived at this sole issue. Save that his wife dumbly -divines and accepts it his perpetration of the deed is not suspected, -and we take the secret confession of which the book consists as made for -the relief and justification of his conscience. The action all goes -forward in that sphere of exasperated sensibility which Signor -D’Annunzio has made his own so triumphantly that other story-tellers -strike us in comparison as remaining at the door of the inner precinct, -as listening there but to catch an occasional faint sound, while he -alone is well within and moving through the place as its master. The -sensibility has again in itself to be qualified; the exasperation of -feeling is ever the essence of the intercourse of some man with some -woman who has reduced him, as in “L’Innocente” and in “Il Trionfo,” to -homicidal madness, or of some woman with some man who, as in “Il Fuoco,” -and also again by a strange duplication of its office in “L’Innocente,” -causes her atrociously to suffer. The plane of the situation is thus -visibly a singularly special plane; that, always, of the more or less -insanely demoralised pair of lovers, for neither of whom is any other -personal relation indicated either as actual or as conceivably possible. -Here, it may be said on such a showing, is material rather alarmingly -cut down as to range, as to interest and, not least, as to charm; but -here precisely it is that, by a wonderful chance, the author’s magic -comes effectively into play. - -Little in fact as the relation of the erotically exasperated _with_ the -erotically exasperated, when pushed on either side to frenzy, would -appear to lend itself to luminous developments, the difficulty is -surmounted each time in a fashion that, for consistency no less than for -brilliancy, is all the author’s own. Though surmounted triumphantly as -to interest, that is, the trick is played without the least -falsification of the luckless subjects of his study. They remain the -abject victims of sensibility that his plan has originally made them; -they remain exasperated, erotic, hysterical, either homicidally or -suicidally determined, cut off from any personal source of life that -does not poison them; notwithstanding all of which they neither starve -dramatically nor suffer us to starve with them. How then is this -seemingly inevitable catastrophe prevented? We ask it but to find on -reflection that the answer opens the door to their historian’s whole -secret. The unfortunates are deprived of any enlarging or saving -personal relation, that is of any beneficent reciprocity; but they make -up for it by their relation both to the _idea_ in general and to the -whole world of the senses, which is the completest that the author can -conceive for them. He may be described as thus executing on their behalf -an artistic _volte-face_ of the most effective kind, with results -wonderful to note. The world of the senses, with which he surrounds -them—a world too of the idea, that is of a few ideas admirably -expressed—yields them such a crop of impressions that the need of other -occasions to vibrate and respond, to act or to aspire, is superseded by -their immense factitious agitation. This agitation runs its course in -strangely brief periods—a singular note, the brevity, of every -situation; but the period is while it lasts, for all its human and -social poverty, quite inordinately peopled and furnished. The -innumerable different ways in which his concentrated couples are able to -feel about each other and about their enclosing cage of golden wire, the -nature and the art of Italy—these things crowd into the picture and -pervade it, lighting it scarcely less, strange to say, because they are -things of bitterness and woe. - -It is one of the miracles of the imagination; the great shining element -in which the characters flounder and suffer becomes rich and beautiful -for them, as well as in so many ways for us, by the action of the -writer’s mind. They not only live in his imagination, but they borrow it -from him in quantities; indeed without this charitable advance they -would be poor creatures enough, for they have in each case almost -nothing of their own. On the aid thus received they start, they get into -motion; it makes their common basis of “passion,” desire, enchantment, -aversion. The essence of the situation is the same in “Il Trionfo” and -“Il Fuoco” as in “L’Innocente”: the temporarily united pair devour each -other, tear and rend each other, wear each other out through a series of -erotic convulsions and nervous reactions that are made -interesting—interesting to _us_—almost exclusively by the special -wealth of their consciousness. The medium in which they move is -admirably reflected in it; the autumn light of Venice, the afterglow of -her past, in the drama of the elderly actress and the young rhetorician -of “Il Fuoco”; the splendour of the summer by the edge of the lower -Adriatic in that of the two isolated erotomaniacs of “Il Trionfo,” -indissolubly linked at last in the fury of physical destruction into -which the man drags the woman by way of retribution for the fury of -physical surrender into which she has beguiled him. - -As for “L’Innocente” again, briefly, there is perhaps nothing in it to -match the Roman passages of “Il Piacere”; but the harmony of the -general, the outer conditions pervades the picture; the sweetness of the -villeggiatura life, the happiness of place and air, the lovability of -the enclosing scene, all at variance with the sharpness of the inner -tragedy. The inner tragedy of “L’Innocente” has a concentration that is -like the carrying, through turns and twists, upstairs and down, of some -cup filled to the brim, of which no drop is yet spilled; such cumulative -truth rules the scene after we have once accepted the postulate. It is -true that the situation as exhibited involves for Giuliana, the young -wife, the vulgarest of adventures; yet she becomes, as it unfolds, the -figure of the whole gallery in whom the pathetic has at once most of -immediate truth and of investing poetry. I much prefer her for beauty -and interest to Donna Maria in “Il Piacere,” the principal other image -of faith and patience sacrificed. We see these virtues as still supreme -in her even while she faces, in advance, her ordeal, in respect to which -it has been her hope, in fact her calculation, that her husband will -have been deceived about the paternity of her child; and she is so -truthfully touching when this possibility breaks down that even though -we rub our eyes at the kind of dignity claimed for her we participate -without reserve in her predicament. The origin of the infant is frankly -ignoble, whereas it is on the nobleness of Giuliana that the story -essentially hinges; but the contradiction is wonderfully kept from -disconcerting us altogether. What the author has needed for his -strangest truth is that the mother shall feel exactly as the husband -does, and that the husband shall after the first shock of his horror -feel intimately and explicitly with the mother. They take in this way -the same view of their woeful excrescence; and the drama of the child’s -advent and of the first months of his existence, his insistent and hated -survival, becomes for them in respect to the rest of the world a drama -of silence and dissimulation, in every step of which we feel a terror. - -The effect, I may add, gains more than one kind of intensity from that -almost complete absence of _other_ contacts to which D’Annunzio -systematically condemns his creatures; introducing here, however, just -the two or three that more completely mark the isolation. It may -doubtless be conceded that our English-speaking failure of insistence, -of inquiry and penetration, in certain directions, springs partly from -our deep-rooted habit of dealing with man, dramatically, on his social -and gregarious side, as a being the variety of whose intercourse with -his fellows, whatever forms his fellows may take, is positively half his -interesting motion. We fear to isolate him, for we remember that as we -see and know him he scarce understands himself save in action, action -which inevitably mixes him with his kind. To see and know him, like -Signor D’Annunzio, almost only in passion is another matter, for passion -spends itself quickly in the open and burns hot mainly in nooks and -corners. Nothing, too, in the picture is more striking than the manner -in which the merely sentimental abyss—that of the couple brought -together by the thing that might utterly have severed them—is -consistently and successfully avoided. We should have been certain to -feel it in many other hands yawning but a few steps off. We see the -dreadful facts in themselves, are brought close to them with no -interposing vaguenesses or other beggings of the question, and are -forcibly reminded how much more this “crudity” makes for the -communication of tenderness—what is aimed at—than an attitude -conventionally more reticent. We feel what the tenderness can be when it -rests on _all_ the items of a constituted misery, not one of which is -illogically blinked. - -For the pangs and pities of the flesh in especial D’Annunzio has in all -his work the finest hand—those of the spirit exist with him indeed only -as proceeding from these; so that Giuliana for instance affects us, -beyond any figure in fiction we are likely to remember, as living and -breathing under our touch and before our eyes, as a creature of organs, -functions and processes, palpable, audible, pitiful physical conditions. -These are facts, many of them, of an order in pursuit of which many a -spectator of the “picture of life” will instinctively desire to stop -short, however great in general his professed desire to enjoy the -borrowed consciousness that the picture of life gives us; and nothing, -it may well be said, is more certain than that we have a right in such -matters to our preference, a right to choose the kind of adventure of -the imagination we like best. No obligation whatever rests on us in -respect to a given kind—much light as our choice may often throw for -the critic on the nature of our own intelligence. _There_ at any rate, -we are disposed to say of such a piece of penetration as “L’Innocente,” -there is a particular dreadful adventure, as large as life, for those -who can bear it. The conditions are all present; it is only the reader -himself who may break down. When in general, it may be added, we see -readers do so, this is truly more often because they are shocked at -really finding the last consistency than because they are shocked at -missing it. - -“Il Trionfo della Morte” and “Il Fuoco” stand together as the amplest -and richest of our author’s histories, and the earlier, and more rounded -and faultless thing of the two, is not unlikely to serve, I should -judge, as an unsurpassable example of his talent. His accomplishment -here reaches its maximum; all his powers fight for him; the wealth of -his expression drapes the situation represented in a mantle of -voluminous folds, stiff with elaborate embroidery. The “story” may be -told in three words: how Giorgio Aurispa meets in Rome the young and -extremely pretty wife of a vulgar man of business, her unhappiness with -whom is complete, and, falling in love with her on the spot, eventually -persuades her—after many troubled passages—to come and pass a series -of weeks with him in a “hermitage” by the summer sea, where, in a -delirium of free possession, he grows so to hate her, and to hate -himself for his subjection to her, and for the prostration of all honour -and decency proceeding from it, that his desire to destroy her even at -the cost of perishing with her at last takes uncontrollable form and he -drags her, under a pretext, to the edge of a sea-cliff and hurls her, -interlocked with him in appalled resistance, into space. We get at an -early stage the note of that aridity of agitation in which the narrator -has expended treasures of art in trying to interest us. “Fits of -indescribable fury made them try which could torture each other best, -which most lacerate the other’s heart and keep it in martyrdom.” But -they understand, at least the hero does; and he formulates for his -companion the essence of their _impasse_. It is not her fault when she -tears and rends. - - Each human soul carries in it for love but a determinate - quantity of sensitive force. It is inevitable that this quantity - should use itself up with time, as everything else does; so that - when it _is_ used up no effort has power to prevent love from - ceasing. Now it’s a long time that you have been loving me; - nearly two years! - -The young man’s intelligence is of the clearest; the woman’s here is -inferior, though in “Il Fuoco” the two opposed faculties are almost -equal; but the pair are alike far from living in their intelligence, -which only serves to bestrew with lurid gleams the black darkness of -their sensual life. So far as the intelligence is one with the will our -author fundamentally treats it as cut off from all communication with -any other quarter—that is with the senses arrayed and encamped. The -most his unfortunates arrive at is to carry their extremely embellished -minds with them through these dusky passages as a kind of gilded -glimmering lantern, the effect of which is merely fantastic and -ironic—a thing to make the play of their shadows over the walls of -their catacomb more monstrous and sinister. Again in the first pages of -“Il Trionfo” the glimmer is given. - - He recognised the injustice of any resentment against her, - because he recognised the fatal necessities that controlled them - alike. No, his misery came from no other human creature; it came - from the very essence of life. The lover had not the lover to - complain of, but simply love itself. Love, toward which his - whole being reached out, from within, with a rush not to be - checked, love was of all the sad things of this earth the most - lamentably sad. And to this supreme sadness he was perhaps - condemned till death. - -That, in a nutshell, is D’Annunzio’s subject-matter; not simply that his -characters see in advance what love is worth for them, but that they -nevertheless need to make it the totality of their consciousness. In “Il -Trionfo” and “Il Fuoco” the law just expressed is put into play at the -expense of the woman, with the difference, however, that in the latter -tale the woman perceives and judges, suffers in mind, so to speak, as -well as in nerves and in temper. But it would be hard to say in which of -these two productions the inexhaustible magic of Italy most helps the -effect, most hangs over the story in such a way as to be one with it and -to make the ugliness and the beauty melt together. The ugliness, it is -to be noted, is continually _presumed_ absent; the pursuit and -cultivation of beauty—that fruitful preoccupation which above all, I -have said, gives the author his value as our “case”—being the very -ground on which the whole thing rests. The ugliness is an accident, a -treachery of fate, the intrusion of a foreign substance—having for the -most part in the scheme itself no admitted inevitability. Against it -every provision is made that the most developed taste in the world can -suggest; for, ostensibly, transcendently, Signor D’Annunzio’s _is_ the -most developed taste in the world—his and that of the ferocious yet so -contracted _conoscenti_ his heroes, whose virtual identity with himself, -affirmed with a strangely misplaced complacency by some of his critics, -one would surely hesitate to take for granted. It is the wondrous -physical and other endowments of the two heroines of “Il Piacere,” it is -the joy and splendour of the hero’s intercourse with them, to say -nothing of the lustre of his own person, descent, talents, possessions, -and of the great general setting in which everything is offered us—it -is all this that makes up the picture, with the constant suggestion that -nothing of a baser quality for the esthetic sense, or at the worst for a -pampered curiosity, might hope so much as to live in it. The case is the -same in “L’Innocente,” a scene all primarily smothered in flowers and -fruits and fragrances and soft Italian airs, in every implication of -flattered embowered constantly-renewed desire, which happens to be a -blighted felicity only for the very reason that the cultivation of -delight—in the form of the wife’s luckless experiment—has so awkwardly -overleaped itself. Whatever furthermore we may reflectively think either -of the Ippolita of “Il Trionfo” or of her companion’s scheme of -existence with her, it is enchanting grace, strange, original, -irresistible in kind and degree, that she is given us as representing; -just as her material situation with her young man during the greater -part of the tale is a constant communion, for both of them, with the -poetry and the nobleness of classic landscape, of nature consecrated by -association. - -The mixture reaches its maximum, however, in “Il Fuoco,” if not perhaps -in “The Virgins of the Rocks”; the mixture I mean of every exhibited -element of personal charm, distinction and interest, with every -insidious local influence, every glamour of place, season and -surrounding object. The heroine of the first-named is a great tragic -actress, exquisite for everything but for being unfortunately -middle-aged, battered, marked, as we are constantly reminded, by all the -after-sense of a career of promiscuous carnal connections. The hero is a -man of letters, a poet, a dramatist of infinite reputation and resource, -and their union is steeped to the eyes in the gorgeous medium of Venice, -the moods of whose melancholy and the voices of whose past are an active -part of the perpetual concert. But we see _all_ the persons introduced -to us yearn and strain to exercise their perceptions and taste their -impressions as deeply as possible, conspiring together to interweave -them with the pleasures of passion. They “go in” as the phrase is, for -beauty at any cost—for each other’s own to begin with; their creator, -in the inspiring quest, presses them hard, and the whole effect becomes -for us that of an organised general sacrifice to it and an organised -general repudiation of everything else. It is not idle to repeat that -the value of the Italian background has to this end been inestimable, -and that every spark of poetry it had to contribute has been struck from -it—with what supreme felicity we perhaps most admiringly learn in “The -Virgins of the Rocks.” To measure the assistance thus rendered, and -especially the immense literary lift given, we have only to ask -ourselves what appearance any one of the situations presented would have -made in almost any Cisalpine or “northern” frame of circumstance -whatever. Supported but by such associations of local or of literary -elegance as _our_ comparatively thin resources are able to furnish, the -latent weakness in them all, the rock, as to final effect, on which they -split and of which I shall presently speak, would be immeasurably less -dissimulated. All this is the lesson of style, by which we here catch a -writer in the very act of profiting after a curious double fashion. -D’Annunzio arrives at it both by expression and by material—that is, by -a whole side of the latter; so that with such energy at once and such -good fortune it would be odd indeed if he had not come far. It is verily -in the very name and interest of beauty, of the lovely impression, that -Giorgio Aurispa becomes homicidal in thought and finally in act. - - She would in death become for me matter of thought, pure - ideality. From a precarious and imperfect existence she would - enter into an existence complete and definitive, forsaking - forever the infirmity of her weak luxurious flesh. Destroy to - possess—there is no other way for him who seeks the absolute in - love. - -To these reflections he has been brought by the long, dangerous past -which, as the author says, his connection with his mistress has behind -it—a past of recriminations of which the ghosts still walk. “It dragged -behind it, through time, an immense dark net, all full of dead things.” -To quote here at all is always to desire to continue, and “Il Trionfo” -abounds in the illustrative episodes that are ever made so masterfully -concrete. Offering in strictness, incidentally, the only exhibition in -all the five volumes of a human relation other than the acutely sexual, -it deals admirably enough with this opportunity when the hero pays his -visit to his provincial parents before settling with his mistress at -their hermitage. His people are of ancient race and have been much at -their ease; but the home in the old Apulian town, overdarkened by the -misdeeds of a demoralised father, is on the verge of ruin, and the dull -mean despair of it all, lighted by outbreaks of helpless rage on the -part of the injured mother, is more than the visitor can bear, absorbed -as he is in impatiences and concupiscences which make everything else -cease to exist for him. His terror of the place and its troubles but -exposes of course the abjection of his weakness, and the sordid -squabbles, the general misery and mediocrity of life that he has to -face, constitute precisely, for his personal design, the abhorred -challenge of ugliness, the interference of a call other than erotic. He -flees before it, leaving it to make shift as it can; but nothing could -be more “rendered” in detail than his overwhelmed vision of it. - -So with the other finest passages of the story, notably the summer day -spent by the lovers in a long dusty dreadful pilgrimage to a famous -local miracle-working shrine, where they mingle with the multitude of -the stricken, the deformed, the hideous, the barely human, and from -which they return, disgusted and appalled, to plunge deeper into -consoling but too temporary transports; notably also the incident, -masterly in every touch, of the little drowned contadino, the whole -scene of the small starved dead child on the beach, in all the beauty of -light and air and view, with the effusions and vociferations and -grimnesses round him, the sights and sounds of the quasi-barbaric life -that have the relief of antique rites portrayed on old tombs and urns, -that quality and dignity of looming larger which a great feeling on the -painter’s part ever gives to small things. With this ampler truth the -last page of the book is above all invested, the description of the -supreme moment—for some time previous creeping nearer and nearer—at -which the delirious protagonist beguiles his vaguely but not fully -suspicious companion into coming out with him toward the edge of a dizzy -place over the sea, where he suddenly grasps her for her doom and the -sense of his awful intention, flashing a light back as into their -monstrous past, makes her shriek for her life. She dodges him at the -first betrayal, panting and trembling. - - “Are you crazy?” she cried with wrath in her throat. “Are you - crazy?” But as she saw him make for her afresh in silence, as - she felt herself seized with still harsher violence and dragged - afresh toward her danger, she understood it all in a great - sinister flash which blasted her soul with terror. “No, no, - Giorgio! Let me go! Let me go! Another minute—listen, listen! - Just a minute! I want to say——!” She supplicated, mad with - terror, getting herself free and hoping to make him wait, to put - him off with pity. “A minute! Listen! I love you! Forgive me! - Forgive me!” She stammered incoherent words, desperate, feeling - herself overcome, losing her ground, seeing death close. - “Murder!” she then yelled in her fury. And she defended herself - with her nails, with her teeth, biting like a wild beast. - “Murder!” she yelled, feeling herself seized by the hair, felled - to the ground on the edge of the precipice, lost. The dog - meanwhile barked out at the scuffle. The struggle was short and - ferocious, as between implacable enemies who had been nursing to - this hour in the depths of their souls an intensity of hate. And - they plunged into death locked together. - -The wonder-working shrine of the Abruzzi, to which they have previously -made their way, is a local Lourdes, the resort from far and wide of the -physically afflicted, the evocation of whose multitudinous presence, the -description of whose unimaginable miseries and ecstasies, grovelling -struggles and supplications, has the mark of a pictorial energy for such -matters not inferior to that of Émile Zola—to the degree even that the -originality of the pages in question was, if I remember rightly, rather -sharply impugned in Paris. D’Annunzio’s defence, however, was easy, -residing as it does in the fact that to handle any subject successfully -handled by Zola (his failures are another matter) is quite inevitably to -walk more or less in his footsteps, in prints so wide and deep as to -leave little margin for passing round them. To which I may add that, -though the judgment may appear odd, the truth and force of the young -man’s few abject days at Guardiagrele, his _casa paterna_, are such as -to make us wish that other such corners of life were more frequent in -the author’s pages. He has the supremely interesting quality in the -novelist that he _fixes_, as it were, the tone of every cluster of -objects he approaches, fixes it by the consistency and intensity of his -reproduction. In “The Virgins of the Rocks” we have also a _casa -paterna_, and a thing, as I have indicated, of exquisite and wonderful -tone; but the tone here is of poetry, the truth and the force are less -measurable and less familiar, and the whole question, after all, in its -refined and attenuated form, is still that of sexual pursuit, which -keeps it within the writer’s too frequent limits. Giorgio Aurispa, in -“Il Trionfo,” lives in communion with the spirit of an amiable and -melancholy uncle who had committed suicide and made him the heir of his -fortune, and one of the nephew’s most frequent and faithful loyalties is -to hark back, in thought, to the horror of his first knowledge of the -dead man’s act, put before us always with its accompaniment of loud -southern resonance and confusion. He is in the place again, he is in the -room, at Guardiagrele, of the original appalled vision. - - He heard, in the stillness of the air and of his arrested soul, - the small shrill of an insect in the wainscot. And the little - fact sufficed to dissipate for the moment the extreme violence - of his nervous tension, as the puncture of a needle suffices to - empty a swollen bladder. Every particular of the terrible day - came back to his memory: the news abruptly brought to Torretta - di Sarsa, toward three in the afternoon, by a panting messenger - who stammered and whimpered: the ride on horseback, at lightning - speed, under the canicular sky and up the torrid slopes, and, - during the rush, the sudden faintnesses that turned him dizzy in - his saddle; then the house at home, filled with sobs, filled - with a noise of doors slamming in the general scare, filled with - the strumming of his own arteries; and at last his irruption - into the room, the sight of the corpse, the curtains inflated - and rustling, the tinkle on the wall of the little font for holy - water. - -This young man’s great mistake, we are told, had been his insistence on -regarding love as a form of enjoyment. He would have been in a possible -relation to it only if he had learned to deal with it as a form of -suffering. This is the lesson brought home to the heroine of “Il Fuoco,” -who suffers indeed, as it seems to us, so much more than is involved in -the occasion. We ask ourselves continually why; that is we do so at -first; we do so before the special force of the book takes us captive -and reduces us to mere charmed absorption of its successive parts and -indifference to its moral sense. Its defect is verily that it has no -moral sense proportionate to the truth, the constant high style of the -general picture; and this fact makes the whole thing appear given us -simply because it has happened, because it was material that the author -had become possessed of, and not because, in its almost journalistic -“actuality,” it has any large meaning. We get the impression of a direct -transfer, a “lift,” bodily, of something seen and known, something not -really produced by the chemical process of art, the crucible or retort -from which things emerge for a new function. Their meaning here at any -rate, extracted with difficulty, would seem to be that there is an -inevitable leak of ease and peace when a mistress happens to be -considerably older than her lover; but even this interesting yet not -unfamiliar truth loses itself in the great poetic, pathetic, psychologic -ceremonial. - -That matters little indeed, as I say, while we read; the two -sensibilities concerned bloom, in all the Venetian glow, like wondrous -water-plants, throwing out branches and flowers of which we admire the -fantastic growth even while we remain, botanically speaking, bewildered. -They are other sensibilities than those with which we ourselves have -community—one of the main reasons of their appearing so I shall -presently explain; and, besides, they are isolated, sequestrated, -according to D’Annunzio’s constant view of such cases, for an exclusive, -an intensified and arid development. The mistress has, abnormally, none -of the protection, the alternative life, the saving sanity of other -interests, ties, employments; while the hero, a young poet and dramatist -with an immense consciousness of genius and fame, has for the time at -least only those poor contacts with existence that the last intimacies -of his contact with his friend’s person, her poor _corpo non più -giovane_, as he so frequently repeats, represent for him. It is not for -us, however, to contest the relation; it is in the penetrating way again -in which the relation is rendered that the writer has his triumph; the -way above all in which the world-weary interesting sensitive woman, with -her infinite intelligence, yet with her longing for some happiness still -among all her experiments untasted, and her genius at the same time for -familiar misery, is marked, featured, individualised for us, and, with -the strangest art in the world—one of those mysteries of which great -talents alone have the trick—at once ennobled with beauty and -desecrated by a process that we somehow feel to be that of exposure, to -spring from some violation of a privilege. “ ‘Do with me,’ ” says the -Foscarina on a certain occasion, “ ‘whatever you will’; and she smiled -in her offered abjection. She belonged to him like the thing one holds -in one’s fist, like the ring on one’s finger, like a glove, like a -garment, like a word that may be spoken or not, like a draught that may -be drunk or poured on the ground.” There are some lines describing an -hour in which she has made him feel as never before “the incalculable -capacity of the heart of man. And it seemed to him as he heard the -beating of his own heart and divined the violence of the other beside -him that he had in his ears the loud repercussion of the hammer on the -hard anvil where human destiny is forged.” More than ever here the pitch -of the personal drama is taken up by everything else in the -scene—everything else being in fact but the immediate presence of -Venice, her old faded colour and old vague harmonies, played with -constantly as we might play with some rosy fretted faintly-sounding -sea-shell. - -It would take time to say what we play with in the silver-toned “Virgins -of the Rocks,” the history of a visit paid by a transcendent young -man—always pretty much the same young man—to an illustrious family -whose fortunes have tragically shrunken with the expulsion of the -Bourbons from the kingdom of Naples, and the three last lovely daughters -of whose house are beginning to wither on the stem, undiscovered, -unsought, in a dilapidated old palace, an old garden of neglected pomp, -a place of fountains and colonnades, marble steps and statues, all -circled with hard bright sun-scorched volcanic scenery. They are tacitly -candidates for the honour of the hero’s hand, and the subject of the -little tale, which deals with scarce more than a few summer days, is the -manner of their presenting themselves for his admiration and his choice. -I decidedly name this exquisite composition as my preferred of the -series; for if its tone is thoroughly romantic the romance is yet of the -happiest kind, the kind that consists in the imaginative development of -observable things, things present, significant, related to us, and not -in a weak false fumble for the remote and the disconnected. - -It is indeed the romantic mind itself that makes the picture, and there -could be no better case of the absolute artistic vision. The mere facts -are soon said; the main fact, above all, of the feeble remnant of an -exhausted race waiting in impotence to see itself cease to be. The -father has nothing personal left but the ruins of his fine presence and -of his old superstitions, a handful of silver dust; the mother, mad and -under supervision, stalks about with the delusion of imperial greatness -(there is a wonderful page on her parading through the gardens in her -rococo palanquin, like a Byzantine empress, attended by sordid keepers, -while the others are hushed into pity and awe); the two sons, -hereditarily tainted, are virtually imbecile; the three daughters, -candidly considered, are what we should regard in our Anglo-Saxon world -as but the stuff of rather particularly dreary and shabby, quite -unutterably idle old maids. Nothing, within the picture, occurs; nothing -is done or, more acutely than usual, than everywhere, suffered; it is -all a mere affair of the rich impression, the complexity of images -projected upon the quintessential spirit of the hero, whose own report -is what we have—an affair of the quality of observation, sentiment and -eloquence brought to bear. It is not too much to say even that the whole -thing is in the largest sense but a theme for style, style of substance -as well as of form. Within this compass it blooms and quivers and -shimmers with light, becomes a wonderful little walled garden of -romance. The young man has a passage of extreme but respectful -tenderness with each of the sisters in turn, and the general cumulative -effect is scarcely impaired by the fact that “nothing comes” of any of -these relations. Too little comes of anything, I think, for any very -marked human analogy, inasmuch as if it is interesting to be puzzled to -a certain extent by what an action, placed before us, is designed to -show or to signify, so we require for this refined amusement at least -the sense that some general idea _is_ represented. We must feel it -present. - -Therefore if making out nothing very distinct in “Le Vergini” but the -pictorial idea, and yet cleaving to the preference I have expressed, I -let the anomaly pass as a tribute extorted by literary art, I may seem -to imply that a book may have a great interest without showing a perfect -sense. The truth is undoubtedly that I am in some degree beguiled and -bribed by the particularly intense expression given in these pages to -the author’s esthetic faith. If he is so supremely a “case” it is -because this production has so much to say for it, and says it with such -a pride of confidence, with an assurance and an elegance that fairly -make it the last conceivable word of such a profession. The observations -recorded have their origin in the narrator’s passionate reaction against -the vulgarity of the day. All the writer’s young men react; but -Cantelmo, in the volume before us, reacts with the finest contempt. He -is, like his brothers, a _raffiné_ conservative, believing really, so -far as we understand it, only in the virtue of “race” and in the grand -manner. The blighted Virgins, with all that surrounds them, are an -affirmation of the grand manner—that is of the shame and scandal of -what in an odious age it has been reduced to. It consists indeed of a -number of different things which I may not pretend to have completely -fitted together, but which are, with other elements, the sense of the -supremacy of beauty, the supremacy of style and, last not least, of the -personal will, manifested for the most part as a cold insolence of -attitude—not manifested as anything much more edifying. What it really -appears to come to is that the will is a sort of romantic ornament, the -application of which, for life in the present and the future, remains -awkwardly vague, though we are always to remember that it has been -splendidly forged in the past. The will in short _is_ beauty, is style, -is elegance, is art—especially in members of great families and -possessors of large fortunes. That of the hero of “Le Vergini” has been -handed down to him direct, as by a series of testamentary provisions, -from a splendid young ancestor for whose memory and whose portrait he -has a worship, a warrior and virtuoso of the Renaissance, the model of -his spirit. - - He represents for me the mysterious meaning of the power of - style, not violable by any one, and least of all ever by myself - in my own person. - -And elsewhere:— - - The sublime hands of Violante [the beauty and interest of hands - play a great part, in general, in the picture], pressing out in - drops the essence of the tender flowers and letting them fall - bruised to the ground, performed an act which, as a symbol, - corresponded perfectly to the character of my style; this being - ever to extract from a thing its very last scent of life, to - take from it all it could give and leave it exhausted. Was not - this one of the most important offices of my art of life? - -The book is a singularly rich exhibition of an inward state, the state -of private poetic intercourse with things, the kind of current that in a -given personal experience flows to and fro between the imagination and -the world. It represents the esthetic consciousness, proud of its -conquests and discoveries, and yet trying, after all, as with the vexed -sense of a want, to look through other windows and eyes. It goes all -lengths, as is of course indispensable on behalf of a personage -constituting a case. “I firmly believe that the greatest sum of future -dominion will be precisely that which shall have its base and its apex -in Rome”—such being in our personage the confidence of the “Latin” -spirit. Does it not really all come back to style? It was to the Latin -spirit that the Renaissance was primarily vouchsafed; and was not, for a -simplified statement, the last word of the Renaissance the question of -taste? That is the esthetic question; and when the Latin spirit after -many misadventures again clears itself we shall see how all the while -this treasure has been in its keeping. Let us as frankly as possible add -that there is a whole side on which the clearance may appear to have -made quite a splendid advance with Signor D’Annunzio himself. - -But there is another side, which I have been too long in coming to, yet -which I confess is for me much the more interesting. No account of our -author is complete unless we really make out what becomes of that -esthetic consistency in him which, as I have said, our own collective -and cultivated effort is so earnestly attempting and yet so -pathetically, if not so grotesquely, missing. We are struck, -unmistakably, early in our acquaintance with these productions, by the -fact that their total beauty somehow extraordinarily fails to march with -their beauty of parts, and that something is all the while at work -undermining that bulwark against ugliness which it is their obvious -theory of their own office to throw up. The disparity troubles and -haunts us just in proportion as we admire; and our uneasy wonderment -over the source of the weakness fails to spoil our pleasure only because -such questions have so lively an interest for the critic. We feel -ourselves somehow in presence of a singular incessant _leak_ in the -effect of distinction so artfully and copiously produced, and we apply -our test up and down in the manner of the inquiring person who, with a -tin implement and a small flame, searches our premises for an escape of -gas. The bad smell has, as it were, to be accounted for; and yet where, -amid the roses and lilies and pomegranates, the thousand essences and -fragrances, can such a thing possibly be? Quite abruptly, I think, at -last (if we have been much under the spell) our test gives us the news, -not unaccompanied with the shock with which we see our escape of gas -spring into flame. There is no mistaking it; the leak of distinction is -produced by a positive element of the vulgar; and that the vulgar should -flourish in an air so charged, intellectually speaking, with the -“aristocratic” element, becomes for us straightway the greatest of -oddities and at the same time, critically speaking, one of the most -interesting things conceivable. - -The interest then springs from its being involved for us in the “case.” -We recognise so many suggested consequences if the case is really to -prove responsible for it. We ask ourselves if there be not a connection, -we almost tremble lest there shouldn’t be; since what is more obvious -than that, if a high example of exclusive estheticism—as high a one as -we are likely ever to meet—is bound sooner or later to spring a leak, -the general question receives much light? We recognise here the value of -our author’s complete consistency: he would have kept his bottom sound, -so to speak, had he not remained so long at sea. If those imperfect -exponents of his faith whom we have noted among ourselves fail to -flower, for a climax, in any proportionate way, we make out that they -are embarrassed not so much by any force they possess as by a force—a -force of temperament—that they lack. The anomaly I speak of presents -itself thus as the dilemma in which Signor D’Annunzio’s consistency has -inexorably landed him; and the disfigurement breaks out, strikingly -enough, in the very forefront of his picture, at the point where he has -most lavished his colour. It is where he has most trusted and depended -that he is most betrayed, the traitor sharing certainly his tent and his -confidence. What is it that in the interest of beauty he most -elaborately builds on if not on the love-affairs of his heroes and -heroines, if not on his exhibition of the free play, the sincere play, -the play closely studied and frankly represented, of the sexual -relation? It is round this exercise, for him, that expressible, -demonstrable, communicable beauty prevailingly clusters; a view indeed -as to which we all generously go with him, subject to the reserve for -each of us of our own expression and demonstration. It is these things -on his part that break down, it is his discrimination that falls short, -and thereby the very kind of intellectual authority most implied by his -pretension. There is according to him an immense amenity that can be -saved—saved by style—from the general wreck and welter of what is most -precious, from the bankruptcy determined more and more by our basely -democratic conditions. As we watch the actual process, however, it is -only to see the lifeboat itself founder. The vulgarity into which he so -incongruously drops is, I will not say the space he allots to -love-affairs, but the weakness of his sense of “values” in depicting -them. - -We begin to ask ourselves at an early stage what this queer passion may -be in the representation of which the sense of beauty ostensibly finds -its richest expression and which is yet attended by nothing else at -all—neither duration, nor propagation, nor common kindness, nor common -consistency with other relations, common congruity with the rest of -life—to make its importance good. If beauty is the supreme need so let -it be; nothing is more certain than that we can never get too much of it -if only we get it of the right sort. It is therefore on this very -ground—the ground of its own sufficiency—that Signor D’Annunzio’s -invocation of it collapses at our challenge. The vulgarity comes from -the disorder really introduced into values, as I have called them; from -the vitiation suffered—that we should have to record so mean an -accident—by taste, impeccable taste, itself. The truth of this would -come out fully in copious examples, now impossible; but it is not too -much to say, I think, that in every principal situation presented the -fundamental weakness causes the particular interest to be inordinately -compromised. - -I must not, I know, make too much of “Il Piacere”—one of those works of -promising youth with which criticism is always easy—and I should indeed -say nothing of it if it were also a work of less ability. It really, -however, to my mind, quite gives us the key, all in the morning early, -to our author’s general misadventure. Andrea Sperelli is the key; Donna -Maria is another key of a slightly different shape. They have neither of -them the esthetic importance, any more than the moral, that their -narrator claims for them and in his elaborate insistence on which he has -so hopelessly lost his way. If they _were_ important—by which I mean if -they showed in any other light than that of their particular erotic -exercise—they would justify the claim made for them with such superior -art. They have no general history, since their history is only, and -immediately and extravagantly, that of their too cheap and too easy -romance. Why should the career of the young man be offered as a sample -of pathetic, of tragic, of edifying corruption?—in which case it might -indeed be matter for earnest exhibition. The march of corruption, the -insidious influence of propinquity, opportunity, example, the ravage of -false estimates and the drama of sterilising passion—all this is a -thinkable theme, thinkable especially in the light of a great talent. -But for Andrea Sperelli there is not only no march, no drama, there is -not even a weakness to give him the semblance of dramatic, of plastic -material; he is solidly, invariably, vulgarly strong, and not a bit more -corrupt at the end of his disorders than at the beginning. His -erudition, his intellectual accomplishments and elevation, are too -easily spoken for; no view of him is given in which we can feel or taste -them. Donna Maria is scarcely less signal an instance of the apparent -desire on the author’s part to impute a “value” defeated by his -apparently not knowing what a value is. She is apparently an immense -value for the occasions on which the couple secretly meet, but how is -she otherwise one? and what becomes therefore of the beauty, the -interest, the pathos, the struggle, or whatever else, of her -relation—relation of character, of judgment, even of mere taste—to her -own collapse? The immediate physical sensibility that surrenders in her -is, as throughout, exquisitely painted; but since nothing operates for -her, one way or the other, _but_ that familiar faculty, we are left -casting about us almost as much for what else she has to give as for -what, in any case, she may wish to keep. - -The author’s view of the whole matter of durations and dates, in these -connections, gives the scale of “distinction” by itself a marked -downward tilt; it confounds all differences between the trivial and the -grave. Giuliana, in “L’Innocente,” is interesting because she has had a -misadventure, and she is exquisite in her delineator’s view because she -has repented of it. But the misadventure, it appears, was a matter but -of a minute; so that we oddly see this particular romance attenuated on -the ground of its brevity. Given the claims of the exquisite, the -attenuation should surely be sought in the very opposite quarter; since, -where these remarkable affections are concerned, how otherwise than by -the element of comparative duration do we obtain the element of -comparative good faith, on which we depend for the element, in turn, of -comparative dignity? Andrea Sperelli becomes in the course of a few -weeks in Rome the lover of some twenty or thirty women of fashion—the -number scarce matters; but to make this possible his connection with -each has but to last a day or two; and the effect of that in its order -is to reduce to nothing, by vulgarity, by frank grotesqueness of -association, the romantic capacity in him on which his chronicler’s -whole appeal to us is based. The association rising before us more -nearly than any other is that of the manners observable in the most -mimetic department of any great menagerie. - -The most serious relation depicted—in the sense of being in some degree -the least suggestive of mere zoological sociability—is that of the -lovers in “Il Fuoco,” as we also take this pair for their creator’s -sanest and most responsible spirits. It is a question between them of an -heroic affection, and yet the affection appears to make good for itself -no place worth speaking of in their lives. It holds but for a scant few -weeks; the autumn already reigns when the connection begins, and the -connection is played out (or if it be not the ado is about nothing) with -the first flush of the early Italian spring. It suddenly, on our hands, -becomes trivial, with all our own estimate of reasons and realities and -congruities falsified. The Foscarina has, on professional business, to -“go away,” and the young poet has to do the same; but such a separation, -so easily bridged over by such great people, makes a beggarly climax for -an intercourse on behalf of which all the forces of poetry and tragedy -have been set in motion. Where then we ask ourselves is the -weakness?—as we ask it, very much in the same way, in respect to the -vulgarised aspect of the tragedy of Giorgio Aurispa. The pang of pity, -the pang that springs from a conceivable community in doom, is in this -latter case altogether wanting. Directly we lift a little the -embroidered mantle of that gift for appearances which plays, on Signor -D’Annunzio’s part, such tricks upon us, we find ourselves put off, as -the phrase is, with an inferior article. The inferior article is the -hero’s poverty of life, which cuts him down for pathetic interest just -as the same limitation in “Il Piacere” cuts down Donna Maria. Presented -each as victims of another rapacious person who has got the better of -them, there is no process, no complexity, no suspense in their story; -and thereby, we submit, there is no esthetic beauty. Why _shouldn’t_ -Giorgio Aurispa go mad? Why shouldn’t Stelio Effrena go away? We make -the inquiry as disconcerted spectators, not feeling in the former case -that we have had any communication with the wretched youth’s sanity, and -not seeing in the latter why the tie of all the passion that has been -made so admirably vivid for us should not be able to weather change. - -Nothing is so singular with D’Annunzio as that the very basis and -subject of his work should repeatedly go aground on such shallows as -these. He takes for treatment a situation that is substantially -none—the most fundamental this of his values, and all the more -compromising that his immense art of producing illusions still leaves it -exposed. The idea in each case is superficially specious, but _where_ it -breaks down is what makes all the difference. “Il Piacere” would have -meant what it seems to try to mean only if a provision had been made in -it for some adequate “inwardness” on the part either of the nature -disintegrated or of the other nature to which this poisoned contact -proves fatal. “L’Innocente,” of the group, comes nearest to justifying -its idea; and I leave it unchallenged, though its meaning surely would -have been written larger if the attitude of the wife toward her -misbegotten child had been, in face of the husband’s, a little less that -of the dumb detached animal suffering in her simplicity. As a picture of -such suffering, the pain of the mere dumb animal, the work is indeed -magnificent; only its connections are poor with the higher dramatic, the -higher poetic, complexity of things. - -I can only repeat that to make “The Triumph of Death” a fruitful thing -we should have been able to measure the triumph by its frustration of -some conceivable opportunity at least for life. There is a moment at -which we hope for something of this kind, the moment at which the young -man pays his visit to his family, who have grievous need of him and -toward whom we look to see some one side or other of his fine -sensibility turn. But nothing comes of that for the simple reason that -the personage is already dead—that nothing exists in him but the -established _fear_ of life. He turns his back on everything but a -special sensation, and so completely shuts the door on the elements of -contrast and curiosity. Death really triumphs, in the matter, but over -the physical terror of the inordinate woman; a pang perfectly -communicated to us, but too small a surface to bear the weight laid on -it, which accordingly affects us as that of a pyramid turned over on its -point. It is throughout one of D’Annunzio’s strongest marks that he -treats “love” as a matter not to be mixed with life, in the larger sense -of the word, at all—as a matter all of whose other connections are -dropped; a sort of secret game that can go on only if each of the -parties has nothing to do, even on any _other_ terms, with any one else. - -I have dwelt on the fact that the sentimental intention in “Il Fuoco” -quite bewilderingly fails, in spite of the splendid accumulation of -material. We wait to the end to see it declare itself, and then are -left, as I have already indicated, with a mere meaningless anecdote on -our hands. Brilliant and free, each freighted with a talent that is -given us as incomparable, the parties to the combination depicted have, -for their affection, the whole world before them—and not the simple -terraqueous globe, but that still vaster sphere of the imagination in -which, by an exceptionally happy chance, they are able to move together -on very nearly equal terms. A tragedy is a tragedy, a comedy is a -comedy, when the effect, in either sense, is _determined_ for us, -determined by the interference of some element that starts a -complication or precipitates an action. As in “Il Fuoco” nothing -whatever interferes—or nothing certainly that need weigh with the high -spirits represented—we ask why such precious revelations are made us -for nothing. Admirably made in themselves they yet strike us as, -esthetically speaking, almost cruelly wasted. - -This general remark would hold good, as well, of “Le Vergini,” if I -might still linger, though its application has already been virtually -made. Anatolia, in this tale, the most robust of the three sisters, -declines marriage in order to devote herself to a family who have, it -would certainly appear, signal need of her nursing. But this, though it -sufficiently represents _her_ situation, covers as little as possible -the ground of the hero’s own, since he, quivering intensely with the -treasure of his “will,” inherited in a straight line from the -_cinque-cento_, only asks to affirm his sublimated energy. The -temptation to affirm it erotically, at least, has been great for him in -relation to each of the young women in turn; but it is for Anatolia that -his admiration and affection most increase in volume, and it is -accordingly for her sake that, with the wonderful moral force behind him -(kept as in a Florentine casket,) we most look to see him justified. He -has a fine image—and when has the author not fine images?—to -illustrate the constant readiness of this possession. The young woman -says something that inspires him, whereupon, “as a sudden light playing -over the dusky wall of a room causes the motionless sword in a trophy to -shine, so her word drew a great flash from my suspended _volontà_. There -was a virtue in her,” the narrator adds, “which could have produced -portentous fruit. Her substance might have nourished a superhuman germ.” -In spite of which it never succeeds in becoming so much as a question -that his affection for her shall _act_, that this grand imagination in -him shall operate, that he himself is, in virtue of such things, exactly -the person to come to her aid and to combine with her in devotion. The -talk about the _volontà_ is amusing much in the same way as the -complacency of a primitive man, unacquainted with the uses of things, -who becomes possessed by some accident of one of the toys of -civilisation, a watch or a motor-car. And yet artistically and for our -author the will _has_ an application, since without it he could have -done no rare vivid work. - -Here at all events we put our finger, I think, on the very point at -which his esthetic plenitude meets the misadventure that discredits it. -We see just where it “joins on” with vulgarity. That sexual passion from -which he extracts such admirable detached pictures insists on remaining -for him _only_ the act of a moment, beginning and ending in itself and -disowning any representative character. From the moment it depends on -itself alone for its beauty it endangers extremely its distinction, so -precarious at the best. For what it represents, precisely, is it -poetically interesting; it finds its extension and consummation only in -the rest of life. Shut out from the rest of life, shut out from all -fruition and assimilation, it has no more dignity than—to use a homely -image—the boots and shoes that we see, in the corridors of promiscuous -hotels, standing, often in double pairs, at the doors of rooms. Detached -and unassociated these clusters of objects present, however obtruded, no -importance. What the participants do with their agitation, in short, or -even what it does with them, _that_ is the stuff of poetry, and it is -never really interesting save when something finely contributive in -themselves makes it so. It is this absence of anything finely -contributive in themselves, on the part of the various couples here -concerned, that is the open door to the trivial. I have said, with all -appreciation, that they present the great “relation,” for intimacy, as -we shall nowhere else find it presented; but to see it related, in its -own turn, to nothing in the heaven above or the earth beneath, this -undermines, we definitely learn, the charm of that achievement. - -And so it is, strangely, that our esthetic “case” enlightens us. The -only question is whether it be the only case of the kind conceivable. -May we not suppose another with the elements differently mixed? May we -not in imagination alter the proportions within or the influences -without, and look with cheerfulness for a different issue? _Need_ the -esthetic adventure, in a word, organised for real discovery, give us no -more comforting news of success? Are there not, so to speak, finer -possible combinations? are there not safeguards against futility that in -the example before us were but too presumably absent? To which the sole -answer probably is that no man can say. It is Signor D’Annunzio alone -who has really sailed the sea and brought back the booty. The actual -case is so good that all the potential fade beside it. It has for it -that it exists, and that, whether for the strength of the original -outfit or for the weight of the final testimony, it could scarce -thinkably be bettered. - - - - - MATILDE SERAO - - -Few attentive readers, I take it, would deny that the English -novelist—from whom, in this case, there happens to be even less -occasion than usual for distinguishing the American—testifies in his -art much more than his foreign comrade, from whatever quarter, to the -rigour of convention. There are whole sides of life about which he has -as little to say as possible, about which he observes indeed in general -a silence that has visibly ended by becoming for the foreign comrade his -great characteristic. He strikes the spectator as having with a -misplaced humility consented once for all to be admonished as to what he -shall or shall not “mention”—and to be admonished in especial by an -authority altogether indefinite. He subscribes, when his turn comes -round, to an agreement in the drawing-up of which he has had no hand; he -sits down to his task with a certain received canon of the “proper” -before his eyes. The critic I am supposing reproaches him, naturally, in -this critic’s way, with a marked failure ever to challenge, much less to -analyse, that conception; with having never, as would appear, so much as -put to himself in regard to most of the matters of which he makes his -mystery the simple question “Proper to what?” How can any authority, -even the most embodied, asks the exponent of other views, decide for us -in advance what shall in any case be proper—with the consequent -implication of impropriety—to our given subject? - -The English novelist would, I imagine, even sometimes be led on to -finding that he has practically had to meet such an overhauling by a -further admission, though an admission still tacit and showing him not a -little shy of the whole discussion—principles and formulas being in -general, as we know, but little his affair. Would he not, if off his -guard, have been in peril of lapsing into the doctrine—suicidal when -reflected upon—that there may be also an _a priori_ rule, a “Thou shalt -not,” if not a “Thou shalt,” as to treatable subjects themselves? Then -it would be that his alien foe might fairly revel in the sense of having -him in a corner, laughing an evil laugh to hear him plead in explanation -that it is exactly _most_ as to the subject to be treated that he feels -the need laid upon him to conform. What is he to do when he has an idea -to embody, we might suspect him rashly to inquire, unless, frankly to -ask himself in the first place of _all_ if it be proper? Not indeed—we -catch the reservation—that he is consciously often accessible to ideas -for which that virtue may not be claimed. Naturally, however, still, -such a plea only brings forth for his interlocutor a repetition of the -original appeal: “Proper to what?” There is only one propriety the -painter of life can ask of his morsel of material: Is it, or is it not, -of the stuff of life? So, in simplified terms at any rate, I seem to -hear the interchange; to which I need listen no longer than thus to have -derived from it a word of support for my position. The question of our -possible rejoinder to the scorn of societies otherwise affected I must -leave for some other connection. The point is—if point I may expect to -obtain any countenance to its being called—that, in spite of our great -Dickens and, in a minor degree, of our great George Eliot, the -limitations of our practice are elsewhere than among ourselves pretty -well held to have put us out of court. The thing least conceded to us -moreover is that we handle at all frankly—if we put forward such a -claim—even our own subject-matter or in other words our own life. “Your -own is all we want of you, all we should like to see. But that your -system really touches your own is exactly what we deny. Never, never!” -For what it really comes to is that practically we, of all people in the -world, are accused of a system. Call this system a conspiracy of -silence, and the whole charge is upon us. - -The fact of the silence, whether or no of the system, is fortunately all -that at present concerns us. Did this not happen to be the case nothing -could be more interesting, I think, than to follow somewhat further -several of the bearings of the matter, which would bring us face to face -with some wonderful and, I hasten to add, by no means doubtless merely -disconcerting truths about ourselves. It has been given us to read a -good deal, in these latter days, about _l’âme Française_ and _l’âme -Russe_—and with the result, in all probability, of our being rather -less than more penetrated with the desire, in emulation of these -opportunities, to deliver ourselves upon the English or the American -soul. There would appear to be nothing we are totally conscious of that -we are less eager to reduce to the mere expressible, to hand over to -publicity, current journalistic prose aiding, than either of these fine -essence; and yet incontestably there are neighbourhoods in which we feel -ourselves within scent and reach of them by something of the same sense -that in thick forests serves the hunter of great game. He may not quite -touch the precious presence, but he knows when it is near. So somehow we -know that the “Anglo-Saxon” soul, the modern at least, is not far off -when we frankly consider the practice of our race—comparatively recent -though it be—in taking for granted the “innocence” of literature. - -Our perhaps a trifle witless way of expressing our conception of this -innocence and our desire for it is, characteristically enough, by taking -refuge in another vagueness, by invoking the allowances that we -understand works of imagination and of criticism to make to the “young.” -I know not whether it has ever officially been stated for us that, given -the young, given literature, and given, under stress, the need of -sacrificing one or the other party, it is not certainly by our sense of -“style” that our choice would be determined: no great art in the reading -of signs and symptoms is at all events required for a view of our -probable instinct in such a case. That instinct, however, has too many -deep things in it to be briefly or easily disposed of, and there would -be no greater mistake than to attempt too simple an account of it. The -account most likely to be given by a completely detached critic would be -that we are as a race better equipped for action than for thought, and -that to let the art of expression go by the board is through that very -fact to point to the limits of what we mostly have to express. If we -accept such a report we shall do so, I think, rather from a strong than -from a weak sense of what may easily be made of it; but I glance at -these things only as at objects almost too flooded with light, and come -back after my parenthesis to what more immediately concerns me: the -plain reflection that, if the elements of compromise—compromise with -fifty of the “facts of life”—be the common feature of the novel of -English speech, so it is mainly indebted for this character to the sex -comparatively without a feeling for logic. - -Nothing is at any rate _a priori_ more natural than to trace a -connection between our general mildness, as it may conveniently be -called, and the fact that we are likewise so generally feminine. Is the -English novel “proper” because it is so much written by women, or is it -only so much written by women because its propriety has been so firmly -established? The intimate relation is on either determination all that -is here pertinent—effect and cause may be left to themselves. What is -further pertinent, as happens, is that on a near view the relation is -not constant; by which I mean that, though the ladies are always -productive, the fashion of mildness is not always the same. Convention -in short has its ups and downs, and these votaries have of late years, I -think, been as often seen weltering in the hollow of the wave as borne -aloft on its crest. Some of them may even be held positively to have -distinguished themselves most—whether or no in veils of anonymity—on -the occasion of the downward movement; making us really wonder if their -number might not fairly, under any steadier force of such a movement, be -counted on to increase. All sorts of inquiries are suggested in truth by -the sight. “Emancipations” are in the air, and may it not possibly be -that we shall see two of the most striking coincide? If convention has, -to the tune to which I just invited an ear, blighted our fiction, what -shall we say of its admitted, its still more deprecated and in so many -quarters even deplored, effect upon the great body under the special -patronage of which the “output” has none the less insisted on becoming -incomparably copious? Since the general inaptitude of women appears by -this time triumphantly to have been proved an assumption particularly -hollow, despoiled more and more each day of the last tatters of its -credit, why should not the new force thus liberated really, in the -connection I indicate, give something of its measure? - -It is at any rate keeping within bounds to say that the novel will -surely not become less free in proportion as the condition of women -becomes more easy. It is more or less in deference to their constant -concern with it that we have seen it, among ourselves, pick its steps so -carefully; but there are indications that the future may reserve us the -surprise of having to thank the very class whose supposed sensibilities -have most oppressed us for teaching it not only a longer stride, but a -healthy indifference to an occasional splash. It is for instance only of -quite recent years that the type of fiction commonly identified as the -“sexual” has achieved—for purposes of reference, so far as notices in -newspapers may be held to constitute reference—a salience variously -estimated. Now therefore, though it is early to say that all -“imaginative work” from the female hand is subject to this description, -there is assuredly none markedly so subject that is _not_ from the -female hand. The female mind has in fact throughout the competition -carried off the prize in the familiar game, known to us all from -childhood’s hour, of playing at “grown-up;” finding thus its -opportunity, with no small acuteness, in the more and more marked -tendency of the mind of the other gender to revert, alike in the grave -and the gay, to those simplicities which there would appear to be some -warrant for pronouncing puerile. It is the ladies in a word who have -lately done most to remind us of man’s relations with himself, that is -with woman. His relations with the pistol, the pirate, the police, the -wild and the tame beast—are not these prevailingly what the gentlemen -have given us? And does not the difference sufficiently point my moral? - -Let me, however, not seem to have gone too far afield to seek it; for my -reflections—general perhaps to excess—closely connect themselves with -a subject to which they are quite ready to yield in interest. I have -lately been giving a happy extension to an old acquaintance, dating from -early in the eighties, with the striking romantic work of Matilde Serao; -a writer who, apart from other successes, has the excellent effect, the -sign of the stronger few, that the end of her story is, for her reader, -never the end of her work. On thus recently returning to her I have -found in her something much more to my present purpose than the mere -appearance of power and ease. If she is interesting largely because she -is, in the light of her free, her extraordinary Neapolitan temperament, -a vivid painter and a rich register of sensations and impressions, she -is still more so as an exceptionally compact and suggestive _case_, a -case exempt from interference and presenting itself with a beautiful -unconsciousness. She has had the good fortune—if it be, after all, not -the ill—to develop in an air in which convention, in our invidious -sense, has had as little to say to her as possible; and she is -accordingly a precious example of the possibilities of free exercise. -The questions of the proper and the improper are comfortably far from -her; and though more than in the line of her sisters of English speech -she may have to reckon with prescriptions as to form—a burden at which -in truth she snaps her fingers with an approach to impertinence—she -moves in a circle practically void of all pre-judgment as to subject and -matter. Conscious enough, doubtless, of a literary law to be offended, -and caring little in fact, I repeat—for it is her weakness—what wrong -it may suffer, she has not even the agreeable incentive of an ability to -calculate the “moral” shocks she may administer. - -Practically chartered then she is further happy—since they both -minister to ease—in two substantial facts: she is a daughter of the -veritable south and a product of the contemporary newspaper. A -Neapolitan by birth and a journalist by circumstance, by marriage and in -some degree doubtless also by inclination, she strikes for us from the -first the note of facility and spontaneity and the note of initiation -and practice. Concerned, through her husband, in the conduct of a -Neapolitan morning paper, of a large circulation and a radical colour, -she has, as I infer, produced her novels and tales mainly in such -snatches of time and of inspiration as have been left her by urgent -day-to-day journalism. They distinctly betray, throughout, the -conditions of their birth—so little are they to the literary sense -children of maturity and leisure. On the question of style in a foreign -writer it takes many contributive lights to make us sure of our ground; -but I feel myself on the safe side in conceiving that this lady, full of -perception and vibration, can not only not figure as a purist, but must -be supposed throughout, in spite of an explosive eloquence, to pretend -but little to distinction of form: which for an Italian is a much graver -predicament than for one of our shapeless selves. That, however, would -perhaps pass for a small quarrel with a writer, or rather with a talker -and—for it is what one must most insist on—a _feeler_, of Matilde -Serao’s remarkable spontaneity. Her Neapolitan nature is by itself a -value, to whatever literary lapses it may minister. A torch kindled at -that flame can be but freely waved, and our author’s arm has a fine -action. Loud, loquacious, abundant, natural, happy, with luxurious -insistences on the handsome, the costly and the fleshly, the fine -persons and fine clothes of her characters, their satin and velvet, -their bracelets, rings, white waistcoats, general appointments and -bedroom furniture, with almost as many repetitions and as free a tongue, -in short, as Juliet’s nurse, she reflects at every turn the wonderful -mixture that surrounds her—the beauty, the misery, the history, the -light and noise and dust, the prolonged paganism and the renewed -reactions, the great style of the distant and the past and the generally -compromised state of the immediate and the near. These things were all -in the germ for the reader of her earlier novels—they have since only -gathered volume and assurance—so that I well remember the impression -made on me, when the book was new (my copy, apparently of the first -edition, bears the date of 1885), by the rare energy, the immense -_disinvoltura_, of “La Conquista di Roma.” This was my introduction to -the author, in consequence of which I immediately read “Fantasia” and -the “Vita e Avventure di Riccardo Joanna,” with some smaller pieces; -after which, interrupted but not detached, I knew nothing more till, in -the course of time, I renewed acquaintance on the ground of “Il Paese di -Cuccagna,” then, however, no longer in its first freshness. That work -set me straightway to reading everything else I could lay hands on, and -I think therefore that, save “Il Ventre di Napoli” and two or three -quite recent productions that I have not met, there is nothing from our -author that I have not mastered. Such as I find her in everything, she -remains above all things the signal “case.” - -If, however, she appears, as I am bound to note, not to have kept the -full promise of her early energy, this is because it has suited her to -move less in the direction—where so much might have awaited her—of -“Riccardo Joanna” and “La Conquista” than in that, on the whole less -happily symptomatic, of “Fantasia.” “Fantasia” is, before all else, a -study of “passion,” or rather of the intenser form of that mystery which -the Italian _passione_ better expresses; and I hasten to confess that -had she not so marked herself an exponent of this specialty I should -probably not now be writing of her. I conceive none the less that it -would have been open to her to favour more that side of her great talent -of which the so powerful “Paese di Cuccagna” is the strongest example. -There is by good fortune in this large miscellaneous picture of -Neapolitan life no _passione_ save that of the observer curiously and -pityingly intent upon it, that of the artist resolute at any cost to -embrace and reproduce it. Admirably, easily, convincingly objective, the -thing is a sustained panorama, a chronicle of manners finding its unity -in one recurrent note, that of the consuming lottery-hunger which -constitutes the joy, the curse, the obsession and the ruin, according to -Matilde Serao, of her fellow-citizens. Her works are thus divided by a -somewhat unequal line, those on one side of which the critic is tempted -to accuse her of having not altogether happily sacrificed to those on -the other. When she for the most part invokes under the name of -_passione_ the main explanation of the mortal lot it is to follow the -windings of this clue in the upper walks of life, to haunt the -aristocracy, to embrace the world of fashion, to overflow with clothes, -jewels and promiscuous intercourse, all to the proportionate eclipse of -her strong, full vision of the more usually vulgar. “La Conquista” is -the story of a young deputy who comes up to the Chamber, from the -Basilicata, with a touching candour of ambition and a perilous ignorance -of the pitfalls of capitals. His dream is to conquer Rome, but it is by -Rome naturally that he is conquered. He alights on his political twig -with a flutter of wings, but has reckoned in his innocence without the -strong taste in so many quarters for sport; and it is with a charge of -shot in his breast and a drag of his pinions in the dust that he takes -his way back to mediocrity, obscurity and the parent nest. It is from -the ladies—as was indeed even from the first to be expected with -Serao—that he receives his doom; _passione_ is in these pages already -at the door and soon arrives; _passione_ rapidly enough passes its -sponge over everything not itself. - -In “Cuore Infermo,” in “Addio Amore,” in “Il Castigo,” in the two -volumes of “Gli Amanti” and in various other pieces this effacement is -so complete that we see the persons concerned but in the one relation, -with every other circumstance, those of concurrent profession, -possession, occupation, connection, interest, amusement, kinship, -utterly superseded and obscured. Save in the three or four books I have -named as exceptional the figures evoked are literally professional -lovers, “available,” as the term is, for _passione_ alone: which is the -striking sign, as I shall presently indicate, of the extremity in which -her enjoyment of the freedom we so often have to envy has strangely -landed our author. “Riccardo Joanna,” which, like “La Conquista,” has -force, humour and charm, sounding with freshness the note of the general -life, is such a picture of certain of the sordid conditions of Italian -journalism as, if I may trust my memory without re-perusal, sharply and -pathetically imposes itself. I recall “Fantasia” on the other hand as -wholly _passione_—all concentration and erotics, the latter practised -in this instance, as in “Addio Amore,” with extreme cruelty to the -“good” heroine, the person innocent and sacrificed; yet this volume too -contributes its part in the retrospect to that appearance of marked -discipleship which was one of the original sources of my interest. -Nothing could more have engaged one’s attention in these matters at that -moment than the fresh phenomenon of a lady-novelist so confessedly -flushed with the influence of Émile Zola. Passing among ourselves as a -lurid warning even to workers of his own sex, he drew a new grace from -the candid homage—all implied and indirect, but, as I refigure my -impression, not the less unmistakable—of that half of humanity which, -let alone attempting to follow in his footsteps, was not supposed even -to turn his pages. There is an episode in “Fantasia”—a scene in which -the relations of the hero and the “bad” heroine are strangely -consolidated by a visit together to a cattle-show—in which the courage -of the pupil has but little to envy the breadth of the master. The hot -day and hot hour, the heavy air and the strong smells, the great and -small beasts, the action on the sensibilities of the lady and the -gentleman of the rich animal life, the collapse indeed of the lady in -the presence of the prize bull—all these are touches for which luckily -our author has the warrant of a greater name. The general picture, in -“Fantasia,” of the agricultural exhibition at Caserta is in fact not the -worse at any point for a noticeable echo of more than one French model. -Would the author have found so full an occasion in it without a fond -memory of the immortal Cornices of “Madame Bovary”? - -These, however, are minor questions—pertinent only as connecting -themselves with the more serious side of her talent. We may rejoice in -such a specimen of it as is offered by the too brief series of episodes -of “The Romance of the Maiden.” These things, dealing mainly with the -small miseries of small folk, have a palpable truth, and it is striking -that, to put the matter simply, Madame Serao is at her best almost in -direct proportion as her characters are poor. By poor I mean literally -the reverse of rich; for directly they _are_ rich and begin, as the -phrase is, to keep their carriage, her taste totters and lapses, her -style approximates at moments to that of the ladies who do the fashions -and the letters from the watering-places in the society papers. She has -acutely and she renders with excellent breadth the sense of benighted -lives, of small sordid troubles, of the general unhappy youthful (on the -part of her own sex at least) and the general more or less starved -plebeian consciousness. The degree to which it testifies to all this is -one of the great beauties of “Il Paese di Cuccagna,” even if the moral -of that dire picture be simply that in respect to the gaming-passion, -the madness of “numbers,” no walk of life at Naples is too high or too -low to be ravaged. Beautiful, in “Il Romanzo della Fanciulla,” are the -exhibitions of grinding girl-life in the big telegraph office and in the -State normal school. The gem of “Gli Amanti” is the tiny tale of -“Vicenzella,” a masterpiece in twenty small pages—the vision of what -three or four afternoon hours could contain for a slip of a creature of -the Naples waterside, a poor girl who picks up a living by the cookery -and sale, on the edge of a parapet, of various rank dismembered polyps -of the southern sea, and who is from stage to stage despoiled of the -pence she patiently pockets for them by the successive small emissaries -of her artful, absent lover, constantly faithless, occupied, not too far -off, in regaling a lady of his temporary preference, and proportionately -clamorous for fresh remittances. The moment and the picture are but a -scrap, yet they are as large as life. - -“Canituccia,” in “Piccole Anime,” may happily pair with “Vicenzella,” -Canituccia being simply the humble rustic guardian, in field and -wood—scarce more than a child—of the still more tender Ciccotto; and -Ciccotto being a fine young pink-and-white pig, an animal of endowments -that lead, after he has had time to render infatuated his otherwise -quite solitary and joyless friend, to his premature conversion into -bacon. She assists, helplessly silent, staring, almost idiotic, from a -corner of the cabin-yard, by night and lamplight, in the presence of -gleaming knives and steaming pots and bloody tubs, at the sacrifice that -deprives her of all company, and nothing can exceed the homely truth of -the touch that finally rounds off the scene and for which I must refer -my reader to the volume. Let me further not fail to register my -admiration for the curious cluster of scenes that, in “Il Romanzo,” -bears the title of “Nella Lava.” Here frankly, I take it, we have the -real principle of “naturalism”—a consistent presentment of the famous -“slice of life.” The slices given us—slices of shabby hungry maidenhood -in small cockney circles—are but sketchily related to the volcanic -catastrophe we hear rumbling behind them, the undertone of all the noise -of Naples; but they have the real artistic importance of showing us how -little “story” is required to hold us when we get, before the object -evoked and in the air created, the impression of the real thing. -Whatever thing—interesting inference—has but effectively to _be_ real -to constitute in itself story enough. There is no story without it, none -that is not rank humbug; whereas with it the very desert blooms. - -This last-named phenomenon takes place, I fear, but in a minor degree in -such of our author’s productions as “Cuore Infermo,” “Addio Amore,” “Il -Castigo” and the double series of “Gli Amanti”; and for a reason that I -the more promptly indicate as it not only explains, I think, the -comparative inanity of these pictures, but does more than anything else -to reward our inquiry. The very first reflection suggested by Serao’s -novels of “passion” is that they perfectly meet our speculation as to -what might with a little time become of our own fiction were our -particular convention suspended. We see so what, on its actual lines, -does, what _has_, become of it, and are so sated with the vision that a -little consideration of the latent other chance will surely but refresh -us. The effect then, we discover, of the undertaking to give _passione_ -its whole place is that by the operation of a singular law no place -speedily appears to be left for anything else; and the effect of that in -turn is greatly to modify, first, the truth of things, and second, with -small delay, what may be left them of their beauty. We find ourselves -wondering after a little whether there may not really be more truth in -the world misrepresented according to our own familiar fashion than in -such a world as that of Madame Serao’s exuberant victims of Venus. It is -not only that if Venus herself is notoriously beautiful her altar, as -happens, is by no means always proportionately august; it is also that -we draw, in the long run, small comfort from the virtual suppression, by -any painter, of whatever skill—and the skill of this particular one -fails to rise to the height—of every relation in life but that over -which Venus presides. In “Fior di Passione” and the several others of a -like connection that I have named the suppression is really complete; -the common humanities and sociabilities are wholly absent from the -picture. - -The effect of this is extraordinarily to falsify the total show and to -present the particular affair—the intimacy in hand for the moment, -though the moment be but brief—as taking place in a strange false -perspective, a denuded desert which experience surely fails ever to give -us the like of and the action of which on the faculty of observation in -the painter is anything but favourable. It strikes at the root, in the -impression producible and produced, of discrimination and irony, of -humour and pathos. Our present author would doubtless contend on behalf -of the works I have mentioned that pathos at least does abound in -them—the particular bitterness, the inevitable despair that she again -and again shows to be the final savour of the cup of _passione_. It -would be quite open to her to urge—and she would be sure to do so with -eloquence—that if we pusillanimously pant for a moral, no moral really -can have the force of her almost inveterate evocation of the absolute -ravage of Venus, the dry desolation that in nine cases out of ten Venus -may be perceived to leave behind her. That, however, but half meets our -argument—which bears by no means merely on the desolation behind, but -on the desolation before, beside and generally roundabout. It is not in -short at all the moral but the fable itself that in the exclusively -sexual light breaks down and fails us. Love, at Naples and in Rome, as -Madame Serao exhibits it, is simply unaccompanied with any interplay of -our usual conditions—with affection, with duration, with circumstances -or consequences, with friends, enemies, husbands, wives, children, -parents, interests, occupations, the manifestation of tastes. Who are -these people, we presently ask ourselves, who love indeed with -fury—though for the most part with astonishing brevity—but who are so -without any suggested situation in life that they can only strike us as -loving for nothing and in the void, to no gain of experience and no -effect of a felt medium or a breathed air. We know them by nothing but -their convulsions and spasms, and we feel once again that it is not the -passion of hero and heroine that gives, that can ever give, the heroine -and the hero interest, but that it is they themselves, with the ground -they stand on and the objects enclosing them, who give interest to their -passion. This element touches us just in proportion as we see it mixed -with other things, with all the things with which it has to reckon and -struggle. There is moreover another reflection with which the pathetic -in this connection has to count, even though it undermine not a little -the whole of the tragic effect of the agitations of _passione_. Is it, -ruthlessly speaking, certain that the effect most consonant, for the -spectator, with truth is half as tragic as it is something else? Should -not the moral be sought in the very different quarter where the muse of -comedy rather would have the last word? The ambiguity and the difficulty -are, it strikes me, of a new growth, and spring from a perverse desire -on the part of the erotic novelist to secure for the adventures he -depicts a dignity that is not of the essence. To compass this dignity he -has to cultivate the high pitch and beat the big drum, but when he has -done so he has given everything the wrong accent and the whole the wrong -extravagance. Why see it all, we ask him, as an extravagance of the -solemn and the strained? Why make _such_ an erotic a matter of tears and -imprecations, and by so doing render so poor a service both to pleasure -and to pain? Since by your own free showing it is pre-eminently a matter -of folly, let us at least have folly with her bells, or when these -must—since they must—sound knells and dirges, leave them only to the -light hand of the lyric poet, who turns them at the worst to music. -Matilde Serao is in this connection constantly lugubrious; even from the -little so-called pastels of “Gli Amanti” she manages, with an ingenuity -worthy of a better cause, to expunge the note of gaiety. - -This dismal _parti pris_ indeed will inevitably, it is to be feared, -when all the emancipations shall have said their last word, be that of -the ladies. Yet perhaps too, whatever such a probability, the tone -scarce signifies—in the presence, I mean, of the fundamental mistake -from which the author before us warns us off. That mistake, we gather -from her warning, would be to encourage, after all, any considerable -lowering of the level of our precious fund of reserve. When we come to -analyse we arrive at a final impression of what we pay, as lovers of the -novel, for such a chartered state as we have here a glimpse of; and we -find it to be an exposure, on the intervention at least of such a -literary temperament as the one before us, to a new kind of vulgarity. -We have surely as it is kinds enough. The absence of the convention -throws the writer back on tact, taste, delicacy, discretion, subjecting -these principles to a strain from which the happy office of its presence -is, in a considerable degree and for performers of the mere usual -endowment, to relieve him. When we have not a very fine sense the -convention appears in a manner to have it on our behalf. And how -frequent to-day, in the hurrying herd of brothers and sisters of the -pen, _is_ a fine sense—of _any_ side of their affair? Do we not -approach the truth in divining that only an eminent individual here and -there may be trusted for it? Here—for the case is our very lesson—is -this robust and wonderful Serao who is yet not to be trusted at all. -Does not the dim religious light with which we surround its shrine do -more, on the whole, for the poetry of _passione_ than the flood of -flaring gas with which, in her pages, and at her touch, it is drenched? -Does it not shrink, as a subject under treatment, from such expert -recognitions and easy discussions, from its so pitiless reduction to the -category of the familiar? It issues from the ordeal with the aspect with -which it might escape from a noisy family party or alight from a crowded -omnibus. It is at the category of the familiar that vulgarity begins. -There may be a cool virtue therefore even for “art,” and an appreciable -distinction even for truth, in the grace of hanging back and the choice -of standing off, in that shade of the superficial which we best defend -by simply practising it in season. A feeling revives at last, after a -timed intermission, that we may not immediately be quite able, quite -assured enough, to name, but which, gradually clearing up, soon defines -itself almost as a yearning. We turn round in obedience to -it—unmistakably we turn round again to the opposite pole, and there -before we know it have positively laid a clinging hand on dear old Jane -Austen. - - - - - THE NEW NOVEL - 1914 - - -We feel it not to be the paradox it may at the first blush seem that the -state of the novel in England at the present time is virtually very much -the state of criticism itself; and this moreover, at the risk perhaps of -some added appearance of perverse remark, by the very reason that we see -criticism so much in abeyance. So far as we miss it altogether how and -why does its “state” matter, and why and how can it or should it, as an -absent force, enjoy a relation to that constant renewal of our supply of -fiction which is a present one so far as a force at all? The relation is -this, in the fewest words: that no equal outpouring of matter into the -mould of literature, or what roughly passes for such, has been noted to -live its life and maintain its flood, its level at least of quantity and -mass, in such free and easy independence of critical attention. It -constitutes a condition and a perversity on the part of this element to -remain irresponsive before an appeal so vociferous at least and so -incessant; therefore how can such a neglect of occasions, so careless a -habit in spite of marked openings, be better described than as -responsibility declined in the face of disorder? The disorder thus -determines the relation, from the moment we feel that it might be less, -that it might be different, that something in the way of an order even -might be disengaged from it and replace it; from the moment in fact that -the low critical pitch is logically _reflected_ in the poetic or, less -pedantically speaking, the improvisational at large. The effect, if not -the prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our -enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself as -possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand, which thus in -turn wanders further and further for pasture. This action on the part of -the mind practically amounts to a reaching out for the reasons of its -interest, as only by its so ascertaining them can the interest grow more -various. This is the very education of our imaginative life; and thanks -to it the general question of how to refine, and of why certain things -refine more and most, on that happy consciousness, becomes for us of the -last importance. Then we cease to be only instinctive and at the mercy -of chance, feeling that we can ourselves take a hand in our satisfaction -and provide for it, making ourselves safe against dearth, and through -the door opened by that perception criticism enters, if we but give it -time, as a flood, the great flood of awareness; so maintaining its high -tide unless through some lapse of our sense for it, some flat reversion -to instinct alone, we block up the ingress and sit in stale and -shrinking waters. Stupidity may arrest any current and fatuity transcend -any privilege. The comfort of those who at such a time consider the -scene may be a little, with _their_ curiosity still insistent, to survey -its platitude and record the exhibited shrinkage; which amounts to the -attempt to understand how stupidity could so have prevailed. We take it -here that the answer to that inquiry can but be ever the same. The flood -of “production” has so inordinately exceeded the activity of control -that this latter anxious agent, first alarmed but then indifferent, has -been forced backward out of the gate, leaving the contents of the -reservoir to boil and evaporate. It is verily on the wrong side of the -gate that we just now seem to see criticism stand, for never was the -reservoir so bubblingly and noisily full, at least by the superficial -measure of life. We have caught the odd accident in the very fact of its -occurrence; we have seen the torrent swell by extravagant cheap -contribution, the huge increase of affluents turbid and unstrained. -Beyond number are the ways in which the democratic example, once -gathering momentum, sets its mark on societies and seasons that stand in -its course. Nowhere is that example written larger, to our perception, -than in “the new novel”; though this, we hasten to add, not in the least -because prose fiction now occupies itself as never before with the -“condition of the people,” a fact quite irrelevant to the nature it has -taken on, but because that nature amounts exactly to the complacent -declaration of a common literary level, a repudiation the most operative -even if the least reasoned of the idea of differences, the virtual law, -as we may call it, of sorts and kinds, the values of individual quality -and weight in the presence of undiscriminated quantity and -rough-and-tumble “output”—these attestations made, we naturally mean, -in the air of composition and on the esthetic plane, if such terms have -still an attenuated reference to the case before us. With which, if we -be asked, in the light of that generalisation, whether we impute to the -novel, or in other words the novelist, _all_ the stupidity against which -the spirit of appreciation spends itself in vain, we reply perforce that -we stop short of that, it being too obvious that of an exhibition so -sterilised, so void of all force and suggestion, there would be nothing -whatever to say. Our contention is exactly that, in spite of all vain -aspects, it does yet present an interest, and that here and there seem -written on it likelihoods of its presenting still more—always on -condition of its consenting to that more intimate education which is -precisely what democratised movements look most askance at. It strikes -us as not too much to say that our actual view of the practice of -fiction gives as just a measure as could be desired of the general, the -incurable democratic suspicion of the selective and comparative -principles in almost any application, and the tendency therewith to -regard, and above all to treat, one manner of book, like one manner of -person, as, if not absolutely as good as another, yet good enough for -any democratic use. Criticism reflects contentiously on that appearance, -though it be an appearance in which comfort for the book and the manner -much resides; so that the idea prompting these remarks of our own is -that the comfort may be deeply fallacious. - - - I - -Still not to let go of our imputation of interest to some part at least -of what is happening in the world of production in this kind, we may say -that non-selective and non-comparative practice appears bent on showing -us all it can do and how far or to what appointed shores, what waiting -havens and inviting inlets, the current that is mainly made a current by -looseness, by want of observable direction, shall succeed in carrying -it. We respond to any sign of an intelligent view or even of a lively -instinct—which is why we give the appearance so noted the benefit of -every presumption as to its life and health. It may be that the dim -sense is livelier than the presentable reason, but even that is no -graceless fact for us, especially when the keenness of young curiosity -and energy is betrayed in its pace, and betrayed, for that matter, in no -small abundance and variety. The new or at least the young novel is up -and doing, clearly, with the best faith and the highest spirits in the -world; if we but extend a little our measure of youth indeed, as we are -happily more and more disposed to, we may speak of it as already -chin-deep in trophies. The men who are not so young as the youngest were -but the other day very little older than these: Mr. Joseph Conrad, Mr. -Maurice Hewlett and Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Arnold -Bennett, have not quite perhaps the early bloom of Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr. -Gilbert Cannan, Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr. D. H. Lawrence, but the -spring unrelaxed is still, to our perception, in their step, and we see -two or three of them sufficiently related to the still newer generation -in a quasi-parental way to make our whole enumeration as illustrational -as we need it. Mr. Wells and Mr. Arnold Bennett have their strongest -mark, the aspect by which we may most classify them, in common—even if -their three named contemporaries are doubtless most interesting in one -of the connections we are not now seeking to make. The author of -“Tono-Bungay” and of “The New Machiavelli,” and the author of “The Old -Wives’ Tale” and of “Clayhanger,” have practically launched the boat in -which we admire the fresh play of oar of the author of “The Duchess of -Wrexe,” and the documented aspect exhibited successively by “Round the -Corner,” by “Carnival” and “Sinister Street,” and even by “Sons and -Lovers” (however much we may find Mr. Lawrence, we confess, hang in the -dusty rear). We shall explain in a moment what we mean by this -designation of the element that these best of the younger men strike us -as more particularly sharing, our point being provisionally that Mr. -Wells and Mr. Arnold Bennett (speaking now only of them) began some time -back to show us, and to show sundry emulous and generous young spirits -then in the act of more or less waking up, what the state in question -might amount to. We confound the author of “Tono-Bungay” and the author -of “Clayhanger” in this imputation for the simple reason that with the -sharpest differences of character and range they yet come together under -our so convenient measure of value by _saturation_. This is the greatest -value, to our sense, in either of them, their other values, even when at -the highest, not being quite in proportion to it; and as to be saturated -is to be documented, to be able even on occasion to prove quite enviably -and potently so, they are alike in the authority that creates emulation. -It little signifies that Mr. Wells’s documented or saturated state in -respect to a particular matter in hand is but one of the faces of his -_generally_ informed condition, of his extraordinary mass of gathered -and assimilated knowledge, a miscellaneous collection more remarkable -surely than any teller of “mere” tales, with the possible exception of -Balzac, has been able to draw upon, whereas Mr. Arnold Bennett’s -corresponding provision affects us as, though singularly copious, -special, exclusive and artfully economic. This distinction avails -nothing against that happy fact of the handiest possession by Mr. Wells -of immeasurably more concrete material, amenable for straight and vivid -reference, convertible into apt illustration, than we should know where -to look for other examples of. The author of “The New Machiavelli” -knows, somehow, to our mystified and dazzled apprehension, because he -writes and because that act constitutes for him the need, on occasion a -most desperate, of absorbing knowledge at the pores; the chronicler of -the Five Towns writing so much more discernibly, on the other hand, -because he knows, and conscious of no need more desperate than that -particular circle of civilisation may satisfy. - -Our argument is that each is ideally immersed in his own body of -reference, and that immersion in any such degree and to the effect of -any such variety, intensity and plausibility is really among us a new -feature of the novelist’s range of resource. We have seen him, we have -even seen _her_, otherwise auspiciously endowed, seen him observant, -impassioned, inspired, and in virtue of these things often very -charming, very interesting, very triumphant, visibly qualified for the -highest distinction before the fact and visibly crowned by the same -after it—we have seen him with a great imagination and a great sense of -life, we have seen him even with a great sense of expression and a -considerable sense of art: so that we have only to reascend the stream -of our comparatively recent literature to meet him serene and immortal, -brow-bound with the bay and erect on his particular pedestal. We have -only to do that, but have only also, while we do it, to recognise that -meantime other things still than these various apotheoses have taken -place, and that, to the increase of our recreation, and even if our -limited space condemns us to put the matter a trifle clumsily, a change -has come over our general receptive sensibility not less than over our -productive tradition. In these connections, we admit, overstatement is -easy and over-emphasis tempting; we confess furthermore to a frank -desire to enrich the case, the historic, with all the meaning we can -stuff into it. So viewed accordingly it gives us the “new,” to repeat -our expression, as an appetite for a closer notation, a sharper -specification of the signs of life, of consciousness, of the human scene -and the human subject in general, than the three or four generations -before us had been at all moved to insist on. They had insisted indeed, -these generations, we see as we look back to them, on almost nothing -whatever; what was to come to them had come, in enormous affluence and -freshness at its best, and to our continued appreciation as well as to -the honour of their sweet susceptibility, because again and again the -great miracle of genius took place, while they gaped, in their social -and sentimental sky. For ourselves that miracle has not been markedly -renewed, but it has none the less happened that by hook and by crook the -case for appreciation remains interesting. The great thing that saves -it, under the drawback we have named, is, no doubt, that we have -simply—always for appreciation—learned a little to insist, and that we -thus get back on one hand something of what we have lost on the other. -We are unable of course, with whatever habit of presumption engendered, -to insist upon genius; so that who shall describe the measure of success -we still achieve as not virtually the search for freshness, and above -all for closeness, in quite a different direction? To this nearer view -of commoner things Mr. Wells, say, and Mr. Arnold Bennett, and in their -degree, under the infection communicated, Mr. D. H. Lawrence and Mr. -Gilbert Cannan and Mr. Compton Mackenzie and Mr. Hugh Walpole, strike us -as having all gathered themselves up with a movement never yet -undertaken on our literary scene, and, beyond anything else, with an -instinctive divination of what had most waved their predecessors off it. -What had this lion in the path been, we make them out as after a fashion -asking themselves, what had it been from far back and straight down -through all the Victorian time, but the fond superstition that the key -of the situation, of each and every situation that could turn up for the -novelist, was the sentimental key, which might fit into no door or -window opening on closeness or on freshness at all? Was it not for all -the world as if even the brightest practitioners of the past, those we -now distinguish as saved for glory in spite of themselves, had been as -sentimental as they could, or, to give the trick another name, as -romantic and thereby as shamelessly “dodgy”?—just in order _not_ to be -close and fresh, not to be authentic, as that takes trouble, takes -talent, and you can be sentimental, you can be romantic, you can be -dodgy, alas, not a bit less on the footing of genius than on the footing -of mediocrity or even of imbecility? Was it not as if the sentimental -had been more and more noted as but another name for the romantic, if -not indeed the romantic as but another name for the sentimental, and as -if these things, whether separate or united, had been in the same degree -recognised as unamenable, or at any rate unfavourable, to any consistent -fineness of notation, once the tide of the copious as a condition of the -thorough had fairly set in? - -So, to express it briefly, the possibility of hugging the shore of the -real as it had not, among us, been hugged, and of pushing inland, as far -as a keel might float, wherever the least opening seemed to smile, -dawned upon a few votaries and gathered further confidence with -exercise. Who could say, of course, that Jane Austen had not been close, -just as who could ask if Anthony Trollope had not been copious?—just as -who could _not_ say that it all depended on what was meant by these -terms? The demonstration of what was meant, it presently appeared, could -come but little by little, quite as if each tentative adventurer had -rather anxiously to learn for himself what _might_ be meant—this -failing at least the leap into the arena of some great demonstrative, -some sudden athletic and epoch-making authority. Who could pretend that -Dickens was anything but romantic, and even more romantic in his humour, -if possible, than in pathos or in queer perfunctory practice of the -“plot”? Who could pretend that Jane Austen didn’t leave much more untold -than told about the aspects and manners even of the confined circle in -which her muse revolved? Why shouldn’t it be argued against her that -where her testimony complacently ends the pressure of appetite within us -presumes exactly to begin? Who could pretend that the reality of -Trollope didn’t owe much of its abundance to the diluted, the quite -extravagantly watered strain, no less than to the heavy hand, in which -it continued to be ladled out? Who of the younger persuasion would not -have been ready to cite, as one of the liveliest opportunities for the -critic eager to see representation searching, such a claim for the close -as Thackeray’s sighing and protesting “look-in” at the acquaintance -between Arthur Pendennis and Fanny Bolton, the daughter of the Temple -laundress, amid the purlieus of that settlement? The sentimental habit -and the spirit of romance, it was unmistakably chargeable, stood out to -sea as far as possible the moment the shore appeared to offer the least -difficulty to hugging, and the Victorian age bristled with perfect -occasions for our catching them in the act of this showy retreat. All -revolutions have been prepared in spite of their often striking us as -sudden, and so it was doubtless that when scarce longer ago than the -other day Mr. Arnold Bennett had the fortune to lay his hand on a -general scene and a cluster of agents deficient to a peculiar degree in -properties that might interfere with a desirable density of -illustration—deficient, that is, in such connections as might carry the -imagination off to some sport on its own account—we recognised at once -a set of conditions auspicious to the newer kind of appeal. Let us -confess that we were at the same time doubtless to master no better way -of describing these conditions than by the remark that they were, for -some reason beautifully inherent in them, susceptible at once of being -entirely known and of seeming detectably thick. Reduction to exploitable -knowledge is apt to mean for many a case of the human complexity -reduction to comparative thinness; and nothing was thereby at the first -blush to interest us more than the fact that the air and the very smell -of packed actuality in the subject-matter of such things as the author’s -two longest works was clearly but another name for his personal -competence in that matter, the fulness and firmness of his embrace of -it. This was a fresh and beguiling impression—that the state of -inordinate possession on the chronicler’s part, the mere state as such -and as an energy directly displayed, _was_ the interest, neither more -nor less, _was_ the sense and the meaning and the picture and the drama, -all so sufficiently constituting them that it scarce mattered what they -were in themselves. Of what they were in themselves their being in Mr. -Bennett, as Mr. Bennett to such a tune harboured them, represented their -one conceivable account—not to mention, as reinforcing this, our own -great comfort and relief when certain high questions and wonderments -about them, or about our mystified relation to them, began one after -another to come up. - -Because such questions did come, we must at once declare, and we are -still in presence of them, for all the world as if that case of the -perfect harmony, the harmony between subject and author, were just -marked with a flaw and didn’t meet the whole assault of restless -criticism. What we make out Mr. Bennett as doing is simply recording his -possession or, to put it more completely, his saturation; and to see him -as virtually shut up to that process is a note of all the more moment -that we see our selected cluster of his interesting juniors, and whether -by his direct action on their collective impulse or not, embroiled, as -we venture to call it, in the same predicament. The act of squeezing out -to the utmost the plump and more or less juicy orange of a particular -acquainted state and letting this affirmation of energy, however -directed or undirected, constitute for them the “treatment” of a -theme—_that_ is what we remark them as mainly engaged in, after -remarking the example so strikingly, so originally set, even if an undue -subjection to it be here and there repudiated. Nothing is further from -our thought than to undervalue saturation and possession, the fact of -the particular experience, the state and degree of acquaintance -incurred, however such a consciousness may have been determined; for -these things represent on the part of the novelist, as on the part of -any painter of things seen, felt or imagined, just one half of his -authority—the other half being represented of course by the application -he is inspired to make of them. Therefore that fine secured half is so -much gained at the start, and the fact of its brightly being there may -really by itself project upon the course so much colour and form as to -make us on occasion, under the genial force, almost not miss the answer -to the question of application. When the author of “Clayhanger” has put -down upon the table, in dense unconfused array, every fact required, -every fact in any way invocable, to make the life of the Five Towns -press upon us, and to make our sense of it, so full-fed, content us, we -may very well go on for the time in the captive condition, the beguiled -and bemused condition, the acknowledgment of which is in general our -highest tribute to the temporary master of our sensibility. Nothing at -such moments—or rather at the end of them, when the end begins to -threaten—may be of a more curious strain than the dawning unrest that -suggests to us fairly our first critical comment: “Yes, yes—but is this -_all_? These are the circumstances of the interest—we see, we see; but -where is the interest itself, where and what is its centre, and how are -we to measure it in relation to _that_?” Of course we may in the act of -exhaling that plaint (which we have just expressed at its mildest) well -remember how many people there are to tell us that to “measure” an -interest is none of our affair; that we have but to take it on the -cheapest and easiest terms and be thankful; and that if by our very -confession we have been led the imaginative dance the music has done for -us all it pretends to. Which words, however, have only to happen to be -for us the most unintelligent conceivable not in the least to arrest our -wonderment as to where our bedrenched consciousness may still not -awkwardly leave us for the pleasure of appreciation. That appreciation -is also a mistake and a priggishness, being reflective and thereby -corrosive, is another of the fond dicta which we are here concerned but -to brush aside—the more closely to embrace the welcome induction that -appreciation, attentive and reflective, inquisitive and conclusive, is -in this connection absolutely the golden _key_ to our pleasure. The more -it plays up, the more we recognise and are able to number the sources of -our enjoyment, the greater the provision made for security in that -attitude, which corresponds, by the same stroke, with the reduced danger -of waste in the undertaking to amuse us. It all comes back to our -amusement, and to the noblest surely, on the whole, we know; and it is -in the very nature of clinging appreciation not to sacrifice -consentingly a single shade of the art that makes for that blessing. -From this solicitude spring our questions, and not least the one to -which we give ourselves for the moment here—this moment of our being -regaled as never yet with the fruits of the movement (if the name be not -of too pompous an application where the flush and the heat of accident -too seem so candidly to look forth), in favour of the “expression of -life” in terms as loose as may pretend to an effect of expression at -all. The relegation of terms to the limbo of delusions outlived so far -as ever really cultivated becomes of necessity, it will be plain, the -great mark of the faith that for the novelist to show he “knows all -about” a certain congeries of aspects, the more numerous within their -mixed circle the better, is thereby to set in motion, with due -intensity, the pretension to interest. The state of knowing all about -whatever it may be has thus only to become consistently and abundantly -active to pass for his supreme function; and to its so becoming active -few difficulties appear to be descried—so great may on occasion be the -mere excitement of activity. To the fact that the exhilaration is, as we -have hinted, often infectious, to this and to the charming young good -faith and general acclamation under which each case appears to -proceed—each case we of course mean really repaying attention—the -critical reader owes his opportunity so considerably and so gratefully -to generalise. - - - II - -We should have only to remount the current with a certain energy to come -straight up against Tolstoy as the great illustrative master-hand on all -this ground of the disconnection of method from matter—which encounter, -however, would take us much too far, so that we must for the present but -hang off from it with the remark that of all great painters of the -social picture it was given that epic genius most to serve admirably as -a rash adventurer and a “caution,” and execrably, pestilentially, as a -model. In this strange union of relations he stands alone: from no other -great projector of the human image and the human idea is so much truth -to be extracted under an equal leakage of its value. All the proportions -in him are so much the largest that the drop of attention to our nearer -cases might by its violence leave little of that principle alive; which -fact need not disguise from us, none the less, that as Mr. H. G. Wells -and Mr. Arnold Bennett, to return to them briefly again, derive, by -multiplied if diluted transmissions, from the great Russian (from whose -all but equal companion Turgenieff we recognise no derivatives at all), -so, observing the distances, we may profitably detect an unexhausted -influence in our minor, our still considerably less rounded vessels. -Highly attaching as indeed the game might be, of inquiring as to the -centre of the interest or the sense of the whole in “The Passionate -Friends,” or in “The Old Wives’ Tale,” after having sought those -luxuries in vain not only through the general length and breadth of “War -and Peace,” but within the quite respectable confines of any one of the -units of effect there clustered: this as preparing us to address a like -friendly challenge to Mr. Cannan’s “Round the Corner,” say, or to Mr. -Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers”—should we wish to be very friendly to Mr. -Lawrence—or to Mr. Hugh Walpole’s “Duchess of Wrexe,” or even to Mr. -Compton Mackenzie’s “Sinister Street” and “Carnival,” discernibly, we -hasten to add, though certain betrayals of a controlling idea and a -pointed intention do comparatively gleam out of the two fictions last -named. “The Old Wives’ Tale” is the history of two sisters, daughters of -a prosperous draper in a Staffordshire town, who, separating early in -life, through the flight of one of them to Paris with an ill-chosen -husband and the confirmed and prolonged local pitch of the career of the -other, are reunited late in life by the return of the fugitive after -much Parisian experience and by her pacified acceptance of the -conditions of her birthplace. The divided current flows together again, -and the chronicle closes with the simple drying up determined by the -death of the sisters. That is all; the canvas is covered, ever so -closely and vividly covered, by the exhibition of innumerable small -facts and aspects, at which we assist with the most comfortable sense of -their substantial truth. The sisters, and more particularly the less -adventurous, are at home in their author’s mind, they sit and move at -their ease in the square chamber of his attention, to a degree beyond -which the production of that ideal harmony between creature and creator -could scarcely go, and all by an art of demonstration so familiar and so -“quiet” that the truth and the poetry, to use Goethe’s distinction, melt -utterly together and we see no difference between the subject of the -show and the showman’s feeling, let alone the showman’s manner, about -it. This felt identity of the elements—because we at least consciously -feel—becomes in the novel we refer to, and not less in “Clayhanger,” -which our words equally describe, a source for us of abject confidence, -confidence truly _so_ abject in the solidity of every appearance that it -may be said to represent our whole relation to the work and completely -to exhaust our reaction upon it. “Clayhanger,” of the two fictions even -the more densely loaded with all the evidence in what we should call the -case presented did we but learn meanwhile for what case, or for a case -of what, to take it, inscribes the annals, the private more -particularly, of a provincial printer in a considerable way of business, -beginning with his early boyhood and going on to the complications of -his maturity—these not exhausted with our present possession of the -record, inasmuch as by the author’s announcement there is more of the -catalogue to come. This most monumental of Mr. Arnold Bennett’s -recitals, taking it with its supplement of “Hilda Lessways,” already -before us, is so describable through its being a monument exactly not to -an idea, a pursued and captured meaning, or in short _to_ anything -whatever, but just simply _of_ the quarried and gathered material it -happens to contain, the stones and bricks and rubble and cement and -promiscuous constituents of every sort that have been heaped in it and -thanks to which it quite massively piles itself up. Our perusal and our -enjoyment are our watching of the growth of the pile and of the -capacity, industry, energy with which the operation is directed. A huge -and in its way a varied aggregation, without traceable lines, divinable -direction, effect of composition, the mere number of its pieces, the -great dump of its material, together with the fact that here and there -in the miscellany, as with the value of bits of marble or porphyry, fine -elements shine out, it keeps us standing and waiting to the end—and -largely just because it keeps us wondering. We surely wonder more what -it may all propose to mean than any equal appearance of preparation to -relieve us of that strain, any so founded and grounded a postponement of -the disclosure of a sense in store, has for a long time called upon us -to do in a like connection. A great thing it is assuredly that _while_ -we wait and wonder we are amused—were it not for that, truly, our -situation would be thankless enough; we may ask ourselves, as has -already been noted, why on such ambiguous terms we should consent to be, -and why the practice doesn’t at a given moment break down; and our -answer brings us back to that many-fingered grasp of the orange that the -author squeezes. This particular orange is of the largest and most -rotund, and his trust in the consequent flow is of its nature -communicative. Such is the case always, and most naturally, with that -air in a person who has something, who at the very least has much to -tell us: we _like_ so to be affected by it, we meet it half way and lend -ourselves, sinking in up to the chin. Up to the chin only indeed, beyond -doubt; we even then feel our head emerge, for judgment and articulate -question, and it is from that position that we remind ourselves how the -real reward of our patience is still to come—the reward attending not -at all the immediate sense of immersion, but reserved for the -after-sense, which is a very different matter, whether in the form of a -glow or of a chill. - -If Mr. Bennett’s tight rotundity then is of the handsomest size and his -manipulation of it so firm, what are we to say of Mr. Wells’s, who, a -novelist very much as Lord Bacon was a philosopher, affects us as taking -all knowledge for his province and as inspiring in us to the very -highest degree the confidence enjoyed by himself—enjoyed, we feel, with -a breadth with which it has been given no one of his fellow-craftsmen to -enjoy anything. If confidence alone could lead utterly captive we should -all be huddled in a bunch at Mr. Wells’s heels—which is indeed where we -_are_ abjectly gathered so far as that force does operate. It is -literally Mr. Wells’s own mind, and the experience of his own mind, -incessant and extraordinarily various, extraordinarily reflective, even -with all sorts of conditions made, of whatever he may expose it to, that -forms the reservoir tapped by him, that constitutes his provision of -grounds of interest. It is, by our thinking, in his power to name to us, -as a preliminary, more of these grounds than all his contemporaries put -together, and even to exceed any competitor, without exception, in the -way of suggesting that, thick as he may seem to lay them, they remain -yet only contributive, are not in themselves full expression but are -designed strictly to subserve it, that this extraordinary writer’s spell -resides. When full expression, the expression of some particular truth, -seemed to lapse in this or that of his earlier novels (we speak not here -of his shorter things, for the most part delightfully wanton and -exempt,) it was but by a hand’s breadth, so that if we didn’t -inveterately quite know what he intended we yet always felt sufficiently -that _he_ knew. The particular intentions of such matters as “Kipps,” as -“Tono-Bungay,” as “Ann Veronica,” so swarmed about us, in their -blinding, bluffing vivacity, that the mere sum of them might have been -taken for a sense over and above which it was graceless to inquire. The -more this author learns and learns, or at any rate knows and knows, -however, the greater is this impression of his holding it good enough -for us, such as we are, that he shall but turn out his mind and its -contents upon us by any free familiar gesture and as from a high window -forever open—an entertainment as copious surely as any occasion should -demand, at least till we have more intelligibly expressed our title to a -better. Such things as “The New Machiavelli,” “Marriage,” “The -Passionate Friends,” are so very much more attestations of the presence -of material than attestations of an interest in the use of it that we -ask ourselves again and again why so fondly neglected a state of leakage -comes not to be fatal to _any_ provision of quantity, or even to stores -more specially selected for the ordeal than Mr. Wells’s always strike us -as being. Is not the pang of witnessed waste in fact great just in -proportion as we are touched by our author’s fine off-handedness as to -the value of the stores, about which he can for the time make us believe -what he will? so that, to take an example susceptible of brief -statement, we wince at a certain quite peculiarly gratuitous sacrifice -to the casual in “Marriage” very much as at seeing some fine and -indispensable little part of a mechanism slip through profane fingers -and lose itself. Who does not remember what ensues after a little upon -the aviational descent of the hero of the fiction just named into the -garden occupied, in company with her parents, by the young lady with -whom he is to fall in love?—and this even though the whole opening -scene so constituted, with all the comedy hares its function appears to -be to start, remains with its back squarely turned, esthetically -speaking, to the quarter in which the picture develops. The point for -our mortification is that by one of the first steps in this development, -the first impression on him having been made, the hero accidentally -meets the heroine, of a summer eventide, in a leafy lane which supplies -them with the happiest occasion to pursue their acquaintance—or in -other words supplies the author with the liveliest consciousness (as we -at least feel it should have been) that just so the relation between the -pair, its seed already sown and the fact of that bringing about all that -is still to come, pushes aside whatever veil and steps forth into life. -To show it step forth and affirm itself as a relation, what is this but -the interesting function of the whole passage, on the performance of -which what follows is to hang?—and yet who can say that when the -ostensible sequence is presented, and our young lady, encountered again -by her stirred swain, under cover of night, in a favouring wood, is at -once encompassed by his arms and pressed to his lips and heart (for -celebration thus of their third meeting) we do not assist at a well-nigh -heartbreaking miscarriage of “effect”? We see effect, invoked in vain, -simply stand off unconcerned; effect not having been at all consulted in -advance she is not to be secured on such terms. And her presence would -so have redounded—perfectly punctual creature as she is on a made -appointment and a clear understanding—to the advantage of all -concerned. The bearing of the young man’s act is all in our having begun -to conceive it as possible, begun even to desire it, in the light of -what has preceded; therefore if the participants have _not_ been shown -us as on the way to it, nor the question of it made beautifully to -tremble for us in the air, its happiest connections fail and we but -stare at it mystified. The instance is undoubtedly trifling, but in the -infinite complex of such things resides for a work of art the shy -virtue, shy at least till wooed forth, of the whole susceptibility. The -case of Mr. Wells might take us much further—such remarks as there -would be to make, say, on such a question as the due understanding, on -the part of “The Passionate Friends” (not as associated persons but as a -composed picture), of what that composition is specifically _about_ and -where, for treatment of this interest, it undertakes to find its centre: -all of which, we are willing however to grant, falls away before the -large assurance and incorrigible levity with which this adventurer -carries his lapses—far more of an adventurer as he is than any other of -the company. The composition, as we have called it, heaven saving the -mark, is simply at any and every moment “about” Mr. Wells’s general -adventure; which is quite enough while it preserves, as we trust it will -long continue to do, its present robust pitch. - -We have already noted that “Round the Corner,” Mr. Gilbert Cannan’s -liveliest appeal to our attention, belongs to the order of -_constatations_ pure and simple; to the degree that _as_ a document of -that nature and of that rigour the book could perhaps not more -completely affirm itself. When we have said that it puts on record the -“tone,” the manners, the general domestic proceedings and _train de vie_ -of an amiable clergyman’s family established in one of the more sordid -quarters of a big black northern city of the Liverpool or Manchester -complexion we have advanced as far in the way of descriptive statement -as the interesting work seems to warrant. For it _is_ interesting, in -spite of its leaving itself on our hands with a consistent indifference -to any question of the charmed application springing from it all that -places it in the forefront of its type. Again as under the effect of Mr. -Bennett’s major productions our sole inference is that things, the -things disclosed, _go on and on, in any given case, in spite of -everything_—with Mr. Cannan’s one discernible care perhaps being for -how extraordinarily much, in the particular example here before him, -they were able to go on in spite of. The conception, the presentation of -this enormous inauspicious amount as bearing upon the collective career -of the Folyats is, we think, as near as the author comes at any point to -betraying an awareness of a subject. Yet again, though so little -encouraged or “backed,” a subject after a fashion makes itself, even as -it has made itself in “The Old Wives’ Tale” and in “Clayhanger,” in -“Sons and Lovers,” where, as we have hinted, any assistance rendered us -for a view of one _most_ comfortably enjoys its absence, and in Mr. Hugh -Walpole’s newest novel, where we wander scarcely less with our hand in -no guiding grasp, but where the author’s good disposition, as we feel -it, to provide us with what we lack if he only knew how, constitutes in -itself such a pleading liberality. We seem to see him in this spirit lay -again and again a flowered carpet for our steps. If we do not include -Mr. Compton Mackenzie to the same extent in our generalisation it is -really because we note a difference in him, a difference in favour of -his care for the application. Preoccupations seem at work in “Sinister -Street,” and withal in “Carnival,” the brush of which we in other -quarters scarce even suspect and at some of which it will presently be -of profit to glance. “I answer for it, you know,” we seem at any rate to -hear Mr. Gilbert Cannan say with an admirably genuine young pessimism, -“I answer for it that they were really _like_ that, odd or unpleasant or -uncontributive, and therefore tiresome, as it may strike you;” and the -charm of Mr. Cannan, so far as up or down the rank we so disengage a -charm, is that we take him at his word. His guarantee, his straight -communication, of his general truth is a value, and values are rare—the -flood of fiction is apparently capable of running hundreds of miles -without a single glint of one—and thus in default of satisfaction we -get stopgaps and are thankful often under a genial touch to get even so -much. The value indeed is crude, it would be quadrupled were it only -wrought and shaped; yet it has still the rude dignity that it counts to -us for experience or at least for what we call under our present pitch -of sensibility force of impression. The experience, we feel, is ever -something to conclude upon, while the impression is content to wait; to -wait, say, in the spirit in which we must accept this younger bustle if -we accept it at all, the spirit of its serving as a rather presumptuous -lesson to us in patience. While we wait, again, we are amused—not in -the least, also to repeat, up to the notch of our conception of -amusement, which draws upon still other forms and sources; but none the -less for the wonder, the intensity, the actuality, the probity of the -vision. This is much as in “Clayhanger” and in “Hilda Lessways,” where, -independently of the effect, so considerably rendered, of the long lapse -of time, always in this type of recital a source of amusement in itself, -and certainly of the noblest, we get such an admirably substantial thing -as the collective image of the Orgreaves, the local family in whose -ample lap the amenities and the humanities so easily sit, for Mr. -Bennett’s evocation and his protagonist’s recognition, and the manner of -the presentation of whom, with the function and relation of the picture -at large, strikes such a note of felicity, achieves such a simulation of -sense, as the author should never again be excused for treating, that is -for neglecting, as beyond his range. Here figures signally the -interesting case of a compositional function absolutely performed by -mere multiplication, the flow of the facts: the Orgreaves, in -“Clayhanger,” are there, by what we make out, but for “life,” for -general life only, and yet, with their office under any general or -inferential meaning entirely unmarked, come doubtless as near squaring -esthetically with the famous formula of the “slice of life” as any -example that could be adduced; happening moreover as they probably do to -owe this distinction to their coincidence at once with reality and -charm—a fact esthetically curious and delightful. For we attribute the -bold stroke they represent much more to Mr. Arnold Bennett’s esthetic -instinct than to anything like a calculation of his bearings, and more -to his thoroughly acquainted state, as we may again put it, than to all -other causes together: which strikingly enough shows how much complexity -of interest may be simulated by mere presentation of material, mere -squeezing of the orange, when the material happens to be “handsome” or -the orange to be sweet. - - - III - -The orange of our persistent simile is in Mr. Hugh Walpole’s hands very -remarkably sweet—a quality we recognise in it even while reduced to -observing that the squeeze pure and simple, the fond, the lingering, the -reiterated squeeze, constitutes as yet his main perception of method. He -enjoys in a high degree the consciousness of saturation, and is on such -serene and happy terms with it as almost make of critical interference, -in so bright an air, an assault on personal felicity. Full of material -is thus the author of “The Duchess of Wrexe,” and of a material which we -should describe as the consciousness of youth were we not rather -disposed to call it a peculiar strain of the extreme unconsciousness. -Mr. Walpole offers us indeed a rare and interesting case—we see about -the field none other like it; the case of a positive identity between -the spirit, not to say the time of life or stage of experience, of the -aspiring artist and the field itself of his vision. “The Duchess of -Wrexe” reeks with youth and the love of youth and the confidence of -youth—youth taking on with a charming exuberance the fondest costume or -disguise, that of an adventurous and voracious felt interest, interest -in life, in London, in society, in character, in Portland Place, in the -Oxford Circus, in the afternoon tea-table, in the torrid weather, in -fifty other immediate things as to which its passion and its curiosity -are of the sincerest. The wonderful thing is that these latter forces -operate, in their way, without yet being disengaged and -hand-free—disengaged, that is, from their state of _being_ young, with -its billowy mufflings and other soft obstructions, the state of being -present, being involved and aware, close “up against” the whole mass of -possibilities, being in short intoxicated with the mixed liquors of -suggestion. In the fumes of this acute situation Mr. Walpole’s -subject-matter is bathed; the situation being all the while so much more -his own and that of a juvenility reacting, in the presence of -everything, “for all it is worth,” than the devised and imagined one, -however he may circle about some such cluster, that every cupful of his -excited flow tastes three times as much of his temperamental freshness -as it tastes of this, that or the other character or substance, above -all of this, that or the other group of antecedents and references, -supposed to be reflected in it. All of which does not mean, we hasten to -add, that the author of “The Duchess of Wrexe” has not the gift of life; -but only that he strikes us as having received it, straight from nature, -with such a concussion as to have kept the boon at the stage of -violence—so that, fairly pinned down by it, he is still embarrassed for -passing it on. On the day he shall have worked free of this primitive -predicament, the crude fact of the convulsion itself, there need be no -doubt of his exhibiting matter into which method may learn how to bite. -The tract meanwhile affects us as more or less virgin snow, and we look -with interest and suspense for the imprint of a process. - -If those remarks represent all the while, further, that the performances -we have glanced at, with others besides, lead our attention on, we hear -ourselves the more naturally asked what it is then that we expect or -want, confessing as we do that we have been in a manner interested, even -though, from case to case, in a varying degree, and that Thackeray, -Turgenieff, Balzac, Dickens, Anatole France, no matter who, can not do -more than interest. Let us therefore concede to the last point that -small mercies are better than none, that there are latent within the -critic numberless liabilities to being “squared” (the extent to which he -may on occasion betray his price!) and so great a preference for being -pleased over not being, that you may again and again see him assist with -avidity at the attempt of the slice of life to butter itself thick. Its -explanation that it _is_ a slice of life and pretends to be nothing else -figures for us, say, while we watch, the jam super-added to the butter. -For since the jam, on this system, descends upon our desert, in its form -of manna, from quite another heaven than the heaven of method, the mere -demonstration of its agreeable presence is alone sufficient to hint at -our more than one chance of being supernaturally fed. The happy-go-lucky -fashion of it is indeed not then, we grant, an objection so long as we -do take in refreshment: the meal may be of the last informality and yet -produce in the event no small sense of repletion. The slice of life -devoured, the butter and the jam duly appreciated, we are ready, no -doubt, on another day, to trust ourselves afresh to the desert. We break -camp, that is, and face toward a further stretch of it, all in the faith -that we shall be once more provided for. We take the risk, we enjoy more -or less the assistance—more or less, we put it, for the vision of a -possible arrest of the miracle or failure of our supply never wholly -leaves us. The phenomenon is too uncanny, the happy-go-lucky, as we know -it in general, never _has_ been trustable to the end; the absence of the -last true touch in the preparation of its viands becomes with each -renewal of the adventure a more sensible fact. By the last true touch we -mean of course the touch of the hand of selection; the principle of -selection having been involved at the worst or the least, one would -suppose, in any approach whatever to the loaf of life with the -_arrière-pensée_ of a slice. There being no question of a slice upon -which the further question of where and how to cut it does not wait, the -office of method, the idea of choice and comparison, have occupied the -ground from the first. This makes clear, to a moment’s reflection, that -there can be no such thing as an amorphous slice, and that any waving -aside of inquiry as to the sense and value of a chunk of matter has to -reckon with the simple truth of its having been _born_ of naught else -but measured excision. Reasons have been the fairies waiting on its -cradle, the possible presence of a bad fairy in the form of a bad reason -to the contrary notwithstanding. It has thus had connections at the very -first stage of its detachment that are at no later stage logically to be -repudiated; let it lie as lumpish as it will—for adoption, we mean, of -the ideal of the lump—it has been tainted from too far back with the -hard liability to form, and thus carries in its very breast the hapless -contradiction of its sturdy claim to have none. This claim has the -inevitable challenge at once to meet. How can a slice of life be -anything but illustrational of the loaf, and how can illustration not -immediately bristle with every sign of the extracted and related state? -The relation is at once to what the thing comes from and to what it -waits upon—which last is our act of recognition. We accordingly -appreciate it in proportion as it so accounts for itself; the quantity -and the intensity of its reference are the measure of our knowledge of -it. This is exactly why illustration breaks down when reference, -otherwise application, runs short, and why before any assemblage of -figures or aspects, otherwise of samples and specimens, the question of -what these are, extensively, samples and specimens _of_ declines not to -beset us—why, otherwise again, we look ever for the supreme reference -that shall avert the bankruptcy of sense. - -Let us profess all readiness to repeat that we may still have had, on -the merest “life” system, or that of the starkest crudity of the slice, -all the entertainment that can come from watching a wayfarer engage with -assurance in an alley that we know to have no issue—and from watching -for the very sake of the face that he may show us on reappearing at its -mouth. The recitals of Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Gilbert Cannan, Mr. D. H. -Lawrence, fairly smell of the real, just as the “Fortitude” and “The -Duchess” of Mr. Hugh Walpole smell of the romantic; we have sufficiently -noted then that, once on the scent, we are capable of pushing ahead. How -far it is at the same time from being all a matter of smell the terms in -which we just above glanced at the weakness of the spell of the -happy-go-lucky may here serve to indicate. There faces us all the while -the fact that the act of consideration as an incident of the esthetic -pleasure, consideration confidently knowing us to _have_ sooner or later -to arrive at it, may be again and again postponed, but can never hope -not some time to fall due. Consideration is susceptible of many forms, -some one or other of which no conscious esthetic effort fails to cry out -for; and the simplest description of the cry of the novel when -sincere—for have we not heard such compositions bluff us, as it were, -with false cries?—is as an appeal to us when we have read it once to -read it yet again. _That_ is the act of consideration; no other process -of considering approaches this for directness, so that anything short of -it is virtually not to consider at all. The word has sometimes another -sense, that of the appeal to us _not_, for the world, to go back—this -being of course consideration of a sort; the sort clearly that the truly -flushed production should be the last to invoke. The effect of -consideration, we need scarce remark, is to light for us in a work of -art the hundred questions of how and why and whither, and the effect of -these questions, once lighted, is enormously to thicken and complicate, -even if toward final clarifications, what we have called the amused -state produced in us by the work. The more our amusement multiplies its -terms the more fond and the more rewarded consideration becomes; the -fewer it leaves them, on the other hand, the less to be resisted for us -is the impression of “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds -sang.” Birds that have appeared to sing, or whose silence we have not -heeded, on a first perusal, prove on a second to have no note to -contribute, and whether or no a second is enough to admonish us of those -we miss, we mostly expect much from it in the way of emphasis of those -we find. Then it is that notes of intention become more present or more -absent; then it is that we take the measure of what we have already -called our effective provision. The bravest providers and designers show -at this point something still in store which only the second rummage was -appointed to draw forth. To the variety of these ways of not letting our -fondness fast is there not practically no limit?—and of the arts, the -devices, the graces, the subtle secrets applicable to such an end what -presumptuous critic shall pretend to draw the list? Let him for the -moment content himself with saying that many of the most effective are -mysteries, precisely, of method, or that even when they are not most -essentially and directly so it takes method, blest method, to extract -their soul and to determine their action. - -It is odd and delightful perhaps that at the very moment of our urging -this truth we should happen to be regaled with a really supreme specimen -of the part playable in a novel by the source of interest, the principle -of provision attended to, for which we claim importance. Mr. Joseph -Conrad’s “Chance” is none the less a signal instance of provision the -most earnest and the most copious for its leaving ever so much to be -said about the particular provision effected. It is none the less an -extraordinary exhibition of method by the fact that the method is, we -venture to say, without a precedent in any like work. It places Mr. -Conrad absolutely alone as a votary of the way to do a thing that shall -make it undergo most doing. The way to do it that shall make it undergo -least is the line on which we are mostly now used to see prizes carried -off; so that the author of “Chance” gathers up on this showing all sorts -of comparative distinction. He gathers up at least two sorts—that of -bravery in absolutely reversing the process most accredited, and that, -quite separate, we make out, of performing the manœuvre under salvos of -recognition. It is not in these days often given to a refinement of -design to be recognised, but Mr. Conrad has made his achieve that -miracle—save in so far indeed as the miracle has been one thing and the -success another. The miracle is of the rarest, confounding all -calculation and suggesting more reflections than we can begin to make -place for here; but the sources of surprise surrounding it might be, -were this possible, even greater and yet leave the fact itself in all -independence, the fact that the whole undertaking was committed by its -very first step either to be “art” exclusively or to be nothing. This is -the prodigious rarity, since surely we have known for many a day no -other such case of the whole clutch of eggs, and these withal of the -freshest, in that one basket; to which it may be added that if we say -for many a day this is not through our readiness positively to associate -the sight with any very definite moment of the past. What concerns us is -that the general effect of “Chance” is arrived at by a pursuance of -means to the end in view contrasted with which every other current form -of the chase can only affect us as cheap and futile; the carriage of the -burden or amount of service required on these lines exceeding surely all -other such displayed degrees of energy put together. Nothing could well -interest us more than to see the exemplary value of attention, attention -given by the author and asked of the reader, attested in a case in which -it has had almost unspeakable difficulties to struggle with—since so we -are moved to qualify the particular difficulty Mr. Conrad has “elected” -to face: the claim for method in itself, method in this very sense of -attention applied, would be somehow less lighted if the difficulties -struck us as less consciously, or call it even less wantonly, invoked. -What they consist of we should have to diverge here a little to say, and -should even then probably but lose ourselves in the dim question of why -so special, eccentric and desperate a course, so deliberate a plunge -into threatened frustration, should alone have seemed open. It has been -the course, so far as three words may here serve, of his so multiplying -his creators or, as we are now fond of saying, producers, as to make -them almost more numerous and quite emphatically more material than the -creatures and the production itself in whom and which we by the general -law of fiction expect such agents to lose themselves. We take for -granted by the general law of fiction a primary author, take him so much -for granted that we forget him in proportion as he works upon us, and -that he works upon us most in fact by making us forget him. - -Mr. Conrad’s first care on the other hand is expressly to posit or set -up a reciter, a definite responsible intervening first person singular, -possessed of infinite sources of reference, who immediately proceeds to -set up another, to the end that this other may conform again to the -practice, and that even at that point the bridge over to the creature, -or in other words to the situation or the subject, the thing “produced,” -shall, if the fancy takes it, once more and yet once more glory in a -gap. It is easy to see how heroic the undertaking of an effective fusion -becomes on these terms, fusion between what we are to know and that -prodigy of our knowing which is ever half the very beauty of the -atmosphere of authenticity; from the moment the reporters are thus -multiplied from pitch to pitch the tone of each, especially as -“rendered” by his precursor in the series, becomes for the prime poet of -all an immense question—these circumferential tones having not only to -be such individually separate notes, but to keep so clear of the others, -the central, the numerous and various voices of the agents proper, those -expressive of the action itself and in whom the objectivity resides. We -usually escape the worst of this difficulty of a tone _about_ the tone -of our characters, our projected performers, by keeping it single, -keeping it “down” and thereby comparatively impersonal or, as we may -say, inscrutable; which is what a creative force, in its blest fatuity, -likes to be. But the omniscience, remaining indeed nameless, though -constantly active, which sets Marlow’s omniscience in motion from the -very first page, insisting on a reciprocity with it throughout, this -original omniscience invites consideration of itself only in a degree -less than that in which Marlow’s own invites it; and Marlow’s own is a -prolonged hovering flight of the subjective over the outstretched ground -of the case exposed. We make out this ground but through the shadow cast -by the flight, clarify it though the real author visibly reminds himself -again and again that he must—all the more that, as if by some -tremendous forecast of future applied science, the upper aeroplane -causes another, as we have said, to depend from it and that one still -another; these dropping shadow after shadow, to the no small menace of -intrinsic colour and form and whatever, upon the passive expanse. What -shall we most call Mr. Conrad’s method accordingly but his attempt to -clarify _quand même_—ridden as he has been, we perceive at the end of -fifty pages of “Chance,” by such a danger of steeping his matter in -perfect eventual obscuration as we recall no other artist’s consenting -to with an equal grace. This grace, which presently comes over us as the -sign of the whole business, is Mr. Conrad’s gallantry itself, and the -shortest account of the rest of the connection for our present purpose -is that his gallantry is thus his success. It literally strikes us that -his volume sets in motion more than anything else a drama in which his -own system and his combined eccentricities of recital represent the -protagonist in face of powers leagued against it, and of which the -dénouement gives us the system fighting in triumph, though with its back -desperately to the wall, and laying the powers piled up at its feet. -This frankly has been _our_ spectacle, our suspense and our thrill; with -the one flaw on the roundness of it all the fact that the predicament -was not imposed rather than invoked, was not the effect of a challenge -from without, but that of a mystic impulse from within. - -Of an exquisite refinement at all events are the critical questions -opened up in the attempt, the question in particular of by what it -exactly is that the experiment is crowned. Pronouncing it crowned and -the case saved by sheer gallantry, as we did above, is perhaps to fall -just short of the conclusion we might reach were we to push further. -“Chance” _is_ an example of objectivity, most precious of aims, not only -menaced but definitely compromised; whereby we are in presence of -something really of the strangest, a general and diffused lapse of -authenticity which an inordinate number of common readers—since it -always takes this and these to account encouragingly for -“editions”—have not only condoned but have emphatically commended. They -can have done this but through the bribe of some authenticity other in -kind, no doubt, and seeming to them equally great if not greater, which -gives back by the left hand what the right has, with however -dissimulated a grace, taken away. What Mr. Conrad’s left hand gives back -then is simply Mr. Conrad himself. We asked above what would become, by -such a form of practice, of indispensable “fusion” or, to call it by -another name, of the fine process by which our impatient material, at a -given moment, shakes off the humiliation of the handled, the fumbled -state, puts its head in the air and, to its own beautiful illusory -consciousness at least, simply runs its race. Such an amount of handling -and fumbling and repointing has it, on the system of the multiplied -“putter into marble,” to shake off! And yet behold, the sense of -discomfort, as the show here works out, _has_ been conjured away. The -fusion has taken place, or at any rate _a_ fusion; only it has been -transferred in wondrous fashion to an unexpected, and on the whole more -limited plane of operation; it has succeeded in getting effected, so to -speak, not on the ground but in the air, not between our writer’s idea -and his machinery, but between the different parts of his genius itself. -His genius is what is left over from the other, the compromised and -compromising quantities—the Marlows and their determinant inventors and -interlocutors, the Powells, the Franklins, the Fynes, the tell-tale -little dogs, the successive members of a cue from one to the other of -which the sense and the interest of the subject have to be passed on -together, in the manner of the buckets of water for the improvised -extinction of a fire, before reaching our apprehension: all with -whatever result, to this apprehension, of a quantity to be allowed for -as spilt by the way. The residuum has accordingly the form not of such -and such a number of images discharged and ordered, but that rather of a -wandering, circling, yearning imaginative _faculty_, encountered in its -habit as it lives and diffusing itself as a presence or a tide, a noble -sociability of vision. So we have as the force that fills the cup just -the high-water mark of a beautiful and generous mind at play in -conditions comparatively thankless—thoroughly, unweariedly, yet at the -same time ever so elegantly at play, and doing more for itself than it -succeeds in getting done for it. Than which nothing could be of a -greater reward to critical curiosity were it not still for the wonder of -wonders, a new page in the record altogether—the fact that these things -are apparently what the common reader has seen and understood. Great -then would seem to be after all the common reader! - - - IV - -We must not fail of the point, however, that we have made these remarks -not at all with an eye to the question of whether “Chance” has been well -or ill inspired as to its particular choice of a way of really attending -to itself among all the possible alternatives, but only on the ground of -its having compared, selected and held on; since any alternative that -might have been preferred and that should have been effectively adopted -would point our moral as well—and this even if it is of profit none the -less to note the most striking of Mr. Conrad’s compositional -consequences. There is one of these that has had most to do with making -his pages differ in texture, and to our very first glance, from that -straggle of ungoverned verbiage which leads us up and down those of his -fellow fabulists in general on a vain hunt for some projected mass of -truth, some solidity of substance, as to which the deluge of “dialogue,” -the flooding report of things said, or at least of words pretendedly -spoken, shall have learned the art of being merely illustrational. What -first springs from any form of real attention, no matter which, we on a -comparison so made quickly perceive to be a practical challenge of the -preposterous pretension of this most fatuous of the luxuries of -looseness to acquit itself with authority of the structural and -compositional office. Infinitely valid and vivid as illustration, it -altogether depends for dignity and sense upon our state of possession of -its historic preliminaries, its promoting conditions, its supporting -ground; that is upon our waiting occupancy of the chamber it proposes to -light and which, when no other source of effect is more indicated, it -doubtless inimitably fills with life. Then its relation to what encloses -and confines and, in its sovereign interest, finely compresses it, -offering it constituted aspects, surfaces, presences, faces and figures -of the matter we are either generally or acutely concerned with to play -over and hang upon, then this relation gives it all its value: it has -flowered from the soil prepared and sheds back its richness into the -field of cultivation. It is interesting, in a word, only when nothing -else is equally so, carrying the vessel of the interest with least of a -stumble or a sacrifice; but it is of the essence that the sounds so set -in motion (it being as sound above all that they undertake to convey -sense,) should have something to proceed from, in their course, to -address themselves to and be affected by, with all the sensibility of -sounds. It is of the essence that they should live in a medium, and in a -medium only, since it takes a medium to give them an identity, the -intenser the better, and that the medium should subserve them by -enjoying in a like degree the luxury of an existence. We need of course -scarce expressly note that the play, as distinguished from the novel, -lives exclusively on the spoken word—not on the report of the thing -said but, directly and audibly, on that very thing; that it thrives by -its law on the exercise under which the novel hopelessly collapses when -the attempt is made disproportionately to impose it. There is no danger -for the play of the cart before the horse, no disaster involved in it; -that form being _all_ horse and the interest itself mounted and astride, -and not, as that of the novel, dependent in the first instance on -wheels. The order in which the drama simply says things gives it all its -form, while the story told and the picture painted, as the novel at the -pass we have brought it to embraces them, reports of an infinite -diversity of matters, gathers together and gives out again a hundred -sorts, and finds its order and its structure, its unity and its beauty, -in the alternation of parts and the adjustment of differences. It is no -less apparent that the novel may be fundamentally _organised_—such -things as “The Egoist” and “The Awkward Age” are there to prove it; but -in this case it adheres unconfusedly to that logic and has nothing to -say to any other. Were it not for a second exception, one at this season -rather pertinent, “Chance” then, to return to it a moment, would be as -happy an example as we might just now put our hand on of the automatic -working of a scheme unfavourable to that treatment of the colloquy by -endless dangling strings which makes the current “story” in general so -figure to us a porcupine of extravagant yet abnormally relaxed bristles. - -The exception we speak of would be Mrs. Wharton’s “Custom of the -Country,” in which, as in this lady’s other fictions, we recognise the -happy fact of an abuse of no one of the resources it enjoys at the -expense of the others; the whole series offering as general an example -of dialogue flowering and not weeding, illustrational and not itself -starved of illustration, or starved of referability and association, -which is the same thing, as meets the eye in any glance that leaves Mr. -Wells at Mr. Wells’s best-inspired hour out of our own account. The -truth is, however, that Mrs. Wharton is herself here out of our account, -even as we have easily recognised Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Maurice Hewlett -to be; these three authors, with whatever differences between them, -remaining essentially votaries of selection and intention and being -embodiments thereby, in each case, of some state over and above that -simple state of possession of much evidence, that confused conception of -what the “slice” of life must consist of, which forms the text of our -remarks. Mrs. Wharton, _her_ conception of the “slice” so clarified and -cultivated, would herself of course form a text in quite another -connection, as Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Galsworthy would do each in his own, -which we abstain from specifying; but there are two or three grounds on -which the author of “Ethan Frome,” “The Valley of Decision” and “The -House of Mirth,” whom we brush by with reluctance, would point the moral -of the treasure of amusement sitting in the lap of method with a -felicity peculiarly her own. If one of these is that she too has clearly -a saturation—which it would be ever so interesting to determine and -appreciate—we have it from her not in the crude state but in the -extract, the extract that makes all the difference for our sense of an -artistic economy. If the extract, as would appear, is the result of an -artistic economy, as the latter is its logical motive, so we find it -associated in Mrs. Wharton with such appeals to our interest, for -instance, as the fact that, absolutely sole among our students of this -form, she suffers, she even encourages, her expression to flower into -some sharp image or figure of her thought when that will make the -thought more finely touch us. Her step, without straying, encounters the -living analogy, which she gathers, in passing, without awkwardness of -pause, and which the page then carries on its breast as a trophy plucked -by a happy adventurous dash, a token of spirit and temper as well as a -proof of vision. We note it as one of the _kinds_ of proof of vision -that most fail us in that comparative desert of the inselective where -our imagination has itself to hunt out or call down (often among strange -witnessed flounderings or sand-storms) such analogies as may mercifully -“put” the thing. Mrs. Wharton not only owes to her cultivated art of -putting it the distinction enjoyed when some ideal of expression has the -_whole_ of the case, the case once made its concern, in charge, but -might further act for us, were we to follow up her exhibition, as -lighting not a little that question of “tone,” the author’s own -intrinsic, as to which we have just seen Mr. Conrad’s late production -rather tend to darken counsel. “The Custom of the Country” is an eminent -instance of the sort of tonic value most opposed to that baffled -relation between the subject-matter and its emergence which we find -constituted by the circumvalations of “Chance.” Mrs. Wharton’s reaction -in presence of the aspects of life hitherto, it would seem, mainly -exposed to her is for the most part the ironic—to which we gather that -these particular aspects have so much ministered that, were we to pursue -the quest, we might recognise in them precisely the saturation as to -which we a moment ago reserved our judgment. “The Custom of the Country” -is at any rate consistently, almost scientifically satiric, as indeed -the satiric light was doubtless the only one in which the elements -engaged could at all be focussed together. But this happens directly to -the profit of something that, as we read, becomes more and more one with -the principle of authority at work; the light that gathers is a dry -light, of great intensity, and the effect, if not rather the very -essence, of its dryness is a particular fine asperity. The usual -“creative” conditions and associations, as we have elsewhere languished -among them, are thanks to this ever so sensibly altered; the general -authoritative relation attested becomes clear—we move in an air purged -at a stroke of the old sentimental and romantic values, the perversions -with the maximum of waste of perversions, and we shall not here attempt -to state what this makes for in the way of esthetic refreshment and -relief; the waste having kept us so dangling on the dark esthetic abyss. -A shade of asperity may be in such fashion a security against waste, and -in the dearth of displayed securities we should welcome it on that -ground alone. It helps at any rate to constitute for the talent manifest -in “The Custom” a rare identity, so far should we have to go to seek -another instance of the dry, or call it perhaps even the hard, -intellectual touch in the soft, or call it perhaps even the humid, -temperamental air; in other words of the masculine conclusion tending so -to crown the feminine observation. - -If we mentioned Mr. Compton Mackenzie at the beginning of these -reflections only to leave him waiting for some further appreciation, -this is exactly because his case, to the most interesting effect, is no -simple one, like two or three of our others, but on the contrary -mystifying enough almost to stand by itself. What would be this striking -young writer’s state of acquaintance and possession, and should we find -it, on our recognition of it, to be all he is content to pitch forth, -without discriminations or determinants, without motives or lights? Do -“Carnival” and “Sinister Street” proceed from the theory of the slice or -from the conception of the extract, “the extract flasked and fine,” the -chemical process superseding the mechanical? Mr. Compton Mackenzie’s -literary aspect, though decidedly that of youth, or that of experience, -a great deal of young experience, in its freshness, offers the -attraction of a complexity defiant of the prompt conclusion, really -charms us by giving us something to wonder about. We literally find it -not easy to say if there may not lurk in “Carnival,” for example, a -selective sense more apprehensible, to a push of inquiry, than its -overflooded surface, a real invitation to wade and upon which everything -within the author’s ken appears poured out, would at first lead us to -suspect. The question comes up in like fashion as to the distinctly more -developed successor of that work, before which we in fact find questions -multiply to a positive quickening of critical pleasure. We ask ourselves -what “Sinister Street” may mean as a whole in spite of our sense of -being brushed from the first by a hundred subordinate purposes, the -succession and alternation of which seem to make after a fashion a plan, -and which, though full of occasional design, yet fail to gather -themselves for application or to converge to an idea. Any idea will -serve, ever, that has held up its candle to composition—and it is -perhaps because composition proposes itself under Mr. Compton -Mackenzie’s energy on a scale well-nigh of the most prodigious that we -must wait to see whither it tends. The question of what he may here mean -“on the whole,” as we just said, is doubtless admonished to stand back -till we be possessed of the whole. This interesting volume is but a -first, committed up to its eyes to continuity and with an announced -sequel to follow. The recital exhibits at the point we have reached the -intimate experience of a boy at school and in his holidays, the -amplification of which is to come with his terms and their breaks at a -university; and the record will probably form a more squared and -extended picture of life equally conditioned by the extremity of youth -than we shall know where else to look for. Youth clearly has been Mr. -Mackenzie’s saturation, as it has been Mr. Hugh Walpole’s, but we see -this not as a subject (youth in itself is no specific subject, any more -than age is,) but as matter for a subject and as requiring a motive to -redeem it from the merely passive state of the slice. We are sure -throughout both “Sinister Street” and “Carnival” of breathing the air of -the extract, as we contentiously call it, only in certain of the rounded -episodes strung on the loose cord as so many vivid beads, each of its -chosen hue, and the series of which, even with differences of price -between them, we take for a lively gage of performance to come. These -episodes would be easy to cite; they are handsomely numerous and each -strikes us as giving in its turn great salience to its motive; besides -which each is in its turn “done” with an eminent sense and a remarkably -straight hand for doing. They may well be cited together as both -signally and finely symptomatic, for the literary gesture and the -_bravura_ breadth with which such frequent medallions as the adventure -on the boy’s part of the Catholic church at Bournemouth, as his -experiment of the Benedictine house in Wiltshire, as his period of -acquaintance with the esthetic _cénacle_ in London, as his relation with -his chosen school friend under the intensity of boyish choosing, are -ornamentally hung up, differ not so much in degree as in kind from any -play of presentation that we mostly see elsewhere offered us. To which -we might add other like matters that we lack space to enumerate, the -scene, the aspect, the figure in motion tending always, under touches -thick and strong, to emerge and flush, sound and strike, catch us in its -truth. We have read “tales of school life” in which the boys more or -less swarmed and sounded, but from which the masters have practically -been quite absent, to the great weakening of any picture of the boyish -consciousness, on which the magisterial fact is so heavily projected. If -that is less true for some boys than for others, the “point” of Michael -Fane is that for him it is truest. The types of masters have in -“Sinister Street” both number and salience, rendered though they be -mostly as grotesques—which effect we take as characterising the -particular turn of mind of the young observer and discoverer -commemorated. - -That he _is_ a discoverer is of the essence of his interest, a -successful and resourceful young discoverer, even as the poor -ballet-girl in “Carnival” is a tragically baffled and helpless one; so -that what each of the works proposes to itself is a recital of the -things discovered. Those thus brought to our view in the boy’s case are -of much more interest, to our sense, than like matters in the other -connection, thanks to his remarkable and living capacity; the heroine of -“Carnival” is frankly too minute a vessel of experience for treatment on -the scale on which the author has honoured her—she is done assuredly, -but under multiplications of touch that become too much, in the narrow -field, monotonies; and she leaves us asking almost as much what she -exhibitionally means, what application resides in the accumulation of -facts concerning her, as if she too were after all but a slice, or at -the most but a slice _of_ a slice, and her history but one of the -aspects, on her author’s part, of the condition of repleteness against -the postulate of the entire adequacy of which we protest. So far as this -record does affect us as an achieved “extract,” to reiterate our term, -that result abides in its not losing its centre, which is its fidelity -to the one question of her dolefully embarrassed little measure of life. -We know to that extent with some intensity what her producer would be -at, yet an element of the arbitrary hangs for us about the particular -illustration—illustrations leaving us ever but half appreciative till -we catch that one bright light in which they give out all they contain. -This light is of course always for the author to set somewhere. Is it -set then so much as it should be in “Sinister Street,” and is our -impression of the promise of this recital one with a dawning divination -of the illustrative card that Mr. Mackenzie may still have up his sleeve -and that our after sense shall recognise as the last thing left on the -table? By no means, we can as yet easily say, for if a boy’s experience -has ever been given us for its face value simply, for what it is worth -in mere recovered intensity, it is so given us here. Of all the -saturations it can in fact scarce have helped being the most sufficient -in itself, for it is exactly, where it is best, from beginning to end -the remembered and reported thing, that thing alone, that thing existent -in the field of memory, though gaining value too from the applied -intelligence, or in other words from the lively talent, of the -memoriser. The memoriser helps, he contributes, he completes, and what -we have admired in him is that in the case of each of the pearls fished -up by his dive—though indeed these fruits of the rummage are not all -pearls—his mind has had a further iridescence to confer. It is the -fineness of the iridescence that on such an occasion matters, and this -appeal to our interest is again and again on Mr. Compton Mackenzie’s -page of the happiest and the brightest. It is never more so than when we -catch him, as we repeatedly do, in the act of positively caring for his -expression as expression, positively providing for his phrase as a -fondly foreseeing parent for a child, positively loving it in the light -of what it may do for him—meeting revelations, that is, in what it may -do, and appearing to recognise that the value of the offered thing, its -whole relation to us, is created by the breath of language, that on such -terms exclusively, for appropriation and enjoyment, we know it, and that -any claimed independence of “form” on its part is the most abject of -fallacies. Do these things mean that, moved by life, this interesting -young novelist is even now uncontrollably on the way to style? We might -cite had we space several symptoms, the very vividest, of that -possibility; though such an appearance in the field of our general -survey has against it presumptions enough to bring us surely back to our -original contention—the scant degree in which that field has ever had -to reckon with criticism. - - - - - DUMAS THE YOUNGER - 1895 - - -One of the things that most bring home his time of life to a man of -fifty is the increase of the rate at which he loses his friends. Some -one dies every week, some one dies every day, and if the rate be high -among his coevals it is higher still in the generation that, on awaking -to spectatorship, he found in possession of the stage. He begins to feel -his own world, the world of his most vivid impressions, gradually become -historical. He is present, and closely present, at the process by which -legend grows up. He sees the friends in question pictured as only death -can picture them—a master superior to the Rembrandts and Titians. They -have been of many sorts and many degrees, they have been private and -public, but they have had in common that they were the furniture of this -first fresh world, the world in which associations are formed. That one -by one they go is what makes the main difference in it. The landscape of -life, in foreground and distance, becomes, as the painters say, another -composition, another subject; and quite as much as the objects directly -under our eyes we miss the features that have educated for us our sense -of proportion. - -Among such features for the author of these lines the younger Dumas, who -has just passed away, was in the public order long one of the most -conspicuous. Suffused as he is already with the quick historic haze, -fixed, for whatever term, in his ultimate value, he appeals to me, I -must begin by declaring, as a party to one of these associations that -have the savour of the prime. I knew him only in his work, but he is the -object of an old-time sentiment for the beginning of which I have to go -back absurdly far. He arrived early—he was so loudly introduced by his -name. I am tempted to say that I knew him when he was young, but what I -suppose I mean is that I knew him when I myself was. I knew him indeed -when we both were, for I recall that in Paris, in distant days and -undeveloped conditions, I was aware with perhaps undue and uncanny -precocity of his first successes. There emerges in my memory from the -night of time the image of a small boy walking in the Palais Royal with -innocent American girls who were his cousins and wistfully hearing them -relate how many times (they lived in Paris) they had seen Madame Doche -in “La Dame aux Camélias” and what floods of tears she had made them -weep. It was the first time I had heard of pockethandkerchiefs as a -provision for the play. I had no remotest idea of the social position of -the lady of the expensive flowers, and the artless objects of my envy -had, in spite of their repeated privilege, even less of one; but her -title had a strange beauty and her story a strange meaning—things that -ever after were to accompany the name of the author with a faint yet -rich echo. The younger Dumas, after all, was then not only relatively -but absolutely young; the American infants, privileged and unprivileged, -were only somewhat younger; the former going with their _bonne_, who -must have enjoyed the adventure, to the “upper boxes” of the old -Vaudeville of the Place de la Bourse, where later on I remember thinking -Madame Fargueil divine. He was quite as fortunate moreover in his own -designation as in that of his heroine; for it emphasised that bloom of -youth (I don’t say bloom of innocence—a very different matter) which -was the signal-note of the work destined, in the world at large, to -bring him nine-tenths of his celebrity. - -Written at twenty-five “La Dame aux Camélias” remains in its combination -of freshness and form, of the feeling of the springtime of life and the -sense of the conditions of the theatre, a singular, an astonishing -production. The author has had no time to part with his illusions, but -has had full opportunity to master the most difficult of the arts. -Consecrated as he was to this mastery he never afterwards showed greater -adroitness than he had then done in keeping his knowledge and his -_naïveté_ from spoiling each other. The play has been blown about the -world at a fearful rate, but it has never lost its happy juvenility, a -charm that nothing can vulgarise. It is all champagne and tears—fresh -perversity, fresh credulity, fresh passion, fresh pain. We have each -seen it both well done and ill done, and perhaps more particularly the -latter—in strange places, in barbarous tongues, with Marguerite Gautier -fat and Armand Duval old. I remember ages ago in Boston a version in -which this young lady and this young gentleman were represented as -“engaged”: that indeed for all I know may still be the form in which the -piece most enjoys favour with the Anglo-Saxon public. Nothing makes any -difference—it carries with it an April air: some tender young man and -some coughing young woman have only to speak the lines to give it a -great place among the love-stories of the world. I recollect coming out -of the Gymnase one night when Madame Pierson had been the -Marguerite—this was very long since—and giving myself up on the -boulevard to a fine critical sense of what in such a composition was -flimsy and what was false. Somehow, none the less, my fine critical -sense never prevented my embracing the next opportunity to expose it to -the same irritation; for I have been, I am happy to think to-day, a -playgoer who, whatever else he may have had on his conscience, has never -had the neglect of any chance to see this dramatist acted. Least of all, -within a much shorter period, has it undermined one’s kindness to have -had occasion to admire in connection with the piece such an artist for -instance as Eleonora Duse. We have seen Madame Duse this year or two in -her tattered translation, with few advantages, with meagre accessories -and with one side of the character of the heroine scarcely touched at -all—so little indeed that the Italian version joins hands with the -American and the relation of Marguerite and Armand seems to present -itself as a question of the consecrated even if not approved “union.” -For this interesting actress, however, the most beautiful thing is -always the great thing, and her performance—if seen on a fortunate -evening—lives in the mind as a fine vindication of the play. I am not -sure indeed that it is the very performance Dumas intended; but he lived -long enough to have forgotten perhaps what that performance was. He -might on some sides, I think, have accepted Madame Duse’s as a reminder. - -If I have stopped to be myself so much reminded, it is because after and -outside of “La Dame aux Camélias” Dumas really never figured among us -all again—a circumstance full of illustration of one of the most -striking of our peculiarities, the capacity for granting a prodigious -ear to some one manifestation of an author’s talent and caring nothing -whatever for the others. It is solely the manifestation and never the -talent that interests us, and nothing is stranger than the fact that no -critic has ever explained on our behalf the system by which we hurl -ourselves on a writer to-day and stare at him to-morrow as if we had -never heard of him. It gives us the air of perpetually awaking from -mistakes, but it renders obscure all our canons of judgment. A great -force makes a great success, but a great force is furthermore no less a -great force on Friday than on Monday. Was the reader a sorry dupe on the -first day, or is the writer a wanton sacrifice on the second? That the -public is intelligent on both occasions is a claim it can scarcely make: -it can only choose between having its acuteness impugned or its manners -condemned. At any rate if we have in England and the United States only -the two alternatives of the roar of the market and the silence of the -tomb the situation is apt to be different in France, where the quality -that goes into a man’s work and gives it an identity is the source of -the attention excited. It happens that the interest in the play of the -genius is greater there than the “boom” of the particular hit, the -concern primarily for the author rather than the subject, instead of, as -among ourselves, primarily for the subject rather than the author. Is -this because the French have been acute enough to reflect that authors -comprehend subjects, but that subjects can unfortunately not be said to -comprehend authors? Literature would be a merry game if the business -were arranged in the latter fashion. However such a question may be -answered, Dumas was in his own country, to the end, the force that, save -in connection with his first play, he failed to become elsewhere; and if -he was there much the most original worker in his field one of the -incidental signs of his originality was that, despite our inveterate -practice, in theatrical matters, of helping ourselves from our -neighbour’s plate, he was inveterately not a convenience to us. We -picked our morsels from the plates of smaller people—we never found on -that of the author of “Le Fils Naturel” any we could swallow. He was not -to our poor purpose, and I cannot help thinking that this helps a little -to give his artistic measure. It would be a bad note for him now if we -had found him amenable to that graceless game of which we show signs -to-day of having grown ashamed, but which flourished for years in two -imperturbable communities as the art of theatrical adaptation. A Dumas -adaptable is a Dumas inconceivable; and in point of fact he was touched -by the purveyors of the English-speaking stage only to prove fatal to -them. If the history of so mean a traffic as the one here glanced at -were worth writing it would throw light on some odd conceptions of the -delicacy in the abused name of which it was carried on. It is all to the -honour of our author’s seriousness that he was, in such conditions, so -unmanageable; though one must of course hasten to add that this -seriousness was not the only reason of it. There were several others, -not undiscoverable, and the effect of the whole combination was, in view -of the brilliant fortune of his productions at home and the eager -foraging of English and American speculators, to place him on a footing -all his own. He was of active interest among us only to individual -observers—simply as one of the most devoted of whom I trace these few -pages of commemoration. - -It takes some analysis, yet is not impossible, to explain why among the -men of his time to whom the creative gift had been granted his image, -for sundry such admirers, always presented him as somehow the happiest -consciousness. They were perhaps not always aware of it, but now that he -is gone they have a revelation of the place he occupied in the envious -mind. This envy flowed doubtless, to begin with, from the sense of his -extraordinarily firm grasp of his hard refractory art; the grasp that -had put him into possession of it without fumblings or gropings made him -canter away on the back of it the moment he had touched the stirrup. He -had the air through all his career of a man riding a dangerous horse -without ever being thrown. Every one else had a fall—he alone never -really quitted the saddle, never produced a play that was not to stay to -be revived and in the case of his comparative failures enjoy some sort -of revenge, even to that of travelling in the repertory of great -actresses round the globe. Such travels, moreover, much as they may -please his shade, are far from having been the only felicities of his -long career. The others strike me as so numerous that I scarcely indeed -know where to begin to reckon them. Greatly even if oddly auspicious for -instance was just his stark son-ship to his prodigious father, his -having been launched with that momentum into the particular world in -which he was to live. It was a privilege to make up for the legal -irregularity attaching to his birth; we think of it really almost to -wonder that it didn’t lift him on a still higher wave. His limitations, -which one encounters with a sort of violence, were not to be overlooked; -it expresses them in some degree to say that he was bricked up in his -hard Parisianism, but it is also incontestable that some of them were -much concerned in producing his firm and easy equilibrium. We -understand, however, the trap they set for him when we reflect that a -certain omniscience, a great breadth of horizon, may well have seemed to -him to be transmitted, in his blood, from such a boundless fountain of -life. What mattered to him the fact of a reach of reference that stopped -at the _banlieue_, when experience had sat at his cradle in the shape -not at all of a fairy godmother but of an immediate progenitor who was -at once fabulous and familiar? He had been encompassed by all history in -being held in such arms—it was an entrance into possession of more -matters than he could even guess what to do with. The profit was all the -greater as the son had the luxury of differing actively from the father, -as well as that of actively admiring and, in a splendid sense, on all -the becoming sides, those of stature, strength and health, vividly -reproducing him. He had in relation to his special gift, his mastery of -the dramatic form, a faculty of imagination as contracted as that of the -author of “Monte Cristo” was boundless, but his moral sense on the other -hand, as distinguished from that of his parent, was of the liveliest, -was indeed of the most special and curious kind. The moral sense of the -parent was to be found only in his good humour and his good health—the -moral sense of a musketeer in love. This lack of adventurous vision, of -the long flight and the joy of motion, was in the younger genius quite -one of the conditions of his strength and luck, of his fine assurance, -his sharp edge, his high emphasis, his state untroubled above all by -things not within his too irregularly conditioned ken. The things close -about him were the things he saw—there were alternatives, differences, -opposites, of which he lacked so much as the suspicion. Nothing -contributes more to the prompt fortune of an artist than some such -positive and exclusive temper, the courage of his convictions, as we -usually call it, the power to neglect something thoroughly, to abound -aggressively in his own sense and express without reserve his own -saturation. The saturation of the author of “Le Demi-Monde” was never -far to seek. He was as native to Paris as a nectarine to a south wall. -He would have fared ill if he had not had a great gift and Paris had not -been a great city. - -It was another element of the happy mixture that he came into the world -at the moment in all our time that was for a man of letters the most -amusing and beguiling—the moment exactly when he could see the end of -one era and the beginning of another and join hands luxuriously with -each. This was an advantage to which it would have taken a genius more -elastic to do full justice, but which must have made him feel himself -both greatly related and inspiringly free. He sprang straight from the -lap of full-grown romanticism; he was a boy, a privileged and initiated -youth, when his father, when Victor Hugo, when Lamartine and Musset and -Scribe and Michelet and Balzac and George Sand were at the high tide of -production. He saw them all, knew them all, lived with them and made of -them his profit, tasting just enough of the old concoction to understand -the proportions in which the new should be mixed. He had above all in -his father, for the purpose that was in him, a magnificent -springboard—a background to throw into relief, as a ruddy sunset seems -to make a young tree doubly bristle, a profile of another type. If it -was not indispensable it was at any rate quite poetic justice that the -successor to the name should be, in his conditions, the great casuist of -the theatre. He had seen the end of an age of imagination, he had seen -all that could be done and shown in the way of mere illustration of the -passions. That the passions are always with us is a fact he had not the -smallest pretension to shut his eyes to—they were to constitute the -almost exclusive subject of his study. But he was to study them not for -the pleasure, the picture, the poetry they offer; he was to study them -in the interest of something quite outside of them, about which the -author of “Antony” and “Kean,” about which Victor Hugo and Musset, -Scribe and Balzac and even George Sand had had almost nothing to say. He -was to study them from the point of view of the idea of the right and -the wrong, of duty and conduct, and he was to this end to spend his -artistic life with them and give a new turn to the theatre. He was in -short to become, on the basis of a determined observation of the manners -of his time and country, a professional moralist. - -There can scarcely be a better illustration of differences of national -habit and attitude than the fact that while among his own people this is -the character, as an operative force, borne by the author of “Le -Demi-Monde” and “Les Idées de Madame Aubray,” so among a couple of -others, in the proportion in which his reputation there has emerged from -the vague, his most definite identity is that of a mere painter of -indecent people and indecent doings. There are, as I have hinted, -several reasons for the circumstance already noted, the failure of the -attempt to domesticate him on the English-speaking stage; but one states -the case fairly, I think, in saying that what accounts for half of it is -our passion, in the presence of a work of art, for confounding the -object, as the philosophers have it, with the subject, for losing sight -of the idea in the vehicle, of the intention in the fable. Dumas is a -dramatist as to whom nine playgoers out of ten would precipitately -exclaim: “Ah, but you know, isn’t he dreadfully immoral?” Such are the -lions in the path of reputation, such the fate, in an alien air, of a -master whose main reproach in his native clime is the importunity and -the rigour of his lesson. The real difference, I take it, is that -whereas we like to be good the French like to be better. We like to be -moral, they like to moralise. This helps us to understand the number of -our innocent writers—writers innocent even of reflection, a practice of -course essentially indelicate, inasmuch as it speedily brings us face to -face with scandal and even with evil. It accounts doubtless also for the -number of writers on the further side of the Channel who have made the -journey once for all and to whom, in the dangerous quarter they have -reached, it appears of the very nature of scandal and evil to be -inquired about. The whole undertaking of such a writer as Dumas is, -according to his light, to carry a particular, an esthetic form of -investigation as far as it will stretch—to study, and study thoroughly, -the bad cases. These bad cases were precisely what our managers and -adapters, our spectators and critics would have nothing to do with. It -defines indeed the separation that they should have been, in the light -in which he presented them, precisely what made them for his own public -exceptionally edifying. One of his great contentions is, for instance, -that seduced girls should under all circumstances be married—by -somebody or other, failing the seducer. This is a contention that, as we -feel, barely concerns us, shut up as we are in the antecedent conviction -that they should under no circumstances be seduced. He meets all the -cases that, as we see him, we feel to have been spread out before him; -meets them successively, systematically, at once with a great -earnestness and a great wit. He is exuberantly sincere: his good faith -sometimes obscures his humour, but nothing obscures his good faith. So -he gives us in their order the unworthy brides who must be denounced, -the prenuptial children who must be adopted, the natural sons who must -be avenged, the wavering ladies who must be saved, the credulous fiancés -who must be enlightened, the profligate wives who must be shot, the -merely blemished ones who must be forgiven, the too vindictive ones who -must be humoured, the venal young men who must be exposed, the -unfaithful husbands who must be frightened, the frivolous fathers who -must be pulled up and the earnest sons who must pull them. To enjoy his -manner of dealing with such material we must grant him in every -connection his full premise: that of the importunity of the phenomenon, -the ubiquity of the general plight, the plight in which people are left -by an insufficient control of their passions. We must grant him in fact -for his didactic and dramatic purpose a great many things. These things, -taken together and added to some others, constitute the luxurious terms -on which I have spoken of him as appearing to the alien admirer to have -practised his complicated art. - -When we speak of the passions in general we really mean, for the most -part, the first of the number, the most imperious in its action and the -most interesting in its consequences, the passion that unites and -divides the sexes. It is the passion, at any rate, to which Dumas as -dramatist and pamphleteer mainly devoted himself: his plays, his -prefaces, his manifestos, his few tales roll exclusively on the special -relation of the man to the woman and the woman to the man, and on the -dangers of various sorts, even that of ridicule, with which this -relation surrounds each party. This element of danger is what I have -called the general plight, for when our author considers the sexes as -united and divided it is with the predominance of the division that he -is principally struck. It is not an unfair account of him to say that -life presented itself to him almost wholly as a fierce battle between -the woman and the man. He sides now with one and now with the other; the -former combatant, in her own country, however, was far from pronouncing -him sympathetic. His subject at all events is what we of English race -call the sexes and what they in France call the sex. To talk of love is -to talk, as we have it, of men and women; to talk of love is, as the -French have it, to _parler femmes_. From every play of our author’s we -receive the impression that to _parler femmes_ is its essential and -innermost purpose. It is not assuredly singular that a novelist, a -dramatist _should_ talk of love, or even should talk of nothing else: -what, in addition to his adroitness and his penetration, makes the -position special for Dumas is that he talks of it—and in the form of -address most associated with pure diversion—altogether from the anxious -point of view of the legislator and the citizen. - -“Diane de Lys,” which immediately followed “La Dame aux Camélias,” is, -so far as I can recall it, a picture pure and simple, a pretty story, as -we say, sufficiently romantic and rather long-winded; but with “Le -Demi-Monde” began his rich argumentative series, concluding only the -other day with “Denise” and “Francillon,” the series in which every -theme is a proposition to be established and every proposition a form of -duty to be faced. The only variation that I can recollect in the list is -the disinterested portraiture of “Le Père Prodigue,” with its remarkable -presentation, in the figure of Albertine de la Borde, of vice -domesticated and thrifty, keeping early hours and books in double-entry, -and its remarkable illustration, I may further add, of all that was the -reverse of infallible in the author’s power to distinguish between -amiable infirmities and ugly ones. The idea on which “Le Père Prodigue” -rests belongs more distinctively to the world of comedy than almost any -other situation exhibited in the series; but what are we to say of the -selection, for comic effect, of a fable of which the principal feature -is a son’s not unfounded suspicion of the attitude of his own father to -his own wife? The father is the image of a nature profusely frivolous, -but we scent something more frivolous still in the way his frivolity is -disposed of. At the time the play was produced the spectator thought -himself warranted in recognising in this picture the personal character -(certainly not the personal genius) of the elder Dumas. If the spectator -_was_ so warranted, that only helps, I think, to make “Le Père Prodigue” -a stumbling-block for the critic—make it, I mean, an exhibition of the -author off his guard and a fact to be taken into account in an estimate -of his moral reach; a moral reach, for the rest, at all events, never -impugned by any obliquity in facing that conception of the duty imposed -which it is the main source of the writer’s interest in the figured -circumstances that they may be held to impose it, and which he was apt -to set forth more dogmatically, or at least more excitedly, in an -occasional and polemical pamphlet. These pamphlets, I may -parenthetically say, strike me as definitely compromising to his -character as artist. What shines in them most is the appetite for a -discussion, or rather the appetite for a conclusion, and the passion for -a simplified and vindictive justice. But I have never found it easy to -forgive a writer who, in possession of a form capable of all sorts of -splendid application, puts on this resource the slight of using -substitutes for it at will, as if it is good but for parts of the cause. -If it is good for anything it is good for the whole demonstration, and -if it is not good for the whole demonstration it is good for -nothing—nothing that _he_ is concerned with. If the picture of life -doesn’t cover the ground what in the world _can_ cover it? The fault can -only be the painter’s. Woe, in the esthetic line, to any example that -requires the escort of precept. It is like a guest arriving to dine -accompanied by constables. Our author’s prefaces and treatises show a -mistrust of disinterested art. He would have declared probably that his -art was not disinterested; to which our reply would be that it had then -no right to put us off the scent and prepare deceptions for us by coming -within an ace of being as good as if it were. - -The merits of the play—that is of the picture, in these hands—are -sometimes singularly independent of the lesson conveyed. The merits of -the lesson conveyed are in other cases much more incontestable than -those of the picture, than the production of the air of life or the -happiest observance of the conditions of the drama. The conclusion, the -prescription, of “Denise” strikes me (to give an instance) as singularly -fine, but the subject belongs none the less to the hapless order of -those that fail to profit by the dramatic form though they have -sacrificed the highest advantages of the literary. A play—even the -best—pays so tremendously by what it essentially can not do for the -comparatively little it practically can, that a mistake in the -arithmetic of this positive side speedily produces a wide deviation. In -other words the spectator, and still more the reader, sees such a theme -as that of “Denise,” which may be described as the evolution of a view, -presented most in accordance with its nature when the attempt is not -made to present it in accordance with the nature of the theatre. It is -the nature of the theatre to give its victims, in exchange for -melancholy concessions, a vision of the immediate not to be enjoyed in -any other way; and consequently when the material offered it to deal -with is not the immediate, but the contingent, the derived, the -hypothetic, our melancholy concessions have been made in vain and the -inadequacy of the form comes out. In “Francillon,” partly perhaps -because the thing has nothing to do with anybody’s duty—least of all -with the heroine’s, which would be surely to keep off the streets—the -form happens to be remarkably adequate. The question is of the liberty -of the protagonist, the right of a wronged and indignant wife to work -out her husband’s chastisement in the same material as his sin, work it -out moreover on the spot, as a blow is repaid by a blow, exacting an eye -for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The play has all the kinds of life -that the theatre can achieve, because in the first place Dumas, though -acting as the wife’s advocate, has had the intelligence to give us a -solution which is only a scenic sequence and not a real, still less a -“philosophic,” one; and because in the second it deals with emotions and -impulses, which can be shown by the short measure, and not with -reflections and aspirations, which can be shown but by the long. - -I am not pretending to take things in turn, but a critic with a generous -memory of the spell of Dumas should not, however pressed, neglect to -strain a point for “Le Demi-Monde.” I doubt my competence, however, to -consider that admirable work scientifically—I find myself too condemned -to consider it sentimentally. A critic is lost, as a critic, from the -moment his feeling about the worse parts of the matter he investigates -fails to differ materially from his feeling about the better. That is an -attitude even less enlightened than being unconscious of the blemishes; -all the same it must serve me for the present case. I am perfectly aware -that Olivier de Jalin is a man of no true delicacy; in spite of which I -take when I see them represented the liveliest interest in his -proceedings. I am perfectly aware that Madame d’Ange, with her _calme -infernal_, as George Sand calls it, is tainted and tortuous; in spite of -which my imagination quite warms to Madame d’Ange. Perhaps I should -indeed rather say that this interest and this sympathy have for their -object the great total of the play. It is the member of the series in -which Dumas first took up the scales in one hand and the sword in the -other, and it is a wonderful piece of work, wonderful in kind of -maturity, for a man of thirty. It has all the easy amplitude we call -authority. I won’t pretend to say what I think, here, of the author’s -justice, and if I happen to think ill of it I won’t pretend to care. I -see the thing through too many old memories, old echoes, old charms. In -the light of the admirable acting of ancient days, of the faded image of -the exquisite Desclée, of a dim recollection even of the prehistoric -Rose Chéri and of Mademoiselle Delaporte, it represents too many of the -reasons why I saw him always ideally triumphant. To practise an art -which for its full, its rich effect depended on interpretation, and to -be able to do one’s work with an eye on interpretation of that -quality—this had in common with supreme bliss the element at any rate -of being attainable only by the elect. It partook of a peace the world -cannot give. To be a moralist with the aid of Croizette, a philosopher -with the aid of Delaunay, an Academician, even, with the aid of -Bartet—such things suggested an almost equivocal union of virtue and -success. One had never seen virtue so agreeable to one’s self, nor -success so useful to others. One had never seen a play that was a model -so alive in spite of it. Models in the theatre were apt to be dead and -vivacities vulgar. One had never above all seen on the stage a picture -so conformable to deep pictorial art, a drama so liberally, gradually, -scientifically flushed with its action. Beautiful in “Le Demi-Monde” is -the way the subject quietly, steadily, strongly expands from within. - -It was always the coercive force that his tone gave one the strongest -sense of life, and it remains the interesting thing that this element in -Dumas abounds in spite of not being fed from the source that we usually -assume to be the richest. It was not fed from the imagination, for his -imagination, by no means of the great plastic sort, has left us a -comparatively small heritage of typical figures. His characters are all -pointed by observation, they are clear notes in the concert, but not one -of them has known the little invisible push that, even when shyly and -awkwardly administered, makes the puppet, in spite of the string, walk -off by himself and quite “cut,” if the mood take him, that distant -relation his creator. They are always formal with this personage and -thoroughly conscious and proud of him; there is a charm of mystery and -poetry and oddity, a glory of unexpectedness, that they consistently -lack. Their life, and that, in each case, of the whole story (quite the -most wonderful part of this) is simply the author’s own life, his high -vitality, his very presence and temperament and voice. They do more for -him even than they do for the subject, and he himself is at last -accordingly the most vivid thing in every situation. He keeps it at -arm’s length because he has the instinct of the dramatist and the -conscience of the artist, but we feel all the while that his face is -bigger than his mask. Nothing about his work is more extraordinary than -this manner in which his personality pervades without spoiling it the -most detached and most impersonal of literary forms. The reasons for -such an impunity are first that his precautions, the result of a great -intelligence, were so effective, and second that his personality, the -result of a great affiliation, was so robust. It may be said that the -precautions were not effective if the man himself was what one most -enjoyed in the play. The only answer to that can be that I speak merely -for myself and for the fresher sensibility of the happy time. Other -admirers found certainly other things; what I found most was a tall -figure in muscular motion and the sense of a character that had made -admirably free with life. If it was mainly as an unabashed observer that -he had made free, and if the life supplied was much of it uncommonly -queer, that never diminished the action of his hard masculinity and his -fine intellectual brutality. There was an easy competence in it all, and -a masterful experience, and a kind of vicarious courage. In particular -there was a real genius for putting all persons—especially all bad -ones—very much in their place. Then it was all, for another bribe, so -copious and so close, so sustained and so quiet, with such fascinating -unities and complex simplicities and natural solutions. It was the -breath of the world and the development of an art. - -All the good, however, that I recollect thinking of Dumas only reminds -me how little I desired that my remarks in general should lead me into -vain discriminations. There are some indeed that are not vain—at least -they help us to understand. He has a noble strain of force, a fulness of -blood that has permitted him to be tapped without shrinking. We must -speak of him in the present tense, as we always speak of the masters. -The theatre of his time, wherever it has been serious, has on the ground -of general method lived on him; wherever it has not done so it has not -lived at all. To pretend to be too shocked to profit by him was a way of -covering up its levity, but there was no escaping its fate. He was the -kind of artistic influence that is as inevitable as a medical specific: -you may decline it from black bottle to-day—you will take it from a -green bottle to-morrow. The energy that went forth blooming as Dumas has -come back grizzled as Ibsen, and would under the latter form, I am sure, -very freely acknowledge its debt. A critic whose words meet my eyes as I -write very justly says that: “Just as we have the novel before Balzac -and the novel after Balzac, the poetry that preceded Victor Hugo and the -poetry that followed him, so we have the drama before Alexandre Dumas -and the drama after him.” He has left his strong hand upon it; he -remodelled it as a vehicle, he refreshed it as an art. His passion for -it was obviously great, but there would be a high injustice to him in -not immediately adding that his interest in the material it dealt with, -in his subject, his question, his problem, was greater still than this -joy of the craftsman. That might well be, but there are celebrated cases -in which it has not been. The largest quality in Dumas was his immense -concern about life—his sense of human character and human fate as -commanding and controllable things. To do something on their behalf was -paramount for him, and _what_ to do in his own case clear: what else but -act upon the conscience as violently as he could, and with the -remarkable weapons that Providence had placed within his grasp and for -which he was to show his gratitude by a perfectly intrepid application? -These weapons were three: a hard rare wit, not lambent like a flame, but -stiff and straight like an arrow from a crossbow; a perception not less -rare of some of the realities of the particular human tendency about -which most falsities have clustered; and lastly that native instinct for -the conditions of dramatic presentation without which any attempt to -meet them is a helpless groping. - -It must always be remembered of him that he was the observer of a -special order of things, the moralist of a particular relation as the -umpire of a yacht-race is the legislator of a particular sport. His -vision and his talent, as I have said, were all for the immediate, for -the manners and the practices he himself was drenched with: he had none -of the faculty that scents from afar, that wings away and dips beyond -the horizon. There are moments when a reader not of his own race feels -that he simplifies almost absurdly. There are too many things he didn’t -after all guess, too many cases he didn’t after all provide for. He has -a certain odour of bad company that almost imperils his distinction. -This was doubtless the deepest of the reasons why among ourselves he -flourished so scantly: we felt ourselves to be of a world in which the -elements were differently mixed, the proportions differently marked, so -that the tables of our law would have to be differently graven. His very -earnestness was only a hindrance—he might have had more to say to us if -he had consented to have less application. This produced the curious -dryness, the obtrusive economy of his drama—the hammered sharpness of -every outline, the metallic ring of every sound. His terrible knowledge -suggested a kind of uniform—gilt buttons, a feathered hat and a little -official book; it was almost like an irruption of the police. The most -general masters are the poets, with all the things they blessedly don’t -hold for so very certain and all the things they blessedly and -preferably invent. It is true that Dumas was splendid, in his way, -exactly because he was not vague: his concentration, all confidence and -doctrine and epigram, is the explanation of his extraordinary force. -That force is his abiding quality: one feels that he was magnificently a -man—that he stands up high and sees straight and speaks loud. It is his -great temperament, undiminished by what it lacks, that endears him to -his admirers. It made him still of the greater race and played well its -part in its time—so well that one thinks of him finally as perhaps not, -when all is said, of the very happiest group, the group of those for -whom in the general affection there is yet more to come. He had an -immense reverberation—he practised the art that makes up for being the -most difficult by being the most acclaimed. There is no postponed poetic -justice for those who have had everything. He was seconded in a manner -that must have made success a double delight. There are indications that -the dramatist of the future will be less and less elated. He may well -become so if he is to see himself less and less interpreted. - - - - - THE NOVEL IN “THE RING AND THE BOOK”[8] - 1912 - - -If on such an occasion as this—even with our natural impulse to shake -ourselves free of reserves—some sharp choice between the dozen -different aspects of one of the most copious of our poets becomes a -prime necessity, though remaining at the same time a great difficulty, -so in respect to the most voluminous of his works the admirer is -promptly held up, as we have come to call it; finds himself almost -baffled by alternatives. “The Ring and the Book” is so vast and so -essentially gothic a structure, spreading and soaring and branching at -such a rate, covering such ground, putting forth such pinnacles and -towers and brave excrescences, planting its transepts and chapels and -porticos, its clustered hugeness or inordinate muchness, that with any -first approach we but walk vaguely and slowly, rather bewilderedly, -round and round it, wondering at what point we had best attempt such -entrance as will save our steps and light our uncertainty, most enable -us to reach our personal chair, our indicated chapel or shrine, when -once within. For it is to be granted that to this inner view the -likeness of the literary monument to one of the great religious gives -way a little, sustains itself less than in the first, the affronting -mass; unless we simply figure ourselves, under the great roof, looking -about us through a splendid thickness and dimness of air, an -accumulation of spiritual presences or unprofaned mysteries, that makes -our impression heavily general—general only—and leaves us helpless for -reporting on particulars. The particulars for our purpose have thus -their identity much rather in certain features of the twenty -faces—either of one or of another of these—that the structure turns to -the outer day and that we can, as it were, sit down before and consider -at our comparative ease. I say comparative advisedly, for I cling to the -dear old tradition that Browning is “difficult”—which we were all -brought up on and which I think we should, especially on a rich -retrospective day like this, with the atmosphere of his great career -settling upon us as much as possible, feel it a shock to see break down -in too many places at once. Selecting my ground, by your kind -invitation, for sticking in and planting before you, to flourish so far -as it shall, my little sprig of bay, I have of course tried to measure -the quantity of ease with which our material may on that noted spot -allow itself to be treated. There are innumerable things in “The Ring -and the Book”—as the comprehensive image I began with makes it needless -I should say; and I have been above all appealed to by the possibility -that one of these, pursued for a while through the labyrinth, but at -last overtaken and then more or less confessing its identity, might have -yielded up its best essence as a grateful theme under some fine strong -economy of _prose_ treatment. So here you have me talking at once of -prose and seeking that connection to help out my case. - -From far back, from my first reading of these volumes, which took place -at the time of their disclosure to the world, when I was a fairly young -person, the sense, almost the pang, of the novel they might have -constituted sprang sharply from them; so that I was to go on through the -years almost irreverently, all but quite profanely if you will, thinking -of the great loose and uncontrolled composition, the great heavy-hanging -cluster of related but unreconciled parts, as a fiction of the so-called -historic type, that is as a suggested study of the manners and -conditions from which our own have more or less traceably issued, just -tragically spoiled—or as a work of art, in other words, smothered in -the producing. To which I hasten to add my consciousness of the scant -degree in which such a fresh start from our author’s documents, such a -reprojection of them, wonderful documents as they can only have been, -may claim a critical basis. Conceive me as simply astride of my -different fancy, my other dream, of the matter—which bolted with me, as -I have said, at the first alarm. - -Browning worked in this connection literally _upon_ documents; no page -of his long story is more vivid and splendid than that of his find of -the Book in the litter of a market-stall in Florence and the swoop of -practised perception with which he caught up in it a treasure. Here was -a subject stated to the last ounce of its weight, a living and breathing -record of facts pitiful and terrible, a mass of matter bristling with -revelations and yet at the same time wrapped over with layer upon layer -of contemporary appreciation; which appreciation, in its turn, was a -part of the wealth to be appreciated. What our great master saw was his -situation founded, seated there in positively packed and congested -significance, though by just so much as it was charged with meanings and -values were those things undeveloped and unexpressed. They looked up at -him, even in that first flush and from their market-stall, and said to -him, in their compressed compass, as with the muffled rumble of a -slow-coming earthquake, “Express us, express us, immortalise us as we’ll -immortalise _you_!”—so that the terms of the understanding were so far -cogent and clear. It was an understanding, on their side, with the poet; -and since that poet had produced “Men and Women,” “Dramatic Lyrics,” -“Dramatis Personæ” and sundry plays—we needn’t even foist on him -“Sordello”—he could but understand in his own way. That way would have -had to be quite some other, we fully see, had he been by habit and -profession not just the lyric, epic, dramatic commentator, the -extractor, to whatever essential potency and redundancy, of the moral of -the fable, but the very fabulist himself, the inventor and projector, -layer down of the postulate and digger of the foundation. I doubt if we -have a precedent for this energy of appropriation of a deposit of -_stated_ matter, a block of sense already in position and requiring not -to be shaped and squared and caused any further to solidify, but rather -to suffer disintegration, be pulled apart, melted down, hammered, by the -most characteristic of the poet’s processes, to powder—dust of gold and -silver, let us say. He was to apply to it his favourite system—that of -looking at his subject from the point of view of a curiosity almost -sublime in its freedom, yet almost homely in its method, and of -smuggling as many more points of view together into that one as the -fancy might take him to smuggle, on a scale on which even he had never -before applied it; this with a courage and a confidence that, in -presence of all the conditions, conditions many of them arduous and arid -and thankless even to defiance, we can only pronounce splendid, and of -which the issue was to be of a proportioned monstrous magnificence. - -The one definite forecast for this product would have been that it -should figure for its producer as a poem—as if he had simply said, “I -embark at any rate for the Golden Isles”; everything else was of the -pure incalculable, the frank voyage of adventure. To what extent the -Golden Isles were in fact to be reached is a matter we needn’t pretend, -I think, absolutely to determine; let us feel for ourselves and as we -will about it—either see our adventurer, disembarked bag and baggage -and in possession, plant his flag on the highest eminence within his -circle of sea, or, on the other hand, but watch him approach and beat -back a little, tack and turn and stand off, always fairly in sight of -land, catching rare glimpses and meeting strange airs, but not quite -achieving the final _coup_ that annexes the group. He returns to us -under either view all scented and salted with his measure of contact, -and that for the moment is enough for us—more than enough for me at any -rate, engaged for your beguilement in this practical relation of -snuffing up what he brings. He brings, however one puts it, a detailed -report, which is but another word for a story; and it is with his story, -his offered, not his borrowed one—a very different matter—that I am -concerned. We are probably most of us so aware of its general content -that if I sum this up I may do so briefly. The Book of the Florentine -rubbish-heap is the full account (as full accounts were conceived in -those days) of the trial before the Roman courts, with inquiries and -judgments by the Tuscan authorities intermixed, of a certain Count Guido -Franceschini of Arezzo, decapitated, in company with four -confederates—these latter hanged—on February 22, 1698, for the murder -of his young wife Pompilia Comparini and her ostensible parents, Pietro -and Violante of that ilk. - -The circumstances leading to this climax were primarily his marriage to -Pompilia, some years before, in Rome—she being then but in her -thirteenth year—under the impression, fostered in him by the elder -pair, that she was their own child and on this head heiress to moneys -settled on them from of old in the event of their having a child. They -had in fact had none, and had, in substitution, invented, so to speak, -Pompilia, the luckless base-born baby of a woman of lamentable character -easily induced to part with her for cash. They bring up the hapless -creature as their daughter, and as their daughter they marry her, in -Rome, to the middle-aged and impecunious Count Guido, a rapacious and -unscrupulous fortune-seeker by whose superior social position, as we -say, dreadfully _decaduto_ though he be, they are dazzled out of all -circumspection. The girl, innocent, ignorant, bewildered, scared and -purely passive, is taken home by her husband to Arezzo, where she is at -first attended by Pietro and Violante and where the direst -disappointment await the three. Count Guido proves the basest of men and -his home a place of terror and of torture, from which at the age of -seventeen, and shortly prior to her giving birth to an heir to the -house, such as it is, she is rescued by a pitying witness of her misery, -Canon Caponsacchi, a man of the world and adorning it, yet in holy -orders, as men of the world in Italy might then be, who clandestinely -helps her, at peril of both their lives, back to Rome, and of whom it is -attested that he has had no other relation with her but this of -distinguished and all-disinterested friend in need. The pretended -parents have at an early stage thrown up their benighted game, fleeing -from the rigour of their dupe’s domestic rule, disclosing to him -vindictively the part they have played and the consequent failure of any -profit to him through his wife, and leaving him in turn to wreak his -spite, which has become infernal, on the wretched Pompilia. He pursues -her to Rome, on her eventual flight, and overtakes her, with her -companion, just outside the gates; but having, by the aid of the local -powers, reachieved possession of her, he contents himself for the time -with procuring her sequestration in a convent, from which, however, she -is presently allowed to emerge in view of the near birth of her child. -She rejoins Pietro and Violante, devoted to her, oddly enough, through -all their folly and fatuity; and under their roof, in a lonely Roman -suburb, her child comes into the world. Her husband meanwhile, hearing -of her release, gives way afresh to the fury that had not at the climax -of his former pursuit taken full effect; he recruits a band of four of -his young tenants or farm-labourers and makes his way, armed, like his -companions, with knives, to the door behind which three of the parties -to all the wrong done him, as he holds, then lurk. He pronounces, after -knocking and waiting, the name of Caponsacchi; upon which, as the door -opens, Violante presents herself. He stabs her to death on the spot with -repeated blows—like her companions she is off her guard; and he throws -himself on each of these with equal murderous effect. Pietro, crying for -mercy, falls second beneath him; after which he attacks his wife, whom -he literally hacks to death. She survives, by a miracle, long enough, in -spite of all her wounds, to testify; which testimony, as may be -imagined, is not the least precious part of the case. Justice is on the -whole, though deprecated and delayed, what we call satisfactory; the -last word is for the Pope in person, Innocent XII. Pignatelli, at whose -deliberation, lone and supreme, on Browning’s page, we splendidly -assist; and Count Guido and his accomplices, bloodless as to the act -though these appear to have been, meet their discriminated doom. - -That is the bundle of facts, accompanied with the bundle of proceedings, -legal, ecclesiastical, diplomatic and other, _on_ the facts, that our -author, of a summer’s day, made prize of; but our general temptation, as -I say—out of which springs this question of the other values of -character and effect, the other completeness of picture and drama, that -the confused whole might have had for us—is a distinctly different -thing. The difference consists, you see, to begin with, in the very -breath of our poet’s genius, already, and so inordinately, at play on -them from the first of our knowing them. And it consists in the second -place of such an extracted sense of the whole, which becomes, after the -most extraordinary fashion, bigger by the extraction, immeasurably -bigger than even the most cumulative weight of the mere crude evidence, -that our choice of how to take it all is in a manner determined for us: -we can only take it as tremendously interesting, interesting not only in -itself but with the great added interest, the dignity and authority and -beauty, of Browning’s general perception of it. We can’t not accept -this, and little enough on the whole do we want not to: it sees us, with -its tremendous push, that of its poetic, esthetic, historic, psychologic -shoulder (one scarce knows how to name it), so far on our way. Yet all -the while we are in presence not at all of an achieved form, but of a -mere preparation for one, though on the hugest scale; so that, you see, -we are no more than decently attentive with our question: “Which of them -all, of the various methods of casting the wondrously mixed metal, is -he, as he goes, preparing?” Well, as he keeps giving and giving, in -immeasurable plenty, it is in our selection from it all and our picking -it over that we seek, and to whatever various and unequal effect find, -our account. He works over his vast material, and we then work _him_ -over, though not availing ourselves, to this end, of a grain he himself -doesn’t somehow give us; and there we are. - -I admit that my faith in my particular contention would be a degree -firmer and fonder if there didn’t glimmer through our poet’s splendid -hocus-pocus just the hint of one of those flaws that sometimes deform -the fair face of a subject otherwise generally appealing or -promising—of such a subject in especial as may have been submitted to -us, possibly even with the pretension to impose it, in too complete a -shape. The idea but half hinted—when it is a very good one—is apt to -contain the germ of happier fruit than the freight of the whole branch, -waved at us or dropped into our lap, very often proves. This happens -when we take over, as the phrase is, established data, take them over -from existing records and under some involved obligation to take them as -they stand. That drawback rests heavily for instance on the so-called -historic fiction—so beautiful a case it is of a muddlement of -terms—and is just one of the eminent reasons why the embarrassed Muse -of that form, pulled up again and again, and the more often the fine -intelligence invokes her, by the need of a superior harmony which shall -be after all but a superior truth, catches up her flurried skirts and -makes her saving dash for some gap in the hedge of romance. Now the flaw -on this so intensely expressive face, that of the general _donnée_ of -the fate of Pompilia, is that amid the variety of forces at play about -her the unity of the situation isn’t, by one of those large straight -ideal gestures on the part of the Muse, handed to us at a stroke. The -question of the whereabouts of the unity of a group of data subject to -be wrought together into a thing of art, the question in other words of -the point at which the various implications of interest, no matter how -many, _most_ converge and interfuse, becomes always, by my sense of the -affair, quite the first to be answered; for according to the answer -shapes and fills itself the very vessel of that beauty—the beauty, -exactly, _of_ interest, of maximum interest, which is the ultimate -extract of any collocation of facts, any picture of life, and the finest -aspect of any artistic work. Call a novel a picture of life as much as -we will; call it, according to one of our recent fashions, a slice, or -even a chunk, even a “bloody” chunk, of life, a rough excision from that -substance as superficially cut and as summarily served as possible, it -still fails to escape this exposure to appreciation, or in other words -to criticism, that it has had to be selected, selected under some sense -for something; and the unity of the exhibition should meet us, does meet -us if the work be done, at the point at which that sense is most patent. -If the slice or the chunk, or whatever we call it, if _it_ isn’t “done,” -as we say—and as it so often declines to be—the work itself of course -isn’t likely to be; and there we may dismiss it. - -The first thing we do is to cast about for some centre in our field; -seeing that, for such a purpose as ours, the subject might very nearly -go a-begging with none more definite than the author has provided for -it. I find that centre in the embracing consciousness of Caponsacchi, -which, coming to the rescue of our question of treatment, of our search -for a point of control, practically saves everything, and shows itself -moreover the only thing that _can_ save. The more we ask of any other -part of our picture that it shall exercise a comprehensive function, the -more we see that particular part inadequate; as inadequate even in the -extraordinarily magnified range of spirit and reach of intelligence of -the atrocious Franceschini as in the sublime passivity and plasticity of -the childish Pompilia, educated to the last point though she be indeed -by suffering, but otherwise so untaught that she can neither read nor -write. The magnified state is in this work still more than elsewhere the -note of the intelligence, of any and every faculty of thought, imputed -by our poet to his creatures; and it takes a great mind, one of the -greatest, we may at once say, to make these persons express and confess -themselves to such an effect of intellectual splendour. He resorts -primarily to _their_ sense, their sense of themselves and of everything -else they know, to exhibit them, and has for this purpose to keep them, -and to keep them persistently and inexhaustibly, under the fixed lens of -his prodigious vision. He this makes out in them boundless treasures of -truth—truth even when it happens to be, as in the case of Count Guido, -but a shining wealth of constitutional falsity. Of the extent to which -he may after this fashion unlimitedly draw upon them his exposure of -Count Guido, which goes on and on, though partly, I admit, by repeating -itself, is a wondrous example. It is not too much to say of -Pompilia—Pompilia pierced with twenty wounds, Pompilia on her -death-bed, Pompilia but seventeen years old and but a fortnight a -mother—that she _acquires_ an intellectual splendour just by the fact -of the vast covering charity of imagination with which her recording, -our commemorated, avenger, never so as in this case an avenger of the -wronged beautiful things in life, hangs over and breathes upon her. We -see her come out to him, and the extremely remarkable thing is that we -see it, on the whole, without doubting that it might just have been. -Nothing could thus be more interesting, however it may at moments and in -places puzzle us, than the impunity, on our poet’s part, of most of -these overstretchings of proportion, these violations of the immediate -appearance. Browning is deep down below the immediate with the first -step of his approach; he has vaulted over the gate, is already far -afield and never, so long as we watch him, has occasion to fall back. We -wonder, for, after all, the real is his quest, the very ideal of the -real, the real most finely mixed with life, which _is_ in the last -analysis the ideal; and we know, with our dimmer vision, no such reality -as a Franceschini fighting for his life, fighting for the vindication of -his baseness, embodying his squalor, with an audacity of wit, an -intensity of colour, a variety of speculation and illustration, that -represent well-nigh the maximum play of the human mind. It is in like -sort scarce too much to say of the exquisite Pompilia that on her part -intelligence and expression are disengaged to a point at which the -angels may well begin to envy her; and all again without our once -wincing so far as our consistently liking to see and hear and believe is -concerned. Caponsacchi regales us, of course, with the rarest fruit of a -great character, a great culture and a great case; but Caponsacchi is -acceptedly and naturally, needfully and illustratively, splendid. He -_is_ the soul of man at its finest—having passed through the smoky -fires of life and emerging clear and high. Greatest of all the spirits -exhibited, however, is that of the more than octogenarian Pope, at whose -brooding, pondering, solitary vigil, by the end of a hard grey winter -day in the great bleak waiting Vatican—“in the plain closet where he -does such work”—we assist as intimately as at every other step of the -case, and on whose grand meditation we heavily hang. But the Pope -strikes us at first—though indeed perhaps only at first—as too high -above the whole connection functionally and historically for us to place -him within it dramatically. Our novel faces provisionally the question -of dispensing with him, as it dispenses with the amazing, bristling, all -too indulgently presented Roman advocates on either side of the case, -who combine to put together the most formidable monument we possess to -Browning’s active curiosity and the liveliest proof of his almost -unlimited power to give on his readers’ nerves without giving on his -own. - -What remains with us all this time, none the less, is the effect of -magnification, the exposure of each of these figures, in its degree, to -that iridescent wash of personality, of temper and faculty, that our -author ladles out to them, as the copious share of each, from his own -great reservoir of spiritual health, and which makes us, as I have -noted, seek the reason of a perpetual anomaly. Why, bristling so with -references to _him_ rather than with references to each other or to any -accompanying set of circumstances, do they still establish more truth -and beauty than they sacrifice, do they still, according to their -chance, help to make “The Ring and the Book” a great living thing, a -great objective mass? I brushed by the answer a moment ago, I think, in -speaking of the development in Pompilia of the resource of expression, -which brings us round, it seems to me, to the justification of -Browning’s method. To express his inner self—his outward was a -different affair!—and to express it utterly, even if no matter how, was -clearly, for his own measure and consciousness of that inner self, to -_be_ poetic; and the solution of all the deviations and disparities or, -speaking critically, monstrosities, in the mingled tissue of this work, -is the fact that whether or no by such convulsions of soul and sense -life got delivered for him, the garment of life (which for him was -poetry and poetry alone) got disposed in its due and adequate -multitudinous folds. We move with him but in images and references and -vast and far correspondences; we eat but of strange compounds and drink -but of rare distillations; and very soon, after a course of this, we -feel ourselves, however much or however little to our advantage we may -on occasion pronounce it, in the world of Expression at any cost. That, -essentially, _is_ the world of poetry—which in the cases known to our -experience where it seems to us to differ from Browning’s world does so -but through this latter’s having been, by the vigour and violence, the -bold familiarity, of his grasp and pull at it, moved several degrees -nearer us, so to speak, than any other of the same general sort with -which we are acquainted; so that, intellectually, we back away from it a -little, back down before it, again and again, as we try to get off from -a picture or a group or a view which is too much _upon_ us and thereby -out of focus. Browning is “upon” us, straighter upon us always, somehow, -than anyone else of his race; and we thus recoil, we push our chair -back, from the table he so tremendously spreads, just to see a little -better what is on it. This makes a relation with him that it is -difficult to express; as if he came up against us, each time, on the -same side of the street and not on the other side, across the way, where -we mostly see the poets elegantly walk, and where we greet them without -danger of concussion. It is on this same side, as I call it, on _our_ -side, on the other hand, that I rather see our encounter with the -novelists taking place; we being, as it were, more mixed with them, or -they at least, by their desire and necessity, more mixed with us, and -our brush of them, in their minor frenzy, a comparatively muffled -encounter. - -We have in the whole thing, at any rate, the element of action which is -at the same time constant picture, and the element of picture which is -at the same time constant action; and with a fusion, as the mass moves, -that is none the less effective, none the less thick and complete, from -our not owing it in the least to an artful economy. Another force pushes -its way through the waste and rules the scene, making wrong things right -and right things a hundred times more so—that breath of Browning’s own -particular matchless Italy which takes us full in the face and remains -from the first the felt rich coloured air in which we live. The quantity -of that atmosphere that he had to give out is like nothing else in -English poetry, any more than in English prose, that I recall; and since -I am taking these liberties with him, let me take one too, a little, -with the fruit of another genius shining at us here in association—with -that great placed and timed prose fiction which we owe to George Eliot -and in which _her_ projection of the stage and scenery is so different a -matter. Curious enough this difference where so many things make for -identity—the quantity of talent, the quantity of knowledge, the high -equality (or almost) of culture and curiosity, not to say of “spiritual -life.” Each writer drags along a far-sweeping train, though indeed -Browning’s spreads so considerably furthest; but his stirs up, to my -vision, a perfect cloud of gold-dust, while hers, in “Romola,” by -contrast, leaves the air about as clear, about as white, and withal -about as cold, as before she had benevolently entered it. This straight -saturation of our author’s, this prime assimilation of the elements for -which the name of Italy stands, is a single splendid case, however; I -can think of no second one that is not below it—if we take it as -supremely expressed in those of his lyrics and shorter dramatic -monologues that it has most helped to inspire. The Rome and Tuscany of -the early ’fifties had become for him so at once a medium, a bath of the -senses and perceptions, into which he could sink, in which he could -unlimitedly soak, that wherever he might be touched afterwards he gave -out some effect of that immersion. This places him to my mind quite -apart, makes the rest of our poetic record of a similar experience -comparatively pale and abstract. Shelley and Swinburne—to name only his -compeers—are, I know, a part of the record; but the author of “Men and -Women,” of “Pippa Passes,” of certain of the Dramatic Lyrics and other -scattered felicities, not only expresses and reflects the matter; he -fairly, he heatedly, if I may use such a term, exudes and perspires it. -Shelley, let us say in the connection, is a light and Swinburne, let us -say, a sound; Browning alone of them all is a temperature. We feel it, -we are in it at a plunge, with the very first pages of the thing before -us; to which, I confess, we surrender with a momentum drawn from fifty -of their predecessors, pages not less sovereign, elsewhere. - -The old Florence of the late spring closes round us; the hand of Italy -is at once, with the recital of the old-world litter of Piazza San -Lorenzo, with that of the great glare and of the great shadow-masses, -heavy upon us, heavy with that strange weight, that mixed pressure, -which is somehow, to the imagination, at once a caress and a menace. Our -poet kicks up on the spot and at short notice what I have called his -cloud of gold-dust. I can but speak for myself at least—something that -I want to feel both as historic and esthetic truth, both as pictorial -and moral interest, something that will repay my fancy tenfold if I can -but feel it, hovers before me, and I say to myself that, whether or no a -great poem is to come off, I will be hanged if one of the vividest of -all stories and one of the sharpest of all impressions doesn’t. I beckon -these things on, I follow them up, I so desire and need them that I of -course, by my imaginative collaboration, contribute to them—from the -moment, that is, of my finding myself really in relation to the great -points. On the other hand, as certainly, it has taken the author of the -first volume, and of the two admirable chapters of the same—since I -can’t call them cantos—entitled respectively “Half-Rome” and “The Other -Half-Rome,” to put me in relation; where it is that he keeps me more and -more, letting the closeness of my state, it must be owned, occasionally -drop, letting the finer call on me even, for bad quarters-of-an-hour, -considerably languish, but starting up before me again in vivid -authority if I really presume to droop or stray. He takes his wilful way -with me, but I make it my own, picking over and over as I have said, -like some lingering talking pedlar’s client, his great unloosed pack; -and thus it is that by the time I am settled with Pompilia at Arezzo I -have lived into all the conditions. They press upon me close, those -wonderful dreadful beautiful particulars of the Italy of the eve of the -eighteenth century—Browning himself moving about, darting hither and -thither in them, at his mighty ease: beautiful, I say, because of the -quantity of romantic and esthetic tradition from a more romantic and -esthetic age still visibly, palpably, in solution there; and wonderful -and dreadful through something of a similar tissue of matchless and -ruthless consistencies and immoralities. I make to my hand, as this -infatuated reader, _my_ Italy of the eve of the eighteenth century—a -vast painted and gilded rococo shell roofing over a scenic, an amazingly -figured and furnished earth, but shutting out almost the whole of our -own dearly-bought, rudely-recovered spiritual sky. You see I have this -right, all the while, if I recognise my suggested material, which keeps -coming and coming in the measure of my need, and my duty to which _is_ -to recognise it, and as handsomely and actively as possible. The great -thing is that I have such a group of figures moving across so -constituted a scene—figures so typical, so salient, so reeking with the -old-world character, so impressed all over with its manners and its -morals, and so predestined, we see, to this particular horrid little -drama. And let me not be charged with giving it away, the idea of the -latent prose fiction, by calling it little and horrid; let me not—for -with my contention I can’t possibly afford to—appear to agree with -those who speak of the Franceschini-Comparini case as a mere vulgar -criminal anecdote. - -It might have been such but for two reasons—counting only the principal -ones; one of these our fact that we see it so, I repeat, in Browning’s -inordinately-coloured light, and the other—which is indeed perhaps but -another face of the same—that, with whatever limitations, it gives us -in the rarest manner three characters of the first importance. I hold -three a great many; I could have done with it almost, I think, if there -had been but one or two; our rich provision shows you at any rate what I -mean by speaking of our author’s performance as above all a preparation -for something. Deeply he felt that with the three—the three built up at -us each with an equal genial rage of reiterative touches—there couldn’t -eventually not be something done (artistically done, I mean) if someone -would only do it. There they are in their old yellow Arezzo, that -miniature milder Florence, as sleepy to my recollection as a little -English cathedral city clustered about a Close, but dreaming not so -peacefully nor so innocently; there is the great fretted fabric of the -Church on which they are all swarming and grovelling, yet after their -fashion interesting parasites, from the high and dry old Archbishop, -meanly wise or ignobly edifying, to whom Pompilia resorts in her woe and -who practically pushes her way with a shuffling velvet foot; down -through the couple of Franceschini cadets, Canon Girolamo and Abate -Paul, mere minions, fairly in the verminous degree, of the overgrown -order or too-rank organism; down to Count Guido himself and to Canon -Caponsacchi, who have taken the tonsure at the outset of their careers, -but none too strictly the vows, and who lead their lives under some -strangest profanest pervertedest clerical category. There have been -before this the Roman preliminaries, the career of the queer Comparini, -the adoption, the assumption of the parentship, of the ill-starred -little girl, with the sordid cynicism of her marriage out of hand, -conveying her presumptive little fortune, her poor handful of even less -than contingent cash, to hungry middle-aged Count Guido’s stale “rank”; -the many-toned note or turbid harmony of all of which recurs to us in -the vivid image of the pieties and paganisms of San Lorenzo in Lucina, -that banal little church in the old upper Corso—banal, that is, at the -worst, with the rare Roman _banalité_; bravely banal, or banal with -style—that we have all passed with a sense of its reprieve to our -sight-seeing, and where the bleeding bodies of the still-breathing -Pompilia and her extinct companions are laid out on the greasy marble of -the altar-steps. To glance at these things, however, is fairly to be -tangled, and at once, in the author’s complexity of suggestion, to which -our own thick-coming fancies respond in no less a measure; so that I -have already missed my time to so much even as name properly the -tremendous little chapter we should have devoted to the Franceschini -interior as revealed at last to Comparini eyes; the sinister scene or -ragged ruin of the Aretine “palace,” where pride and penury and, at -once, rabid resentment show their teeth in the dark and the void, and -where Pompilia’s inspired little character, clear silver hardened, -effectually beaten and battered, to steel, begins to shine at the -blackness with a light that fairly outfaces at last the gleam of wolfish -fangs—the character that draws from Guido, in his, alas, too boundless -harangue of the fourth volume, some of the sharpest specifications into -which that extraordinary desert, that indescribable waste of -intellectual life, as I have hinted at its being, from time to time -flowers. - - “None of your abnegation of revenge! - Fly at me frank, tug where I tear again! - Away with the empty stare! Be holy still, - And stupid ever! Occupy your patch - Of private snow that’s somewhere in what world - May now be growing icy round your head, - And aguish at your foot-print—freeze not me!” - -I have spoken of the enveloping consciousness—or call it just the -struggling, emerging, comparing, at last intensely living conscience—of -Caponsacchi as the indicated centre of our situation or determinant of -our form, in the matter of the excellent novel; and know of course what -such an indication lets me in for, responsibly speaking, in the way of a -rearrangement of relations, in the way of liberties taken. To lift our -subject out of the sphere of anecdote and place it in the sphere of -drama, liberally considered, to give it dignity by extracting its finest -importance, causing its parts to flower together into some splendid -special sense, we supply it with a large lucid reflector, which we find -only, as I have already noted, in that mind and soul concerned in the -business that have at once the highest sensibility and the highest -capacity, or that are, as we may call it, most admirably agitated. There -is the awkward fact, the objector may say, that by our record the mind -and soul in question are not concerned till a given hour, when many -things have already happened and the climax is almost in sight; to which -we reply, at our ease, that we simply don’t suffer that fact to be -awkward. From the moment I am taking liberties I suffer _no_ -awkwardness; I should be very helpless, quite without resource and -without vision, if I did. I said it to begin with: Browning works the -whole thing over—the whole thing as originally given him—and we work -_him_; helpfully, artfully, boldly, which is our whole blest basis. We -therefore turn Caponsacchi on earlier, ever so much earlier; turn him -on, with a brave ingenuity, from the very first—that is in Rome if need -be; place him there in the field, at once recipient and agent, vaguely -conscious and with splendid brooding apprehension, awaiting the -adventure of his life, awaiting his call, his real call (the others have -been such vain shows and hollow stopgaps), awaiting, in fine, his -terrible great fortune. His direct connection with Pompilia begins -certainly at Arezzo, only after she has been some time hideously -mismated and has suffered all but her direst extremity—that is of the -essence; we _take_ it; it’s all right. But his indirect participation is -another affair, and we get it—at a magnificent stroke—by the fact that -his view of Franceschini, his fellow-Aretine sordidly “on the make,” his -measure of undesired, indeed of quite execrated contact with him, -brushed against in the motley hungry Roman traffic, where and while that -sinister soul snuffs about on the very vague or the very foul scent of -_his_ fortune, may begin whenever we like. We have only to have it begin -right, only to make it, on the part of two men, a relation of strong -irritated perception and restless righteous convinced instinct in the -one nature and of equally instinctive hate and envy, jealousy and latent -fear, on the other, to see the indirect connection, the one with -Pompilia, as I say, throw across our page as portentous a shadow as we -need. Then we get Caponsacchi as a recipient up to the brim—as an -agent, a predestined one, up to the hilt. I can scarce begin to tell you -what I see him give, as we say, or how his sentient and observational -life, his fine reactions in presence of such a creature as Guido, such a -social type and image and lurid light, as it were, make him -comparatively a modern man, breathed upon, to that deep and interesting -agitation I have mentioned, by more forces than he yet reckons or knows -the names of. - -The direct relation—always to Pompilia—is made, at Arezzo, as we know, -by Franceschini himself; preparing his own doom, in the false light of -his debased wit, by creating an appearance of hidden dealing between his -wife and the priest which shall, as promptly as he likes—if he but work -it right—compromise and overwhelm them. The particular deepest -damnation he conceives for his weaker, his weakest victim is that she -shall take the cleric Caponsacchi for her lover, he indubitably -willing—to Guido’s apprehension; and that her castigation at his hands -for this, sufficiently proved upon her, shall be the last luxury of his -own baseness. He forges infernally, though grossly enough, an imputed -correspondence between them, as series of love-letters, scandalous -scrawls, of the last erotic intensity; which we in the event see -solemnly weighed by his fatuous judges, all fatuous save the grave old -Pope, in the scale of Pompilia’s guilt and responsibility. It is this -atrocity that at the _dénouement_ damns Guido himself most, or -well-nigh; but if it fails and recoils, as all his calculations do—it -is only his rush of passion that doesn’t miss—this is by the fact -exactly that, as we have seen, his wife and her friend are, for our -perfect persuasion, characters of the deepest dye. There, if you please, -is the finest side of our subject; such sides come up, such sides flare -out upon us, when we get such characters in such embroilments. Admire -with me therefore our felicity in this first-class value of Browning’s -beautiful critical genial vision of his Caponsacchi—vision of him as -the tried and tempered and illuminated _man_, a great round smooth, -though as yet but little worn gold-piece, an embossed and figured ducat -or sequin of the period, placed by the poet in my hand. He gives me that -value to spend for him, spend on all the strange old experience, old -sights and sounds and stuffs, of the old stored Italy—so we have at -least the wit to spend it to high advantage; which is just what I mean -by our taking the liberties we spoke of. I see such bits we can get with -it; but the difficulty is that I see so many more things than I can have -even dreamed of giving you a hint of. I see the Arezzo life and the -Arezzo crisis with every “i” dotted and every circumstance presented; -and when Guido takes his wife, as a possible trap for her, to the -theatre—the theatre of old Arezzo: share with me the tattered vision -and inhale the musty air!—I am well in range of Pompilia, the -tragically exquisite, in her box, with her husband not there for the -hour but posted elsewhere; I look at her in fact over Caponsacchi’s -shoulder and that of his brother-canon Conti, while this light -character, a vivid recruit to our company, manages to toss into her lap, -and as coming in guise of overture from his smitten friend, “a -papertwist of comfits.” There is a particular famous occasion at the -theatre in a work of more or less contemporary fiction—at a petty -provincial theatre which isn’t even, as you might think, the place where -Pendennis had his first glimpse of Miss Fotheringay. The evening at the -Rouen playhouse of Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” has a relief not elsewhere -equalled—it is the most _done_ visit to the play in all -literature—but, though “doing” is now so woefully out of favour, my -idea would be to give it here a precious _pendant_; which connection, -silly Canon Conti, the old fripperies and levities, the whole queer -picture and show of manners, is handed over to us, expressly, as inapt -for poetic illustration. - -What is equally apt for poetic or for the other, indeed, is the thing -for which we feel “The Ring and the Book” preponderantly done—it is at -least what comes out clearest, comes out as straightest and strongest -and finest, from Browning’s genius—the exhibition of the great -constringent relation between man and woman at once at its maximum and -as the relation most worth while in life for either party; an exhibition -forming quite the main substance of our author’s message. He has dealt, -in his immense variety and vivacity, with other relations, but on this -he has thrown his most living weight; it remains the thing of which his -own rich experience most convincingly spoke to him. He has testified to -it as charged to the brim with the burden of the senses, and has -testified to it as almost too clarified, too liberated and sublimated, -for traceable application or fair record; he has figured it as never too -much either of the flesh or of the spirit for him, so long as the -possibility of both of these is in each, but always and ever as the -thing absolutely most worth while. It is in the highest and rarest -degree clarified and disengaged for Caponsacchi and Pompilia; but what -their history most concludes to is how ineffably it was, whatever -happened, worth while. Worth while most then for them or for us is the -question? Well, let us say worth while assuredly for us, in this noble -exercise of our imagination. Which accordingly shows us what we, for all -our prose basis, would have found, to repeat my term once more, prepared -for us. There isn’t a detail of their panting flight to Rome over the -autumn Apennines—the long hours when they melt together only _not_ to -meet—that doesn’t positively plead for our perfect prose transcript. -And if it be said that the mere massacre at the final end is a lapse to -passivity from the high plane, for our pair of protagonists, of -constructive, of heroic vision, this is not a blur from the time -everything that happens happens most effectively to Caponsacchi’s life. -Pompilia’s is taken, but she is none the less given; and it is in his -consciousness and experience that she most intensely flowers—with all -her jubilation for doing so. So that _he_ contains the whole—unless -indeed after all the Pope does, the Pope whom I was leaving out as too -transcendent for _our_ version. Unless, unless, further and further, I -see what I have at this late moment no right to; see, as the very end -and splendid climax of all, Caponsacchi sent for to the Vatican and -admitted alone to the Papal presence. _There_ is a scene if we will; and -in the mere mutual confrontation, brief, silent, searching, recognising, -consecrating, almost as august on the one part as on the other. It -rounds us off; but you will think I stray too far. I have wanted, alas, -to say such still other fond fine things—it being of our poet’s great -nature to prompt them at every step—that I almost feel I have missed -half my points; which will doubtless therefore show you these remarks in -their nakedness. Take them and my particular contention as a pretext and -a minor affair if you will only feel them at the same time as at the -worst a restless refinement of homage. It has been easy in many another -case to run to earth the stray prime fancy, the original anecdote or -artless tale, from which a great imaginative work, starting off after -meeting it, has sprung and rebounded again and soared; and perhaps it is -right and happy and final that one should have faltered in attempting by -a converse curiosity to clip off or tie back the wings that once have -spread. You will agree with me none the less, I feel, that Browning’s -great generous wings are over us still and even now, more than ever now; -and also that they shake down on us his blessing. - ------ - -Footnote 8: - -Address delivered before the Academic Committee of the Royal Society of -Literature in Commemoration of the Centenary of Robert Browning, May 7, -1912. - - - - - AN AMERICAN ART-SCHOLAR: CHARLES ELIOT NORTON - 1908 - - -I gladly embrace the occasion to devote a few words to the honoured -memory of my distinguished friend the late Charles Eliot Norton, who, -dying at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 21st of October last, after -having reached his eightieth year, had long occupied—and with an -originality of spirit and a beneficence of effect all his own—the chair -of the History of the Fine Arts at Harvard University, as well as, in -the view of the American world surrounding that seat of influence, the -position of one of the most accomplished of scholars and most efficient -of citizens. This commemorative page may not disclaim the personal tone, -for I can speak of Charles Norton but in the light of an affection which -began long years ago, even though my part in our relation had to be, for -some time, markedly that of a junior; of which tie I was to remain ever -after, despite long stretches of material separation, a conscious and -grateful beneficiary. I can speak of him therefore as I happened myself -to see and know him—with interest and sympathy acting, for considerable -periods together, across distances and superficial differences, yet with -the sense of his extremely individual character and career suffering no -abatement, and indeed with my impression of the fine consistency and -exemplary value of these things clear as never before. - -I find this impression go back for its origin very far—to one autumn -day when, an extremely immature aspirant to the rare laurel of the -critic, I went out from Boston to Cambridge to offer him a contribution -to the old, if I should not rather say the then middle-aged, “North -American Review,” of which he had recently undertaken the editorship. I -already knew him a little, enough to have met casual kindness at his -hands; but my vision of his active presence and function, in the -community that had happily produced and that was long to enjoy him, -found itself, I think, completely constituted at that hour, with scarce -an essential touch to be afterwards added. He largely developed and -expanded as time went on; certain more or less local reserves and -conservatisms fell away from him; but his temper and attitude, all his -own from the first, were to give a singular unity to his life. This -intensity of perception on his young visitor’s part may perhaps have -sprung a little from the fact that he accepted on the spot, as the -visitor still romantically remembers, a certain very first awkward essay -in criticism, and was to publish it in his forthcoming number; but I -little doubt whether even had he refused it the grace of the whole -occasion would have lost anything to my excited view, and feel sure that -the interest in particular would have gained had he charmingly put -before me (as he would have been sure to do) the ground of his -discrimination. For his eminent character as a “representative of -culture” announced itself exactly in proportion as one’s general sense -of the medium in which it was to be exerted was strong; and I seem -verily to recall that even in the comparative tenderness of that season -I had grasped the idea of the precious, the quite far-reaching part such -an exemplar might play. Charles Norton’s distinction and value—this was -still some years before his professorate had taken form—showed early -and above all the note and the advantage that they were to be virtues of -American application, and were to draw their life from the signal -American opportunity; to that degree that the detailed record of his -influence would be really one of the most interesting of American social -documents, and that his good work is best lighted by a due acquaintance -with the conditions of the life about him, indispensable for a founded -recognition of it. It is not too much to say that the representative of -culture—always in the high and special sense in which he practised that -faith—had before him in the United States of those days a great and -arduous mission, requiring plentiful courage as well as plentiful -knowledge, endless good humour as well as assured taste. - -What comes back to me then from the early day I have glanced at is -exactly that prompt sense of the clustered evidence of my friend’s -perfect adaptation to the civilising mission, and not least to the -needfully dauntless and unperturbed side of it. His so pleasant old -hereditary home, with its ample acres and numerous spoils—at a time -when acres merely marginal and, so to speak, atmospheric, as well as -spoils at all felicitously gathered, were rare in the United -States—seemed to minister to the general assurance, constituting as -they did such a picture of life as one vaguely supposed recognisable, -right and left, in an old society, or, otherwise expressed, in that -“Europe” which was always, roundabout one, the fond alternative of the -cultivated imagination, but of which the possible American copy ever -seemed far to seek. To put it in a nutshell, the pilgrimage to the Shady -Hill of those years had, among the “spoils,” among pictures and books, -drawings and medals, memories and relics and anecdotes, things of a -remote but charming reference, very much the effect of a sudden rise -into a finer and clearer air and of a stopgap against one’s own coveted -renewal of the more direct experience. If I allude to a particular, to a -personal yearning appreciation of those matters, it is with the -justified conviction—this justification having been all along -abundantly perceptible—that appreciation of the general sort only -waited to be called for, though to be called for with due authority. It -was the sign of our host, on the attaching spot, and almost the -principal one, that he spoke, all round and with the highest emphasis, -as under the warrant of authority, and that at a time when, as to the -main matter of his claim and his discourse, scarce anyone pretended to -it, he carried himself valiantly under that banner. The main matter of -his discourse offered itself just simply as the matter of -_civilisation_—the particular civilisation that a young roaring and -money-getting democracy, inevitably but almost exclusively occupied with -“business success,” most needed to have brought home to it. The New -England air in especial was no natural conductor of any appeal to an -esthetic aim, but the interest of Professor Norton’s general work, to -say nothing of the interest of his character for a closer view, is -exactly that the whole fruitful enterprise was to prove intimately a New -England adventure; illustrating thus at the same time and once more the -innate capacity of New England for leavening the great American mass on -the finer issues. - -To have grown up as the accomplished man at large was in itself at that -time to have felt, and even in some degree to have suffered, this hand -of differentiation; the only accomplished men of the exhibited New -England Society had been the ministers, the heads of the -congregations—whom, however, one docks of little of their credit in -saying that their accomplishments and their earnestness had been almost -wholly in the moral order. The advantage of that connection was indeed -what Norton was fundamentally to have enjoyed in his descent, both on -his father’s and his mother’s side (pre-eminently on the latter, the -historic stock of the Eliots) from a long line of those stalwart -pastoral worthies who had notably formed the aristocracy of -Massachusetts. It was largely, no doubt, to this heritage of character -and conscience that he owed the strong and special strain of confidence -with which he addressed himself to the business of perfect candour -toward his fellow-citizens—his pupils in particular; they, to whom this -candour was to become in the long run the rarest and raciest and most -endearing of “treats,” being but his fellow-citizens in the making. This -view of an urgent duty would have been a comparatively slight thing, -moreover, without the special preoccupations, without the love of the -high humanities and curiosities and urbanities in themselves, without -the conception of science and the ingrained studious cast of mind, which -had been also an affair of heredity with him and had opened his eyes -betimes to educative values and standards other than most of those he -saw flourish near at hand. He would defer to dilettantism as little as -to vulgarity, and if he ultimately embraced the fine ideal of taking up -the work that lay close to him at home, and of irrigating the immediate -arid tracts and desert spaces, it was not from ignorance of the -temptation to wander and linger where the streams already flowed and the -soil had already borne an abiding fruit. - -He had come to Italy and to England early in life; he had repeated his -visits to these countries with infinite relish and as often as -possible—though never, as a good New Englander, without certain firm -and, where they had to be, invidious discriminations; he was attached to -them by a hundred intellectual and social ties; but he had been from the -first incapable of doubting that the best activity and the liveliest -interest lay where it always, given certain conditions, lies in -America—in a measure of response to intellectual and esthethic -“missionary” labour more traceable and appreciable, more distinguishably -attested and registered, more directly and artlessly grateful, in a -word, than in the thicker elemental mixture of Europe. On the whole side -of taste and association his choice was thus betimes for conscious exile -and for a considerably, though doubtless not altogether irremediably, -deprived state; but it was at the same time for a freedom of exhortation -and a play of ironic comment less restricted, after all, in the clear -American air, than on ground more pretentiously enclosed—less -restricted, that is, from the moment personal conviction might be -absolute and indifference to every form of provincial bewilderment -equally patient and complete. The incontestable _crânerie_ of his -attitude—a thing that one felt to be a high form of sincerity—always -at last won success; the respect and affection that more and more -surrounded him and that finally made his situation sole of its kind and -pre-eminently happy, attest together the interesting truth that -unqualified confidence in one’s errand, the serenest acceptance of a -responsibility and the exercise of a critical authority never too apt to -return critically upon itself, only require for beneficent action that -they be attended at once with a fund of illustration and a fund of good -humour. - -Professor Norton’s pre-eminent work in the interpretation of Dante—by -which I mean his translation, text and notes, of the “Divine Comedy” and -the “New Life,” an achievement of infinite piety, patience and resource; -his admirable volume on Church-Building in the Middle Ages (to say -nothing of his charming earlier one, “Study and Travel in Italy,” -largely devoted to the cathedral of Orvieto); his long and intimate -friendship with Ruskin, commemorated by his publication, as -joint-executor to Ruskin’s will, of the best fruits of the latter’s -sustained correspondence with him; his numerous English friendships, in -especial—to say nothing of his native—all with persons of a highly -representative character: these things give in part the measure of his -finest curiosities and of his appetite, in all directions, for the best -sources and examples and the best company. But it is probable that if -his Harvard lectures are in form for publication, and if his general -correspondence, and above all his own easily handsomest show in it, -comes to be published, as most emphatically it should be, they will -testify not in the least to any unredeemed contraction of life, but to -the largest and happiest and most rewarded energy. An exhilarated -invocation of close responsibility, an absolute ease of mind about one’s -point of view, a thorough and never-failing intellectual wholeness, are -so far from weakening the appeal to young allegiances that, once they -succeed at all, they succeed the better for going all their length. So -it was that, with admirable urbanity of form and uncompromising -straightness of attack, the Professor of the History of the Fine Arts at -Harvard for a quarter of a century let himself go; thinking no trouble -wasted and no flutter and no scandal other than auspicious if only he -might, to the receptive and aspiring undergraduate mind, brand the ugly -and the vulgar and the inferior wherever he found them, tracking them -through plausible disguises and into trumpery strongholds; if only he -might convert young products of the unmitigated American order into -material for men of the world in the finer sense of that term; if only -in short he might render more supple their view, liable to obfuscation -from sights and sounds about them, of the true meaning of a liberal -education and of the civilised character and spirit in the civilised -State. - -What it came to thus was that he availed himself to the utmost of his -free hand for sowing and planting ideals—ideals that, though they might -after all be vague and general things, lacking sometimes a little the -clearer connections with practice, were yet a new and inspiring note to -most of his hearers, who could be trusted, just so far as they were -intelligent and loyal, not to be heavily embarrassed by them, not to -want for fields of application. It was given him, quite unprecedentedly, -to be popular, to be altogether loved and cherished, even while “rubbing -it into” whomever it might concern that such unfortunates were mainly -given over to mediocrity and vulgarity, and that half the crude and ugly -objects and aspects, half the low standards and loose ends surrounding -them and which they might take for granted with a facility and a -complacency alike deplorable, represented a platitude of imagination -that dishonoured the citizen on whom a University worthy of the name -should have left its stamp. Happy, it would thus in fact seem, beyond -any other occasion for educative influence, the immense and delightful -opportunity he enjoyed, the clear field and long reach attached to -preaching an esthetic crusade, to pleading for the higher amenities in -general, in a new and superficially tutored, yet also but superficially -prejudiced, country, where a consequently felt and noted rise of the -tide of manners may be held to have come home to him, or certainly to -have visited his dreams. His effect on the community at large, with -allowances of time, was ever indubitable—even though such workers have -everywhere to take much on trust and to remember that bushels of -doctrine, and even tons of example, make at the most ounces and grains -of responsive life. It can only be the very general and hopeful view -that sustains and rewards—with here and there, at wide intervals, the -prized individual instance of the sown seed actively emerging and -flowering. - -If not all ingenious disciples could give independent proof, however, -all could rally and feel the spirit; all could crowd to a course of -instruction which, largely elective and optional, yet united more -listeners than many others put together, and in which the subject -itself, the illustration of European artistic endeavour at large, or in -other words the record of man’s most comprehensive sacrifice to -organised beauty, tended so to take up on familiar ground the question -of manners, character, conscience, tone, to bristle with questions -addressed to the actual and possible American scene. That, I hasten to -add, was of course but one side of the matter; there were wells of -special science for those who chose to draw from them, and an inner -circle of pupils whose whole fruitful relation to their philosopher and -friend—the happy and easy privilege of Shady Hill in general, where -other charming personal influences helped, not counting as least in -this—can scarce have failed to prepare much practical evidence for -observation still to come. The ivory tower of study would ever, by his -natural bent, I think, have most solicited Charles Norton; but he liked, -as I say, he accepted without a reserve, the function of presiding over -young destinies; he believed in the personal and the social -communication of light, and had a gift for the generous and personal -relation that perhaps found its best issue, as I have already hinted, in -his admirable letters. These were not of this hustled and hustling age, -but of a cooler and steadier sphere and rhythm, and of a charming -mannerly substantial type to which he will have been, I think, among -correspondents truly animated by the social spirit and a due cosmopolite -ideal, one of the last systematically to sacrifice. With the lapse of -years I ceased to be, I admit, a near spectator of his situation; but my -sense of his activity—with more intimate renewals, besides, -occasionally taking place—was to be, all along, so constantly fed by -echo and anecdote and all manner of indirect glimpses, that I find -myself speak quite with the confidence and with all the attachment of a -continuous “assistant.” - -With which, if I reflect on this, I see how interesting a _case_ above -all my distinguished friend was ever to remain to me—a case, I mean, of -such a mixture of the elements as would have seemed in advance, -critically speaking, quite anomalous or at least highly incalculable. -His interest was predominantly in Art, as the most beneficial of human -products; his ostensible plea was for the esthetic law, under the wide -wing of which we really move, it may seem to many of us, in an air of -strange and treacherous appearances, of much bewilderment and not a -little mystification; of terribly fine and complicated issues in short, -such as call for the highest interpretative wisdom. But if nothing was -of a more delightful example than Professor Norton’s large and nourished -serenity in all these connections, a serenity seasoned and tempered, as -it were, by infinite interest in his “subject,” by a steadying faith in -exact and extensive knowledge, so to a fond and incorrigible student of -character the case, as I have called it, and the long and genial career, -may seem to shine in the light of quite other importances, quite other -references, than the presumed and the nominal. Nothing in fact _can_ be -more interesting to a haunter of other intellectual climes and a -worshipper at the esthetic shrine _quand même_ than to note once more -how race and implanted quality and association always in the end come by -their own; how for example a son of the Puritans the most intellectually -transmuted, the most liberally emancipated and initiated possible, could -still plead most for substance when proposing to plead for style, could -still try to lose himself in the labyrinth of delight while keeping -tight hold of the clue of duty, tangled even a little in his feet; could -still address himself all consistently to the moral conscience while -speaking as by his office for our imagination and our free curiosity. -All of which vision of him, however, is far from pointing to a wasted -effort. The great thing, whatever turn we take, is to find before us -perspectives and to have a weight to throw; in accordance with which -wisdom the world he lived in received for long no firmer nor more -gallant and generous impress than that of Charles Eliot Norton. - - - - - LONDON NOTES - _January_ 1897 - - -I am afraid the interest of the world of native letters is not at this -moment so great as to make us despise mere translation as an aid to -curiosity. There is indeed no reason why we should forbear to say in -advance what we are certain, every time, to say after (after the heat -has cooled I mean:) namely, that nothing is easier to concede than that -Ibsen—contentious name!—would be much less remarked if he were one of -a dozen. It is impossible, in London at least, to shut one’s eyes to the -fact that if to so many ingenious minds he is a kind of pictorial -monster, a grotesque on the sign of a side-show, this is at least partly -because his form has a monstrous rarity. It is one of the odd things of -our actual esthetics that the more theatres multiply the less any one -reads a play—the less any one cares, in a word, for the text of the -adventure. That no one ever _does_ read a play has long been a -commonplace of the wisdom of booksellers. Ibsen, however, is a text, and -Ibsen is read, and Ibsen contradicts the custom and confounds the -prejudice; with the effect thereby, in an odd way, of being doubly an -exotic. His violent substance imposes, as it were, his insidious form; -it is not (as would have seemed more likely) the form that imposes the -substance. Mr. William Archer has just published his version of “John -Gabriel Borkman,” of which, moreover, French and German versions reach -us at the same moment. There are therefore all the elements of a fresh -breeze in the wind—one has already a sense as of a cracking of whips -and a girding of loins. You may by this time be terribly tired of it all -in America; but, as I mentioned a fortnight ago, we have had very recent -evidence that languor here, in this connection, is by no means as yet -the dominant note. It is not the dispute itself, however, that most -interests me: let me pay it, for what it has been and what it still may -be, the mere superficial tribute of saying that it constitutes one of -the very few cases of contagious discussion of a matter not political, a -question not of mere practice, of which I remember to have felt, in a -heavy air, the engaging titillation. In London generally, I think, the -wandering breath of criticism is the stray guest at the big party—the -shy young man whom nobody knows. In this remarkable instance the shy -young man has ventured to pause and hover, has lighted on a topic, -introduced himself and, after a gasp of consternation in the company, -seen a little circle gather round him. I can only speak as one of the -little circle, testifying to my individual glee. - -The author who at the age of seventy, a provincial of provincials, turns -out “John Gabriel” is frankly for me so much one of the peculiar -pleasures of the day, one of the current strong sensations, that, erect -as he seems still to stand, I deplore his extreme maturity and, thinking -of what shall happen, look round in vain for any other possible source -of the same kind of emotion. For Ibsen strikes me as an extraordinary -curiosity, and every time he sounds his note the miracle to my -perception is renewed. I call it a miracle because it is a result of so -dry a view of life, so indifferent a vision of the comedy of things. His -idea of the thing represented is never the comic idea, though this is -evidently what it often only can be for many of his English readers and -spectators. Comedy moreover is a product mainly of observation, and I -scarcely know what to say of his figures except that they haven’t the -_signs_. The answer to that is doubtless partly that they haven’t the -English, but have the Norwegian. In such a case one of the Norwegian -must be in truth this very lack of signs. - -They have no tone but their moral tone. They are highly animated -abstractions, with the extraordinary, the brilliant property of becoming -when represented at once more abstract and more living. If the spirit is -a lamp within us, glowing through what the world and the flesh make of -us as through a ground-glass shade, then such pictures as Little Eyolf -and John Gabriel are each a _chassez-croisez_ of lamps burning, as in -tasteless parlours, with the flame practically exposed. There are no -shades in the house, or the Norwegian ground-glass is singularly clear. -There is a positive odour of spiritual paraffin. The author nevertheless -arrives at the dramatist’s great goal—he arrives for all his meagreness -at intensity. The meagreness, which is after all but an unconscious, an -admirable economy, never interferes with that: it plays straight into -the hands of his rare mastery of form. The contrast between this -form—so difficult to have reached, so “evolved,” so civilised—and the -bareness and bleakness of his little northern democracy is the source of -half the hard frugal charm that he puts forth. In the cold fixed light -of it the notes we speak of as deficiencies take a sharp value in the -picture. There is no small-talk, there are scarcely any manners. On the -other hand there is so little vulgarity that this of itself has almost -the effect of a deeper, a more lonely provincialism. The background at -any rate is the sunset over the ice. Well in the very front of the scene -lunges with extraordinary length of arm the Ego against the Ego, and -rocks in a rigour of passion the soul against the soul—a spectacle, a -movement, as definite as the relief of silhouettes in black paper or of -a train of Eskimo dogs on the snow. Down from that desolation the sturdy -old symbolist comes this time with a supreme example of his method. It -is a high wonder and pleasure to welcome such splendid fruit from sap -that might by now have shown something of the chill of age. Never has he -juggled more gallantly with difficulty and danger than in this really -prodigious “John Gabriel,” in which a great span of tragedy is taken -between three or four persons—a trio of the grim and grizzled—in the -two or three hours of a winter’s evening; in which the whole thing -throbs with an actability that fairly shakes us as we read; and in -which, as the very flower of his artistic triumph, he has given us for -the most beautiful and touching of his heroines a sad old maid of sixty. -Such “parts,” even from the vulgarest point of view, are Borkman and -Ella Rentheim. - - - - - LONDON NOTES - _June_ 1897 - - -I am afraid there are at this moment only two notes for a communication -from London to strike. One is that of the plunge into the deep and -turbid waters of the Jubilee; the other is that of the inevitable -retreat from them—the backward scramble up the bank and scurry over its -crest and out of sight. London is in a sorry state; nevertheless I judge -that the number of persons about to arrive undaunted will not fall -substantially short of the number of horror-stricken fugitives. Not to -depart is practically to arrive; for there is little difference in the -two kinds of violence, the shock you await or the shock that awaits you. -Let me hasten, however, to declare that—to speak for the present only -of the former of these—the prospect is full of suggestion, the affair -promises a rare sort of interest. It began a fortnight since to be -clear—and the certitude grows each day—that we are to be treated to a -revelation really precious, the domestic or familiar vision, as it were, -the back-stairs or underside view, of a situation that will rank as -celebrated. Balzac’s image of _l’envers de l’histoire contemporaine_ is -in fact already under our nose, already offered us in a big bouncing -unmistakable case. We brush with an irreverent hand the back of the -tapestry—we crawl on unabashed knees under the tent of the circus. The -commemoration of the completed sixtieth year of her Majesty’s reign will -figure to the end of time in the roll of English wonders and can -scarcely fail to hold its own as an occasion unparalleled. And yet we -touch it as we come and go—we feel it mainly as a great incommodity. It -has already so intimate, so ugly, so measurable a side that these -impressions begin to fall into their place with a kind of representative -force, to figure as a symbol of the general truth that the principal -pomps and circumstances of the historic page have had their most intense -existence as material and social arrangements, disagreeable or amusing -accidents, affecting the few momentary mortals at that time in the -neighbourhood. The gross defacement of London, the uproarious traffic in -seats, the miles of unsightly scaffolding between the West End and the -City, the screaming advertisements, the sordid struggle, the individual -questions—“Haven’t we been cheated by the plausible wretch?” or “How -the devil shall we get _to_ our seats after paying such a lot, -hey?”—these things are actually the historic page. If we are writing -that page every hour let us at any rate commend ourselves for having -begun betimes, even though this early diligence be attended with -extraordinary effects. The great day was a week ago still a month off, -but what we even then had full in view, was, for the coming stretch of -time, a London reduced to such disfigurement as might much better seem -to consort with some great national penance or mourning. The show, when -the show comes off, is to last but a couple of hours; and nothing so odd -surely ever occurred in such a connection as so huge a disproportion -between the discipline and the joy. If this be honour, the simple may -well say, give us, merciful powers, the rigour of indifference! From -Hyde Park Corner to the heart of the City and over the water to the -solid south the long line of thoroughfares is masked by a forest of -timber and smothered in swaggering posters and catchpenny bids, with all -of which and with the vociferous air that enfolds them we are to spend -these next weeks in such comfort as we may. The splendour will have of -course to be great to wash down the vulgarity—and infinitely dazzling -no doubt it will be; yet even if it falls short I shall still feel that, -let the quantity of shock, as I have ventured to call it, be what it -must, it will on the whole be exceeded by what I have ventured to call -the quantity of suggestion. This, to be frank, has even now rolled up at -such a rate that to deal with it I should scarce know where to take it -first. Let me not therefore pretend to deal, but only glance and pass. - -The foremost, the immense impression is of course the constant, the -permanent, the ever-supreme—the impression of that greatest glory of -our race, its passionate feeling for trade. I doubt if the commercial -instinct be not, as London now feels it throb and glow, quite as -striking as any conceivable projection of it that even our American -pressure of the pump might, at the highest, produce. That is the real -tent of the circus—that is the real back of the tapestry. There have -long, I know, been persons ready to prove by book that the explanation -of the “historical event” has always been somebody’s desire to make -money; never, at all events, from the near view, will that explanation -have covered so much of the ground. No result of the fact that the Queen -has reigned sixty years—no sort of sentimental or other association -with it—begins to have the air of coming home to the London conscience -like this happy consequence of the chance in it to sell something dear. -As yet that chance is the one sound that fills the air, and will -probably be the only note audibly struck till the plaudits of the day -itself begin to substitute, none too soon, a more mellifluous one. When -the people are all at the windows and in the trees and on the -water-spouts, house-tops, scaffolds and other ledges and coigns of -vantage set as traps for them by the motive power, _then_ doubtless -there will be another aspect to reckon with—then we shall see, of the -grand occasion, nothing but what is decently and presentably historic. -All I mean is that, pending the apotheosis, London has found in this -particular chapter of the career of its aged sovereign only an enormous -selfish advertisement. It came to me the other day in a quoted epigram -that the advertisement shows as far off as across the Channel and all -the way to Paris, where one of the reflections it has suggested—as it -must inevitably suggest many—appears to be that, in contrast, when, a -year ago, the Russian sovereigns were about to arrive no good Parisian -thought for a moment of anything but how he could most work for the -adornment of his town. I dare say that in fact from a good Parisian or -two a window or a tree was to be hired; but the echo is at least -interesting _as_ an echo, not less than as a reminder of how we still -wait here for the outbreak of the kind of enthusiasm that shall take the -decorative form. The graceful tip of its nose has, it must be admitted, -yet to show. But there are other sides still, and one of them -immense—the light we may take as flooding, I mean, the whole question -of the solidity of the throne. It is impossible to live long in England -without feeling that the monarchy is—below-ground, so to speak, in -particular—a rock; but it was reserved for these days to accentuate the -immobility of even that portion of the rock which protrudes above the -surface. It is being tested in a manner by fire, and it resists with a -vitality nothing short of prophetic. The commercial instinct, as I say, -perches upon it with a security and a success that banish a rival from -the field. It is the biggest of all draws for the biggest of all -circuses; it will bring more money to more doors than anything that can -be imagined in its place. It will march through the ages unshaken. The -coronation of a new sovereign is an event, at the worst, well within the -compass of the mind, and what will that bring with it so much as a fresh -lively market and miles of new posters and new carpentry? Then, who -knows?—coronations will, for a stretch and a change perhaps, be more -frequent than anniversaries; and the bargains struck over the last will, -again at the worst, carry an hilarious country well on to the next. Has -not the monarchy moreover—besides thus periodically making trade -roar—the lively merit, for such an observer as I fancy considering -these things, of helping more than anything else the answers to the -questions into which our actual curiosity most overflows; the question -for instance of whether in the case before us the triumph of vulgarity -be not precisely the flushed but muscular triumph of the inevitable? If -vulgarity thrones now on the house-tops, “blown” and red in the face, is -it not because it has been pushed aloft by deep forces and is really -after all itself the show? The picturesque at any rate has to meet the -conditions. We miss, we regret the old “style” of history; but the style -would, I think, be there if we let it: the age has a manner of its own -that disconcerts, that swamps it. The age is the loudest thing of all. -What has altered is simply the conditions. Poor history has to meet -them, these conditions; she must accommodate herself. She must accept -vulgarity or perish. Some day doubtless she _will_ perish, but for a -little while longer she remembers and struggles. She becomes indeed, as -we look up Piccadilly in the light of this image, perhaps rather more -dramatic than ever—at any rate more pathetic, more noble in her choked -humiliation. Then even as we pity her we try perhaps to bring her round, -to make her understand a little better. We try to explain that if we are -dreadful to deal with it is only, really, a good deal because we so -detestably grow and grow. There is so horribly much of us—that’s where -_our_ style breaks down. Small crowds and paltry bargains didn’t matter, -and a little vulgarity—just a very little—could in other times manage -to pass. Our shame, alas, is our quantity. - -I have no sooner, none the less, qualified it so ungraciously than I ask -myself what after all we should do without it. If we have opened the -floodgates we have at least opened them wide, and it is our very -quantity that perhaps in the last resort will save us. It cuts both -ways, as the phrase is—it covers all the ground; it helps the escape as -well as produces the assault. If retreat for instance at the present -juncture is, as I began by hinting, urgently imposed, it is thanks to -our having so much of everything that we find a bridge for our feet. We -hope to get off in time, but meanwhile even on the spot there are -blessed alternatives and reliefs. I have been trying a number very hard, -but I have expatiated so on the complaint that I have left little room -for the remedy. London reminds one of nothing so often as of the help -she gives one to forget her. One of the forms actually taken by this -happy habit is the ingenious little exhibition, at the Grafton -Galleries, of so-called Dramatic and Musical Art. The name is rather a -grand one and the show has many gaps; but it profits, as such places in -London so often profit, by the law that makes you mostly care less what -you get into than what you get out of. With its Hogarths and -Zoffanys—none too many, I admit—its other last-century portraits and -relics, its numerous ghosts of Garrick, its old play-bills and prints, -its echoes of dead plaudits and its very thin attendance, it happens to -be for the moment a quiet bower in the bear-garden. It is a “scratch” -company, but only—and I can scarce say why—in the portion in which the -portraits of the day prevail is the impression vulgar. Even there indeed -this suspicion receives a grand lift from Mr. Whistler’s exquisite image -of Henry Irving as the Philip of Tennyson’s “Queen Mary.” To pause -before such a work is in fact to be held to the spot by just the highest -operation of the charm one has sought there—the charm of a certain -degree of melancholy meditation. Meditation indeed forgets Garrick and -Hogarth and all the handsome heads of the Kembles in wonder -reintensified at the attitude of a stupid generation toward an art and a -taste so rare. Wonder is perhaps after all not the word to use, for how -_should_ a stupid generation, liking so much that it does like and with -a faculty trained to coarser motions, recognise in Mr. Whistler’s work -one of the finest of all distillations of the artistic intelligence? To -turn from his picture to the rest of the show—which, of course, I -admit, is not a collection of masterpieces—is to drop from the world of -distinction, of perception, of beauty and mystery and perpetuity, -into—well, a very ordinary place. And yet the effect of Whistler at his -best is exactly to give to the place he hangs in—or perhaps I should -say to the person he hangs for—something of the sense, of the illusion, -of a great museum. He isolates himself in a manner all his own; his -presence is in itself a sort of implication of a choice corner. Have we -in this a faint foresight of the eventual turn of the wheel—of one of -the nooks of honour, those innermost rooms of great collections, in -which our posterity shall find him? Look at him at any rate on any -occasion, but above all at his best, only long enough, and hallucination -sets in. We are in the presence of one of the prizes marked with two -stars in the guidebook; the polished floor is beneath us and the rococo -roof above; the great names are ranged about, and the eye is aware of -the near window, in its deep recess, that overhangs old gardens or a -celebrated square. - - - - - LONDON NOTES - _July_ 1897 - - -I continued last month to seek private diversion, which I found to be -more and more required as the machinery of public began to work. Never -was a better chance apparently for the great anodyne of art. It was a -supreme opportunity to test the spell of the magician, for one felt one -was saved if a fictive world would open. I knocked in this way at a -dozen doors, I read a succession of novels; with the effect perhaps of -feeling more than ever before my individual liability in our great -general debt to the novelists. The great thing to say for them is surely -that at any given moment they offer us another world, another -consciousness, an experience that, as effective as the dentist’s ether, -muffles the ache of the actual and, by helping us to an interval, tides -us over and makes us face, in the return to the inevitable, a -combination that may at least have changed. What we get of course, in -proportion as the picture lives, is simply another actual—the actual of -other people; and I no more than any one else pretend to say _why_ that -should be a relief, a relief as great, I mean, as it practically proves. -We meet in this question, I think, the eternal mystery—the mystery that -sends us back simply to the queer constitution of man and that is not in -the least lighted by the plea of “romance,” the argument that relief -depends wholly upon the quantity, as it were, of fable. It depends, to -my sense, on the quantity of nothing but art—in which the material, -fable or fact or whatever it be, falls so into solution, is so reduced -and transmuted, that I absolutely am acquainted with no receipt whatever -for computing its proportion and amount. - -The only amount I can compute is the force of the author, for that is -directly registered in my attention, my submission. A hundred things -naturally go to make it up; but he knows so much better than I what they -are that I should blush to give him a glimpse of my inferior account of -them. The anodyne is not the particular picture, it is our own act of -surrender, and therefore most, for each reader, what he most surrenders -to. This latter element would seem in turn to vary from case to case, -were it not indeed that there are readers prepared, I believe, to limit -their surrender in advance. With some, we gather, it declines for -instance to operate save on an exhibition of “high life.” In others -again it is proof against any solicitation but that of low. In many it -vibrates only to “adventure”; in many only to Charlotte Brontë; in -various groups, according to affinity, only to Jane Austen, to old -Dumas, to Miss Corelli, to Dostoievsky or whomever it may be. The -readers easiest to conceive, however, are probably those for whom, in -the whole impression, the note of sincerity in the artist is what most -matters, what most reaches and touches. That, obviously, is the relation -that gives the widest range to the anodyne. - -I am afraid that, profiting by my license, I drag forward Mr. George -Gissing from an antiquity of several weeks. I blow the dust of oblivion -from M. Pierre Loti and indeed from all the company—they have been -published for days and days. I foresee, however, that I must neglect the -company for the sake of the two members I have named, writers—I speak -for myself—always in order, though not, I admit, on quite the same -line. Mr. Gissing would have been particularly in order had he only kept -for the present period the work preceding his latest; all the more that -“In the Year of Jubilee” has to my perception some points of superiority -to “The Whirlpool.” For this author in general, at any rate, I profess, -and have professed ever since reading “The New Grub Street,” a -persistent taste—a taste that triumphs even over the fact that he -almost as persistently disappoints me. I fail as yet to make out why -exactly it is that going so far he so sturdily refuses to go further. -The whole business of distribution and composition he strikes me as -having cast to the winds; but just this fact of a question about him is -a part of the wonder—I use the word in the sense of enjoyment—that he -excites. It is not every day in the year that we meet a novelist about -whom there is a question. The circumstance alone is almost sufficient to -beguile or to enthrall; and I seem to myself to have said almost -everything in speaking of something that Mr. Gissing “goes far” enough -to do. To go far enough to do anything is, in the conditions we live in, -a lively achievement. - -“The Whirlpool,” I crudely confess, was in a manner a grief to me, but -the book has much substance, and there is no light privilege in an -emotion so sustained. This emotion perhaps it is that most makes me, to -the end, stick to Mr. Gissing—makes me with an almost nervous clutch -quite cling to him. I shall not know how to deal with him, however, if I -withhold the last outrage of calling him an interesting case. He seems -to me above all a case of saturation, and it is mainly his saturation -that makes him interesting—I mean especially in the sense of making him -singular. The interest would be greater were his art more complete; but -we must take what we can get, and Mr. Gissing has a way of his own. The -great thing is that his saturation is with elements that, presented to -us in contemporary English fiction, affect us as a product of -extraordinary oddity and rarity: he reeks with the savour, he is bowed -beneath the fruits, of contact with the lower, with the lowest -middle-class, and that is sufficient to make him an authority—_the_ -authority in fact—on a region vast and unexplored. - -The English novel has as a general thing kept so desperately, so -nervously clear of it, whisking back compromised skirts and bumping -frantically against obstacles to retreat, that we welcome as the boldest -of adventurers a painter who has faced it and survived. We have had low -life in plenty, for, with its sores and vices, its crimes and penalties, -misery has colour enough to open the door to any quantity of artistic -patronage. We have shuddered in the dens of thieves and the cells of -murderers, and have dropped the inevitable tear over tortured childhood -and purified sin. We have popped in at the damp cottage with my lady and -heard the quaint rustic, bless his simple heart, commit himself for our -amusement. We have fraternised on the other hand with the peerage and -the county families, staying at fine old houses till exhausted nature -has, for this source of intoxication, not a wink of sociability left. It -has grown, the source in question, as stale as the sweet biscuit with -pink enhancements in that familiar jar of the refreshment counter from -which even the attendant young lady in black, with admirers and a social -position, hesitates to extract it. We have recognised the humble, the -wretched, even the wicked; also we have recognised the “smart.” But save -under the immense pressure of Dickens we have never done anything so -dreadful as to recognise the vulgar. We have at the very most recognised -it as the extravagant, the grotesque. The case of Dickens was absolutely -special; he dealt intensely with “lower middle,” with “lowest” middle, -elements, but he escaped the predicament of showing them as vulgar by -showing them only as prodigiously droll. When his people are not funny -who shall dare to say what they are? The critic may draw breath as from -a responsibility averted when he reflects that they almost always _are_ -funny. They belong to a walk of life that we may be ridiculous but never -at all serious about. We may be tragic, but that is often but a form of -humour. I seem to hear Mr. Gissing say: “Well, dreariness for -dreariness, let us try Brondesbury and Pinner; especially as in the -first place I know them so well; as in the second they are the essence -of England; and as in the third they are, artistically speaking, virgin -soil. Behold them glitter in the morning dew.” - -So he _is_ serious—almost imperturbably—about them, and, as it turns -out, even quite manfully and admirably sad. He has the great thing: his -saturation (with the visible and audible common) can project itself, let -him get outside of it and walk round it. I scarcely think he stays, as -it were, outside quite as much as he might; and on the question of form -he certainly strikes me as staying far too little. It is form above all -that is talent, and if Mr. Gissing’s were proportionate to his -knowledge, to what may be called his possession, we should have a larger -force to reckon with. That—not to speak of the lack of intensity in his -imagination—is the direction in which one would wish him to go further. -Our Anglo-Saxon tradition of these matters remains surely in some -respects the strangest. After the perusal of such a book as “The -Whirlpool” I feel as if I had almost to explain that by “these matters” -I mean the whole question of composition, of foreshortening, of the -proportion and relation of parts. Mr. Gissing, to wind up my reserves, -overdoes the ostensible report of spoken words; though I hasten to add -that this abuse is so general a sign, in these days, of the English and -the American novel as to deprive a challenge of every hope of credit. It -is attended visibly—that is visibly to those who can see—with two or -three woeful results. If it had none other it would still deserve -arraignment on the simple ground of what it crowds out—the golden -blocks themselves of the structure, the whole divine exercise and -mystery of the exquisite art of presentation. - -The ugliest trick it plays at any rate is its effect on that side of the -novelist’s effort—the side of most difficulty and thereby of most -dignity—which consists in giving the sense of duration, of the lapse -and accumulation of time. This is altogether to my view the stiffest -problem that the artist in fiction has to tackle, and nothing is more -striking at present than the blankness, for the most part, of his -indifference to it. The mere multiplication of quoted remarks is the -last thing to strengthen his hand. Such an expedient works exactly to -the opposite end, absolutely minimising, in regard to time, our -impression of lapse and passage. That is so much the case that I can -think of no novel in which it prevails as giving at all the sense of the -gradual and the retarded—the stretch of the years in which developments -really take place. The picture is nothing unless it be a picture of the -conditions, and the conditions are usually hereby quite omitted. Thanks -to this perversity everything dealt with in fiction appears at present -to occur simply on the occasion of a few conversations about it; there -is no other constitution of it. A few hours, a few days seem to account -for it. The process, the “dark backward and abysm,” is really so little -reproduced. We feel tempted to send many an author, to learn the -rudiments of this secret, back to his Balzac again, the most -accomplished master of it. He will learn also from Balzac while he is -about it that nothing furthermore, as intrinsic effect, so much -discounts itself as this abuse of the element of colloquy. - -“Dialogue,” as it is commonly called, is singularly suicidal from the -moment it is not directly illustrative of something given us by another -method, something constituted and presented. It is impossible to read -work even as interesting as Mr. Gissing’s without recognising the -impossibility of making people both talk “all the time” and talk with -the needful differences. The thing, so far as we have got, is simply too -hard. There is always at the best the author’s voice to be kept out. It -can be kept out for occasions, it can not be kept out always. The -solution therefore is to leave it its function, for it has the supreme -one. This function, properly exercised, averts the disaster of the -blight of the colloquy really in place—illustrative and indispensable. -Nothing is more inevitable than such a blight when antecedently the -general effect of the process has been undermined. We then want the -report of the spoken word—want that only. But, proportionately, it -doesn’t come, doesn’t count. It has been fatally cheapened. There is no -effect, no relief. - -I am writing a treatise when I meant only to give a glance; and it may -be asked if the best thing I find in Mr. Gissing is after all then but -an opportunity to denounce. The answer to that is that I find two other -things—or should find them rather had I not deprived myself as usual of -proper space. One of these is the pretext for speaking, by absolute -rebound, as it were, and in the interest of vivid contrast, of Pierre -Loti; the other is a better occasion still, an occasion for the -liveliest sympathy. It is impossible not to be affected by the frankness -and straightness of Mr. Gissing’s feeling for his subject, a subject -almost always distinctly remunerative to the ironic and even to the -dramatic mind. He has the strongest deepest sense of common humanity, of -the general struggle and the general grey grim comedy. He loves the -real, he renders it, and though he has a tendency to drift too much with -his tide, he gives us, in the great welter of the savourless, an -individual manly strain. If he only had distinction he would make the -suburbs “hum.” I don’t mean of course by his circulation there—the -effect Ibsen is supposed to have on them; I mean objectively and as a -rounded whole, as a great theme treated. - -I am ashamed of having postponed “Ramuntcho,” for “Ramuntcho” is a -direct recall of the beauty of “Pêcheur d’Islande” and “Mon Frère -Yves”—in other words a literary impression of the most exquisite order. -Perhaps indeed it is as well that a critic _should_ postpone—and quite -indefinitely—an author as to whom he is ready to confess that his -critical instinct is quite suspended. Oh the blessing of a book, the -luxury of a talent, that one is only anxious not to reason about, only -anxious to turn over in the mind and to taste! It is a poor business -perhaps, but I have nothing more responsible to say of Loti than that I -adore him. I love him when he is bad—and heaven knows he has -occasionally been so—more than I love other writers when they are good. -If therefore he is on the whole quite at his best in “Ramuntcho” I fear -my appreciation is an undertaking too merely active for indirect -expression. I can give it no more coherent form than to say that he -makes the act of partaking one of the joys that, as things mainly go, a -reader must be pretty well provided to be able not to jump at. And yet -there are readers, apparently, who _are_ so provided. There are readers -who don’t jump and are cocksure they can do without it. My sense of the -situation is that they are wrong—that with famine stalking so abroad -literally no one can. I defy it not to tell somewhere—become a gap one -can immediately “spot.” - -It is well to content one’s self, at all events, with affection; so -stiff a job, in such a case, is understanding or, still more, -explanation. There is a kind of finality in Loti’s simplicity—if it -even _be_ simplicity. He performs in an air in which, on the part of the -spectator, analysis withers and only submission lives. Has it anything -to do with literature? Has it anything to do with nature? It must be, we -should suppose, the last refinement either of one or of the other. Is it -all emotion, is it all calculation, is it all truth, is it all humbug? -All we can say as readers is that it is for ourselves all experience, -and of the most personal intensity. The great question is whether it be -emotion “neat” or emotion rendered and reduced. If it be resolved into -art why hasn’t it more of the chill? If it be sensibility pure why isn’t -it cruder and clumsier? What is exquisite is the contact of sensibility -made somehow so convenient—with only the beauty preserved. It is not -too much to say of Loti that his sensibility begins where that of most -of those who _use_ the article ends. If moreover in effect he represents -the triumph of instinct, when was instinct ever so sustained and so -unerring? It keeps him unfailingly, in the matter of “dialogue,” out of -the overflow and the waste. It is a joy to see how his looseness is -pervaded after all by proportion. - - - - - LONDON NOTES - _August_ 1897 - - -I shrink at this day from any air of relapsing into reference to those -Victorian saturnalia of which the force may now be taken as pretty well -spent; and if I remount the stream for an instant it is but with the -innocent intention of plucking the one little flower of literature that, -while the current roared, happened—so far at least as I could -observe—to sprout by the bank. If it was sole of its kind moreover it -was, I hasten to add, a mere accident of the Jubilee and as little a -prominent as a preconcerted feature. What it comes to therefore is that -if I gathered at the supreme moment a literary impression, the literary -impression had yet nothing to do with the affair; nothing, that is, -beyond the casual connection given by a somewhat acrid aftertaste, the -vision of the London of the morrow as I met this experience in a woeful -squeeze through town the day after the fair. It was the singular fate of -M. Paul Bourget, invited to lecture at Oxford under university patronage -and with Gustave Flaubert for his subject, to have found his appearance -arranged for June 23. I express this untowardness but feebly, I know, -for those at a distance from the edge of the whirlpool, the vast -concentric eddies that sucked down all other life. - -I found, on the morrow in question—the great day had been the 22nd—the -main suggestion of a journey from the south of England up to Waterloo -and across from Waterloo to Paddington to be that of one of those deep -gasps or wild staggers, losses of wind and of balance, that follow some -tremendous effort or some violent concussion. The weather was splendid -and torrid and London a huge dusty cabless confusion of timber already -tottering, of decorations already stale, of _badauds_ already bored. The -banquet-hall was by no means deserted, but it was choked with mere -echoes and candle-ends; one had heard often enough of a “great national -awakening,” and this was the greatest it would have been possible to -imagine. Millions of eyes, opening to dust and glare from the scenery of -dreams, seemed slowly to stare and to try to recollect. Certainly at -that distance the omens were poor for such concentration as a French -critic might have been moved to count upon, and even on reaching Oxford -I was met by the sense that the spirit of that seat of learning, though -accustomed to intellectual strain, had before the afternoon but little -of a margin for pulling itself together. Let me say at once that it made -the most of the scant interval and that when five o’clock came the bare -scholastic room at the Taylorian offered M. Bourget’s reputation and -topic, in the hot dead Oxford air, an attention as deep and as -many-headed as the combination could ever have hoped to command. - -For one auditor of whom I can speak, at all events, the occasion had an -intensity of interest transcending even that of Flaubert’s strange -personal story—which was part of M. Bourget’s theme—and of the new and -deep meanings that the lecturer read into it. Just the fact of the -occasion itself struck me as having well-nigh most to say, and at any -rate fed most the all but bottomless sense that constitutes to-day my -chief receptacle of impressions; a sense which at the same time I fear I -cannot better describe than as that of the way we are markedly going. No -undue eagerness to determine whether this be well or ill attaches to the -particular consciousness I speak of, and I can only give it frankly for -what, on the whole, it most, for beguilement, for amusement, for the -sweet thrill of perception, represents and achieves—the quickened -notation of our “modernity.” I feel that I can pay this last-named -lively influence no greater tribute than by candidly accepting as an aid -to expression its convenient name. To do that doubtless is to accept -with the name a host of other things. From the moment, at any rate, the -quickening I speak of sets in it is wonderful how many of these other -things play, by every circumstance, into the picture. - -That the day should have come for M. Bourget to lecture at Oxford, and -should have come by the same stroke for Gustave Flaubert to be lectured -about, filled the mind to a degree, and left it in an agitation of -violence, which almost excluded the question of what in especial one of -these spirits was to give and the other to gain. It was enough of an -emotion, for the occasion, to live in the circumstance that the author -of “Madame Bovary” could receive in England a public baptism of such -peculiar solemnity. With the vision of that, one could bring in all the -light and colour of all the rest of the picture and absolutely see, for -the instant, something momentous in the very act of happening, something -certainly that might easily become momentous with a little -interpretation. Such are the happy chances of the critical spirit, -always yearning to interpret, but not always in presence of the right -mystery. - -There was a degree of poetic justice, or at least of poetic generosity, -in the introduction of Flaubert to a scene, to conditions of credit and -honour, so little to have been by himself ever apprehended or estimated: -it was impossible not to feel that no setting or stage for the crowning -of his bust could less have appeared familiar to him, and that he -wouldn’t have failed to wonder into what strangely alien air his glory -had strayed. So it is that, as I say, the whole affair was a little -miracle of our breathless pace, and no corner from which another member -of the craft could watch it was so quiet as to attenuate the small -magnificence of the hour. No novelist, in a word, worth his salt could -fail of a consciousness, under the impression, of his becoming rather -more of a novelist than before. Was it not, on the whole, just the -essence of the matter that had for the moment there its official -recognition? were not the blest mystery and art ushered forward in a -more expectant and consecrating hush than had ever yet been known to -wait upon them? - -One may perhaps take these things too hard and read into them foolish -fancies; but the hush in question was filled to my imagination—quite -apart from the listening faces, of which there would be special things -to say that I wouldn’t for the world risk—with the great picture of all -the old grey quads and old green gardens, of all the so totally -different traditions and processions that were content at last, if only -for the drowsy end of a summer afternoon, to range themselves round and -play at hospitality. What it appeared possible to make out was a certain -faint convergence: that was the idea of which, during the whole process, -I felt the agreeable obsession. From the moment it brushed the mind -certainly the impulse was to clutch and detain it: too doleful would it -have been to entertain for an instant the fear that M. Bourget’s lecture -could leave the two elements of his case facing each other only at the -same distance at which it had found them. No, no; there was nothing for -it but to assume and insist that with each tick of the clock they moved -a little nearer together. That was the process, as I have called it, and -none the less interesting to the observer that it may not have been, and -may not yet be, rapid, full, complete, quite easy or clear or -successful. It was the seed of contact that assuredly was sown; it was -the friendly beginning that in a manner was made. The situation was -handled and modified—the day was a date. I shall perhaps remain obscure -unless I say more expressly and literally that the particular thing into -which, for the perfect outsider, the occasion most worked was a lively -interest—so far as an outsider could feel it—in the whole odd -phenomenon and spectacle of a certain usual positive _want_ of -convergence, want of communication between what the seat and habit of -the classics, the famous frequentation and discipline, do for their -victims in one direction and what they do not do for them in another. -Was the invitation to M. Bourget not a dim symptom of a bridging of this -queerest of all chasms? I can only so denominate—as a most anomalous -gap—the class of possibilities to which we owe its so often coming over -us in England that the light kindled by the immense academic privilege -is apt suddenly to turn to thick smoke in the air of contemporary -letters. - -There are movements of the classic torch round modern objects—strange -drips and drops and wondrous waverings—that have the effect of putting -it straight out. The range of reference that I allude to and that is -most the fashion draws its credit from being an education of the taste, -and it doubtless makes on the prescribed lines and in the close company -of the ancients tremendous tests and triumphs for that principle. -Nothing, however, is so singular as to see what again and again becomes -of it in the presence of examples for which prescription and association -are of no avail. I am speaking here of course not of unexpected -reserves, but of unexpected raptures, bewildering revelations of a -failure of the sense of perspective. This leads at times to queer -conjunctions, strange collocations in which Euripides gives an arm to -Sarah Grand and Octave Feuillet harks back to Virgil. It is the breath -of a madness in which one gropes for a method—probes in vain the hiatus -and sighs for the missing link. I am far from meaning to say that all -this will find itself amended by the discreet dose administered the -other day at the Taylorian of even so great an antidote as Flaubert; but -I come back to my theory that there is after all hope for a world still -so accessible to salutary shocks. That was apparent indeed some years -ago. Was it not at the Taylorian that Taine and Renan successively -lectured? Oxford, wherever it was, heard them even then to the end. It -is for the Taines, Renans and Bourgets very much the salting of the tail -of the bird: there must be more than one try. - -It is possible to have glanced at some of the odd estimates that the -conversation of the cultivated throws to the surface and yet to say -quite without reserve that the world of books has suffered no small -shrinkage by the recent death of Mrs. Oliphant. She had long lived and -worked in it, and from no individual perhaps had the great contemporary -flood received a more copious tribute. I know not if some study of her -remarkable life, and still more of her remarkable character, be in -preparation, but she was a figure that would on many sides still lend -itself to vivid portraiture. Her success had been in its day as great as -her activity, yet it was always present to me that her singular gift was -less recognised, or at any rate less reflected, less reported upon, than -it deserved: unless indeed she may have been one of those difficult -cases for criticism, an energy of which the spirit and the form, -straggling apart, never join hands with that effect of union which in -literature more than anywhere else is strength. - -Criticism, among us all, has come to the pass of being shy of difficult -cases, and no one, for that matter, practised it more in the hit-or-miss -fashion and on happy-go-lucky lines than Mrs. Oliphant herself. She -practised it, as she practised everything, on such an inordinate scale -that her biographer, if there is to be one, will have no small task in -the mere drafting of lists of her contributions to magazines and -journals in general and to “Blackwood” in particular. She wrought in -“Blackwood” for years, anonymously and profusely; no writer of the day -found a _porte-voix_ nearer to hand or used it with an easier personal -latitude and comfort. I should almost suppose in fact that no woman had -ever, for half a century, had her personal “say” so publicly and -irresponsibly. Her facilities of course were of her own making, but the -wonder was that once made they could be so applied. - -The explanation of her extraordinary fecundity was a rare original -equipment, an imperturbability of courage, health and brain, to which -was added the fortune or the merit of her having had to tune her -instrument at the earliest age. That instrument was essentially a Scotch -one; her stream flowed long and full without losing its primary colour. -To say that she was organised highly for literature would be to make too -light of too many hazards and conditions; but few writers of our time -have been so organised for liberal, for—one may almost put it—heroic -production. One of the interesting things in big persons is that they -leave us plenty of questions, if only about themselves; and precisely -one of those that Mrs. Oliphant suggests is the wonder and mystery of a -love of letters that could be so great without ever, on a single -occasion even, being greater. It was of course not a matter of mere -love; it was a part of her volume and abundance that she understood life -itself in a fine freehanded manner and, I imagine, seldom refused to -risk a push at a subject, however it might have given pause, that would -help to turn her wide wheel. She worked largely from obligation—to meet -the necessities and charges and pleasures and sorrows of which she had a -plentiful share. She showed in it all a sort of sedentary dash—an -acceptance of the day’s task and an abstention from the plaintive note -from which I confess I could never withhold my admiration. - -Her capacity for labour was infinite—for labour of the only sort that, -with the fine strain of old Scotch pride and belated letterless toryism -that was in her, she regarded as respectable. She had small patience -with new-fangled attitudes or with a finical conscience. What was good -enough for Sir Walter was good enough for her, and I make no doubt that -her shrewd unfiltered easy flow, fed after all by an immensity of -reading as well as of observation and humour, would have been good -enough for Sir Walter. If this had been the case with her abounding -history, biography and criticism, it would have been still more the case -with her uncontrolled flood of fiction. She was really a great -_improvisatrice_, a night-working spinner of long, loose, vivid yarns, -numberless, pauseless, admirable, repeatedly, for their full, pleasant, -reckless rustle over depths and difficulties—admirable indeed, in any -case of Scotch elements, for many a close engagement with these. She -showed in no literary relation more acuteness than in the relation—so -profitable a one as it has always been—to the inexhaustible little -country which has given so much, yet has ever so much more to give, and -all the romance and reality of which she had at the end of her pen. Her -Scotch folk have a wealth of life, and I think no Scotch talk in fiction -less of a strain to the patience of the profane. It may be less -austerely veracious than some—but these are esoteric matters. - -Reading since her death “Kirsteen”—one of the hundred, but published in -her latest period and much admired by some judges—I was, though -beguiled, not too much beguiled to be struck afresh with that elusive -fact on which I just touched, the mixture in the whole thing. Such a -product as “Kirsteen” has life—is full of life, but the critic is -infinitely baffled. It may of course be said to him that he has nothing -to do with compositions of this order—with such wares altogether as -Mrs. Oliphant dealt in. But he can accept that retort only with a -renunciation of some of his liveliest anxieties. Let him take some early -day for getting behind, as it were, the complexion of a talent that -could care to handle a thing to the tune of so many pages and yet not -care more to “do” it. There is a fascination in the mere spectacle of so -serene an instinct for the middle way, so visible a conviction that to -reflect is to be lost. - -Mrs. Oliphant was never lost, but she too often saved herself at the -expense of her subject. I have no space to insist, but so much of the -essence of the situation in “Kirsteen” strikes me as missed, dropped out -without a thought, that the wonder is all the greater of the fact that -in spite of it the book does in a manner scramble over its course and -throw up a fresh strong air. This was certainly the most that the author -would have pretended, and from her scorn of precautions springs a gleam -of impertinence quite in place in her sharp and handsome physiognomy, -that of a person whose eggs are not all in one basket, nor all her -imagination in service at once. There is scant enough question of “art” -in the matter, but there is a friendly way for us to feel about so much -cleverness, courage and humanity. We meet the case in wishing that the -timid talents were a little more like her and the bold ones a little -less. - - THE END - - - - - TRANSCRIBER NOTES - - -Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed. -Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained. - - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes on Novelists, by Henry James - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON NOVELISTS *** - -***** This file should be named 60040-0.txt or 60040-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/0/4/60040/ - -Produced by David T. 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