A History of the French Novel. Volume 2. To the Close of the 19th Century

That the danger of the historical variety was entirely avoided by these its French practitioners cannot indeed be said. Even Scott had not wholly got the better of it in his less perfect pieces, such, for instance, as those already glanced-at parts of

The Monastery

, where historical

récit

 now and then supplies the place of vigorous novel-action and talk. Dumas' co-operative habits (which are as little to be denied as they are to be exaggerated) lent themselves to it much more freely. But, notwithstanding this, the total accession of pleasure to the novel-reader was immense, and the further possibility of such accession practically unlimited. And accordingly the kind, though sometimes belittled by foolish criticism, and sometimes going out of favour by the vicissitudes of mere fashion, has constantly renewed itself, and is likely to do so. Its special advantages and its special warnings are of some interest to discuss briefly. Among the first may be ranked something which the foolish belittlers above mentioned entirely fail to appreciate, and indeed positively dislike. The danger of the novel of ordinary and contemporary life (which accompanied this and which is to be considered shortly as such) is that there may be so much

mere

 ordinariness and contemporariness that the result may be distasteful, if not sickening, to future ages. This has (to take one example out of many) happened with the novels of so clever a person as Theodore Hook in England, even with comparatively elect judges; with the vulgar it is said to have happened even with such consummate things as those of Miss Austen. With a large number of another sort of vulgar it is said to happen with "Victorian" novels generally, while even the elect sometimes find it difficult to prevent its happening with Edwardian and Fifth Georgian. Now the historical novelist has before him the entire range of the most interesting fashions, manners, incidents, characters, literary styles of recorded time. He has but to select from this inexhaustible store of general material, and to charge it with sufficient power of humanity of all time, and the thing is done.

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  "Suppose you go and do it?" as Thackeray says of another matter, no doubt. But I am Crites, not Poietes.

 Under no circumstances can the best historical novels ever lose their attraction with the best readers; and as for the others in each kind, who cares what happens to

them

?

There are, moreover, some interesting general rules about the historical novel which are well worth a moment's notice, even if this partake to some extent of the nature of repetition. The chief of them, which at least ought to be well known, is that it is never safe to make a prominent historical character, and seldom safe to make a prominent historical event, the central subject of your story. The reason is of course obvious. The generally known facts cramp and hamper the writer; he is constantly knocking against them, and finding them in the way of the natural development of his tale. No doubt there is, and has been, a good deal of otiose and even rather silly criticism of details in historical novels which do not satisfy the strict historian. The fuss which some people used to make about Scott's anachronisms in

Ivanhoe

 and

Kenilworth

; the shakings of heads which ought to know better, over Thackeray's dealings with the Old Chevalier and his scandals about Miss Oglethorpe in

Esmond

, can be laughed or wondered at merely. But then these are matters of no importance to the main story. It is Ivanhoe and Rebecca, Henry Esmond and Beatrix,

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  Pedantius may urge, "But 'James III.' is made to affect the fortunes of Esmond and Beatrix very powerfully." True; but he himself is by no means a

very

 "prominent historical character," and the exact circumstances of the agony of Queen Anne, and the

coup d'état

 of Shrewsbury and Argyle, have still enough of the unexplained in or about them to permit somewhat free dealing.

 all of them persons absolutely unknown to history, in whom we are really interested; and in the other case mentioned, Amy Robsart is such a creature or "daughter," if not "of dreams" "of debate," that you may do almost what you like with her; and the book does not sin by presentation of a Leicester so very different from the historical.

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  If any one says "

Leicester's Commonwealth?

" I say "

The Faërie Queene?

"

 But, on the other hand, the introduction of historical persons, skilfully used, seasons, enforces, and vivifies the interest of a book mightily; and the action of great historical scenes supports that of the general plot in a still more remarkable manner. On the whole, we may perhaps say that Dumas depends more on the latter, Scott on the former, and that the difference is perhaps connected with their respective bulk and position as dramatists. Dumas has made of no historical magnate anything like what Scott has made of Richard and of Mary and of Elizabeth; but Scott has not laid actual historical scenes under contribution to anything like the same extent as that by which Dumas has in a fashion achieved a running panorama-companion to the history of France from the fourteenth century to the Revolution and, more intensively, from the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew to the establishment of Louis XIV.'s autocracy.

In fact, the advantages, both to the novelist and to his readers, of the historical kind can hardly be exaggerated. The great danger of invented prose narrative – of

all

 invented narrative, indeed, prose or verse – has always been, and has always from the first shown itself as being, that of running into moulds. In the old epics (the Classical, not the

Chansons

) this danger was accentuated by the rise of rule-criticism; but the facts had induced, if they did not justify, that rule-system itself. The monotony of the mediaeval romance, whether

Chanson

 or

Roman

, has been declared more than once in this book to be exaggerated, but it certainly exists. The "heroic" succumbs to a similar fate rather fatally, though the heroic element itself comes slightly to the rescue; and even the picaresque by no means escapes. To descend, or rather to look, into the gutter for a moment, the sameness of the deliberately obscene novel is a byword to those who, in pursuit of knowledge, have incurred the necessity of "washing themselves in water and being unclean until the evening"; and we saw that even such a light and lively talent as Crébillon's, keeping above the very lowest gutter-depths, could not escape the same danger wholly. In the upper air the fairy-tale flies too often in prescribed gyres; and the most modern kinds of all – the novel of analysis, the problem-novel, and all the rest of them – strive in vain to avoid the curse of – as Rabelais put something not dissimilar long ago – "fatras

à la douzaine

." "All the stories are told," saith the New, even as the Old, Preacher; all but the highest genius is apt to show ruts, brain-marks, common orientations of route and specifications of design. Only the novel of creative – not merely synthetised – character in the most expert hands escapes – for human character undoubtedly partakes of the Infinite; but few are they who can command the days and ways of creation.

Yet though history has its unaltering laws; though human nature in general is always the same; though that which hath been shall be, and the dreams of new worlds and new societies are the most fatuous of vain imaginations – the details of historical incident vary as much as those of individual character or feature, and the whole of recorded time offers them, more than half ready for use, in something like the same condition as those patterns of work which ladies buy, fill up, and regard as their own. To make an historical novel of the very highest class, such as the best of Scott and Thackeray, requires of course very much more than this – to make one of all but the highest class, such as

Les Trois Mousquetaires

, requires much more. But that "tolerable pastime," which it is the business of the average novelist to supply at the demand of the average reader, can perhaps be attained more easily, more abundantly, and with better prospect of average satisfaction in the historical way than in any other.

Other kinds and classes.

The Novel of Romanticism generally.

It would, however, of course be an intolerable absurdity to rest the claims of the French novel of 1825 to 1850 wholly – it would be somewhat absurd to rest them mainly – on its performances in this single kind. It found out, continued, or improved many others; and perhaps most of its greatest achievements were in these others. In fact "others" is an incorrect or at least an inexact term; for the historic novel itself is only a subdivision or offshoot of the great literary revolution which we call Romanticism. Indeed the entire novel of the nineteenth century, misapprehend the fact as people may, is in fact Romantic, from the first novel of Chateaubriand to the last of Zola, though the Romanticism is chequered and to a certain extent warped by that invincible French determination towards "Rule" which has vindicated itself so often, and on which shortly we may have to make something almost like an excursus. But this very fact, if nothing else, would make a discussion of the Romantic novel as such out of place

here

; it will have to come, to some extent at any rate, in the Conclusion itself. Only for the present need it be said, without quite the same danger of meeting with scornful or indignant protest, that all the books hitherto discussed from

René

 to

Dominique

, from

Le Solitaire

 to

Monte Cristo

– even the work of Mérimée and Sainte-Beuve, those celebrated "apostates" as some would have them to be – is really Romantic. It may follow the more poetical romanticism of Nodier and Hugo, of Gautier and Gérard; the historical romanticism of Vigny and Mérimée; the individualism and analysis of Beyle and his disciples; the supernaturalism of George Sand and Nodier again; the adventurous incident of Sue and Soulié and Dumas and the Dumasians generally; it may content itself with that modified form of the great Revolt which admits "low" or "middle" subjects and discards the classical theories that a hero ought to be dignified. But always there is something of the general Romantic colour about – something over which M. Nisard has shaken or would have shaken his respectable

perruque

.

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  I intend nothing offensive in thus mentioning his attitude. In my

History of Criticism

 I have aimed at justice both to his short stage of going with, or at least not definitely against, the Romantic vein, and his much longer one of reaction. He was always vigorous in argument and dignified in manner; but his nature, when he found it, was essentially neo-classic.

So turn we to the other larger group – the largest group of all that come under our survey – the New Ordinary Novel, that which concerns itself with the last shade of his colour just described.

The "ordinary."

We had seen, before the beginning of this volume, how Pigault-Lebrun, in vulgar ways and with restricted talent, had nevertheless made distinct advances in this direction; and we saw in the beginning of this how Paul de Kock – with something of the same limitations but with the advantage of a predecessor in Pigault and of further changes in society towards the normal – improved upon the earlier progression. But Pigault and Paul were thrown into the shade by those writers, younger contemporaries of both, who brought to their task greater genius, better taste, and if not knowledge of better society, at any rate better knowledge how to use their knowledge. Whether Balzac's books can be ticketed

sans phrase

, as "novels of

ordinary

 life," has been, or should have been, duly discussed already. It is certain that, as a rule, they intend to be so. So it is with at least the majority of George Sand's; so with all those of her first lover and half name-father Sandeau; so with Charles de Bernard; so with some at least of Mérimée's best short stories and Musset's, if not exactly of Gautier's; so with others who have had places, and a good many more for whom no place could be found. France, indeed, may be said to have caught up and passed England in this kind, between the time when Miss Austen died and that when Thackeray at last did justice to himself with

Vanity Fair

. And this novel of ordinary life has continued, and shows no signs of ceasing, to be the kind most in demand, according to the usual law of "Like to Like." We shall see further developments of it and shall have to exercise careful critical discretion in deciding whether the apparent improvement only means nearer approximation to our own standard of ordinariness, or to a more abstract one. But that it was in these twenty or five and twenty years that something like a norm of ordinariness was first reached, hardly admits of any question. Still, very much question may arise, and must be faced, on the point whether this novel of ordinary life has not redeveloped a

non

-ordinary subdivision, or many such, in the "problem" novel, the novel of analysis, of abnormal individualism, of theory, naturalist and other, etc. To this we must turn; for at least part of this new question is a very important one, though it may require something of a digression to deal with it properly.

Discussion on a point of general novel criticism.

I have in these volumes, rather sedulously – some readers no doubt may think too sedulously – avoided "fighting prizes" on general points of the criticism or novel-theory. Not that I have the slightest objection to fighting "for my own hand" or to seeing or reading about a good fight between others – very much the contrary. I never thought it the worst compliment paid to Englishmen – the Indian opinion of us, as reported by the late M. Darmesteter – that we cared for nothing but fighting, sport, and making love. But the question now to be discussed is so germane to our subject, both general and special; and the discussion of it once for all (with

renvois

 thereto elsewhere) will save so much space, trouble, and inconvenience, that it may as well be handled at full length.

There was hinted – in a review

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  In the

Times Literary Supplement

 for Thursday, Nov. 1, 1917.

 of the first volume of this work otherwise so complimentary that it must have satisfied the Archbishop of Granada himself – a doubt whether I had given sufficient weight to something which I shall let the reviewer express in his own words;

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  "It is vain to ask, as is the modern custom, whether the leap from the word 'copy' to the word 'recreate' (

v. sup.

 Vol. I. p. 471) does not cover a difference in kind… One feels that Prof. S. is rather sympathetic to that which traditional French criticism regards as essential … close psychological analysis of motive," etc. And so he even questions whether what I have given, much as he likes and praises it,

is

 "A History of The French Novel." But did I ever undertake to give this

from the French point of view

, or to write a

History of French Novel-Criticism

? Or need I do so?

 and whether my admission of Rabelais (of which admission, except on principle, he was himself very glad); my relegation of Laclos to the Condemned Corps; and my comparative toleration of Pigault-Lebrun, did not indicate heresy. Now I feel pretty certain that such a well-wisher would hardly suspect me of doing any of these things by inadvertence; and as I must have gone, and shall still go, much further from what is the right line in his (and no doubt others') opinion, I may as well state my point of view here. It should supply a sort of justificatory comment not merely on the chapters and passages just referred to, and others in the last volume, but on a much larger number in this – in fact, after a fashion, to the whole of this. Any difference of it from the normal French view will even help to explain my attitude in those parts of this book (

e. g.

 the remarks on Dumas

père

) to which it does not directly apply, as well as those (

e. g.

 on Dumas

fils

) to which it does.

The whole question seems to me to turn on the curiously different estimates which different people make of what constitutes "humanity." To cite another dictum of my friend the enemy, he, while, as I have said, speaking with extraordinary kindness of my chapter on Rabelais in itself, disallows it in a

History of the Novel

 because, among other reasons, Panurge is not, or is very slightly, human. I should have said that Panurge was as human as Hamlet, though certainly not so

gentle

human.

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  It might, however, be a not uninteresting matter of debate whether Panurge's conduct to the Lady of Paris was

really

 so very much worse than part of Hamlet's to Ophelia.

 I never met either; but I might do so, and I am sure I should recognise both as men and brothers. Still, the comparison here is of course somewhat rhetorical. Let us take Panurge with Laclos' Valmont, whom, I think, my critic

does

 consider human; whom I am sure I never have met and never shall meet, even if I should be so unfortunate as to go to the place which (but, of course, for the consolations of the Church) would have been his,

if

 he had been human; and whom I never could in the most impossible event or

milieu

 recognise as anything but a synthetised specification. One may perhaps dwell on this, for it is of immense importance to the general question. Panurge and Valmont, comparatively considered, have beyond doubt points in common. Both are extremely immoral, and both are – though the one only sometimes, the other always – ill-natured. Neither is a fool, though the one does, or is going to do, at least one very foolish thing with his eyes open; while nothing that the other does – even his provocation of Madame de Merteuil – can be said to be exactly "foolish." Both are attempts to do what Thackeray said he attempted to do in most of the characters of

Vanity Fair

– to draw people "living without God in the world." Yet I can tolerate Panurge, and recognise him as human even when he indirectly murders Dindenault, even when (which is worse) he behaves so atrociously to the Lady of Paris; and I cannot tolerate or validate Valmont even when he excogitates and puts in practice that very ingenious and picturesque idea of a writing-desk, or when he seeks the consolations and fortifications of the Church after Danceny has done on him the first part of the judgment of God. And I think I can give reasons, both for my intolerance and for my toleration, "rightly and in mine own division."

The reason why I think that Panurge is rightly and Valmont wrongly "copied or re-created" is that Panurge is made at the hazard of the artist, Valmont according to prescription. There might be – there have been – fifty or a hundred Valmonts, the prescription being followed, and slightly – still remaining a prescription – altered. There is and can be only one Panurge. This difference reminds me of, and may be illustrated by, a fact which, in one form or another, must be familiar to many people. I was once talking to a lady who had just come over from China, and who wore a dress of soft figured silk of the most perfect love-in-a-mist colour-shade which I had ever seen, even in turning over the wonder-drawers at Liberty's. I asked her if (for she then intended to go back almost at once) she could get me any like it. "No," she said, "at least not exactly. They never make two pieces of just the same shade, and in fact they couldn't if they tried. They take handfuls of different dyes, measured and mixed, as it seems, at random." Now that is the way God and, in a lesser degree, the great artists work, and the result is living creatures, according to the limitations of artistic and the no-limitations of natural life. The others weigh out a dram of lust, a scruple of cleverness, an ounce of malice, half an ounce of superficial good manners, etc., and say, "Here is a character for you. Type No. 12345." And it is not a living creature at all. But, having been made by regular synthesis,

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  By one of those odd coincidences which diversify and relieve literary work, I read, for the first time in my life, and a few hours

after

 writing the above words, these in Dumas

fils'

Thérèse

: "Il procède par synthése." They do not there apply to authorship, but to the motives and conduct of one of the writer's questionable quasi-heroes. But the whole context, and the usual methods of Dumas

fils

 himself, are saturated with synthesis

by rule

. (Of course the other process is, as also according to the strict meaning of the word, "synthetic," but

not

 "by rule.")

 it can be regularly analysed, and people say, "Oh, how clever he is." The first product, having grown rather than been made, defies analysis, and they say, "How commonplace!"

One can perhaps lay out the ropes of the ring of combat most satisfactorily and fairly by using the distinction of the reviewer (if I do not misunderstand him), that I have neglected the interval between "to copy" and "to re-create." I accept this dependence, which may perhaps be illustrated further from that (in itself) foolish and vulgar boast of Edmond de Goncourt's that his and his brother's epithets were "personal" while Flaubert's were only "admirably good specimens of the epithets of

tout le monde

."

To translate: Should the novelist aim, by

mimesis

– it is a misfortune which I have lamented over and over again in print that "Imitation" and "Copying" are such misleading versions of this – of actual characters, to evolve a personality which will be recognised by all competent observers as somebody whom he has actually met or might have met? Or should he, trusting to his own personal powers of putting together qualities and traits, but more or less neglecting the patterns which the Almighty has put before him in

tout le monde

– sometimes also regarding conventional types and "academies" – either (for this is important) to follow or violently

not

 to follow them – produce something that owes

its

 personality to himself only? The former has been the aim of the great English novelists since Fielding, if not since Richardson

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  I own I see a little less of it and a little more of the other in him; whence a certain lukewarmness with which I have sometimes been reproached.

 or even Defoe. It was the aim of Lesage: he has told us so in so many words. It is by no means alien from that of Marivaux, though he did not pursue it with a single eye; and the same may be said even of Crébillon. Whether Prévost aimed at it or not, he hit the white in

Manon

 as certainly and unmistakably as he lost his arrows elsewhere. Rousseau both did it and meant it in the first part of

Julie

. Pigault, in a clumsy, botcherly fashion, made "outers" not infrequently. But Laclos seems to me to have (as his in some sense follower Dumas

fils

 has it in the passage noted above) "proceeded by synthesis" – to have said, "Let us make a mischievous Marquise and a vile Viscount. Let us deprive them of every amiable quality and of every one that can be called in any sense 'good,' except a certain kind of intellectual ability, and, in the Viscount's case, an ingenious fancy in the matter of extemporising writing-desks." And he did it; and then the people who think that because (to adopt the language of George de Barnwell) "the True is not always the Beautiful" the Ugly must always be the True, hail him as a master.

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  My very amiable reviewer thinks that eighteenth-century French society

did

 behave

à la Laclos

. I don't, though I think it did

à la Crébillon

.

That this half-digression, half-dilemma, is prospective as well as retrospective will hardly form a subject of objection for any one but a mere fault-finder. From the top of a watershed you necessarily survey both slopes. The tendency which we have been discussing is certainly more prevalent in the second half of the century than in the first half. It is prominent in Dumas

fils

, with whom we shall be dealing shortly; it increases as time goes on; and it becomes almost paramount in the practice of and the discussions about the Naturalist School. In the time on which we look back it is certainly important in Beyle and Balzac. But I cannot admit that it is predominant elsewhere, and I am prepared to deny utterly that, until the time of the Sensibility and

Philosophe

 novels, it is even a notable characteristic of French fiction. Many hard things have been said of criticism; but, acknowledging the badness of a bird who even admits any foulness in his own nest – far more in one who causes it – I am bound to say that I think the state of the department of literature now under discussion was happier before we meddled with it. Offence must come; it would even be sometimes rather a pity if it didn't