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diff --git a/old/60040-h/60040-h.htm b/old/60040-h/60040-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index a493379..0000000 --- a/old/60040-h/60040-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16081 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <title>Notes on Novelists With Some Other Notes</title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg"/> - <meta name="cover" content="images/cover.jpg" /> - <meta name="DC.Creator" content="James, Henry"/> - <meta name="DC.Title" content="Notes on Novelists With Some Other Notes"/> - <meta name="DC.Language" content="en"/> - <meta name="DC.Created" content="1914"/> - <meta name="DC.date.issued" content="1914"/> - <meta name="DC.Subject" content="Literature"/> - <meta name="Tags" content="Literature"/> - <meta name="DC.Publisher" content="Distributed Proofreaders Canada"/> - <meta name="generator" content="fpgen 4.03"/> - <style type="text/css"> - body { margin-left:8%;margin-right:10%; } - .pagenum { right: 1%; font-size: x-small; background-color: inherit; color: silver; - text-indent: 0em; text-align: right; position: absolute; - border: 1px solid silver; padding: 1px 3px; font-style: normal; - font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; } - .it { font-style:italic; } - .bold { font-weight:bold; } - .sc { font-variant:small-caps; } - p { text-indent:0; margin-top:0.5em; margin-bottom:0.5em; - text-align: justify; } - div.lgc { } - div.lgl { } - div.lgc p { text-align:center; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - div.lgl p { text-indent: -17px; margin-left:17px; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - div.lgp { } - div.lgp p { text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - .poetry-container { display:inline-block; text-align:left; margin-left:2em; } - h1 { text-align:center; font-weight:normal; - font-size:1.2em; margin:2em auto 1em auto} - h2 { text-align:center; font-weight:normal; - font-size:1.1em; margin:1em auto 0.5em auto} - hr.tbk100{ border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; width:10%; margin-top:0.5em; margin-bottom:0.5em; text-align:center; margin-left:45%; margin-right:45% } - hr.pbk { border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; width:100%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:2em } - hr.footnotemark { border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver; width:10%; margin:1em auto 1em 0; } - .figcenter { text-align:center; margin:1em auto;} - div.blockquote { margin:1em 2em; text-align:justify; } - h1.nobreak { page-break-before: avoid; } - p.line { text-indent:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; } - div.lgp p.line0 { text-indent:-3em; margin:0 auto 0 3em; } - table.center { margin:0.5em auto; border-collapse: collapse; padding:3px; } - </style> - <style type="text/css"> - h1 { font-size:1.8em } - p.toc { font-variant:small-caps } - p { text-indent:1.5em; margin-top:0em; margin-bottom:0em } - div.blockquote.p { text-indent:1.5em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:2em } - </style> - </head> - <body> - - -<pre> - -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 - - - - - - -</pre> - - - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='figcenter'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' id='iid-0000' style='width:250px;height:377px;'/> -</div> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>NOTES ON NOVELISTS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'>WITH SOME OTHER NOTES</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';sc;' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>By HENRY JAMES</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>A SMALL BOY AND OTHERS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>NOTES OF A SON AND BROTHER</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>NOTES ON NOVELISTS</p> -<p class='line' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>WITH SOME OTHER NOTES</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';bold;' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:x-large;font-weight:bold;'>NOTES ON NOVELISTS</p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:large;font-weight:bold;'>WITH SOME OTHER NOTES</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>BY</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:large;font-weight:bold;'>HENRY JAMES</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>NEW YORK</p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</p> -<p class='line' style='font-weight:bold;'>1914</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'><span class='sc'>Copyright, 1914, by</span></p> -<p class='line'>CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</p> -<hr class='tbk100'/> -<p class='line'>Published October, 1914</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;font-size:x-large;'>CONTENTS</p> - -<table summary="" class='center'> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'></td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'> <span style='font-size:smaller'>PAGE</span></td></tr> -<tr><td colspan='0'> </td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Robert Louis Stevenson</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Émile Zola</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Gustave Flaubert</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Honoré de Balzac, 1902</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Honoré de Balzac, 1913</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>George Sand, 1897</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_160'>160</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>George Sand, 1899</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_187'>187</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>George Sand, 1914</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_214'>214</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Gabriele D’Annunzio, 1902</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_245'>245</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Matilde Serao</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>The New Novel, 1914</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_314'>314</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>Dumas the Younger, 1895</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_362'>362</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>The Novel in “The Ring and the Book,” 1912</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_385'>385</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>An American Art-Scholar: Charles Eliot Norton, 1908</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_412'>412</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>London Notes, January 1897</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_424'>424</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>London Notes, June 1897</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_428'>428</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>London Notes, July 1897</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_436'>436</a></td></tr> -<tr><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:left; vertical-align:top'><span class='sc'>London Notes, August 1897</span> </td><td style='padding: 2px 5px; text-align:right; vertical-align:top'><a href='#Page_446'>446</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';xlg;' --> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:x-large;'>NOTES ON NOVELISTS</p> -<p class='line'> </p> -<p class='line' style='font-size:x-large;'>WITH SOME OTHER NOTES</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:1.5em;font-size:2em;font-weight:bold;'>NOTES ON NOVELISTS</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_1' id='Page_1'>1</a></span><h1 class='nobreak' id='t166'>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>them</span>, -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 <span class='it'>ego</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>ego</span> 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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>To this absorbing extension of the story then the -two volumes of Letters<a id='r1'/><a href='#f1' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[1]</span></sup></a> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>was</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>saw</span>, -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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>would</span> 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 <span class='it'>us</span> in our -inevitable category the sweep practically was clean.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>alter ego</span> 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.</p> - -<p>He is never more delightful than when he is most -egotistic, most consciously charmed with something he -has done.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>And the papers are some of them up to dick, and no mistake. I -agree with you, the lights seem a little turned down.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>aiblins twa</span>, 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!</p> - -</div> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>obiter dicta</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>as</span> 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 <span class='it'>felt</span> 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 <span class='it'>the</span> 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.</p> - -<p>These, however, are comparatively small questions; -<span class='it'>the</span> 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 <span class='it'>that</span> 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>are</span> 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 <span class='it'>ficelles</span> of -the business; it is simian; but that is how the wild youth of man is -captured.</p> - -</div> - -<p>The whole letter is enchanting.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>à pieds joints</span>, 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 <span class='it'>literary</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>has</span> 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</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>nil</span>. 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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_1'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f1'><a href='#r1'>[1]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>“The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson to his Family and Friends. -Selected and Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by Sidney Colvin,” -1899.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_26' id='Page_26'>26</a></span><h1 id='t1031'>ÉMILE ZOLA</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>reason</span> 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 <span class='it'>should</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>case</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>him</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>them</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>enquête</span>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>numbers</span>, -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.</p> - -<p>The sense for crowds and processions, for the gross -and the general, was largely the <span class='it'>result</span> 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 <span class='it'>has</span> 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 <span class='it'>obliged</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>He was in prompt possession thus of the range of -sympathy that he <span class='it'>could</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>mœurs</span> of the people, for which -I am making a collection of all the ‘bad words,’ the -<span class='it'>gros mots</span>, 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 <span class='it'>on</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>that</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>pays</span>—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 <span class='it'>dans la force de -l’âge</span>, 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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>he</span> to find it easy through a visit of a month or two -with “introductions” and a Bædeker?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>renseignements</span>, -published or private, even when most mixed -with personal impressions snatched, with <span class='it'>enquêtes sur -les lieux</span>, 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 <span class='it'>were</span> -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 <span class='it'>value</span>; 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>sense</span> 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?”</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>âmes damnées</span> 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 <span class='it'>epos</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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,” -<span class='it'>physiologically</span> 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 <span class='it'>have</span> 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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>us</span>. -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>us</span>) 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>done</span>?—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 <span class='it'>represented</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>near</span>? 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.</p> - -<p>Grant—and the generalisation may be emphatic—that -the shallow and the simple are <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>cheap</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>idea</span>, 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 <span class='it'>cadres</span> established, I write the book. And I can -hardly say which part of the job is stiffest.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>imitation</span> -of observation that we possess. Balzac appealed -to “science” and proceeded by her aid; Balzac had -<span class='it'>cadres</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>procédé</span>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>guinguette</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_65' id='Page_65'>65</a></span><h1 id='t2356'>GUSTAVE FLAUBERT</h1></div> - -<p>The first thing I find to-day and on my very threshold<a id='r2'/><a href='#f2' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[2]</span></sup></a> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>love</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>the</span> 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 <span class='it'>confrère</span>. -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>immediately</span> 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 <span class='it'>banal</span>, -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 <span class='it'>cénacle</span>, 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 <span class='it'>cénacle</span> 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 -<span class='it'>kind</span>. 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 <span class='it'>gueuler</span>, 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 <span class='it'>dans l’intimité</span>, to “bellow” it to its -fullest effect.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>told</span> of anecdotes.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>should</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>itself</span> 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 <span class='it'>be</span> interesting—all -round; that is to be genuine and whole. The -work is a classic because the thing, such as it is, is -ideally <span class='it'>done</span>, 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 <span class='it'>her</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> they are. It may be, -I concede, because Emma is the only woman in the -book that she is taken by M. Faguet as <span class='it'>femininely</span> -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 <span class='it'>that</span>? 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.</p> - -<p>We meet Frédéric first, we remain with him long, as -a <span class='it'>moyen</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>was</span> 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 -<span class='it'>know</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>should</span> 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 <span class='it'>because</span> 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 -<span class='it'>intrinsic</span> 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 <span class='it'>that</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>made</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>existing</span> 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<a id='r3'/><a href='#f3' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[3]</span></sup></a> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>whole</span> 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? -<span class='it'>L’âme française</span> at all events shows in him but ill.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>nouvelles</span>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>makes</span> the reality, and -only in the degree in which it <span class='it'>is</span>, 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 <span class='it'>as</span> 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 -<span class='it'>totally</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>his</span> 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 <span class='it'>seeing</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>can</span> render it—that is the first way. The more -he renders it the more he <span class='it'>can</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>fact</span> 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 <span class='it'>we</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>can</span> 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 <span class='it'>his</span> 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?</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_2'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f2'><a href='#r2'>[2]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>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.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_3'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f3'><a href='#r3'>[3]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>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!</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_109' id='Page_109'>109</a></span><h1 id='t3835'>HONORÉ DE BALZAC<br/>1902</h1></div> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t3838'>I</h2> - -<p>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<a id='r4'/><a href='#f4' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[4]</span></sup></a> 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 <span class='it'>plus</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>What he did above all was to read the universe, as -hard and as loud as he could, <span class='it'>into</span> 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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>a priori</span> 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 -<span class='it'>disjecta membra</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>data</span> 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.</p> - -<p>It is to that I <span class='it'>should</span> 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 <span class='it'>things</span>. 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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_4'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f4'><a href='#r4'>[4]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>The appearance of a translation of the “Deux Jeunes Mariées” in A -Century of French Romance.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t4257'>II</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> -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 <span class='it'>us</span> 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 <span class='it'>shall</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>rococo</span> -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 <span class='it'>la province</span>, -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 <span class='it'>la province</span> 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 <span class='it'>am</span>!”—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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t4499'>III</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>be</span> 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 <span class='it'>been</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>agréments</span> -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 <span class='it'>fils de -famille</span> 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 <span class='it'>œuvres de jeunesse</span>. 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 -<span class='it'>not</span> 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, <span class='it'>did</span> he live?” is the -question that haunts us—with the consequence for -the most part of promptly meeting its fairly tragic -answer. He did <span class='it'>not</span> 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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>did</span> 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 <span class='it'>them</span>—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 <span class='it'>was</span> 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. -<span class='it'>Naturally</span> 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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>had</span> 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t4811'>IV</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>entiers</span>, 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 -<span class='it'>data</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>de province</span>, -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. <span class='it'>Was</span> 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 <span class='it'>done</span>—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 <span class='it'>didn’t</span> 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 <span class='it'>know</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>jeunes mariées</span>—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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_143' id='Page_143'>143</a></span><h1 id='t4998'>HONORÉ DE BALZAC<br/>1913</h1></div> - -<p>It is a pleasure to meet M. Émile Faguet<a id='r5'/><a href='#f5' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[5]</span></sup></a> 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 <span class='it'>should</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>obiter dicta</span> -and monstrous <span class='it'>suffisances</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> the exploiting agent, the pushing inquirer, -the infallible appraiser, the subject of an <span class='it'>arrière-pensée</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>was</span> -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 -<span class='it'>naturally</span> 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 <span class='it'>cadres</span>, 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 <span class='it'>confrère</span> -had known; so far, indeed, as Balzac suffered <span class='it'>confrères</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>type</span> 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 <span class='it'>be</span> a figure but by showing for endlessly -entangled in them.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>should</span> 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 <span class='it'>at once</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>place</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>insolence</span> 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 <span class='it'>cultivated</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>has</span> 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 <span class='it'>that</span> 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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_5'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f5'><a href='#r5'>[5]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>Balzac. Par Émile Faguet, de l’Académie Française. Les Grands -Écrivains Français. Paris, Hachette, 1913.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_160' id='Page_160'>160</a></span><h1 id='t5574'>GEORGE SAND<br/>1897</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t5633'>I</h2> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>madras</span> 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 <span class='it'>laideurs</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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 <span class='it'>enquête</span> 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 <span class='it'>for</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>seen</span>, 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t5883'>II</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>sorties</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>never</span>. 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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>laideurs</span> -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 <span class='it'>foyer</span>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>le vertige du sublime et de l’impossible</span>. “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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>liaison</span> with -Mérimée, who <span class='it'>was</span> 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t6157'>III</h2> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>point d’appui</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>had</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_187' id='Page_187'>187</a></span><h1 id='t6472'>GEORGE SAND<br/>1899</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Mme. Wladimir Karénine’s extraordinarily diffuse, -but scarcely less valuable, biography, of which the -first instalment,<a id='r6'/><a href='#f6' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[6]</span></sup></a> 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 <span class='it'>our</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>this</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>any</span> 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.</p> - -<p>But how in the world indeed was the point so indicated -<span class='it'>not</span> 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 <span class='it'>dramatis -personæ</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>Wahrheit und Dichtung</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>conquistador</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> a -method, which <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>intimité</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>pavé de Paris</span>, 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 <span class='it'>for</span> the remainder she would be too encouraging. -She was one in a myriad, and the cluster of circumstances -is too unlikely to recur.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>made</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>would</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>aimable</span> -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 <span class='it'>is</span> -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 <span class='it'>style</span>. And -it’s true.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>tutoiement</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_6'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f6'><a href='#r6'>[6]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>“George Sand, sa Vie et ses Œuvres, 1804-1876.” Paris, 1899.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_214' id='Page_214'>214</a></span><h1 id='t7388'>GEORGE SAND<br/>1914</h1></div> - -<p>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,<a id='r7'/><a href='#f7' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[7]</span></sup></a> 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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_7'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f7'><a href='#r7'>[7]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>George Sand, sa Vie et ses Œuvres, vol. iii. (1838-1848). Par Wladimir -Karénine. Paris, Plon, 1912.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t7464'>I</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>sagesse</span> 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 <span class='it'>our</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>her</span> 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 <span class='it'>could</span> 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 <span class='it'>have</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>distinctive</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t7716'>II</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>actual</span> 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 <span class='it'>kind</span> 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 <span class='it'>can</span> be, -even at the worst, or still at the best, the best for -parental fondness, so awkward for him as for a mother.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>passive</span> -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 <span class='it'>all</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>could</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t8042'>III</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>encourage</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>genius loci</span> 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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:</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>magnificent</span>,” -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 <span class='it'>Leitmotive</span> -which might have been called in the terms of -Wagner the <span class='it'>Leitmotif</span> of soreness and the <span class='it'>Leitmotif</span> 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 <span class='it'>basso obligato</span> 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>la chasteté de nos -rapports</span>, he saw also that the poor sick soul took up, without -<span class='it'>wanting to</span> 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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>moyens</span> -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 <span class='it'>in extenso</span>, 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—<span class='it'>there</span> 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 <span class='it'>general</span> humanity—when a particularly -beautiful voice happens to serve it.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_245' id='Page_245'>245</a></span><h1 id='t8458'>GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO<br/>1902</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>it</span>. -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>brave l’honnêteté</span>—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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>would</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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. <span class='it'>Then it was that Andrea fully -knew the pain he was making another soul suffer.</span></p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>her</span> 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!”</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>Even the best things suffer by detachment from -their context; but so it is that we are in <span class='it'>possession</span> 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Little in fact as the relation of the erotically exasperated -<span class='it'>with</span> 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 <span class='it'>idea</span> 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 <span class='it'>volte-face</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>us</span>—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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>The effect, I may add, gains more than one kind of -intensity from that almost complete absence of <span class='it'>other</span> -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 <span class='it'>all</span> the items of a constituted -misery, not one of which is illogically blinked.</p> - -<p>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. <span class='it'>There</span> 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.</p> - -<p>“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 <span class='it'>impasse</span>. It is not her -fault when she tears and rends.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>is</span> -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!</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>presumed</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> the most developed -taste in the world—his and that of the ferocious -yet so contracted <span class='it'>conoscenti</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>our</span> -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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>“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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>casa paterna</span>, 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 <span class='it'>fixes</span>, 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 <span class='it'>casa paterna</span>, 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>corpo -non più giovane</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>is</span> represented. We must feel -it present.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>raffiné</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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.</p> - -</div> - -<p>And elsewhere:—</p> - -<div class='blockquote'> - -<p>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?</p> - -</div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>leak</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>were</span> 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, <span class='it'>but</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>shouldn’t</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>where</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>fear</span> -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 <span class='it'>other</span> terms, with any one -else.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>determined</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>her</span> -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 <span class='it'>cinque-cento</span>, 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 -<span class='it'>volontà</span>. 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 <span class='it'>act</span>, 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 <span class='it'>volontà</span> 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 <span class='it'>has</span> an application, -since without it he could have done no rare -vivid work.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>only</span> 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, <span class='it'>that</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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? <span class='it'>Need</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_294' id='Page_294'>294</a></span><h1 id='t10151'>MATILDE SERAO</h1></div> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>a priori</span> 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 <span class='it'>most</span> 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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>l’âme -Française</span> and <span class='it'>l’âme Russe</span>—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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Nothing is at any rate <span class='it'>a priori</span> 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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>not</span> 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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>case</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>feeler</span>, 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 <span class='it'>disinvoltura</span>, 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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>passione</span> 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 <span class='it'>passione</span> 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 <span class='it'>passione</span> -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; <span class='it'>passione</span> is in these pages already at the door -and soon arrives; <span class='it'>passione</span> rapidly enough passes its -sponge over everything not itself.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>passione</span> 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 <span class='it'>passione</span>—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”?</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>are</span> 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.</p> - -<p>“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 <span class='it'>be</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>has</span>, 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 -<span class='it'>passione</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>passione</span>. 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 <span class='it'>passione</span>. -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 <span class='it'>such</span> 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.</p> - -<p>This dismal <span class='it'>parti pris</span> 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, <span class='it'>is</span> a fine sense—of -<span class='it'>any</span> 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 <span class='it'>passione</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_314' id='Page_314'>314</a></span><h1 id='t10818'>THE NEW NOVEL<br/>1914</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>reflected</span> 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 <span class='it'>their</span> -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, <span class='it'>all</span> 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t10937'>I</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>saturation</span>. 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 -<span class='it'>generally</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>her</span>, 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 <span class='it'>not</span> 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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>not</span> 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 <span class='it'>might</span> -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, <span class='it'>was</span> -the interest, neither more nor less, <span class='it'>was</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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—<span class='it'>that</span> 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 <span class='it'>all</span>? 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 <span class='it'>that</span>?” -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 <span class='it'>key</span> 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t11306'>II</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>so</span> 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 <span class='it'>to</span> anything whatever, but just simply <span class='it'>of</span> 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 <span class='it'>while</span> 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 <span class='it'>like</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>are</span> 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 <span class='it'>he</span> 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 <span class='it'>any</span> 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 <span class='it'>not</span> 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 <span class='it'>about</span> 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.</p> - -<p>We have already noted that “Round the Corner,” -Mr. Gilbert Cannan’s liveliest appeal to our attention, -belongs to the order of <span class='it'>constatations</span> pure and simple; -to the degree that <span class='it'>as</span> 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 <span class='it'>train de vie</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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, <span class='it'>go on and on, in any given case, in spite of -everything</span>—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 <span class='it'>most</span> 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 <span class='it'>like</span> 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.</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t11674'>III</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>being</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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 <span class='it'>has</span> 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 <span class='it'>arrière-pensée</span> -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 <span class='it'>born</span> 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 <span class='it'>of</span> declines not to beset us—why, -otherwise again, we look ever for the supreme -reference that shall avert the bankruptcy of sense.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>have</span> 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. <span class='it'>That</span> 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 <span class='it'>not</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>about</span> 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 <span class='it'>quand même</span>—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 <span class='it'>our</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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” <span class='it'>is</span> 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, <span class='it'>has</span> been conjured away. The fusion -has taken place, or at any rate <span class='it'>a</span> 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 <span class='it'>faculty</span>, 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!</p> - -<h2 class='nobreak' id='t12092'>IV</h2> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>all</span> 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 <span class='it'>organised</span>—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.</p> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>her</span> 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 <span class='it'>kinds</span> 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 <span class='it'>whole</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>bravura</span> 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 <span class='it'>cénacle</span> 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.</p> - -<p>That he <span class='it'>is</span> 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 <span class='it'>of</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_362' id='Page_362'>362</a></span><h1 id='t12459'>DUMAS THE YOUNGER<br/>1895</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>bonne</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>naïveté</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>banlieue</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>parler femmes</span>. From every play of our -author’s we receive the impression that to <span class='it'>parler femmes</span> -is its essential and innermost purpose. It is not assuredly -singular that a novelist, a dramatist <span class='it'>should</span> -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.</p> - -<p>“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 <span class='it'>was</span> 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 <span class='it'>he</span> is concerned -with. If the picture of life doesn’t cover the -ground what in the world <span class='it'>can</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>calme -infernal</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>what</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_385' id='Page_385'>385</a></span><h1>THE NOVEL IN “THE RING AND THE BOOK”<a id='r8'/><a href='#f8' style='text-decoration:none'><sup><span style='font-size:0.9em'>[8]</span></sup></a><br/>1912</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>prose</span> treatment. So here -you have me talking at once of prose and seeking -that connection to help out my case.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>Browning worked in this connection literally <span class='it'>upon</span> -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 -<span class='it'>you</span>!”—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 <span class='it'>stated</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>coup</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>decaduto</span> -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.</p> - -<p>That is the bundle of facts, accompanied with the -bundle of proceedings, legal, ecclesiastical, diplomatic -and other, <span class='it'>on</span> 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 <span class='it'>him</span> over, though not availing ourselves, -to this end, of a grain he himself doesn’t somehow -give us; and there we are.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>donnée</span> 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, <span class='it'>most</span> 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, -<span class='it'>of</span> 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 <span class='it'>it</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>can</span> 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 <span class='it'>their</span> 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 <span class='it'>acquires</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>him</span> 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 <span class='it'>be</span> 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, -<span class='it'>is</span> 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 -<span class='it'>upon</span> 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 <span class='it'>our</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>her</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>my</span> 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 <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>banalité</span>; 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.</p> - -<div class='poetry-container' style=''><div class='lgp'> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line0'>“None of your abnegation of revenge!</p> -<p class='line0'>Fly at me frank, tug where I tear again!</p> -<p class='line0'>Away with the empty stare! Be holy still,</p> -<p class='line0'>And stupid ever! Occupy your patch</p> -<p class='line0'>Of private snow that’s somewhere in what world</p> -<p class='line0'>May now be growing icy round your head,</p> -<p class='line0'>And aguish at your foot-print—freeze not me!”</p> -</div></div> <!-- end poetry block --><!-- end rend --> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>no</span> 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 <span class='it'>him</span>; 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 -<span class='it'>take</span> 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 <span class='it'>his</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>dénouement</span> 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 <span class='it'>man</span>, 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 <span class='it'>done</span> 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 <span class='it'>pendant</span>; 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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>not</span> 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 <span class='it'>he</span> contains the -whole—unless indeed after all the Pope does, the -Pope whom I was leaving out as too transcendent for -<span class='it'>our</span> 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. <span class='it'>There</span> 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.</p> - -<hr class='footnotemark'/> - -<table style='margin:0 4em 0 0;' summary='footnote_8'> -<colgroup> -<col span='1' style='width: 3em;'/> -<col span='1'/> -</colgroup> -<tr><td style='vertical-align:top;'> -<div id='f8'><a href='#r8'>[8]</a></div> -</td><td> - -<p>Address delivered before the Academic Committee of the Royal Society -of Literature in Commemoration of the Centenary of Robert Browning, -May 7, 1912.</p> - -</td></tr> -</table> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_412' id='Page_412'>412</a></span><h1 id='t14148'>AN AMERICAN ART-SCHOLAR: CHARLES ELIOT NORTON<br/>1908</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>civilisation</span>—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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>crânerie</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.”</p> - -<p>With which, if I reflect on this, I see how interesting -a <span class='it'>case</span> 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 <span class='it'>can</span> be more interesting -to a haunter of other intellectual climes and a -worshipper at the esthetic shrine <span class='it'>quand même</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_424' id='Page_424'>424</a></span><h1 id='t14533'>LONDON NOTES<br/><span class='it'>January</span> 1897</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>does</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>signs</span>. 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>chassez-croisez</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_428' id='Page_428'>428</a></span><h1 id='t14663'>LONDON NOTES<br/><span class='it'>June</span> 1897</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>l’envers de l’histoire contemporaine</span> -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 <span class='it'>to</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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, <span class='it'>then</span> 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 <span class='it'>as</span> 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 <span class='it'>will</span> -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 <span class='it'>our</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>should</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_436' id='Page_436'>436</a></span><h1 id='t14920'>LONDON NOTES<br/><span class='it'>July</span> 1897</h1></div> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>why</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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—<span class='it'>the</span> authority -in fact—on a region vast and unexplored.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>are</span> 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.”</p> - -<p>So he <span class='it'>is</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>“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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 -<span class='it'>should</span> 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 <span class='it'>are</span> -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.”</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>be</span> 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 -<span class='it'>use</span> 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.</p> - -<div><span class='pagenum'><a name='Page_446' id='Page_446'>446</a></span><h1 id='t15248'>LONDON NOTES<br/><span class='it'>August</span> 1897</h1></div> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>badauds</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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?</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>want</span> 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>porte-voix</span> -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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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 <span class='it'>improvisatrice</span>, 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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p>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.</p> - -<p class='line' style='text-align:center;margin-top:3em;'>THE END</p> - -<hr class='pbk'/> - -<h1 id='t15589'>TRANSCRIBER NOTES</h1> - -<div class='lgl' style=''> <!-- rend=';' --> -<p class='line'>Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been fixed.</p> -<p class='line'>Inconsistency in hyphenation has been retained.</p> -</div> <!-- end rend --> - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -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-h.htm or 60040-h.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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