INTIMATE REMEMBRANCES
OF
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
I.
T]These pages are not a biography of Gustave Flaubert,they are simply recollections; my own and those I have collected.
My uncle's life was passed entirely in the intimacy of the family,between his mother and me; to relate the story of this life is to makehim better known, more loved and esteemed; in this way I believe that Iam fulfilling a pious duty towards his memory.
Before Gustave Flaubert's birth, my grandparents had had three children.The eldest, Achilles, was nine years older than Gustave, and the twoother little ones were dead. Then came Gustave and another boy who diedin a few months; and finally my mother, Caroline, the last child.
She and her younger brother loved each other with a peculiar tenderness.With but three years difference in their ages, the two little ones werescarcely ever separated from each other. Gustave repeated everything helearned to his sister; she was his pupil, and one of his greatestpleasures was initiating her into literary composition. Later, when hewas in Paris, it was to her he wrote; through her was the daily newstransmitted to their parents, because that sweet communion had not beenlost.
I should say that the greater part of the facts relative to my uncle'sinfancy have been told me by the old nurse who brought him up and whodied three years after him, in 1883. The familiarity permitted with achild was followed in her case by a respect and worship for her master.She was "full of him," recalling his least action, his least word. Whenshe said "Monsieur Gustave," she believed that she was speaking of anextraordinary being. Those who knew him will appreciate the veritycontained in the admiration of this old servant.
Gustave Flaubert was four years old when Julie came to Rouen into mygrand-parents' service, in 1825. She came from the village ofFleury-on-the-Andelle, situated in that pretty, smiling valley whichextends from Pont-Saint-Pierre to the great market-town ofLyons-la-Foret. The coast of the "Two Lovers" protected its entrance;here and there was a chateau, sometimes surrounded by water and havingits drawbridge, again the superb estate of Radepont, the ruins of an oldabbey and the woods of the surrounding hills.
This charming country is fertile in old stories of love and of ghosts.Julie knew them all. She was a skilful story-teller, this simple girl ofthe people, and endowed with a naturally fine and agreeable mind. Herancestors, from father to son, had been postilions, rather bad fellows,and hard drinkers.
While Gustave was small he would sit beside her for whole days. In orderto amuse him, Julie would join together all the legends she had heardaround the fire with those she had read, and, having been kept in bed ayear with a bad knee, she had read more than most women of her class.
The child was of a tranquil nature, meditative, possessing aningenuousness of which he retained traces during his whole life. Mygrandmother has told me that he would remain for hours with a finger inhis mouth, absorbed, and with an almost stupid appearance. When he wassix years old an old domestic, called Pierre, used to amuse himself withthat innocence; he would say to little Gustave, if he teased foranything, "Go now and look at the end of the garden, or in the kitchenand see whether I am there." And the child would go and say to the cook:"Pierre sent me to see whether he were here." He could not comprehendthat they were deceiving him, and while they laughed, would standthinking, trying to see through the mystery.
My grandmother had taught her oldest son to read, and, wishing to do asmuch for the second, put herself to the task. The little Caroline,beside Gustave, learned by degrees that she could not keep up with him,and he, being forced to understand this from signs of which no one saidanything to him, began to weep large tears. He was, however, eager forknowledge, and his brain worked continually.
Opposite the hospital, in a modest little house in the Rue de Lecat,lived two old people, Father and Mother Mignot. They had an extremetenderness for their little neighbour. Times without number, the childwould open the heavy door of the Hotel-Dieu, and run across to FatherMignot's knee, upon a signal from him. And it was not the good woman'sstrawberries that tempted him, but the stories the old man told him. Heknew a great many pretty tales of one kind and another, and with whatpatience he related them! From this time Julie was supplanted. The childwas not difficult to please, but had insistent preferences; those thathe liked must be told him over and over again.
Father Mignot also read to him. _Don Quixote_ especially pleased myuncle; he would never let it be taken from him. And he retained forCervantes the same admiration all his life.
In the scenes brought about by the difficulty of learning to read, thelast irrefutable argument with him was: "Why should I learn, since PapaMignot can read to me?"
But the age for entering school arrived. He must know once for all thathis old friend could not follow him there. Gustave put himselfresolutely to work, and at the end of a few months had caught up withthe children of his age. He entered the eighth class.
He was not what one would call a brilliant pupil. Continually failing toobserve some rule, and not troubling himself to understand hisprofessors, punishments abounded, and the first prize escaped him,except in history, in which he was always first. In philosophy hedistinguished himself, but he never comprehended mathematics.
Generous and full of exuberance, he had some warm friends whom he amusedextremely by his unquenchable enthusiasm and good humour. His melancholytimes, for he had them even then, he passed in a region of his mindaccessible to himself alone, and not yet did he show them in hisexterior life. He had a great memory, forgetting nothing, neitherbenevolences nor vexation of which he was the subject. Thus, hepreserved for his professor in history, Cheruel, a profound remembrance,and hated a certain usher who had hindered him from reading hisfavourite book during the study hour.
But his years at the college were miserable; he never could becomeaccustomed to things there, having a horror of discipline, and ofeverything that savoured of militarism. The custom of announcing thechange of exercises by the beating of drums irritated him, and that offiling the pupils in rank when they passed from one class to anotherexasperated him. Constraint in his movements was a punishment, and hiswalk with the procession every Thursday was never a pleasure; not thathe was feeble, but he had a natural antipathy for all that seemed to himuseless motion. His antipathy for walking lasted his whole life. Of allexercises for the body, swimming alone pleased him; he was a very goodswimmer.
The dull, labourious days of school life were enlivened by outings onThursdays and Sundays. Then he saw his beloved family and his littlesister, which was a joy unequalled.
In the dormitory during the week, thanks to some hidden pieces ofcandle, he read some of Victor Hugo's dramas, and his passion for thetheatre was kept warm. From the age of ten, Gustave composed tragedies.These pieces, of which he was scarcely able to write the lines, wereplayed by him and his comrades. A great billiard hall opening from thesalon was given up to them. The billiard table, pushed to one end ofthe room, served as a stage, which they mounted by means of a crock fromthe garden. Caroline had charge of the decorations and costumes. Hismother's wardrobe was plundered for old shawls, which made excellentpeplums. He wrote to one of his principal actors, Ernest Chevalier:"Victory! victory! victory! victory! You will come, and Amedee, Edmond,Madame Chevalier, Mamma, two servants and perhaps some pupils, will behere to see us play. We shall give four pieces that you do not know. Butyou will soon learn them. The tickets of the first, second, and thirdclasses are made. There will be some armchairs. There will also bescenery and decorations; the curtain is arranged. Perhaps there will beten or twelve persons. So we must have courage and not fear," etc.
Alfred Le Poittevin, some years older than Gustave, and his sisterLaura, were also a part of these representations. The family ofPoittevin was bound to that of Flaubert through the two mothers, who hadknown each other from nine years of age at the _pension_. Alfred LePoittevin had a very great influence upon my uncle in his youth,contributing to his literary development. He was end
owed with abrilliant mind, full of life and eccentricity. He died young, which wasa great grief. My uncle speaks of him in his preface to the _LastSongs_.
* * * * *
A few words about my grandparents and upon the moral and intellectualdevelopment of my uncle.
My grandfather, whose traits have been sketched in _Madame Bovary_,under those of Doctor Lariviere, called in consultation to the bed ofthe dying Emma, was the son of a veterinary of Nogent-on-the-Seine. Thesituation of the family was modest: nevertheless, by denying themselves,they sent their son to Paris to study medicine. He took the first prizein the great competition and by this success was received as a doctorfree of further cost. Scarcely had he passed his examinations when hewas sent from Dupuytren, where he was house physician, to Rouen toDoctor Laumonier, who was then surgeon of the hospital. This sojourn wassupposed to be only temporary, to restore his health, which had becomeenfeebled from overwork and a life of privation. But, instead ofremaining for a few months, the young physician spent all his lifethere. The frequent appeals of his numerous friends, or the hope ofarriving at a high place in the medical profession in Paris, which hissuccessful beginning had justified, never decided him to leave hishospital and a people to whom he became profoundly attached.
But in the beginning, it was love which extended this sojourn,--love fora young girl, a child of thirteen years, a goddaughter of MadameLaumonier, an orphan in a boarding-school, who came each week to visither godmother.
Anne-Justine-Caroline Fleuriot was born in 1794 at Pont-l'Eveque inCalvados. Through her mother she was allied to the oldest families inLower Normandy. "A great noise is made," said Charlotte Corday in one ofher letters, "about an unequal marriage between Charlotte Cambremer deCroixmare and Jean-Baptiste Francois-Prosper Fleuriot, a doctor withoutreputation." At thirty years of age Mademoiselle de Croixmare had beensent back to the convent. But the obstacles were finally conquered, thewalls of the convent broken and the marriage took place. One year latera daughter was born, and the mother died in giving her birth.
The child, left in the arms of its father, became for him an object oftenderness and worship. At sixteen, my grandmother still remembered withemotion her father's kisses. "He would undress me each evening," shesaid, "and put me in my bed, wishing to take my mother's place." Thesepaternal cares soon ceased. Doctor Fleuriot, seeing that he was about todie, gave his daughter in charge of two old ladies of Saint-Cyr who hada little school at Honfleur. These ladies promised to keep her until hermarriage, but they, too, soon disappeared. Then her tutor, MonsieurThouret, sent the young girl to Madame Laumonier, sister ofJacques-Guillaume Thouret, Deputy from Rouen to the States-General andPresident of that Assembly. She came at the same time as my grandfather,when they happened to see each other. Some months later they avowedtheir love and promised themselves to each another.
The Laumonier household, like many others of that epoch, tolerated,under a spiritual and gracious exterior, a certain lightness of morals.The eminently serious nature of my grandmother and her love preservedher from the dangers of such surroundings. Besides, my grandfather, morefar-seeing than she could be, wished her to remain in theboarding-school until she was married. She was eighteen and hetwenty-seven at the time of their marriage. Their purse was slender, buttheir hearts had little fear. My grandfather's portion was in hisfuture; my grandmother had a little farm which brought her a revenue offour thousand francs.
The household was established in the Rue du Petit-Salut, near the RueGrand-Pont, a little street of narrow houses, touching one another,where the sun could never penetrate. In my childhood my grandmotherwould often take me through there, and, looking at the windows, wouldsay in a grave voice, almost religious: "Look, my child, the best yearsof my life were passed there."
Descended from a Champenois and a Norman, Gustave Flaubert had thecharacteristic signs of both races; his temperament was very expansiveand, at the same time, it was enveloped in the vague melancholy of thepeople of the north. He was of even temper and gay, sometimes with atouch of buffoonery; but ever at the bottom of his nature was anundefined sadness, a kind of disquiet. He was physically robust,enjoying full, strong pleasures; but his soul, aspiring to anunattainable ideal, suffered without ceasing in not finding it. Thisapplied to the smallest things; because, as a seeker after theexquisite, he had found that the most frequently recurring sentiment wasnearly always one of grief. This without doubt added to the sensibilityof his nervous system, which the violent commotions of a certain malady(to the paroxysms of which he had had many relapses, especially in hisyouth) had refined to an extreme point. That came also from his greatlove of the ideal. This nervous malady threw a veil over his whole life;it was a permanent fear obscuring even his happiest days. However, ithad no influence upon his robust health, and the incessant and vigorouswork of his brain continued without interruption.
Gustave Flaubert was something of a fanatic; he had taken art for hisgod, and like a devotee, he knew all the tortures and all theintoxications of the love to which he had sacrificed himself. Afterhours passed in communion with abstract form, the mystic became managain, was a _bon vivant_, laughed with a frank laugh, put a charminggaiety into the recital of a story, or some pleasant personalremembrance. One of his greatest pleasures was to amuse those about him.What would he not do to raise my spirits when I was sad or ill?
It was easy to feel the honesty of his characteristics. From his fatherhe had received his tendency to experiment, that minute observation ofthings which caused him to spend infinite time in accounting to himselffor the smallest detail, and that taste for all knowledge which made hima scholar as well as an artist. His mother transmitted to him hisimpressionability and that almost feminine tenderness which often madehis great heart overflow and his eyes grow moist at the sight of achild. His taste for travel, he often said, came to him from one of hisancestors who took part in the conquest of Canada. He was very proud ofcounting up the brave ones among his own people, any one who had brainsand was not _bourgeois_; for he had a hatred of the _bourgeois_, andcontinually employed that term as a synonym for mediocrity and envy, theliving only with the appearance of virtue and insulting all grandeur andbeauty.
At the death of Laumonier, my grandfather succeeded him assurgeon-in-chief of the Hospital. It was in this vast building thatGustave Flaubert was born.
The Hospital at Rouen, of the construction of the last century, is notwanting in a certain kind of character; the straight lines of itsarchitecture present something of chasteness and something of theaccepted modern types. It was situated at the end of Rue de Crosne, andas one came from the centre of the town he found himself face to facewith the great arch of the iron gate, all black, behind which was acourt-yard with willows planted in rows: at the end and built around thesides was the edifice.
The part occupied by my grandparents formed a wing, approached by aprivate entrance. At the left of the central gate, a high door openedupon a court where grass grew among the old paving stones. On the otherside of the pavilion was a garden forming an angle with the street,bordered at the left by a wall covered with ivy and hemmed in at theright by the hospital buildings. These are high grey walls, puncturedwith little glazed holes to which meagre faces are glued, their headsbound in white linen cloths. These ghastly silhouettes with hollow eyesshow great suffering and have a profound sadness about them.
Gustave's room was on the side of the entrance, in the second story. Theview was upon the hospital gardens overlooking the trees, under whoseverdure the patients sat on stone seats, when the weather was pleasant.From time to time the white wing of a great bonnet of one of the sisterscould be seen rapidly crossing the courtyard, and sometimes there werevisitors, the parents of the invalids, or the friends of the attendants,but never any noise or anything unexpected.
This severe and melancholy place could not have been without influenceupon Gustave Flaubert. He ever retained an exquisite compassion for allhuman suffering, and also a high morality, which would
scarcely besuspected by those who are scandalised by his paradoxes.
No one was less like what is usually called an artist than my uncle.Among the peculiarities of his character, the contrasts have alwaysastonished me. This man, so preoccupied with beauty in style and givingform so high a place, even the highest, paid little attention to thebeauty that surrounded him; his own furniture was of heavy contour, notthe least delicate, and he had no taste for objects of art (bric-a-brac)so much in vogue at that time.
He loved order with a passion, carrying it to a mania, and would neverwork until his books were arranged in a certain fashion. He preservedcarefully all letters addressed to him. I have large boxes full of them.Did he think there would be as much interest taken in them as there waslater in his own? Did he foresee that great interest in hiscorrespondence (which reveals the man in a light so different from thatrevealed by his works), that he imposed upon me the task of collectingand publishing it? No one can say.
He always observed extreme regularity in his work each day. He yokedhimself to it as an ox is yoked to a cart, without waiting for thatinspiration which expectation renders fruitless, as he said. His energyof will for all that concerned his art was prodigious, and his patiencewas tireless. Some years before his death, he would amuse himself bysaying: "I am the last of the Fathers of the Church," and, in fact, withhis long, maroon-coloured wrapper and a little black silk cap on the topof his head, he was something like a recluse of Port-Royal.
I can see him now running over the terrace at Croisset, absorbed inthought, stopping suddenly, his arms crossed, raising his head andremaining for some moments with his eyes fixed on the space above, andthen resuming his walk again.
Life at the Hospital was regular, free, and good. My grandfather, whohad attained a high reputation, medically, gave his children all thatease and tenderness could add to the happiness of youth. He had bought ahouse in the country, at Deville near Rouen, which he disposed of oneyear before his death, a railroad having cut through the garden only afew metres from the house. It was then that he bought Croisset, on thebanks of the Seine.
Each year the entire family went to Nogent-on-the-Seine to the home ofthe Flaubert parents. It was quite a journey, which we made in apost-chaise, a veritable journey of the good old times. The thought ofthem brought many an amusing remembrance to my uncle; but those whichwere most charming to him were his vacations passed at Trouville, thenbut a simple fishing village.
He met there some English people, the family of Admiral Collier, all ofwhom were beautiful and intelligent. The oldest daughters, Gertrude andHenrietta, soon became the intimate friends of my uncle and my mother.Gertrude, now Madame Tennant, lately wrote me some pages about heryouth. I translate the following lines:--
"Gustave Flaubert was then like a young Greek. In full adolescence, he was tall and thin, supple and graceful as an athlete, unconscious of the gifts that he possessed, physically and morally, caring little for the impression he produced and entirely indifferent to accepted form. His dress consisted of a red flannel shirt, great trousers of blue cloth, a scarf of the same color around his waist and a cap put on no matter how, or often bare-headed. When I spoke to him of fame, or of influence, as desirable things that I esteemed, he listened, smiled, and seemed superbly indifferent. He admired what was beautiful in nature, art and literature and lived for that, as he said, without any thought of the personal. He cared neither for glory nor for gain. Was it not enough that a thing was true and beautiful? His great joy was in finding something that he judged worthy of admiration. The charm of his society was in his enthusiasm for all that was noble; and the charm of his mind was its intense individuality. He hated all hypocrisy. What was lacking in his nature, was an interest in exterior and useful things. If any one happened to say that religion, politics, or business had as great an interest for them as literature or art, he would open his eyes in astonishment and pity. To be literary, an artist, that alone was worth living for."
It was at Trouville also that he met the musical editor, MauriceSchlesinger and his wife. Many faces remained engraved on his memory ofhis sojourns by the sea, among others that of an old sailor, CaptainBarbet and his little daughter, Barbette, a little humpback alwayscrying out to her dolls. Then there was Doctor Billard, and FatherCouillere, mayor of the commune, at whose house they had repasts thatlasted for six hours. He recalled these years in writing _A SimpleSoul_. Madame Aubin, her two children, the house where she lived, andall the details so true, so appreciative, in this simple history, are ofstriking exactness. Madame was an aunt to my grandmother; Felicite andher parrot once lived.
In his last years, my uncle had an extreme desire to revive his youth.He wrote _A Simple Soul_, after his mother's death, to try to accomplishthis. In painting the town where she was born, the hearth before whichshe had played, his cousins, the companions of his childhood, he foundsatisfaction, and that pleasure has brought from his pen his mosttouching pages, those perhaps where he allows us to divine most clearlythe man under the writer. Recall that scene where Madame Aubin and herservant are arranging the trifling possessions that had belonged toVirginia. A large hat of black straw which my grandmother had worn awokein my uncle a similar emotion. He would take that relic from the nail,look at it in silence, with eyes moistening, and then respectfullyreplace it.
Finally, the happy time of leaving college arrived, but the terriblequestion of choosing a profession, or taking up some career poisoned hisjoy. As a vocation, he cared only for literature, and "literature" isnot a career; it leads to no "position." My grandfather wished his sonto be a savant and a law practitioner. To devote himself to the uniqueand exclusive research for beauty of literary form, seemed to him almostfolly. A man of character, eminently strong, and of very active habits,he comprehended with difficulty the nervous and somewhat feminine sidewhich characterises all artistic organisations. With his mother my unclefound more encouragement, but she held to the point that he should obeyhis father, and he was resolved that Gustave should make his way inParis. He set out, sad at leaving his own people, his sister especially.
At Paris he lived in the Rue de l'Est in a little bachelor apartmentwhere he found himself badly installed. The noisy, free and easypleasures of his comrades seemed to him stupid, so that he scarcely everparticipated in them. He would remain alone, open one of his law books,which he would immediately put away, then extending himself upon hisbed, he would smoke and dream for hours. He became very weary of thislife, and grew sombre.
Pradier's studio alone put warmth in him again; he saw there all theartists of the day, and in contact with them he felt his instincts grow.One day he met Victor Hugo there. Some women visited the studio; it wasthere he met Louise Colet. He often went to see the pretty English girlsof Trouville, to the salon of the editor, Maurice Schlesinger, and tothe hospitable house of his father's friend, Doctor Jules Cloquet, wholed him away one summer to the Pyrenees and to Corsica. The _EducationSentimental_ was composed in remembrance of this epoch.
But in spite of friendship,--doubtless in spite of love,--a wearinesswithout bounds invaded him. His work, which was contrary to his taste,became intolerable to him, his health was seriously affected and hereturned to Rouen.
My mother's marriage, her death the year following, and a little laterthat of my grandfather, left my grandmother in such grief that she washappy to keep her son near her. Paris and the Law School were abandoned.It was then that, in company with Maxime Ducamp, he made the journeythrough Brittany and they wrote together the book: _Over Strand andField_. (_A travers les Champs et les Greves._)
Upon his return, he began his _Saint Antoine_, his first great work. Ithad been preceded by many, of which fragments have been published sincehis death. The _Saint Antoine_ composed then, was not the first known tothe public. This work was undertaken at three different times before itwas finally finished.
In 1849 Gustave Flaubert took a second journey with Maxime D
ucamp. Thistime the two friends directed their steps towards the Orient, which hadfor so long been their dream!
II.
My personal reminiscences date from his return. He came back at evening;I was in bed, but they awakened me. He came to my little bed, raised mesuddenly and found me very droll in my long nightgown; I remember thatit extended far below my feet. He began to laugh very hard and then toimprint great kisses on my cheeks which made me cry; I felt the cold ofhis moustache, humid with dew, and was very glad when he put me downagain. I was then five years old and we were at the grandparents' houseat Nogent. Three months later I saw him again in England, as I stillremember distinctly. It was at the time of the first Exposition atLondon. They took me there and the crowd frightened me; my uncle took meon his shoulder, and I traversed the galleries overlooking everybody,this time happy to be in his arms. They chose me a governess and wereturned to Croisset.
My uncle wished to begin my education immediately. The governess was toteach me only English; my grandmother would teach me to read and write,and for him was reserved history and geography. He believed it uselessto study grammar, holding that it taught itself in reading, and that itwas bad to charge the memory of a young child with abstractions, whichone begins where often they ought to finish.
Then began some years when we were all together.
Croisset, where we lived, is the first village on the bank of the Seinein going from Rouen to Havre. The house, long and low in shape, allwhite, must have been built about two hundred years. It had belonged tothe monks of the Abbey of Saint-Ouen whom it served for a country house,and it pleased my uncle to think that Prevost had composed _ManonLescaut_ here.
In the interior court, where still remained the pointed roof and theguillotine-shaped windows of the seventeenth century, the constructionwas interesting, but the facade was ugly. It had undergone one of thoseremodellings in bad taste that were seen so often in the first Empireand the reign of Louis Philippe, at the beginning of the century. Abovethe entrance, after the fashion of bas-reliefs, were some villainouscasts,--the seasons of Bouchardon--and the mantelpiece in the salon hadon each side a representation of a mummy in white marble, a souvenir ofthe Egyptian country.
The rooms were few, but sufficiently large. The spacious dining-room,which occupied the centre of the house on the ground floor, opened uponthe garden by a glass door flanked by two windows in full view of theriver. It was pleasing and gay.
On the next story, at the right, a long corridor separated the chambers,and on the left was my uncle's study, or work-room. It was a largeapartment, with a very low ceiling, but very light, because of fivewindows, of which three looked upon the whole length of the garden, theother two being in the front of the house. There was a pretty view ofthe turf, the beds full of flowers, the trees on the long terrace, andthe Seine enframed in the foliage of a splendid tulip tree.
The ways of the house were subordinated to the taste of my uncle, mygrandmother having, so to speak, no longer any personal life; she livedfor the happiness of others. Her tenderness was in alarm at theslightest symptom of suffering which she thought she detected in herson, and she sought to envelop him in a calm atmosphere. In the morningshe was on the defence against the least noise; towards ten o'clock theviolent ringing of a bell would be heard, and some one would go to myuncle's room; not until then did every one awake. The domestic carriedhim his letters and newspapers, deposited on the night table a glass offresh water and a well-filled pipe; then he opened the shutters, and thelight streamed in. My uncle would seize his letters, run over theaddresses, but rarely did he open one before taking a few whiffs fromhis pipe; then, having read them all, he would tap the neighbouring wallto call his mother, who would run in immediately and seat herself nearhis bed until he was ready to rise.
He made his toilet slowly, sometimes interrupting himself to go to thetable and re-read some passage with which he was preoccupied. Althoughlittle complicated, his dress was not lacking in care, and his neatnessexpressed his refinement.
At eleven he came down to breakfast, where my grandmother, uncle Parain,the governess and I, were already assembled. We all loved uncle Paraininfinitely. He had married my grandfather's sister and passed a greatpart of the year with us. At this time my uncle ate little, especiallyin the morning, finding that too much nourishment made him heavy andunfit for work. Almost never did he eat meat; only eggs, vegetables, apiece of cheese, fruit and a cup of cold chocolate. At dessert, he wouldrelight his pipe--a little gray pipe--get up and go into the garden,where we followed. His favourite walk was the terrace walled in andbordered on one side by old willows cut straight across like a giganticwall. This led to a little pavilion in the style of Louis XV., whosewindows looked out upon the Seine. Very often on summer evenings wewould all seat ourselves here under the balcony of graceful fretwork andremain for some calm hours, chatting together; the night would come,little by little, the last passers disappear; in the water opposite wecould just distinguish the silhouette of a horse drawing a boat whichglided along without noise; then the moon would begin to shine with athousand sparkling rays, like a fine diamond powder, scintillating atour feet, while a light tug and two or three barques would slip fromtheir moorings and invade the river. These belonged to the eel fisherswho were starting at this time to set their nets.
My grandmother, who was very delicate, would cough, and my uncle wouldsay: "It is time to return to the Bovary." The Bovary? What was that? Iknew not. But I respected the name, those two words, as I respectedeverything that came from my uncle, and believed vaguely that it was asynonym for work, and work was writing, as was well understood. In fact,it was during these years, from 1852 to 1856 that he composed thisnovel.
We were rarely in the pavilion after breakfast. Fleeing from the middaysun, we mounted to a spot called "The Mercury," because of a statue ofthat god which formerly ornamented it. It was a second avenue situatedabove the terrace, which led to a charming shady footpath; some oldyew-trees came out of the rocks in queer shapes, showing their bareroots and jagged trunks; they appeared to be suspended, holding only tothe crumbling wall at the side by their roots. Above the alley was akind of roundpoint, a circular bench concealed under some hugechestnut-trees. Through the branches one could see the tranquil watersand above them a large expanse of sky.
From time to time, a cloud would rapidly go by and vanish. It was thesmoke of a steamboat; and immediately would appear between theinterlaced branches the pointed masts of ships which were being towed toRouen. Sometimes there would be seven, or nine. Nothing is more majesticand beautiful than the pomp of these floating houses, which suggest afar-off country. About one o'clock could be heard a sharp whistle; itwas "the steamer," as they say in the country. Three times a day thisboat crossed between Rouen and Bouille. The whistle was the signal ofdeparture.
"Come," my uncle would say, "come to your lesson, my Caro;" and draggingme along, we would both go into his large study, where the shutters werecarefully closed to keep out the heat. It was pleasant there; onebreathed an odour of Oriental joss-sticks mingled with that of tobacco,also with perfumes that were wafted in through the door of hisdressing-room. With a bound I would throw myself upon the great whitebear-skin, which I adored, and cover his great head with kisses. Myuncle, meantime, would be putting his pipe on the chimney-piece; and,selecting another, would fill it, light it, and seat himself in hisleather armchair at the end of the room; he would cross one leg over theother, turn his back, take a file and begin to polish his nails, saying:"Let us see, where were you? Now, what do you remember from yesterday?"
"Oh! I know the history of Pelopidas and Epaminondas very well."
"Relate it, then."
I began, but naturally I became confused or I had forgotten.
"I am going to tell it to you once more," he would finally say.
Then I would approach and sit facing him on a long chair or upon thedivan. I listened with a palpitating interest to the recitals that hemade so amusing to me.
It w
as thus I learned all my ancient history, coming to the facts oneafter another, making reflections within my power, but remaining trulyand profoundly observant; mature minds would have been able to listenwithout finding anything puerile in his teaching.
Sometimes I would stop him and ask: "Was he good?" And this question,applied to such men as Cambyses, Alexander or Alcibiades, was somewhatembarrassing for him to answer.
"Good?" he would say, "Yes ... these were not very proper gentlemen, but... that is not the point."
But I was not satisfied, and I found that "my old boy," as I called him,knew even the smallest details of the people we were studying about.
The history lesson finished, we passed on to geography. He never wishedme to study from a book. "Images, as many as possible," he said, "arethe best means of learning in childhood." We had charts, spheres, gamesof patience which we could make and unmake together; then, to explainthe difference between islands, peninsulas, bays, gulfs and promontorieshe would take a shovel and a pail of water and, in a little walk in thegarden, make models of these in nature.
As I grew older, the lessons became longer and more serious. Hecontinued them up to my seventeenth year, until my marriage. When I wasten years old, he obliged me to take notes while he was speaking, andwhen my mind was capable of comprehending it, he began to make me noticethe artistic side of things, especially in my reading.
He considered no book dangerous that was well written; he held thisopinion because of his intimate union of foundation and form: anythingwell written could not be badly thought out or basely conceived. It wasnot the crude detail, the raw fact that was pernicious or harmful, orlikely to soil the intelligence; all that is in nature. There is nothingmoral or immoral but the soul of him who represents nature, rendering itgrand, beautiful, serene, small, ignoble, or tormenting. Such a thing asan obscene book well written could not exist, according to him.
Certainly he was very liberal in the reading he recommended to me, yethe was decided in allowing me nothing for amusement alone, and neverwould permit me to leave a book unfinished. "Continue to read thehistory of the Conquest," he wrote me, "and do not allow yourself tobegin books and then leave them for some time. When one undertakes toread a book, it should be finished at a single blow. It is the only wayof seeing it as a whole and of deriving any profit from it. Accustomyourself to following this idea. Since you are my pupil, I do not wishyou to have that disconnected way of thinking, a mind unable to followout anything, which is the attribute of persons of your sex."
He held to this intellectual discipline, judging it to be very useful.His teaching sought to impress itself upon my mind in the strongestmanner possible. So easy in some ways, he was very rigorous on certainpoints; thus, he wished that the virtue of a woman consisted not aloneof purity of morals, but that she might add that to what is exacted inan honest man.
My lesson finished, my uncle would seat himself at his table in hishigh-back, oak armchair and there remain until seven o'clock, allowinghimself only a moment from time to time, to go to his window and breathelarge whiffs of air. Then we dined, and chatted together awhile, asafter breakfast. At nine o'clock, or ten at the latest, he would againtake up his work with zeal, prolonging it far into the night. He wasnever more in the spirit of it than in these solitary hours when nosound could come to trouble him.
He remained thus many months in succession, seeing no one but LouisBouilhet, his intimate friend, who came each Sunday, staying untilMonday morning. A part of the night was passed in reading the work ofthe week. What delightful hours of expansion! There were loud cries ofexclamation without end, some controversy over rejecting or keeping someepithet, or some reciprocal enthusiasm!
Three or four times a year, my uncle would go to Paris to pass some daysat the house of the Helder's. All his distractions were limited to shortabsences. However, in 1856, having decided to publish _Madame Bovary_,he went to live at No. 42 Boulevard du Temple, in a house belonging toM. Mourier, director of the theatre of the _Delassements-Comiques_.Bouilhet was presenting his first piece, _Madame de Montarcy_, at theOdeon that year. He had already preceded his friend, left Rouen and hisprofession as tutor to live entirely by letters. My grandmother was notlong in joining them; she spent some of the winter months in a furnishedapartment, and two years later installed herself in the same house withher son, on the story above.
Although living so near, we were very independent. My uncle had takeninto his service a valet named Narcisse, the queerest individualpossible; he had been a domestic in my grandfather's house, and hisdrollery as well as his zeal prompted my uncle to engage him. Narcisse,an established farmer, married, and the father of six children, had lefthis wife and family with the greatest eagerness to follow the son of hisold master for whom he had a respect amounting to fanaticism, but joinedto that the greatest forgetfulness of difference in station. One day hereturned completely drunk; my uncle perceived this and seated, or rathertumbled him into a chair in the kitchen. He aided him to reach his room,and to stretch himself out on the bed. Then Narcisse, in a supplicatingair, said: "Ah! sir! complete your goodness by pulling off my boots."And this was done by the too indulgent master!
Our friends amused themselves with the reflections of this servant andhis repartee; certain of them sent him their books. He was often foundsitting in the study, or before a bookcase, with a feather duster underone arm and a book in his hand; he read in a high voice, imitating hismaster. But these artistic endeavours, joined to the abuse of smallglasses, completely disordered the brain of the poor devil; and he wasobliged to return to the fields.
During these winter months, I regretted the summer days because thegreat success of _Madame Bovary_ followed by a famous lawsuit had givento my uncle a celebrity that made him sought after. He went out much andI saw less of him.
The apartment of the Boulevard du Temple blossomed on certain days. Itwas a pleasure to give little repasts there to our intimate friends; Iremember those in which I took part and which had around the tableSainte-Beuve, Monsieur and Madame Sandeau, Monsieur and Madame Cornu,these last brought by Jules Duplan, the faithful friend of GustaveFlaubert; then Charles d'Osmoy, and Theophile Gautier came very often,and on Sundays the door was open wide and friends were numerous.
This epoch was for my uncle the beginning of relations which lasteduntil his death. He assiduously frequented the _salon_ of the PrincessMathilde. He found gathered there scholars, artists, and some of hisintimate friends; he relished strongly this intellectual and worldlylife. He went also to the Tuileries and was invited to Compiegne; fromhis sojourn at the castle there came to him the thought of a greatromance which should bring out the French and the Turkishcivilisations.
Then he also had dinners at Magny which, in the beginning, numbered onlyhalf a score of people: Sainte-Beuve, Theophile Gautier, the two DeGoncourts, Garvarni, Renan, Taine, the Marquis of Chennevieres, Bouilhetand my uncle. Their conversations abounded in the highest interest.
Finally, the month of May arrived and we returned to the tranquil lifeat Croisset.
Beginning in 1860 to write _Salammbo_, my uncle soon perceived that avoyage to the site of what was once Carthage was necessary to him, andhe set out for Tunis. On his return he accompanied his mother to Vichy.We went there the two years following.
My grandmother's health not permitting her to go out with me, my uncletook her place; he accompanied me in my walks and on Sunday even took meto church, in spite of the independence of his beliefs, or ratherbecause of that independence. We often went when it was pleasant, andseated ourselves under the little white-leaved poplars along the mainwalk; he would read while I sketched, and interrupting his reading, hewould speak to me of what it suggested to him, or begin to recite verse,or entire pages of prose which he knew by heart. What he most oftenrecited was Montesquieu and Chateaubriand. His memory disclosed itselfequally in dates or in historic facts. But let him recall some literaryremembrance and he was truly surprising; in a volume read twenty yearsbefore he could name the pa
ge and the spot on the page which had pleasedhim; and, going straight to his library and opening the book, he wouldsay: "Here it is," with a certain satisfaction which made the lightshine in his eyes.
At Vichy he returned to old acquaintances: Doctor Villemain whom he metin Egypt, and Lambert Bey, one of the adepts of the _Pere Enfantin_.
My marriage came in 1864, changing all our life. I lived a great part ofthe year at Neuville near Dieppe, going no oftener to Croisset thantwice a year, in the spring and in the autumn. My uncle made only shortvisits at my house; any change of place troubling him extraordinarilyand disturbing his work. It was necessary for him to work at an extremetension, and it was impossible for him to find himself in this stateelsewhere than at his great round table in his study, where he was surethat nothing would distract him. This love of tranquillity, which hecarried later to an excess, had begun already to exercise a tyranny uponhis least action. At the end of a few days, I could see that he wasnervous and I felt that he was desirous of returning to his belovedlabour.
For ten years our lives were less mingled, save for the month of Aprilin 1871. When I returned from England where I had passed some months, Ifound him much changed. The war had made a profound impression upon him;his "old Latin blood" had revolted at this return to barbarity. Obligedto flee from his house,--for he would not for anything in the world beunder the necessity of speaking to a Prussian,--he took refuge in Rouenin a little lodging near the Havre quay where he was badly housed. Thisseemed to be a bereavement; my grandmother, now aged, no longer occupiedherself with the management of the household, and instead oftransporting their furniture and necessary objects from the country tothe town (and that would have been easy to do), they left all atCroisset, where a score of men, officers and soldiers, had establishedthemselves.
The fatal lack of employment that a disturbed life brings, the thoughtof his study, his books, his home soiled by the presence of the enemy,brought to my uncle's heart and mind frightful anxiety and grief. Thearts appeared to him dead. Why? Was it possible? Could it be that anintelligent country would cause these billows of blood? But there werescholars who were holding Paris in siege, and hurling projectilesagainst the monuments!
He thought that he should return to his house to find nothing there. Hewas deceived; save some trifling objects without value, such as cards, apenknife, or a paper-cutter, they had respected absolutely all thatbelonged to him. One thing only about the return was suffocating,--theodour of the Prussian, as the French call it, an odour of greased boots.The walls were impregnated with it, through their stay there of threelong months, and it was necessary to paint and redecorate the rooms inorder to get rid of it.
Six months passed without my uncle being able to write, and finally, hewas at my house at Neuville when, yielding to my supplications, he beganagain, this time finishing _The Temptation of Saint Antony_.
There was in Gustave Flaubert's nature a sort of impossibility of beinghappy, and a tendency continually to turn back in order to compare andanalyse. Even at the age of the most absolute joys, he dissected them sothat he saw nothing in them but the skeleton of pleasure.
When, on descending the Nile, he wrote the pages entitled: _Au bord dela Cange_, he regretted his home on the banks of the Seine. Thelandscape under his eye never seemed to captivate him; it was later thathe recalled it with pleasure, while man, with his foolishness, and hisconversation, was intensely interesting to him. "Foolishness," he wouldsay, "enters my pores." And when he was reproached for not going outmore, or for remaining so much in the country, he would say indignantly:"But nature devours me! If I remain extended on the grass for a longtime, I believe that I can feel the plants growing under my body"; andhe would add: "You don't know what trouble confusion and change makeme."
As to himself, in the most grievous events of his life he wrote down hissensations, seeking, scrutinising the most remote corners of his nature,however veiled or intimate. A fact in a newspaper, a droll story ofpeople he knew, stupidities written by authoritative pens, themanifestation of their self-conceit or their greed, were to him so muchsubjects of experience that he recorded them and slipped them into hisportfolio; he could not comprehend the art that sought only gain;according to him, mere money could not reward the artist; and betweenthe five hundred francs which the editor Michael Levy sent him for hisfive years' work on _Madame Bovary_, and the ten thousand francs whichhe received some years later for _Salammbo_, he saw very littledifference.
In his note-books of travel in the Pyrenees at seventeen years of age,he pointed out the silliness of the reflections of travelers about LakeGaube and the inn near Gavarnie. Even here is the beginning of the_Dictionary of Accepted Ideas by Bouvard and Pecuchet_. This strongsense of the comic was useful in opposition to his love for the ideal,as his love for farce corrected his inborn melancholy.
III.
In 1875, the loss of a considerable sum of money changed ourcircumstances. My husband saw all that he had disappear in commercialtransactions. Married under the dowry laws so common in Normandy, Icould dispose of only a part of my property in his favour. My uncle madeup the deficit with an entirely spontaneous generosity, giving all thathe possessed to save our position. Nothing remained for him to live onexcept the interest that we had engaged to pay him, and the verymediocre revenue from his books. To sell Croisset was the thought whichfirst presented itself to our minds; this property had been given me bymy grandmother, with the expressed wish that her son Gustave shouldcontinue to live there. This consideration, added to my uncle'srepugnance to separating himself from it, decided us in the resolutionto keep it. Loneliness weighed upon his tender nature, and anarrangement of a life in common was agreeable to him. He passed thegreater part of the time in the country; and, in Paris, having taken hisapartment again in the Rue Murillo, we took one on the same landing, onthe fifth floor of a house situated at the angle of the Rue duFaubourg-Saint-Honore and the Avenue de la Reine-Hortense.
We were then together as formerly, and our confidential talks were morefrequent, deeper and more intimate than those of my childhood's days. Inthe retired life that we led, my uncle spoke to me as to a friend; wetalked on all subjects, but preferably those of literature, religion andphilosophy, which we discussed without any anger or disagreeableresults, although we were often of a different opinion.
It is easy to see that a man who could write _Saint Antoine_ must besuperabundantly occupied with religious thought as found in humanity,and its manifold manifestations. The old theogonies interested himextremely, and the excessive in all people had an infinite attractionfor him. The anchorite, the recluse at the Thebans, provoked hisadmiration, and he felt towards them as towards the Bouddha on the bankof the Ganges. He often re-read his Bible. That verse of Isaiah: "Howbeautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth goodtidings!" he thought sublime. "Reflect, sift the thing to the bottom,"he would say to me enthusiastically.
A pagan on his artistic side, he was, through the needs of his soul,pantheistic. Spinoza, whom he much admired, did not fail to leave hisimprint upon him. Besides, no belief of his mind, save his belief inbeauty, was so fixed that it was not capable of listening to the otherside, and admitting even, up to a certain point, the obverse. He lovedto repeat with Montaigne, what was perhaps the last word of hisphilosophy, that it is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.
But let us return to the work of the day. Here he is happy in reading tome the freshly hatched phrase that he has just finished; I assist, as amotionless witness, the slow creation of these pages so labouriouslyelaborated. In the evening, the same lamp lights us, I, seated besidethe large table, where I am employed with my needlework, or in reading;he, struggling with his work. Bent forward, he writes feverishly, thenturns his back upon his work, strikes his arms upon those of his chairand utters a groan, for a moment almost like a rattle in the throat; butsuddenly his voice modulates sweetly, swelling proudly: he has found thedesired expression and is repeating the phrase to himself. Then he getsup and w
alks around his study with long steps, scanning the syllables ashe goes and is content; it is a moment of triumph after exhaustinglabour.
Having arrived at the end of a chapter, he would often give himself aday of rest in order to read over at his ease what he had written, tosee the "effect." He read in a unique fashion, chanting and emphasisingso much that at first it seemed exaggerated, but ending in a way thatwas very agreeable. It was not only his own works that he read in thisway; from time to time he would give real literary sessions, becomingimpassioned with the beauty that he found; and his enthusiasm wascommunicative, so that it was impossible to remain cold, or keep fromvibrating with him.
Among the ancients, Homer and AEschylus were his gods. Aristophanes gavehim more pleasure than Sophocles, Plautus than Horace, whose merit hethought over-praised. How many times have I heard him say that he wouldprefer above all things to be a comic poet!
Shakespeare, Byron, and Victor Hugo he profoundly admired, but he nevercomprehended Milton. He said: "Virgil has created the amorous woman,Shakespeare the amorous young girl; all others are more or lessfar-removed copies of Dido or Juliette."
In French prose he read again and again Rabelais and Montaigne,recommending them to all who wished to meddle with writing.
Literary enthusiasms had always existed in him; one that he loved torecall was that he experienced on his first reading of _Faust_. He readit on the eve of Easter as he was leaving college; instead of returningto his father's house, he found himself, not knowing how, in a spotcalled "Queen's walk." It is a beautiful promenade planted with hightrees upon the left bank of the Seine, a little removed from the town.He was seated upon the steep bank; the clocks in the churches across theriver resounded in the air and mingled with the poetry of Goethe."Christ had arisen, peace and joy were complete. Announce then, deepbells, the beginning of the Easter day, celestial sounds, powerful andsweet! Why seek you me in the dust?" His head was turned and he cameback like one lost in revery, scarcely realising things of earth.
How could this man, so great an admirer of the beautiful, find so muchhappiness in uncovering human turpitude, especially that found outsidethe realm of virtue? Must it not be from his worship of the true? Hisrevelations seemed to be the confirmation of his philosophy and herejoiced in them through love of that truth which he believed he waspenetrating.
Numerous projects of work occupied his mind. He mentioned especially astory of the people of Thermopylae that he intended to begin. He foundthat he had lost too much time in the preparatory research for his worksand wished to employ the rest of his life in art, pure art. His beliefin form would cross his mind; this caused him one day to cry out in hiswhimsical spontaneity: "I attach myself to the Ideal!" Then immediatelylaughing at our applause, he said: "Not bad, that! Poetry, isn't it? Ibegin to comprehend art."
A true artist, for him, never could be wicked, for an artist is beforeall an observer; the first quality for an observer is to possess goodeyes. If they are blurred with passion, or personal interest, thingsescape them; a good heart makes a good mind!
His worship of the beautiful led him to say: "The moral is not only apart of the aesthetic, but its condition foundationally."
Two kinds of men were especially displeasing to him and were ever asubject for his disgust: the critic who never produced anything, butjudges all things (to whom he preferred a candle merchant), and theeducated gentleman who believes himself an artist, who has imaginedVenice different from what it is, and has had disillusions. When he meta person of this kind, there was an explosion of scorn which showeditself, perhaps through cutting answers (he would pretend that he had noimagination, never fancied anything nor knew anything) or through asilence still more haughty.
Up to the time of his death, I had the advantage of continuing thatserious, calm life from which my feminine mind had so much to gain. Manyof my uncle's best friends were dead: Louis Bouilhet, Jules Duplan,Ernest Lemarie, Theophile Gautier, Jules de Goncourt, Ernest Feydeau,and Sainte-Beuve, while others were far away. His meetings with MaximeDucamp were only rare; from 1852 the two friends no longer followed thesame routes, as their correspondence witnesses.
In friendship my uncle was perfect; of a devotion absolutely faithful,without envy, happier in the success of a friend than in his own; but hebrought into his friendly relations some exactions that those who werethe object of them found it difficult to support. The heart that wasbound to him by a common love of art (and all his deep attachments wereupon this basis) should belong to him without reserve.
Wherefore, five years before his death, he received this short note inresponse to a package containing his _Three Stories_:--
"MY DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your volume. I have not read any of it, for I am absolutely besotted by the finishing of a work of mine. I should have it done in eight or ten days and I shall then reward myself by reading you. Yours,
MAXIME DUCAMP."
His heart suffered and recoiled on itself bitterly. Where now was theardent desire of knowing quickly the thought that springs from the brainof a friend? Where were those beautiful years of youth? where was thefaith in each other?
Nevertheless, there were still some natures that he loved much. Amongthe young, in the first rank, was the nephew of Alfred Le Poittevin, Guyde Maupassant, his "disciple," as he loved to call him. Then, hisfriendship with George Sand was for his mind no less than for his heart,a great comfort. But of his own generation, he often said that onlyEdmond de Goncourt and Ivan Tourgenief remained; with them he tastedthe full joy of aesthetic conversation. Alas! they became more and morerare, these hours of intimate talks, because, for this overflow of soulit was necessary to find minds taken up with the same things, and thesojourns in Paris became farther and farther apart. His solitude, alwaysterrible, became unbearable when I was not there, and often, to escapeit, he would call on the old nurse of his childhood. At her fireside hisheart would become warm again. In a letter to me he said: "To-day I havehad an exquisite conversation with 'Mademoiselle Julie.' In speaking ofthe old times, she brought before me a crowd of portraits and imageswhich expanded my heart. It was like a whiff of fresh air. She has (inlanguage) an expression of which I shall make use. It was in speaking ofa lady, 'She was very fragile,' she said, 'thundering so!' _Thundering_after _fragile_ is full of depth! Then we spoke of Marmontel and of the_New Heloise_, something that could not be done among ladies norscarcely among gentlemen."
When he was much alone, he would sometimes take up his love of nature,which would relieve him from his work for a moment. "Yesterday," hewrote, "in order to refresh my poor noddle, I took a walk to Canteleu.After travelling for two solid hours, Monsieur took a chop at Pasquet's,where they were making ready for New Year's Day. Pasquet showed a greatjoy at seeing me, because I recalled to him 'that poor MonsieurBouilhet'; and he sighed many times. The weather was so beautiful, themoon so bright in the evening that I went out to walk again at teno'clock in the garden, 'under the glimmer of the stars of night.' Youcannot imagine what a lover of nature I have become; I look at the sky,the trees and the verdure with a pleasure I never knew before. I couldwish to be a cow that I might eat grass."
But he would seat himself again at his table and let many months slip bywithout being seized with the same desire.
At the beginning of the year 1874, he began _Bouvard and Pecuchet_, asubject which had interested him for thirty years. He intended it atfirst to be very short--a novel of about forty pages. Here is how theidea came to him: Seated with Bouilhet on a bench of the Boulevard atRouen, opposite the asylum for the aged, they amused themselves bydreaming of what they should be some day; and, having begun gaily thesupposed romance of their existence, suddenly they cried: "And whoknows? we may finish, perhaps, like these old decrepits in this asylum."Then they began to imagine the friendship of two clerks, their life,their retiring from business, etc., etc., in order finally to finishtheir days in misery. These two clerks became "Bouvard and Pecuchet."This romance, so difficult of execution, discour
aged my uncle at morethan one undertaking. He was even obliged to lay it aside and go toConcarneau to join his friend George Pouchet, the naturalist.
Down there, on the Brittany strand, he began the legend of _Saint Julianthe Hospitaller_, which was immediately followed by _A Simple Soul_ and_Herodias_. He wrote these three stories rapidly and then took up_Bouvard and Pecuchet_ again, a heavy care, under which he must die.
Few existences bear witness to unity so complete as his: his lettersshow that at nine years of age he was preoccupied with art as if hewere fifty. His life, as has been stated by all those who have spokenabout him, was, from the awakening of his intelligence to the day of hisdeath, the long development of the same passion--Literature. Hesacrificed all to that; his love and tenderness were never separatedfrom his art. Did he regret in the last years of his life that he hadnot followed the common route? Some words which came from his lips oneday when we were walking beside the Seine made me think so: we had justvisited one of my friends whom we had found among her charming children."They are in the right," he said to me, alluding to that household ofthe honest and good family; "Yes," he repeated to himself, gravely,"they are in the right." I did not trouble his thoughts, but remainedsilent by his side. This walk was one of our last.
Death took him in full health. It was at evening, and his letter was allgood cheer, expressing the joy he felt at seeing himself confirmed in aconjecture that he had made regarding a plant. He had written me theseinteresting lines upon his work, of which only a few pages remained: "Iam right! I have the assurance of the Professor of Botany in the _Jardindes Plantes_, and I was right; because the aesthetic is true, and to acertain intellectual degree (when one has some method) one is notdeceived; the reality does not yield to the ideal, but confirms it. Ithas been necessary for me to make three journeys into different regionsfor _Bouvard and Pecuchet_ before finding their setting, that best fitfor action. Ah! ha! I have triumphed! I flatter myself it is a success!"
He had made arrangements to set out for Paris to join me again. It wasthe day of his departure, he was coming from the bath and mounting tohis study; the cook was going up to serve his breakfast, when she heardhim call and hastened to him. Already his tense fingers could not loosena bottle of salts which he held in his hand. He tried to utter somewords that were unintelligible in which she could distinguish:"Eylau--go--bring--avenue--I know him--"
A letter received from me that morning had told him that Victor Hugo wasgoing to live in the Avenue d'Eylau; it was without doubt a remembranceof this news that he had in mind, as well as an appeal for help. He wascared for by his neighbor and friend, Doctor Fortin.
The last glimmer of his thought evoked the great poet who had caused hiswhole nature to vibrate. Immediately he fell into unconsciousness. Somemoments later they found that he no longer breathed. Apoplexy had beenthe thunderbolt.
CAROLINE COMMANVILLE.
PARIS, _December, 1886_.
CORRESPONDENCE.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET,_Monday Night, June, 1853_.
F]Feeling myself in a grand humor of style this morning,after giving my niece her lesson in geography, I seized upon my_Bovary_, sketching three pages in the afternoon which I have justrewritten this evening. Its movement is furious and full, and I shalldoubtless discover a thousand repetitions which it will be necessary tostrike out as soon as I come to look it over a little. What a miracle itwould be for me to write even two pages in a day, when heretofore I havescarcely been able to write three in a week! With the _Saint Antony_that was, indeed, the way I worked, but I can no longer content myselfwith that. I wish _Bovary_ to be at the same time heavier and moreflowing. I believe that this week will see me well advanced, and that inabout a fortnight I shall be able to read Bouilhet the whole of thebeginning (a hundred and twenty pages), which, if it goes well, would bea great encouragement, and I shall have passed if not the most difficultpart at least the most annoying. But there are so many delays! I am notyet at the point where I can credit our last interview at Mantes. Whatfoolish and severe vexation you must have passed through that week, mypoor friend! About cases like M----, who throw themselves at your feet,the best thing to do is to pass the sponge over them immediately; but ifyou would care the least bit in the world for the elder Lacroix or thegreat Sainte-Beuve to receive something on the face or elsewhere, youhave only to tell me and it is a commission of which I shall acquitmyself with despatch on my next visit to Paris, in the old-time mannerbetween two journeys; but could you not show Lacroix the door with asingle word? What good is there in discussing, replying to, and angeringhim? This is all very easy to say in cold blood, is it not? It is alwaysthis accursed passion element which causes us all our annoyances. Howtrue is Larochefoucauld's remark: "The virtuous man is he who allowshimself to be concerned with nothing." Yes, it is necessary to bridlethe heart, to hold it in leash like an enraged bulldog, and then let itloose at a bound at the opportune moment. Run, run, my old fellow, barkloudly and go at top speed; what these rogues have that is superior tous is patience. So in this story, Lacroix by his cowardly tenacitywearies De Lisle, who ends by becoming vexed and leaving the game and_Le Jeune irrite_ (the whole of Sainte-Beuve is in these words) will nothave had finally either a sword in his paunch or a foot to hiscoat-tails, and will privately begin his machinations anew, as Homaiswould say.
You are astonished to find yourself the butt of so much calumny,opposition, indifference and ill-will. You will be more so and havemore of it; it is the reward of the good and the beautiful: one maycalculate the value of a man from the number of his enemies and theimportance of a work by the evil said of it. Critics are like fleaswhich always jump upon white linen and adore lace. That reproach sent bySainte-Beuve to the _Paysanne_ establishes my belief in the _Paysanne_more firmly than Victor Hugo's praise of it; we give our praise toeverybody, but our blame, no! Who is there that has not made a parody onthe mediocre?
In regard to Hugo, I do not believe that it is time to write to him; yougave him a month for an answer, and it is not more than two weeks sinceour packet left; so it is necessary to wait at least as long as that,provided it has not been seized. Every precaution was taken, my motheraddressing the letter herself.
What can this phrase in your letter this morning mean in speaking of DeLisle? "I believe that I was deceived in my impression of yesterday."The words of the _bourgeois_ at Preault are good. Have I told you what acurate of Trouville said one day after I had dined with him? When Irefused champagne (I had already eaten and drunk enough to make me fallunder the table), my curate was astonished and turned on me an eye! suchan eye! an eye expressing envy, admiration, and disdain together, andsaid to me, shrugging his shoulders: "Come, now! all you young peoplefrom Paris who _gulp down champagne_ with your fine suppers, make verylittle mouths when you come to the provinces!" And it was so easy tounderstand that between the words "fine suppers" and "gulp" he meant tosay "with the actresses!" What horizons! and to know that I excitedthis brave man! In this connection I am going to allow myself aquotation: "Come now!" said the chemist, shrugging his shoulders, "doyou know about these fine parties at the house of the traitor! themasked balls! the champagne? All this goes on, I assure you."
"I do not believe that it injures him," objected Bovary.
"Nor I either," quickly replied M. Homais, "and it may be necessary forhim to keep them up or be taken for a Jesuit. But if you only knew whatlives those fellows lead, in the Latin Quarter with their actresses!Generally speaking, students are well looked upon in Paris. For thelittle attractiveness that they have, they are received into the bestsociety, and there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain whofall in love with them and, in consequence sometimes give themopportunities of making fine marriages." In two pages I believe I havecollected all the stupidity that one hears in the provinces aboutParis,--student life, actresses, the pickpockets you encounter in thepublic gardens, and the cooking at the restaurants, "always moreunwholesome than provincial cooking."
That stif
fness of which Preault accuses me is astonishing; it appearsthat when I have on a black coat, I am not the same man. And it iscertain that I am then wearing a kind of disguise which my face andmanners ought to resent, so much effect has the exterior upon theinterior. It is the cap that moulds the head, and all troopers haveabout them the imbecile stiffness of hard lines. Bouilhet pretends that,out in the world, I have the air of a drilled, _bourgeois_ officer. Isit on this account that the illustrious Turgan calls me "the major?" Healso maintains that I have a military air, and one could pay me nocompliment that would be less agreeable. If Preault knew me, he would,on the contrary, find that I have a too bare-breasted air like the goodcaptain; but how beautiful Ferrat must have been with his "good southernfury;" I can see him there now gasconading; it is tremendous. And,speaking of the grotesque, I was overwhelmed at the funeral of MadamePouchet; decidedly, the good God is romantic, for he continually minglesthe two kinds together. Nevertheless, while I was looking at the poorPouchet, who was in torture, shaking like a reed in the wind, do youknow what came up before me? A gentleman who asked me, on my voyage:"What kind of museums have they in Egypt? _What is the condition oftheir public libraries?_" And when I demolished his illusions, he wasdesolate. "Is it possible!" said he. "What an unfortunate country! Whata civilization!" etc....
The burial was Protestant, the priest speaking in French beside thegrave; Monsieur would prefer it so ... "since Catholicism is denuded ofthe flowers of rhetoric." O humans! O mortals! and to think we arealways duped, that we have the vanity to believe ourselves imaginative,when the reality crushes us! I went to that ceremony with the intentionof elevating my mind to the point of penetration; to try to discover afew pebbles; and then--these blocks fell upon my head! The grotesquedeafened my ears, and the pathetic was in convulsions before my eyes.Whence I draw (or rather withdraw) this conclusion: _It is nevernecessary to fear exaggerating_; all the great ones have done it:Michael-Angelo, Rabelais, Shakespeare and Moliere. It is a question ofmaking a man take an injection when he has no syringe; well, we mustfill the theatre with apothecaries' syringes; that is clearly the way toreach genius in its true centre, which is very ridiculous. But tosuppress exaggeration, there must be continuity, proportion, and harmonyin itself. If your good men have a hundred feet, your mountains shouldbe twenty miles high; and what is the ideal if it is not a magnifying?
Adieu; work well, see only friends, mount to the ivory tower, and letcome what may.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Saturday night_.
Finally I have finished my first part (of the second part); that is, Iam at the point where I had intended to be at our last interview atMantes; you see how great a delay this is! I shall pass still anotherweek in re-reading all this and copying it, and a week from to-morrow Ishall spout it to my lord Bouilhet. If this goes, a great anxiety willbe removed, at least, and one good thing I can be sure of, that thefoundation is well established; but I think however, that this book willhave one great fault: that is, the fault of material proportion. I havealready two hundred and sixty pages which contain only the preparationfor action, some expositions, more or less disguised, of character (itis true that they are graduated), and of landscapes and places. Myconclusion, which will be the recital of the death of my little woman,her funeral, and the sorrow of the husband, will follow with sixty pagesat least. There remains, then, for the body of the action one hundredand twenty, or one hundred and sixty pages at the most. Is this not agreat defect? What reassures me (in a slight degree), however, is thatthis book is a biography rather than a gradual development. The drama isa small part of it, so the dramatic element is well drowned in thegeneral tone of the book; perhaps it will not be noticed that there is awant of harmony between the different phases so much as in theirdevelopment; and then, it seems to me that life itself is a little likethis. Our passions are like volcanoes; they grumble continually, but theeruption is only intermittent.
Unfortunately, the French mind has such a rage for amusement, it isnecessary for it always to be seeing things! It cares so little for thatwhich is poetry for me, or for knowing the _exposition_, that perhaps,as one may strike it picturesquely through tableaux, or morally throughpsychological analysis, it may serve exceedingly well that I wear ablouse, or have the appearance of doing so.
This is not the only day that I have suffered from writing in thislanguage and thinking in it! At bottom I am German! The force of studyhas rubbed off all my southern mists. I wish to make books where onlyphrases are written (if one may so put it), as one lives by breathingonly air; what vexes me is the trickery of the plan, the combinationsfor effect, and all the calculations which are the art of it, and uponwhich the effect of style depends exclusively.
And you, good muse, dear colleague in all (colleague comes from_colligere_, to bind together), have you worked well this week? I amcurious to see that second recital. I have to recommend only two things:First, follow your metaphors closely; second, no details outside thesubject; work in a straight line. _Parbleu!_ We shall make somearabesques when we wish to, and better than anybody's. We must show theclassicists that we are more classic than they, and make theromanticists turn pale with rage by surpassing their attempts. I believethe thing feasible, although of no importance. When a verse is good, itloses its school. A good verse by Boileau resembles a good verse byHugo. Perfection has everywhere the same character, which is precisionand justness.
If the book I am writing with so much trouble comes to any good, I shallhave established two truths by its execution alone, which are for meaxioms of knowledge: first, that poesy is purely subjective, that thereare not in literature beautiful art subjects, and that Yvetot is worthas much as Constantinople; consequently, one may write one thing as wellas another, it matters not what. The artist must raise all; he is like apump, having in him a great duct which descends to the entrails ofthings, to the deepest stratum, and makes leap into the light, in giantjets, what was under the earth and seen by no one but himself.
Shall I have a letter from you on awakening? Your letters have not beennumerous this week, my friend! But I suppose it is work which has keptyou. What an admirable face Father Babinet, member of the readingcommittee of the Odeon, will have! I can see now his _facies_, as mychemist would say, listening to the pieces as they are read.
There is taking place here an interesting case. A judge of the court ofassizes, a brave man, is accused of killing his wife and then, havingsewed her in a sack, of throwing her into the water. This poor woman hadmany lovers, and some one discovered at her house (it was a workman ofthe lowest class) a portrait and a letter from a gentleman, a chevalierof the Legion of Honor, a rallying Legitimist, Member of the GeneralCouncil, of the Building Associations, etc., ... of all theAssociations, well known among the vestry, member of the Society ofSaint-Vincent de Paul, of the Society of Saint-Regis, of the Children'sSociety, and all the humbugs possible; highly placed in fine society ofthe right kind, one of those persons who are an honour to a country andof whom it is said: "We are happy to possess such a gentleman"; andhere, at a blow, it is discovered that this merry fellow has beencarrying on relations (this is the phrase) with this merrylass--relations of the most disgusting kind, yes, Madame! Ah! greatHeavens! I jeer like a beggar when I see all those fine people in thehands of the law; the humiliations these good gentlemen receive (theywho find honours everywhere) seem to me to be the just punishment oftheir false pride. It is a disgrace to be always wishing to shine; it isdebasing to mount to the heights and then sink into the mire with themob! One should keep his level. And while there is not in my make-upmuch liking for democracy, I nevertheless love what is common, evenignoble, when it is sincere. But that which lies, which poses, whichaffects a condemnation of passion and assumes a grimace of virtue,revolts me beyond all limits. I feel now for my kind a serene hatred, oran inactive pity which is akin to it. I have made great progress in twoyears, and the political state of things has confirmed my old theories a_priori_, upon the biped without feathers, whom all in a
ll I consider aturkey and a vulture.
Adieu, dear dove.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Tuesday, 1 A.M._
I AM overwhelmed; my brain is dancing in my head. I have been since sixo'clock this evening until now recopying seventy-seven successive pages,and now they make but fifty-three. It is torture. The ramifications ofmy vertebrae to the neck, as M. Enault remarks, are broken from havingbent my head so long. What with the repetition of words, the _alls_, the_buts_, the _fors_ and the _howevers_ I had to strike out, there isnever any end to it, which is the way with this diabolical prose. Thereare, nevertheless, good pages, and I believe that, as a whole, it movesalong; but I doubt if I shall be ready to read it all to Bouilhet onSunday. Just think! since the end of February, I have writtenfifty-three pages! What a charming profession! It is like whipping creamwhen one would like to be rolling marbles.
I am very tired, but have, however, many things to say. I have justwritten four lines to Ducamp, not for you; that would have been areason for his showing you more malevolence--I know the man. This is thereason why I wrote him: to-day I received the last package of hisphotographs, of which I had never spoken to him, and the note was tothank him for it. That was all; I said nothing further. If, in thearticle on the philosophers, on Wednesday, he uses your name accompaniedwith any harmful allusions, I will do what you wish; but for my part, Ishould propose to break off squarely in a pretty, well-defined letter.However, do not let us torment ourselves, since the thing will doubtlessnot take place. It is Bouilhet's opinion (my note to-day is from acontrary hypothesis) that it is best to be on good terms when therupture comes and be able to say to him: here is still another time thatyou are disobliging to me; good evening and good-bye. Do you understand?
As for Enault's article, it seems to me, good Muse, as if you hadexaggerated it. It is stupid and foolish and all that, with its_feminosities_, "sensible woman," "younger woman," etc.--which haveevidently come from Madame ----, who is jealous of you from all reports,and on that I would bet my head. It is our opinion, both Bouilhet's andmine, that he labours hard over his little monthly billets without eversaying anything. Bouilhet is profoundly indignant and proposes not evengoing to see him when he next goes to Paris; but what difference does itmake to us, the opinion of my lord Enault, either written or spoken? AsDucamp said to Ferrat: Can you expect, in the midst of the whirlwind inwhich he lives, with his fascinating personality, his officer's badge,his receptions at the house of M. de Persigny, etc., that he couldpreserve enough perspicacity to feel a new, original, or novel thing?Besides, in this arrangement, there may be something agreed upon. Wenever can turn a negro white and we never can hinder the mediocre frombeing mediocre. I assure you that if he were to say to me "I have hadcurvature of the spine or softening of the brain," it would make melaugh. Do you know what I found out to-day from his photographs? Theonly one he did not publish was the one representing our hotel at Cairoand the garden before our windows where I stood in Nubian costume; it isa bit of malice on his part. He wishes that I did not exist; I haveweighed him, as have you and every body else. The work is dedicated toCormenin, with a dedicatory epigraph in Latin, and in the text is anepigraph taken from Homer, all in Greek. The good Maxime does not know adeclension, but that does not matter. He has had the German work ofLeipsius translated and has pillaged it impudently (in the text that Ilooked over) without quoting it once. I heard that from a friend of histhat I met on the train; you know I said he must have pillaged it, forthere were all sorts of inscriptions that he never would have valued,which are not in the books that we meet in our travels, but which hereports as having been appreciated by him; it is like all the rest ofhis work. As for the _Paysanne_, the eulogy which Bouilhet wrote himabout it (at the same time he wrote to De Lisle, a letter which has metwith no response) is the cause, you may be sure, of his remark toFerrat. Finally, all that is of very little importance. Still, we havebeen very much vexed all Sunday afternoon from it, these storiesdemoralising lord Bouilhet a little, in which respect I find him weak,and me also, for I am caught in it. Frankly now, it is stupid to permitthese fellows to trouble us so. In fact, I find that in injuries,stupidities, foolishness, etc., it is necessary to be angry only whensomething is said to one's face. Make grimaces at my back as much as youwish, my breeches alone contemplate you.
I love you so much when I see you calm and know that you are workingwell, and still more, perhaps, when I know that you are suffering, forthen you write me such superb letters, so full of fire. But, poor dearsoul, take care of thyself, and tax only in moderation thy southernfury, as you called it in speaking of Ferrat.
The advice of De Lisle relative to the _Acropole_ is good. First, sendthe manuscript to Villemain as you sent it to Jersey (I have received noletter about it, which seems strange, and my mother will write some dayto Madame Farmer if I receive nothing); you could even make somecorrections if you find it necessary although it seems good to me,except about the Barbarians, which I persist in finding much theweakest; second, try to have it appear in the _Press_; third, we shallfind some plan, you may be sure. Bouilhet will be there this winter andhe will aid you. His last fossil, the third piece, "Springtime," issuperb; there is in it a pecking of birds around gigantic nests which isgigantic in itself. But he gets too sad, my poor Bouilhet; it isnecessary to straighten up and em ... humanity which em ... us! Oh! Ishall be avenged! In fifteen years from now I shall have undertaken agreat modern romance where they shall all pass in review. I think that_Gil Blas_ has perhaps done this, and Balzac remotely, but the fault ofhis style is that his work is rather more curious than beautiful andstronger than it is brilliant. These are projects of which I should notspeak, as all my books are only the preparation for two, which I willfinish if God lends me life. I mean this one and the Oriental story.
You must see the story of the journey that Enault has published on hisreturn from Italy! He is a wag and a droll fellow, who will make anarticle in that cavalier fashion upon one with whom he has dined withoutfirst asking his permission. As for the article, it is simply stupid,and that one he wrote upon Bouilhet was no stronger. He underlines_bosom_ and _rags_, exclaims "Eight children! O, Poesy!" paints theschool where he thinks it probable there are a certain number ofchildren that will be known to literature! No, if one does not keephimself from all this, _I say it in all seriousness_, there is danger ofhis becoming an idiot.
My father said repeatedly that he never would wish to be a doctor in ahospital for the insane, because if one dealt seriously with madness, heended by becoming mad himself. It is the same in this case; frombecoming too much disturbed by these imbeciles, there is danger ofbecoming such ourselves. Heavens! what a headache I have! I must go tobed! my thumb is hollowed by my pen and my neck is twisted.
I find Musset's observation of Hamlet that of a profound _bourgeois_,and this is the reason why: he reproaches the inconsistency of Hamlet, asceptic, seeing with his eyes the soul of his father. But first, it wasnot the soul that he saw, but a phantom, a shadow, a thing, a materiallyliving shadow, which has no connection either in popular or in poeticideas with the abstract idea of the soul. It is we, metaphysicians andmodern people, who speak this language; and then, Hamlet did not_question_ at all the philosophic sense, he was _dreaming_. I believethis observation of Musset's is not his own but Mallefille's; in thepreface of his _Don Juan_, he is superficial, to my mind. A peasant inour day could see a phantom perfectly and, the next day in broaddaylight, reflect in cold blood upon life and death, but not upon fleshand the soul. Hamlet was not reflecting upon the subtleties of someschool, but upon human thoughts. On the contrary, it is this state ofperpetual fluctuation in Hamlet, this vagueness in which he holdshimself, this want of decision in will and solution in thought, whichmakes him sublime.
But _people of mind_ will have their characters all of a piece and_consistent_ (since they can have them so only in books). There is notan aim of the human soul which is not reflected in this conception.Ulysses is perhaps the strongest type in all
ancient literature, andHamlet of all modern.
If I were not so weary, I should express my thought at greater length;it is so easy to prattle about the beautiful; but to say in proper style"Shut the door," or "He has a desire to sleep," requires more geniusthan to make all the Courses of Literature in the world.
Criticism is the lowest round on the ladder of literature, nearly alwaysin form and in moral value; incontestably it comes after the end-rhymeand the acrostic, which demand at least the work of some invention.
Now, adieu.
TO LOUIS BOUILHET.
TROUVILLE, _Aug. 23, 1853_.
WHAT a confounded rain! How it falls! Everything is imbedded in water!From my window I can see bonnets passing shielded by red umbrellas;barques are putting out to sea; I hear the chains of the anchors whichthey are raising with general imprecations addressed to the bad weather.If it lasts three or four days more, which seems to me probable, weshall pack up and return home.
Admire here one of the polite ways of Providence which would be hard tobelieve: in whose house have I lodgings? In the house of a chemist! Andof whom is he the pupil? Of Dupre! Like him, he deals in Seltzer water!"I am the only one in Trouville who manufactures Seltzer water" he says.In fact, at eight o'clock in the morning I am often awakened by thenoise of corks which go off unexpectedly. Pif! paf! The kitchen is thelaboratory as well as kitchen; a monstrous still stands humbly among thestewpans:
The frightful length of its copper smoking,
and often they cannot put on the dinner-pot because of pharmaceuticalpreparations. In order to go into the yard, it is necessary to pass overbaskets filled with bottles. There creaks a pump which wets your legs;two boys are rinsing decanters; a parrot repeats from morning tillnight: "Have you breakfasted, Jacko?" and finally, a brat about tenyears old, the son of the house and the hope of the pharmacy, exercisesin all sorts of athletics, such as raising himself from the ground byhis teeth.
This journey to Trouville has brought the whole inner story of my lifebefore me. I have dreamed much in this theatre of my passions. I nowtake leave of them forever, I hope; in the part of life that remains,there is time to say adieu to youthful sadness. I cannot conceal,however, that it has come back to me in waves, during the last threeweeks. I have had two or three good afternoons in full sunlight, allalone upon the sand, where I found again some other sad things besidebroken shells! But I have finished with it now, God be thanked! We shallnow cultivate our garden and no more raise our head at the cry of thecrows.
How I long to finish _Bovary_, _Anubis_, and my three prefaces, in orderto enter a new period and give myself up to the "purely beautiful!" Theidleness in which I have lived for some time gives me the cutting desireto transform through art all that is "myself," all that I have felt. Ifeel no need of writing my memoirs; my personality even repels me, andimmediate objects seem hideous or stupid. I go back to former ideas. Iarrange the barques into old-time ships. I undress the sailors who pass,to make savages of them walking naked upon the silver shores; I think ofIndia, of China, of my Oriental story (of which fragments are coming tome), and I feel like undertaking gigantic epics.
But life is so short! I never can write as I wish, nor the quarter partof what I dream. All that force that we feel and that stifles us mustdie with us without being allowed to overflow!
I revisited yesterday a village two hours' journey from here, where Iwent with that good Orlowski when I was eleven years old. Nothing waschanged about the houses, the cliff, or the fishing-boats. The women atthe wash-house were sewing in the same position, the same number werebeating their soiled linen in the same blue water, and it rained alittle as in former times. It seemed, at certain moments that theuniverse had become immovable, that everything had become a statue, andthat we alone were living. And how insolent nature is! What waggishnesson her impudent visage! One tortures his mind trying to comprehend theabyss that separates him from her, but something comes up more farcicalstill, that is, the abyss that separates us from ourselves. When I thinkthat here, in this place, on looking at this white wall off-setting thegreen, I had some heart throbs, and that I was full of "poesy," I amamazed, lost in a vertigo, as if I had suddenly discovered myself on thepeak of a wall two thousand feet high.
This little work that I am doing, I shall complete this winter, when youare no longer there, poor old man! to arrange, burn, and, classify allmy scribblings. With the _Bovary_ finished, the age of reason willbegin. And then, why encumber ourselves with so many souvenirs? The pasteats up too much and we are never in the present, which alone isimportant in life. How I philosophise! I have need to, since you arethere! It is difficult to write; words are wanting, and I should preferbeing extended on my bear-skin, near you, discoursing "melancholically"together.
Do you know that in the last number of the _Review_ our friend Lecontewas very badly treated? They are definitely low rascals; and "thephalanx" is a dog-kennel. All the animals there are much more stupidthan ferocious. You who love the word "paltry," be assured that is whatit is.
Write me an immeasurable letter as soon as you can, and embrace yourselffor me; adieu.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Wednesday evening, Midnight_.
I HAVE taken up the _Bovary_ again, and since Monday have five pagesalmost done; _almost_ is the word, for it is necessary to take it upagain. How difficult it is! I fear that my _comices_ (primary meetings)may be too long; it is a hard place. I have there all the personages ofmy book in action and in dialogue, mingled with one another, and beyondthem all is a great landscape which envelopes them; if I can succeedwith it, it will be very symphonic.
Bouilhet has finished the descriptive part of his _Fossils_. Hismastodon ruminating in the moonlight on a prairie is enormously full ofpoesy and will be, perhaps, to the public, the most effective of all hispieces! There only remains the philosophic part, which is the last.About the middle of next month, he will go to Paris to select a lodgingwhere he can install himself the first of November. Would that I were inhis place!
Decidedly, the article by Verdun on Leconte (which I have an idea isJourdan's) is more stupid than hostile; I have laughed much at thecomparison they make with the _beautiful lines_ of the _Fall of anAngel_; what bearish politeness! As for the _Indian Poems_ and the pieceabout _Dies irae_, not a word. There is a certain ingenuousness aboutthem, but why call the _sperchius_, _sperkhios_? That seems to me a true_janoterie_. What has become of the good Leconte,--is he progressingwith his Celtic poem?
I have been re-reading some of Boileau, or rather all of Boileau, andwith my pencil on the margin. This seems to me truly strong; one doesnot tire of what is well written, for style is life! It is the blood ofthe thought! Boileau has a little river, straight, not deep, butadmirably limpid and well within its banks; and that is the reason whythe waters have not dried up; nothing is lost of what he wishes to say.But how much art he has used and with so little effort!
Within the next two or three years, I intend to re-read attentively allthe French classics and to annotate them; this is work that will serveme in _my prefaces_ (my work of literary critic, you know); I wish tostate there the insufficiency of schools as they are, and to declareplainly that we make no claim to being one of them, we outsiders, nor isit necessary to be one of them. On the contrary, we are in the line oftransmission; that seems to me strictly exact; it reassures andencourages me. What I admire in Boileau is what I admire in Hugo; andwhere one has been good, the other is excellent. There is only onestandard of beauty; it is the same everywhere, although under differentaspects, and more or less coloured by the reflections that dominate it.Voltaire and Chateaubriand, for example, were mediocre for the samereasons, etc. I shall try to make it seen why the aesthetic critic is somuch behind the historic and scientific critic; he has never had anybase. The knowledge that is wanting is that of the anatomy of style; toknow how a phrase is constructed, and where it should be attached. Theystudy manikins and translations with professors,--imbeciles incapable ofholding the instrumen
t of the science they teach (I mean the pen), andthe result is, they lack life!
Love! Love! the secret of the good God which does not easily give itselfup,--the soul, without which nothing is understood.
When I have finished that (and the _Bovary_ and _Anubis_ first of all),I shall without doubt, enter into a new phase, and it seems slow gettingthere; I, who write so slowly, am gnawed by my plans. I wish to producetwo or three long, epic antiques--romances in a grandiose setting, wherethe action may be forcefully fertile and the details rich in themselves,and luxurious and tragic as a whole; books of grand mural painting, ofheroic size.
There was in the _Revue de France_ (a fragment by Michelet upon Danton)a judgment of Robespierre that pleased me much; it stamped him as beingin himself a government; and it was for that reason that all Republicangovernmental maniacs loved him. Mediocrity cherishes rules, but I hatethem. I feel myself against them and against all restrictions,corporations, caste, hierarchy, levels, and droves, with an execrationthat fills my soul; it is on this side, perhaps, that I comprehend themartyr.
Adieu, beautiful ex-democrat.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Wednesday, Midnight_.
HAVE you still your tooth? Take steps, then, immediately to have itremoved. There is nothing in the world worse than physical pain; and itis worse than death for a man, as Montaigne says, "to put himself underthe skin of a calf to escape it." Pain has this evil: it makes us feellife too much; it gives us, as it were, a proof of malediction toourselves which weighs upon us; it humiliates us, and that is sad forbeings that are sustained solely by their pride.
Certain natures suffer not so much, and people without nerves are happy;but of how many things are they not deprived? According as one rises inthe scale of being, the nervous faculty increases, that is, the facultyfor suffering. Are to suffer and to think the same thing, then? Isgenius, after all, only a refinement of pain, that is to say, ameditation of the objective through the soul?
The sadness of Moliere came wholly from the human stupidity which hefelt contained in himself; he suffered from the Diaforus and Tartuffeswhich passed before the eyes of his brain. Do you not suppose that thesoul of a Veronese imbibes colour like a piece of stuff plunged into theboiling vat of a dyer? All things appear to him as if magnifying glasseswere before his eyes. Michael-Angelo said that marble trembled at hisapproach; what is sure is, that he himself trembled when he approachedmarble. Mountains, for this man, had souls; they were of a correspondingnature and there was a sympathy between them like that betweenanalogous elements. And this should establish, I know not where or how,some kind of volcanic train that would make poor human implementsexplode.
I find myself nearly half through my _comices_. I have made fifteenpages this month, not finished them,--but whether they are good or bad,I know not. How difficult dialogue is when one especially wishes it tohave character; to paint by dialogue, and keep it lively, precise, anddistinguished while it remains commonplace is monstrous, and I know ofno one who has done this in a book. It is necessary to write thedialogue in comedy, while the narrative takes the epic style.
This evening I began again that accursed page about the lamps which Ihave already written four times; it is enough to make one beat his headagainst a wall! I am trying to paint (in one page) the gradations of theenthusiasm of a multitude watching a good man as he places many lamps insuccession upon the outside of the mayor's residence; it is necessary tomake seen the crowd howling with astonishment and joy, and that withoutany apparent motive or reflection on the part of the author.
You are astonished at some of my letters, you say; you find in themwell-written, pretty malice; well, I write what I think; but when itcomes to writing for others, and making them speak as they would havespoken, what a difference! A moment ago, for example, I was trying toshow in a dialogue a particular man who must be at the same timegood-natured, commonplace, a little vulgar and pretentious! And beyondall this one must make sure that the point is clear. In a word, all thedifficulties that we have in writing come from a lack of order. It is aconviction that I now have, that if you are troubled to give the rightturn to an expression, it is sure that _you have not the idea_. A veryclear image or sentiment in the head leads to the word on paper. The oneflows from the other. "Whatever is well conceived," etc.... I have beenre-reading this in old father Boileau; or rather I have read himentirely again (I am now on his prose works), and find him a master manand a great writer rather than a poet. But how stupid they have made himout! What paltry interpreters he has had! The race of collegeprofessors, pedants of pale ink, have lived upon him and stretched himthin, chattering over him like a cloud of locusts in a tree. He was notdense! No matter, he was solid of root and well planted, straight andwell-poised.
The literary critic seems to me a thing to be made anew; those who havemeddled with it are not of the trade, and while perhaps they know theanatomy of a phrase, they have not a drop of the physiology of style.
And about _La Servante_? Why was I afraid that it would not be long?Because it is better to be too long than too short, although the generaldefect of poets is the length, as it is of prose writers, which makesthe first wearisome and the second disgusting. Lamartine, Eugene Sue....Verse in itself is so convenient for disguising the absence of ideas!Analyse a beautiful passage of verse and another of prose, and you willsee which is the fuller. Prose, art aside, must needs bristle withthings to be discovered; but in verse the most trifling things appear.Thus we may say in comparison that the most unnoticed idea in a phraseof prose may suffice to make a whole sonnet; often, three or four plansare necessary in a prose work; do we expect to find this in poetry?
I have at this moment a great rage for Juvenal. What style! what style!and what a language Latin is! I also flatter myself that I begin tounderstand Sophocles a little. As for Juvenal, it goes along smoothlyenough, save here and there for some hidden meaning, which I quicklyperceive. I should much like to know, and with many details, why Saulcyrefused Leconte's article; what are the motives alleged? This must beinteresting for us to know; try to get at the last word of the story.
Try to be better and to work better in Paris than in the country, foryou have all your time to yourself. I grudge this poor Leconte hisexperience. In order to follow this trade as Bouilhet has for fouryears, eight and ten hours a day (and he had the boarding-house keepersat his back more than Leconte), I believe it is necessary to have thestrongest constitution and a cerebral temperament of Titanic endurance.He will have merited glory as much as the other, but one can go toheaven only as a martyr, mounting on high with a crown of thorns, apierced heart, bleeding hands and radiant face.
Adieu; a thousand kisses for thee!
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Wednesday, Midnight_.
MY HEAD is on fire, as I remember to have had it after passing long dayson horseback, because to-day I have rudely ridden my pen. I havewritten since half-past twelve without stopping (save for five minutesat one time and another to smoke a pipe, and about an hour for dinner).My _comices_ were such a trial to me that I have broken loose from them,even to the extent of calling them finished, both Greek and Latin; fromto-day, I do no more of them; it is too hard! it would be the death ofme, and I wish to go to see you.
Bouilhet pretends that it will be the most beautiful scene in the book.What I am sure of is that it will be new and that the intention is good.If ever the effects of a symphony were reported in a book, it will behere. It is necessary for the roar to be heard through it all: thebellowing of the bulls, the sighs of love, and the phrases of theadministrators at once distinguishable; and over all the sunlight andthe gusts of wind that fan the large bonnets into motion. The mostdifficult passages of _Saint Antony_ were child's play in comparison. Ihave come to nothing dramatic except the interlacing of the dialogue andopposition in characters. I am now in the open; before another week, Ishall have passed the knot upon which all depends. My brain seems toosmall to take in at a single glance this complex situation. I h
avewritten ten pages at a time, skipping from one phrase to another.
I am almost sure that Gautier did not see you in the street when he didnot salute you; he is like myself, very near-sighted, and with me suchthings are customary. It would have been a gratuitous insolence, whichis not his manner of behaviour; he is a great, good-natured man, verypeaceful and very p----. As for espousing the animosities of a friend,I strongly doubt it, from the way in which he spoke to me in the firstplace. The dedication, in spite of your opinion, proves nothing at all_pro_ or _con_. The poor boy hangs to everything, tacks his name toeverything that is descending this Nile! If anyone could strengthen mein my literary theories, it would be he. The farther off the time whenDucamp followed my advice, the more he goes down; for, between _Galaor_and the _Nil_ there is a frightful decadence, and in the _Livreposthume_, which is between them, he is at his lowest, and the force ofthe young Delessert is no better. Jacotot's proposition was strangelyrevolting to me, and you were in the right. You try to be polite to ascamp like that? oh! no, no, no!
What a strange creature you are, dear friend, to send me diatribesstill, as my chemist would call them. You ask me for a thing, I say"Yes," and you still continue to mutter! Oh, well! since you concealnothing from me (which I approve), I will not conceal from you that thisappears to me to be a bad habit with you. You wish to establish betweenrelations of a different nature a bond of which I cannot see the senseor the utility. I do not at all comprehend how the kindnesses you showme when I am in Paris, affect my mother in any way. For three years Ihave been at the Schlesingers', where she has never set foot. In thesame way, Bouilhet has been coming here every Sunday for eight years tosleep, dine and lunch, but we have not once seen his mother, who comesto Rouen nearly every month; and I assure you that my mother is not atall shocked. Nevertheless, it shall be according to your wish. I promiseyou, I swear it, that I will explain to her your reasons and that Iwill pray her to bring it about that you may see each other. As for theoutcome, with the best will in the world, I can do nothing; perhaps youwill please each other much, perhaps you will displease each otherenormously. The good woman is not very approachable, and she has ceasedto see not only all her old acquaintances but even her friends; I knowonly one of them and she does not live in the country.
I have just finished Boileau's Correspondence; he was less narrow amonghis intimates than in _Apollon_. I found there many confidences thatcorrected his judgments. _Telemaque_ was harshly enough judged, etc.,and he avows that Malherbe was not a poet. But have you not noticed ofhow little value is the correspondence of the great men of that time? Itis, in fact, all commonplace. Lyricism in France is a new faculty; Ibelieve that the education of the Jesuits has been a considerablemisfortune to letters. They have taken nature away from art. Since theend of the sixteenth century, even to the time of Hugo, all books,however beautiful they may be, smell of the dust of the college. I amnow going to re-read all my French and to take a long time to prepare myhistory of the poetical sentiment of France. It is necessary to writecriticism as one would write a natural history, _with the absence ofmoral idea_; it is not for us to declaim upon such and such a form, butto show in what it consists, how it is attached to another and by whatit lives (aestheticism awaits its Saint-Hilaire, that great man who hasshown the legitimacy of monsters). When the human soul is treated withthe impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study ofmaterial things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the onlymeans by which humanity can put itself above itself. It will thenconsider itself frankly through the mirror of its works; it will be likeGod and judge from on high.
Well, I believe that feasible; perhaps, as in mathematics, we have onlyto find the method. Before all, it will be applicable to art and toreligion, which are the two great manifestations of the idea. Supposeone begins thus: the first idea of God being given (the most simplepossible), the first poetic sentiment being born (the most slender thatcould be), each finds at first its manifestation, and easily finds it inthe savage infant, etc.; here is, then, the first point: you havealready established relations. Now, if one were to continue, makingcount of all relative contingents, climate, language, etc.; then, fromdegree to degree one could come up to the art of the future, and thehypothesis of the Beautiful, to a clear conception of its reality, tothat ideal type where all our effort should tend; but it is not for meto charge myself with this task, for I have other pens to cut.
Adieu.
TO MADAME X.
CROISSET, _Friday, Midnight, 1854_.
I HAVE passed a sad week, not because of my work, but on your account,and because of my thoughts concerning you. I will tell you moreprivately the personal reflections that were the result of this state ofmind.
You believe that I do not love you, my poor dear friend, and say thatyou are only a secondary consideration in my life. I have hardly anyhuman affection for anyone greater than I feel for you, and as foraffection towards woman, I swear to you that you stand first in myheart,--the only one; and I will affirm further: I never have felt asimilar love--so prolonged, so sweet, above all, so profound.
As to the question of my immediate installation in Paris, I must give upthe plan at once; it is _impossible_ to carry it out now, to say nothingof the money I should have but have not. I know myself well: it wouldmean the loss of the winter; and perhaps of my book. Bouilhet spoke veryeasily about it, he, who is fortunate enough to be able to writeanywhere, who for twelve years worked in continual confusion. But for meit is like beginning a new life. I am like a pan of milk--in order thatcream shall rise, I must not be disturbed! But I say to you again: ifyou _wish_ that I should come, now, instantly, for a month, two months,four months, cost what it may, I will go. If not, this is my plan: fromthe present time until I finish _Bovary_, I will visit youoftener,--eight times in two months, without missing a week, except forthat time when you will not be able to see me until the end of January.Then we shall meet regularly through April, June, and September, and ina year I shall be very near the end of my book.
I have talked over all this with my mother. Do not accuse her, even inyour heart, because she is on your side. I have concluded pecuniarysettlements with her, and she is about to make arrangements for the careof my rooms, my linen, etc., for a year. I have engaged a servant whom Ishall take to Paris, so you see that my resolution is not whollyunshakeable, and if I am not buried here under about three hundredpages, you may see me before long installed in the capital. I shalldisturb nothing at my rooms, because I always work best there, and Ishall probably pass most of my time there, on account of my mother, whois growing old; so reassure yourself, I shall show enough filialaffection, and be very good!
Do you know whither the sadness of all this has led me, and what Ishould like to do? I should like to throw literature to the windsforever, to do nothing more, but go and live with you! I say to myself;Is art worth so much trouble, so much weariness for me, so many tearsfor her? Of what use is all this effort, perhaps to arrive only atmediocrity in the end? For I own to you that I am not cheerful; I havesad doubts at times regarding myself and my work. I have just re-read_Novembre_, from curiosity. I did the same thing eleven years agoto-day. I had so far forgotten it that it seemed quite new to me, but itis not good, and the effect is not satisfactory. I see no way ofre-writing it; I should be compelled to recast it entirely, becausealthough here and there I find a good phrase, a good comparison, thereis no homogeneity of style. Conclusion: _Novembre_ will go the same waywith _Sentimental Education_, and will remain with it indefinitely in myportfolio. Ah, what good sense I showed in my youth not to publish! HowI should have blushed for it now!
I am about to write a monumental letter to the "Crocodile." Hasten tosend me yours, because it is several days since my mother wrote toMadame Farmer, and she persecutes me to let her read my letter before Isend it away.
I am re-reading Montaigne. It is singular how I am filled with thespirit of this good fellow! Is this a coincidence, or is it because whenI was eighteen years old I
read only Montaigne during a wholetwelvemonth? I am really astonished, however, to find very often in hiswritings the most delicate analysis of my own sentiments. He has thesame tastes, the same opinions, the same manner of living, the samemanias. There are persons I admire more than Montaigne, but there is noone I would evoke more gladly, or with whom I could talk better.
Thine ever.
TO LAURENT PICHAT
(Director of the _Revue de Paris_.)
CROISSET, _Thursday evening, 1856_.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just received the _Bovary_, and I feel that Imust thank you immediately (for if I am somewhat churlish, I am not aningrate). You have rendered me a great service in accepting this work,such as it is, and I shall not forget it.
Confess that you have found me, and that you still find me (more thanever, perhaps) possessed of a ridiculous amount of vehemence. I shouldlike to own some day that you are right; I promise that when that timecomes I will make you the most abject excuses! But understand, dearfriend, that it was only an experiment I attempted, and I hope theworkmanship is not too crude.
Will you believe me when I tell you that the ignoble realism you find inmy story, the reproduction of which disgusts you, revolts me quite asmuch? If you knew me better, you would know that I hold commonplaceexistence in execration. I always seclude myself from it as much aspossible. But, for aesthetic purposes, I wished this time--and only thistime--to exploit it from its very foundation. So I have undertaken thematter in a heroic way; I listened to the minutest details; I acceptedall, said all, painted all,--an ambitious attempt.
I explain myself badly, but it is enough that you comprehend the reasonfor my resistance of your criticisms, judicious as they were. You willmake another book for me! You struck at the poetic foundation whencesprings the type (as a philosopher would say) from which the work wasconceived. In short, I should have failed in what I owe to myself, andalso in what I owe to you, if I had yielded as an act of deference andnot of conviction.
Art demands neither complaisance nor politeness,--nothing butfaith--faith and liberty! And on that point we may join hands!
Under an unfruitful tree, whose branches are always green, I am
Faithfully yours.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
1857.
MY GOOD FRIEND: I believe it is always considered proper to wash one'ssoiled linen. Now I will wash mine immediately. You say you have been"very much vexed" at me, and you must feel so still, if you reallysuppose that I had, in company with Aubeyet, said anything againsteither yourself or your works. I am writing this in all seriousness.Such an accusation chokes me, wounds me. I am made so--I cannot help it.Know, then, that such cowardly conduct is completely antipathetic to me.I do not allow anyone to say, in my presence, anything about my friendsthat I would not say myself to their faces. And if a stranger opens hismouth to lie about them, I close it for him immediately. The contrarycustom is the usual thing, I know, but it is not my way. Let us have nomore discussion of this! If you do not know me better than that by thistime, all the worse for you! Let us consider less serious matters, andgive me your word of honour, for the future, never again to judge me asif I were a stranger.
Know also, O Feydeau! that I am not a bit of a _farceur_. There is noanimal in the world more serious than I! Sometimes I laugh, but I jokevery little, and less now than ever before. I am sick, as a result offear; all sorts of anguish fill my being. I am about to write once more!
No, my good fellow, I'm not so stupid! I shall not show you anything ofmy story of Carthage until the last line is written, because I amalready assailed with doubts enough about it without adding to themthose you would express. Your observations would make me "lose theball." As to the archaeology, that will be "probable." And that's all!Provided no one can prove that I have written absurdities, that is all Iask. As to the botanical queries that may arise, I can laugh at them. Ihave seen with my own eyes all the plants and all the trees that I needfor my purpose.
Besides, all this matters very little; it is quite a secondaryconsideration. A book may be full of enormities and blunders, and yet benone the less beautiful. If this doctrine were admitted, it would beconsidered deplorable, of course; especially in France, where reigns thepedantry of ignorance! But I see in the contrary tendency (which ismine, alas!) a great danger. The study of the external makes us forgetthe soul. I would give the half-ream of notes that I have written duringthe past five months, and the ninety-eight books that I have read, tobe, for three seconds only, really stirred by the passion and emotionexperienced by my heroes! Let us guard against the temptation to dealwith trifles, or we shall find ourselves belonging to the coffee-cupschool of the Abbe Delille. There is at present a school of paintingwhich, in order to make us admire Pompeii, adopts a style more _rococo_than that of Girodet. I believe, then, that one must love nothing, thatis, we should preserve the strictest impartiality towards allobjectives.
Why do you persist in irritating my nerves by saying that a field ofcabbages is more beautiful than a desert? Permit me first to beg thatyou will go and look at the desert before talking about it! And even ifthere is anything as beautiful, go there just the same. But in yourexpression of a preference for the _bourgeois_ vegetable, I see only anattempt to enrage me, which has been quite successful.
You will not have from me any criticism written on _l'Ete_ because,first, it would take too much of my time; and second, I might say thingsthat would vex you. Yes, I am afraid of compromising myself, for I amnot sure of anything, and that which displeased me might, after all, bethe best thing I could have said. I shall wait for your brutal andunwavering opinion regarding _l'Automne_. _Le Printemps_ pleased andentranced me, without any restrictions. As to _l'Ete_, I have made afew.
Now,--but I must stop, because my observations may be directed againstan affair that is already settled, which perhaps is a good thing--I donot know. And as there is nothing in the world more tiresome or stupidthan an unjust criticism, I will withhold mine, although it might havebeen good. So that is all, my dear old boy! You accused me in your mindof a cowardly action. This time you have reason to call me cowardly, butthe cowardice is only that of prudence.
Are you amusing yourself? Do you employ your preservatives, impure man?What a wicked fellow is my friend Feydeau, and how I envy him! As forme, I worry myself immeasurably. I feel old, tired, withered. I am assombre as a tomb and as crabbed as a hedgehog.
I have just read Cohan's book from one end to the other. I know that itis very faithful, very good, very wise, but I prefer the old _Vulgate_,because of the Latin. How swelling it is, compared with this poor, puny,pulmonic little Frenchman! I will show you two or three mistranslations(or rather, embellishments) in the said _Vulgate_, which have morebeauty than the real meaning.
Go on and amuse yourself, and pray to Apollo to inspire me, for I amsadly flattened out.
Thine ever.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
CROISSET, _Sunday evening, 1858_.
WHAT has become of you? As for myself, I have passed nearly four days insleeping, because of extreme fatigue; then I wrote my notes of travel,and my lord Bouilhet has come to visit me.
During the week that he has been here we have been digging ferociously.I must tell you that the story of Carthage is to be completely changed,or rather, to be written over again, as I have destroyed the whole ofthe original! It was absurd, impossible, false!
I believe now that I have struck the right note at last. I begin tocomprehend my personages, and already feel a great interest in them. Ido not know when I shall finish this colossal work. Perhaps not beforetwo or three years. From now on, I shall beg everyone that meets me notto talk to me. I should like to send out notes announcing my death!
My course of action is planned. For me, the public, outside impressions,and time, exist no more. To work!
I have re-read _Fanny_, at a single sitting, although I already knew itby heart. My impression has not changed, but the whole effect seems tobe more rapid in movement, which is
good. Do not disturb yourself aboutanything, nor think any more about this. When you come here next, Ishall allow myself to point out to you two or three insignificantdetails.
About the middle of next week, _Montarcy_ is to be played. Then, at thebeginning of next month, Bouilhet will return to Mantes, and my motherwill go to Trouville for a little visit of about a week. After that, mydear sir, we shall expect you.
Will that be convenient and agreeable? Why have you not sent me any newsof yourself, you rascal? What are you writing? What are you doing? Howabout Houssaye? etc.
As for myself, I take a river bath every day. I swim like a triton. Myhealth never has been better. My spirits are good, and I am full ofhope. When one is in good health he should store up a reserve ofcourage, in order to meet disappointments in the future. They will come,alas!
I believe that in the Rue Richer there is a photographer who sells viewsof Algiers. If you could find me a view of Medragen (the tomb of theNumidian kings), near Algiers, and send it to me, I should be verygrateful.
TO JULES DUPLAN.
1858.
I HAVE arrived, in my first chapter, at the description of my littlewoman. I am polishing up her costume--a task that pleases me. It has setme up not a little. I spread myself out, like a pig, on the stones bywhich I am surrounded; I think that the words "purple" or "diamond" arein every phrase in the chapter. And gold lace!--but I must not say anymore about it.
I shall certainly have finished my first chapter by the time you see meagain (that will not be before December), and perhaps I shall haveadvanced considerably with the second, although it will be impossible towrite it in haste. This book [_Salammbo_] is above all things a groupingof effects. My processes in beginning this romance are not good, but itis necessary to make the surroundings _seem real_ at the very outset.After that there will be enough of details and ornament to give thething a natural and simple effect.
Young Bouilhet has begun his fourth act.
Have you had a good laugh at the fast ordered by Her Majesty QueenVictoria?
I think it is one of the most magisterial pieces of absurdity that Iever have known; it is amazing! O Rabelais, where is thy vast mouth?
TO MADEMOISELLE LEROYER DE CHANTEPIE.
_December 26, 1858._
YOU may think that I have forgotten you, but I have done nothing of thekind! My thoughts are often turned towards you, and I address myself tothe "unknown God," of whom St. Paul speaks, in prayers for the comfortand satisfaction of your spirit. You hold in my heart a very high andpure place; you would hardly believe me if I should tell you what amarvellous depth of sentiment your first letters touched in me. I musttell you of all that I feel, at some better time than this. We must meetsoon, to clasp each other's hands, that I may press a kiss upon yourbrow!
This is what has happened since I wrote my last letter:
I was in Paris for ten days, where I assisted and co-operated in thelast performances of _Helene Peyron_. This is a very beautiful play, andit is also a great success. Making calls, reading the journals, etc.,kept me very busy, and I returned here worn out, as usual, and as to themoral effect, I was disgusted with all that uproar. I fell upon my_Salammbo_ again with fury.
My mother has gone to Paris, and for a month I have been entirely alone.I have begun my third chapter, and the story is to have twelve. You canjudge how much remains for me to do. I have thrown the preface into thefire, although I worked two months on it this summer. But I am justbeginning, _at last_, to feel entertained by my own work. Every day Irise at noon, and I retire at four o'clock in the morning. A white bearis not more solitary and a god is not more calm. It was time! I think ofnothing but Carthage, and it is necessary that I should. To write a bookhas always meant to me the necessity of imagining myself to be actuallyliving in the place described. This will explain my hesitations, mydistress of mind, and my slowness.
I shall not return to Paris until the last of February. Between now andthat time you will see in the _Revue Contemporaine_ a romance by myfriend Feydeau, which is dedicated to me, and which I hope you willread.
Do you keep yourself informed as to the works of Renan? They wouldinterest you, and so would the new book by Flourens, on the _Siege del'ame_.
Can you guess what occupies me at present? The maladies of serpents(always for my Carthage book)! I am about to write to Tunis to-day onthis subject. When one wishes to be absolutely accurate in such writing,it costs something! All this may seem rather puerile, or even foolish.But what is the use of living if one may not indulge in dreams?
Adieu! A thousand embraces. Write to me as often as you wish, and asfreely as you can.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
CROISSET, _Thursday_.
I HAVE not forgotten you at all, my dear old boy, but I am working likethirty niggers! I have finally finished my interminable fourth chapterfrom which I have stricken out that which I liked best. Then, I havemade the plan of the fifth, written a quantity of notes, etc. The summerhas not begun badly. I believe that the work will go smoothly now, butperhaps I delude myself. What a book! Heavens! It is difficult!
Yes, I find, contrary to D'Aurevilly, that there is now a question ofhypocrisy and nothing else. I am alarmed, amazed, scandalised at thetranscendent poltroonery that possesses the human race. Everyone fears"being compromised." This is something new,--at least, to such a degreeas appears. The desire for success, the necessity, even, of succeeding,_because of the profit to be made_, has so greatly demoralisedliterature that one becomes stupid through timidity. The idea of failureor of incurring censure makes the timid writer shake in his shoes."That's all very well for you to say, you, who collect your rents," Ithink I hear you remark. A very clever response, the inference of whichis that morality is to be relegated to a place among objects of luxury!The time is no more when writers were dragged to the Bastille. It mightbe rebuilt, but no one could be found to put in it.
All this will not be lost. The deeper I plunge into antiquity, the moreI feel the necessity of reforming modern times, and I am ready to roasta number of worthy citizens!
Do not think any more about _Daniel_. It is finished. It will be read,be sure of that.
When you come to Croisset, before setting out for Luchon (about thebeginning of July, I suppose), bring me the detailed plan of_Catherine_. I have several ideas on your style in general and on yourfuture book in particular.
You are a rascal! You compromise my name in public places! I shallattack you in a court of justice for a theft of titles.
I have two pretty neighbours who have read _Daniel_, twice running. Andthe coachmen of Rouen fall off their seats while reading _Fanny_(historic)!
_A propos_ of morality, have you read that the inhabitants of Glasgowhave petitioned Parliament to suppress the models of nude women in theschools of drawing?
Adieu, old boy; dig hard!
What news of your wife? Why is she at Versailles? It is an atrociousplace, colder than Siberia.
TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.
CROISSET, _May, 1860_.
I MUST tell you of the pleasure I had in reading your two books. I foundthem charming, full of new details and having an excellent style,showing at the same time nervous power and lofty imagination. That ishistory, it seems to me, and original history.
One sees in them always the soul within the body; the abundance ofdetails does not stifle the psychological side. The moral is revealedbeneath the facts, without declamation or digression. It _lives_,--arare merit.
The portrait of Louis XV., that of Bachelier, and above all, that ofRichelieu, seem to me to be products of the most finished art.
How much you make me love Madame de Mailly! She actually excites me!"She was one of those beauties ... like the divinities of a bacchante!"Heavens! You certainly write like angels!
I know of nothing in the world that has interested me more than thefinale of _Madame de Chateauroux_.
Your judgment of the Pompadour will rest without appeal, I fancy. Whatcould anyone say after yo
u?
That poor Du Barry! How you love her, do you not? I love her, too, Imust confess. How fortunate you are, to be able to occupy yourselveswith all that sort of thing, instead of diving into nothingness, orworking upon nothingness, as I must work.
It is altogether charming of you to send me the book, to have so muchtalent, and to love me a little!
I clasp your four hands as warmly as possible, and am ever your
G. FLAUBERT,
Friend of Franklin and of Marat; factionist, and anarchist_of the first order_, and for twenty years a disorganiserof despotism on two hemispheres!!!
TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.
CROISSET, _July 3, 1860_.
SINCE you appear to be interested in my _Carthage_, this is what I haveto tell you about it:
I believe that my eyes have been larger than my belly! To present the_reality_ is almost impossible with such a subject. One's only resourceis to make the thing poetic, but there is danger of falling into the wayof employing the old, well-known tricks of speech that have been usedfrom _Telemaque_ to the _Martyrs_.
I say nothing of the archaeological researches, the labour of gatheringwhich must not be evident, nor of the language and the form, which arealmost impossible to handle. If I tried to write with absolute accuracyof detail, the work would be obscure; I should be compelled to useabstruse terms, and to stuff the volumes with notes. And if I shouldpreserve the usual French literary tone, the work would become simplybanal. Problem! as Father Hugo would say.
In spite of all that, I continue, but I am devoured by anxiety anddoubts. I console myself with the thought that at least I have attemptedto do something worth while. That is all.
The standard of the Doctrine will be boldly carried this time, I assureyou! But it proves nothing, it says nothing, it is neither historic, norsatirical, nor humorous. On the other hand, is it not stupid?
I have just begun Chapter VIII., after which seven still remain to bewritten. I shall not finish the work before eighteen months have passed.
It was not a mere bit of politeness on my part when I congratulated youon your work. I love history madly! The dead are far more agreeable tome than the living. Whence comes this seduction of the past? Why haveyou made me fall in love with the mistresses of Louis XV.? A love likethis is, now I think of it, a decided novelty in human emotion. Thehistoric sense dates from yesterday, and it is perhaps the bestcharacteristic of the nineteenth century.
What are you doing now? As for myself, I am deep in Kabbala, in Mischna,in the military tactics of the ancients, etc. (a mass of reading that isof no particular use to me, but which I undertook through the urgency ofmy conscience, and also a little to amuse myself). I worry myself overthe assonances that I find in my prose; my life is as flat as the tableupon which I write. The days follow one another, each one appearing tobe exactly like the preceding, externally, at least. In my despair, Isometimes dream of travel. Sad remedy!
Both of you seem to me to have the air of stultifying yourselvesvirtuously in the bosom of your family, among the delights of thecountry! I comprehend that sort of thing, having undergone it severaltimes.
Shall you be in Paris from the first of August to the 25th?
While waiting for the joy of seeing you, I clasp your hands with trueaffection.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
CROISSET, _Sunday, July 20, 1860_.
I REPLY immediately to your pretty letter, received this morning, tocongratulate you, my dear sir, on the life you lead! Accept the homageof my envy.
Since you ask me about _Salammbo_, this is how it stands. I have justfinished the ninth chapter, and am preparing the material for the tenthand eleventh, which I intend to write this winter, living here allalone, like a bear.
I am occupied now with a quantity of reading, which I get through withgreat rapidity. For the last three days I have done nothing but swallowLatin, following, at the same time, my studies of the early Christians.As to the Carthaginians, I really believe I have exhausted all texts onthe subject. After my romance is finished, it would be easy for me towrite a large volume of criticisms of these books, with strongcitations. For instance, no longer ago than to-day, a passage in Ciceroled me to discover a form of Tanith of which I had had no previousknowledge.
I become wise--and sad! Yes, I now lead a holy existence--I, who wasborn with so many appetites! But sacred literature has become a part ofmy very being.
I pass my time in putting stones on the pit of my stomach, to preventthe feeling of hunger! This makes me fairly stupid at times.
As to my "copy" (since that is the term), frankly, I do not know what tothink. I fear I may fall into the way of making continual repetitions,of eternally rehashing the same things. Sometimes my phrases seem to beall cut after the same fashion, and likely to bore anyone to death. Mywill does not weaken, but I find it very difficult to please myself. Ifeel like _eating_ my own words.
You may judge of my agitation just now, when I tell you that I amactually preparing a grand _coup_, the finest effect in the book. Itmust be at once brutal and chaste, mystical yet realistic,--a kind ofeffect that never has been produced before, yet absolutely real andconvincing.
That which I predicted has come true; you are enamoured of Arabianmanners and morals! How much time you will lose, after you return,dreaming, beside the fire, of dark eyes beneath a cloudless sky!
Send me a line as soon as you return to Paris. You said you expected toarrive by the end of the month. That time is now here. We must not letany longer time elapse without seeing each other. Bouilhet's play willhave its first performance about the 15th or the 20th of November.
My mother and my niece are well, and thank you for your kindremembrance. As to my niece, I believe I shall be made a great-unclenext April. I am becoming a veteran, a sheikh, an old man, an idiot!
May you enjoy the last days of your journey and have a good voyage home.I embrace thee!
TO MADEMOISELLE LEROYER DE CHANTEPIE.
CROISSET, _September 8, 1860_.
I RECEIVED on Tuesday morning your letter of the first of September. Itsaddened me to read the expression of your grief. Besides your privatesorrow, you are surrounded by exterior annoyances, as I understand,since you are forced to perceive the ingratitude and selfishness ofthose who are under obligations to you. I must tell you that such is_always_ the case,--a very poor consolation, it is true! But theconviction that rain is wet and that a rattlesnake is dangerous has itsshare in helping us to support our miseries. Why is this so? But here weattempt to encroach upon the omniscience of God!
Let us try to forget evil, and turn to the sunshine and the good we mayfind in life. If a malicious person wounds you, try to remember thekindness of some noble heart, and fill your mind with that recollection.
You tell me that you find absolutely no sympathy of ideas. That is onereason why you should live in Paris. One always finds there some personto whom one can talk. You were not made for provincial life. I amconvinced that among other surroundings you would have suffered less.Each soul has its own atmosphere. You must suffer keenly, in the midstof the folly, lies, calumnies, jealousies, and indescribable pettinesswhich are almost the inevitable accompaniment of _bourgeois_ life insmall towns. Of course, that sort of thing exists in Paris also, but inanother form--less direct and less irritating.
There is still time to form a good resolution. Do not continue to live"on foot" as you have lived heretofore. Tear yourself away! Travel! Doyou think you may die on the way? Ah, well, never mind! No, no, believeme when I tell you that you would be better for it, physically andmorally. But you need a master, who would order you to go, and force youto it! I know you as well as if I had lived with you twenty years. Isthis presumption on my part,--an excessive sympathy that I feel for you?
I assure you that I am very fond of you, and that I wish you to know, ifnot happiness, at least tranquillity. But it is not possible to enjoythe least serenity with your habit of delving incessantly among thegreatest mysteries. You kill both y
our body and your soul in trying toconciliate two contradictory things: religion and philosophy. Theliberalism of your mind revolts against the old rubbish of dogma, andyour natural mysticism takes alarm at the extreme consequences whitheryour reason leads you. Try to confine yourself to science, to purescience; learn to love facts for themselves. Study ideas as naturalistsstudy insects. Such contemplation may be full of tenderness. The breastsof the Muses are full of milk; and that liquid is the beverage of thestrong. And--once more--leave the place where your soul is stifling. Goat once, instantly, as if the house were afire!
Think of me sometimes, and believe always in my sincere affection.
TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.
1861.
YOU must have found a letter from me at your house in Paris, as I wroteto you the same day I received your book (last Monday), after reading itfrom one end to the other without hastening.
I was enchanted with it! It has an upspringing power that never flagsfor an instant. As to the analysis, it is perfect--it fairly dazzles me.In my former letter you will find my impression given immediately afterthe first reading. I should now be reading it a second time, if mymother had not three ladies under her roof, who are regaling themselveswith it! It will certainly appeal to the fair sex, and therefore will bea success--I believe that is the general idea. But I have foundopportunities to dip into your _Philomene_ here and there, and I knowthe book perfectly. My opinion is this: You have done that which youwished to do, and have done it with great success.
Do not have any anxiety about it. Your _religieuse_ is not banal, thanksto the explanation at the beginning. That was the danger, but you haveavoided it.
But that which lends the book its simplicity has perhaps restricted itsbreadth a little. Beside Sister Philomene I should have wished to seecontrasted the generality of _religieuses_, who scarcely resemble her.And that is the only objection I have to make. It is true that you havenot entitled your book: _Morals of a Hospital!_ This may be the cause ofsome criticism.
I cannot find words to tell you how pleased I am with your work. Inotice a new effect of realism in it,--the power to describe the naturalconnection of facts. Your method of doing this is excellent. Perhaps thestrongest interest of the work springs from this.
What an imbecile was Levy! But he is very amusing, all the same.
No, there are not too many "horrors" (for my personal taste, there arenot even enough!--but that is a question of temperament). You stoppedjust at the very limit. There are exquisite traits,--the old man whocoughs, for instance, and the head surgeon among his pupils, etc. Theconclusion is superb--I mean the death of Barnier.
It was necessary, perhaps, for you to make your romance in six volumes,but it must have been a wearisome piece of work. They say it isimpossible to please everyone; but I am convinced that your _SisterPhilomene_ will have a great success, and shall not be at all surprisedat it.
I have said nothing about your style, for it has been a long time sinceI first congratulated you upon that!
Romaine excites my admiration beyond bounds. "Ah! To touch, as youtouched, to cut, as you cut there yourself." Here a true and deep noteis sounded.
I am as proud of you as I am displeased with myself. Alas! My goodfriends, things do not go well. It seems to me that _Salammbo_ isstupid enough to kill one! There is too much talk of the unsettledconditions of ancient times, always battles, always furious people. Onelongs for cradling verdure and a milk diet! Berquin would seem deliciousafter this. In short, I am not contented. I believe my plan is bad, butit is too late to change it, because everything now is fully settled.
What do you intend to do next? How goes _La Jeune Bourgeoise_? Write tome when you have nothing better to do, for I think of you very often.
Adieu! A thousand thanks, and a thousand sincere compliments! I embraceyou.
TO ERNEST FEYDEAU.
1861.
WHAT a man was old Father Hugo! Heavens! what a poet! I have justdevoured his two volumes. I need you! I need Bouilhet! I need someintelligent auditor! I want to bawl three thousand verses as no one elseever has bawled them! Did I say bawl?--I meant _howl_! I do notrecognize myself--I do not know what possesses me! Ah! that has done megood!
I have found three superb details which are not at all historic andwhich are in my _Salammbo_. I must cut them out, else some one would besure to accuse me of plagiarism. It is the poor that are always chargedwith stealing!
My work is progressing rather better. I am now engrossed in a battle ofelephants, and I assure you that I kill men off like flies! I pourblood in torrents!
I wished to write you a long letter, my poor old boy, about theannoyances you suffer, which seem to me rather serious, but frankly, itis time I went to bed. It will soon be four o'clock in the morning.Father Hugo has turned my brain topsy-turvy!
I, too, have had for some time annoyances and anxieties that are notslight. But--_Allah Kherim!_
You appear to me to be in good condition. You are right. As your bookwill not be about Belgium (the scene, I mean), it will have a freercolour and unity. But think seriously after that of your proposed workon the Bourse, of which there is a crying need.
TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES.
1861.
A GOOD subject for a romance is one that is embodied in one idea,springing up like a single jet of water. It is the "mother idea," whencecome all that follow. One is by no means free to write of such or such athing; he does not _choose_ his subject. This is something that thepublic and the critics do not comprehend, but the secret of allmasterpieces lies in the concordance between the subject and thetemperament of the author.
You are right; we must speak with respect of _Lucrece_; I can compare itonly to Byron, and Byron had not his gravity, nor his sincerity, nor hissadness. The melancholy of the olden time seems to me more profoundthan that of our day, which implies, more or less, the idea ofimmortality beyond the grave. But to the ancients the grave wasinfinity; their dreams were conceived and enacted against a black andunchangeable background. No cries, no convulsions, nothing but thefixity of a thoughtful visage! The gods no longer existed, and theChrist had not yet come; and the ancients, from Cicero to MarcusAurelius, lived at a unique epoch when man alone was all-powerful. I donot find anything like such grandeur as this; but that which renders_Lucrece_ intolerable is its philosophy, which the author presents aspositive. It is because he does not suspect that it is weak; he wishesto explain, to conclude! If he had resembled Epicurus only in mind andnot in system, all parts of his work would have been immortal andradical. No matter! Our modern poets are weak and puny compared withsuch a man!
TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES.
CROISSET, 1862.
TO YOU I can say everything! Well, our god has come down a peg! _LesMiserables_ exasperates me, yet one cannot say a word against it, forfear of being thought a _mouchard_! The position of the author isimpregnable, unassailable. I, who have passed my life in adoring him, amactually indignant at him at present, and must burst out somehow!
I find in this book neither verity nor grandeur. As to style, it seemsto me intentionally incorrect and low, as if the story had been writtenthus to flatter the popular taste. Hugo has a good word and kindlyattention for everyone: Saint Simonians, Philippists, even forinnkeepers,--all receive equal adulation, and the types are like thosefound only in tragedies. Where are there any prostitutes like Fantine,convicts like Valjean, and politicians like the stupid donkeys of the A,B, C? Nowhere do we find the real suffering of the _soul_. These areonly manikins, sugar dolls, beginning with Monseigneur Bienvenu. In arage of socialism, Hugo calumniates the Church as he calumniates misery.
Where is the bishop who asks a benediction from a convention? Where isthe factory that turns away a girl because she has a child? And thedigressions! How many of these do we find! The passage about manureshould interest Pelletan!
This book was written for the low socialist class and for thephilosophical-evangelical vermin. What a pretty character is MonsieurMa
rius, living for three days on a cutlet, and Monsieur Enjolras, whonever had given but two kisses in his life, poor fellow!
As to the conversations, they are good, but they are all alike. Theeternal repetitions of Pere Gillenormant, the final delirium of Valjean,the humour of Cholomies and of Gantaise--it is all in the same strain.Always a straining after effects, attempts at jokes, an effort atgaiety, but nothing really comic. There are lengthy explanations ofthings quite outside the subject, and a lack of details that should beindispensable. Then there are long sermons, saying that universalsuffrage would be a very fine thing, and that it is necessary toinstruct the masses,--all of which is repeated to satiety.
Decidedly, this book, in spite of some beautiful passages, is childish.Personal observation is a secondary quality in literature, but oneshould not allow himself to paint society so falsely when he is thecontemporary of Balzac and of Dickens. It was a splendid subject, butwhat calm philosophy it demanded in its treatment, and what breadth ofscientific vision! It is true that Father Hugo disdains science,--and heproves it!
In my mind this confirms Descartes or Spinoza.
Posterity will not pardon him for attempting to be a thinker, in spiteof his nature. Where has the rage for philosophic prose conducted him?And what kind of philosophy? That of Prudhomme, of the Bonhomme Richard,or of Beranger. He is no more of a thinker than Racine, or La Fontaine,whom he considers mediocre; that is, in this book he flows with thecurrent, even as they; he gathers all the banal ideas of his epoch, andwith such persistence that he forgets his work and his art.
This is my opinion; I keep it to myself, you understand. Anyone thathandles a pen must feel too much gratitude towards Hugo to permithimself to criticise him; but I find that externally, at least, even thegods grow old!
I await your reply--and your anger!
TO THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
1863.
WHAT a charming article, my dear Theo, and how can I thank you for it?If anyone had said to me, when I was twenty years old, that TheophileGautier, with whom my imagination was filled, would write such thingsabout me, I should have become delirious with pride!
Have you read the third philippic of Sainte-Beuve? But your panegyric ofTrajan avenges me.
May I expect you the day after to-morrow? Tell Toto to give me an answerregarding this.
Your old friend.
TO THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
_Monday evening, 1863._
MY OLD THEO: Do not come Wednesday. I am invited to dine with thePrincess Mathilde that evening, and we should not have time for a chatbefore dinner. Let us put it off until Saturday. Ducamp has beennotified.
My reply to my lord Froehner will appear in _l'Opinion_ next Saturday,or perhaps Thursday. I believe that you will not be displeased with thephrase that alludes to you.
Is it understood, then--Saturday?
TO THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
CROISSET, _April 3, 1864_.
HOW goes it, dear old master? How comes on the _Fracasse_? What do youthink of _Salammbo_? Is there anything new to say about that youngperson? The _Figaro-Programme_ has mentioned it again, and Verdi is inParis.
As soon as you have finished your romance, come to my cabin and stay aweek (or more) according to your promise, and we will lay out thescenario. I shall expect you in May. Let me know two days in advancebefore you come.
I am dreaming of writing two books, without having done any actual workupon them. I have nails in my throat--if I may so express myself.
It seems to me a very long time since I have seen your dear face.
I imagine that we shall enjoy here (far from courts and women) a greatgossip. So run hither as soon as you are free! I kiss you on bothcheeks.
Tenderest remembrances to all, especially to Toto.
I am a victim of the HHHHHATRED OF THE PRIESTS, having been cursed bythem in two churches--Sainte-Clotilde and Trinity!! They accuse me ofbeing the inventor of obscene travesties, and of wishing to restorepaganism!
TO GEORGE SAND.
1866.
DEAR MADAME: I cannot tell you how much pleased I am that you fulfilledwhat you called a duty. The kindness of your heart has touched me andyour sympathy has made me proud. That is all.
Your letter, which I have just received, adds to your article and evensurpasses it, and I do not know what to say to you unless I say franklythat I love you for it!
It was not I that sent you a little flower in an envelope lastSeptember. But it is a strange coincidence that I received at the sametime, sent in the same fashion, a leaf plucked from a tree.
As to your cordial invitation, I reply neither yes nor no, like a trueNorman. I shall surprise you, perhaps, some day this summer. I have agreat desire to see you and to talk with you.
It would be very sweet to me to have your portrait to hang upon my studywall in the country, where I often pass long months entirely alone. Ismy request indiscreet? If not, I send you a thousand thanks in advance.Take them in addition to my others, which I reiterate.
TO GEORGE SAND.
PARIS, 1866.
MOST certainly I count upon your visit at my private domicile. As forthe inconveniences dreaded by the fair sex, you will not perceive moreof them than have others (be sure of that). My little stories of theheart and of the sense do not come out of a back shop. But as it is along distance from my home to yours, in order to save you a uselessjourney, let me meet you as soon as you arrive in Paris, and we willdine together all by ourselves with our elbows on the table!
I have sent Bouilhet your kind message.
At the present moment I am deafened by the crowd in the street under mywindow following the prize ox! And they say that intellect flourishesamong the people of the street!
TO GEORGE SAND.
CROISSET, _Tuesday, 1866_.
YOU are alone and sad where you are, and I am the same here. Whence comethe black moods that sometimes sweep over us? They creep up like therising tide and we are suddenly overwhelmed and must flee. My method isto lie flat on my back and do nothing, and the wave passes after a time.
My romance has been going badly for a quarter of an hour. Then, too, Ihave just heard of two deaths, that of Cormenin, a friend for the pasttwenty-five years, and of Gavarni. Other things have troubled me, too,but all this will soon pass over.
You do not know what it is to sit a whole day with your head in yourhands, squeezing your unhappy brain in trying to find a word. Your ideasflow freely, incessantly, like a river. But with me they run slowly,like a tiny rill. I must have great works of art to occupy me in orderto obtain a cascade. Ah! I know what they are--the terrors of _style_!
In short, I pass my life gnawing my heart and my brain--that is the realtruth about your friend.
You ask whether he thinks sometimes of his old troubadour of the clock.He does, indeed! And he regrets him. Our little nocturnal chats werevery charming. There were moments when I had to restrain myself to keepfrom babbling to you like a big baby.
Your ears must have burned last night. I dined with my brother and hisfamily. We spoke of scarcely anyone but you, and everyone sang yourpraises, dear and well-beloved master!
I re-read, _a propos_ of your last letter (and by a natural train ofideas), Father Montaigne's chapter entitled "Some Verses of Virgil."That which he says about chastity is precisely my own belief.
It is the effort that is difficult, and not abstinence in itself.Otherwise, it would be a curse to the flesh. Heaven knows whither thiswould lead. So, at the risk of eternal reiteration, and of being likePrudhomme, I repeat that your young man was wrong. If he had beenvirtuous up to twenty years of age, his action would be an ignoblelibertinage at fifty. Everyone gets his deserts some time! Greatnatures, that are also good, are above all things generous, and do notcalculate expense. We must laugh and weep, work, play, and suffer, sothat we may feel the divine vibration throughout our being. That, Ibelieve, is the characteristic of true manhood.
TO GEORGE SAND.
CROISSET, _Saturday night, 1866_.
Of the two portraits, the one I like the better is the drawing byCouture. As to Marchal's conception, he has seen in you only "the goodwoman"; but I, who am an old romanticist, find in it "the head of theauthor" who gave me in my youth so many beautiful dreams!
TO GEORGE SAND.
CROISSET, 1866.
I, A MYSTERIOUS being, dear master? What an idea! I find myself awalking platitude, and am sometimes bored to death by the _bourgeois_ Icarry about under my skin! Sainte-Beuve, between you and me, does notknow me at all, whatever he may say. I even swear to you (by the sweetsmile of your grand-daughter!) that I know few men less "vicious" thanmyself. I have dreamed much, but have done little. That which isdeceptive to superficial observers is the discord between my sentimentsand my ideas. If you wish to have my confession, I will give it frankly.
My sense of the grotesque has always restrained me from yielding to anyinclination towards licentiousness. I maintain that cynicism protectschastity. We must discuss this matter at length (that is, if you choose)the next time we meet.
This is the programme that I propose to you. During the next month myhouse will be in some disorder. But towards the end of October, or atthe beginning of November (after the production of Bouilhet's play), Ihope nothing will prevent you from returning here with me, not for aday, as you say, but for a week at least. You shall have your room "witha round table and everything needful for writing." Is that agreeable?
About the fairy play [_The Castle of Hearts_] I thank you for yourkindly offer of assistance. I will tell you all about the thing (I amwriting it in collaboration with Bouilhet). But I believe it is a meretrifle, and I am divided between the desire to gain a few piastres andshame at the idea of exhibiting such a piece of frivolity.
I find you a little severe towards Brittany, but not towards the Bretonsthemselves, who appear to me a crabbed set of animals.
_A propos_ of Celtic archaeology, I published, in _l'Artiste_, in 1858, amarvellous tale about the rocking stones, but I have not a copy of thenumber, and do not even remember in which month it appeared.
I have read, continuously, the ten volumes of _l'Histoire de Ma Vie_, ofwhich I knew about two thirds, in fragments. That which struck me mostforcibly was the account of life in the convent.
On all these matters I have stored up a quantity of observations tosubmit to you when we meet.
TO GEORGE SAND.
CROISSET, _Saturday night, 1866_.
THE sending of the two portraits made me believe that you were in Paris,dear master, and I wrote you a letter which now awaits you at the Ruedes Feuillantines.
I have not found my article on the dolmens. But I have the wholemanuscript about my trip through Brittany among my unedited works. Weshall have it to let our tongues loose upon while you are here. Takecourage!
I do not experience, as you do, that feeling as of the beginning of anew life, the bewilderment of a fresh existence newly opening. On thecontrary, it seems to me that I have always existed, and I possessrecollections that go back to the time of the Pharaohs! I can see myselfat various epochs in history very clearly, following variousoccupations, and placed in divers circumstances. The present individualis the product of my past individualities. I have been a boatman on theNile; a _leno_ at Rome during the time of the Punic wars; then a Greekrhetorician at Suburra, where I was devoured by bugs. I died, during thecrusades, from eating grapes on the coast of Syria. I have been a pirateand a monk; a clown and a coachman. Perhaps, also, an emperor in theOrient!
Many things would explain themselves if we could only know our truegenealogy. For, the elements that go to make a man being limited, thesame combinations must reproduce themselves.
We must regard this matter as we regard many others. Each of us takeshold of it by only one end, and never fully understands it. Thepsychological sciences remain where they have always lain, in folly andin darkness. All the more so since they possess no exact nomenclature,and we are compelled to employ the same expression to signify the mostdiverse ideas. When we mix up the categories, good-bye to the _morale_!
Do you not find that, since '89, we struggle with trifles? Instead ofcontinuing along the broad road, which was as wide and beautiful as atriumphal way, we run off into narrow paths, or struggle in the mire. Itmight be wiser to return temporarily to d'Holbach. Before admiringPrudhon, we should know Turgot!
But "Chic," that modern religion, what would become of that?
"Chic" (or "Chique") opinions: to support Catholicism, without believinga word of it; to approve of slavery; to praise the House of Austria; towear mourning for Queen Amelie; to admire _Orphee aux Enfers_; to occupyoneself with agriculture; to talk "sport;" to be cold; to be idiotenough to regret the treaties of 1815. All this is the very newestthing!
Ah! You believe because I pass my life in trying to make harmoniousphrases and to avoid assonances, that I do not form my own littlejudgments on the affairs of this world. Alas! I do, and sometimes I boilwith rage at not being able to express them.
But enough of gossip, or I shall bore you.
Bouilhet's play will appear early in November. And we shall see eachother in about a month from that time.
I embrace you tenderly, dear master!
TO GEORGE SAND.
_Monday night, 1866._
YOU are sad, my poor friend and dear master; I thought of you at once onlearning of the death of Duveyrier. Since you loved him, I pity you.This loss is one of many. These deaths we feel in the depths of ourhearts. Each of us carries within himself his own burial ground.
I am all _unscrewed_ since your departure; it seems to me now as if tenyears have passed since last I saw you. My only topic of conversationwith my mother is yourself; we all cherish the thought of you here.
Under what constellation were you born, to have united in your personqualities so diverse, so numerous, and so rare? I hardly know how tocharacterise the sentiment I feel for you, but I bear you a _particular_tenderness, such as I never have felt for anyone else. We understandeach other well, do we not? And that is charming!
I regretted you especially last night at ten o'clock. There was a fireon my wood-merchant's premises. The sky was rosy, and the Seine was thecolour of gooseberry sirup. I worked at the pumps for three hours, andcame home as weak as the Turk of the giraffe.
A journal of Rouen, the _Nouvelliste_, has mentioned your visit atRouen, and in such terms that on Saturday, after you had gone, I metseveral worthy _bourgeois_ who were indignant at me because I had notexhibited you! The most absurd remark was made by an oldsub-prefect:--"Ah! if we had only known that she was here ... we shouldhave ... we should have" ... pause of five minutes, while he searchedfor a word--"we should have ... _smiled_!" That would have been a greatcompliment, eh?
To love you "more" is difficult, but I embrace you tenderly. Your letterof this morning, so melancholy, has touched the depths of my heart. Weare separated just at the time when we wish to say so many things. Notall doors have yet been opened between you and me. You inspire me with adeep respect, and I dare not question you.
TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.
_Friday, one o'clock, 1867._
MY DEAR OLD BOYS! On arriving at Paris, the day before yesterday, Ilearned of your nomination through Scholl's article. So my pleasure wasmingled with annoyance.
Then, last evening, the princess told me you were in Paris. If you werein the habit of opening your door to the people that knock at it, Ishould have presented myself at midnight, to embrace you.
How shall we meet?--for I must return this evening. It is not you,Edmond, I wish to compliment so much as Jules, to whom the nominationmust give more pleasure than it gives to you. The fifteenth of nextAugust will be the date for
your turn, I suppose.
Adieu, dear old fellows, I embrace you both most tenderly.
I wrote to you at Trouville, _poste restante_. Have you received myletter?
P.S.--A sudden thought seizes me. What do you intend to do this evening?Where shall you be at five minutes before midnight? Is it not possiblethat I might dine with you? Where shall we see each other?
You know that this is worn as soon as the news is printed in the_Moniteur_. So here is a little gift from your friend. Cut the ribbonand wear it. Cut it in half, because there is enough for two.
TO GEORGE SAND.
_Wednesday night, 1867._
I HAVE followed your advice, dear master, and I have taken exercise!
Am I not good, eh?
Sunday evening, at eleven o'clock, there was such beautiful moonlight onthe river and across the snow, that I was seized with a wild desire togo out and bestir myself; so I walked for two hours and a half, showingthe scenery to myself, and imagining I was travelling in Russia or inNorway! When the waves rose and cracked the ice along the edges of theriver, it was, without joking, really superb. Then I thought of you, andlonged for your companionship.
I do not like to eat alone. I find it necessary to associate the idea ofsome one to the things that give me pleasure. But the right "someone"is extremely rare. I ask myself why I love you. Is it because you are agreat "man" or simply a charming being? I do not know. The one thing Iam sure of is that I feel for you a particular sentiment which I cannotdefine.
_A propos_ of this, do you believe (you, who are a master in psychology)that one ever loves two persons in the same way, or that one everexperiences two identical sensations? I do not believe it, as I maintainthat the individual changes every moment of his existence.
You write me such pretty things regarding "disinterested affection."They are very true, but the contrary also is true. We always imagine Godin our own image. At the foundation of all our loves and all ouradmirations we find--ourselves, or something resembling ourselves. Butwhat matters it?--if we are admirable!
My own _ego_ overwhelms me for a quarter of an hour. How heavily thatrascal weighs upon me at times. He writes too slowly, and does not_pose_ the least in the world when he complains about his work. What atask! And what devil possessed him to induce him to seek such a subject?You ought to give me a recipe for writing faster; yet you complain ofhaving to seek fortune! You!
I have had a little note from Sainte-Beuve, reassuring me as to hishealth, but rather sad in tone. He seems to be very sorry not to be ableto haunt the woods of Cyprus. He is right, after all, or at least, itseems right to him, which amounts to the same thing. Perhaps I shallresemble him when I reach his age, but somehow, I believe not. As I hadnot the same kind of youth, my old age will probably be different.
This reminds me that I have sometimes dreamed of writing a book on SaintPerine. Champfleury has treated this subject very badly. I see nothingwhatever in it of a comical nature; I should bring out its painful andlamentable character. I believe that the heart never grows old; thereare people in whom it even grows stronger with age. I was drier andharsher at twenty than I am to-day. I have become softened and feminisedby wear and tear, while others have hardened and withered, and thatalmost makes me indignant. I feel that I am becoming a _cow_! A merenothing stirs my emotions; everything troubles and agitates me andshakes me as a reed is shaken in the north wind.
One word of yours, which I have just recollected, made me wish tore-read _The Fair Maid of Perth_. She was something of a coquette,whatever they say of her. That good fellow had some imagination,decidedly.
Now, adieu. Think of me! I send you my tenderest thoughts.
TO GEORGE SAND.
_Wednesday night, 1867._
DEAR MASTER, dear friend of the good God, "let us talk a little ofDozenval," let us growl about Monsieur Thiers! Could there ever be amore triumphant imbecile, a more abject fellow, a meaner _bourgeois_!No, no words could ever give an idea of the nausea that overcomes mewhen I contemplate that old pumpkin of a diplomat, fattening hisstupidity under the muck of the _bourgeoisie_. Would it be possible totreat with more naive and more inappropriate unceremoniousness, mattersof religion, the people, liberty, the past and the future, nationalhistory and natural history, everything? He seems to me as eternal asmediocrity itself! He prostrates me! But the finest thing of all is thespectacle of the brave National Guards, whom he threw out in 1848, nowbeginning to applaud him! What absolute lunacy! It proves thateverything depends upon temperament. Prostitutes--represented in thiscase by France--are said to have always a weakness for old rascals!
I shall attempt, in the third part of my romance (when I shall have hadthe reaction following the June days), to insinuate a panegyric abouthim, _a propos_ of his book: _De la Propriete_, and I hope that he willbe pleased with me!
What care should one take sometimes, in expressing an opinion on thingsof this world, not to risk being considered an imbecile later? It is arude problem. It seems to me that the best way is to describe, with thesimplest precision, those things that exasperate one. The dissectionitself is a vengeance!
Ah, well! it is not at him alone that I am enraged, nor at theothers--it is at our people in general.
However, if we had spent our time in instructing the higher classes onthe subject of agriculture; if we had thought more of our stomachs thanof our heads, probably we should resemble him!
I have just read the preface of Buchez to his _Histoire parlementaire_.Like other similar publications, it is full of stupidities, of which wefeel the weight to this day.
It is not kind to say I do not think of my "old troubadour;" of whatelse should I think? Of my little book, perhaps,--but that is moredifficult and not nearly so agreeable.
How long do you remain at Cannes? After Cannes, does not one usuallyreturn to Paris? I shall be there towards the end of January.
In order that my book may be finished in the spring of 1869, from thistime on, I shall not allow myself even a week's holiday. This is thereason why I do not go to Nohant. I am still on the history of theamazons. In order to draw the bow with the best effect, they used to cutoff one breast! Was that a good way, after all?
Adieu, dear master; write to me. I embrace thee tenderly!
TO JULES MICHELET.
_Wednesday, 1868._
NO, MY dear master, I have not received your book, but I have alreadyread it, and am re-reading it. What a mountain is yours! Where will youstop?
I am overwhelmed by this mass of ideas, and amazed at their profundity.
I believe I never have read anything that impressed me more deeply thanthat part about the baths of Acqui. You bring the Pyrenees and the Alpsbefore our very eyes. But in your company one is always on the heights!
The weighty romance in which you express an interest (weighty for me,while waiting to see what it will be for others!), will not be finishedin less than a whole year. I am full of it now, in the history of '48.My profound conviction is that the clergy has acted amazingly.
The dangers of democratic Catholicism, pointed out by you in the prefaceto your _Revolution_, are already here. Ah! we are indeed alone. But youremain to us, you!
I clasp your hand warmly, and beg you to believe me yours, with trueaffection.
TO GEORGE SAND.
CROISSET, _Wednesday evening, Sept. 9, 1868_.
IS THIS handsome conduct, dear master? Two months have passed since youwrote last to your old troubadour! Are you in Paris, Nohant, or where?
They say that _Cadio_ is being rehearsed at the Porte Saint-Martin (areyou very sorry, you and Chilly?). They say also, that Thuillier willmake her reappearance in your play. (I thought she was dying--I meanThuillier, not your play.) And when will _Cadio_ be produced. Are youpleased?
I live absolutely like an oyster. My romance is the rock to which Icling, and I know nothing of what is going on in the world. I do noteven read, or rather, I read only the _Lanterne_. Rochefort bores me,to tell the truth. One must, however, have consid
erable bravery to dareto say, even timidly, that perhaps he is not the first writer of thecentury! O _Velches! Velches!_ as Monsieur de Voltaire would sigh, orrather, roar!
And Sainte-Beuve--do you see him? I am working furiously. I have justwritten a description of the forest of Fontainebleau, which has filledme with a desire to hang myself on one of its trees! I was interruptedfor three weeks, and had a hard task to put myself in train to workagain. I have the peculiarity of a camel--I find it difficult to stopwhen once I get started, and hard to start after I have been resting. Ihave worked steadily for a year at a time. After which I loafeddefinitely, like a _bourgeois_. It was difficult at first, and not atall pleasant. It is time now that I should do something fine, somethingthat shall please me. That which would please me greatly for a quarterof an hour would be to embrace you! When shall I be able to do so? Fromnow until that time, I send you a thousand sweet thoughts.
TO MAXIME DUCAMP.
CROISSET, _July 23, 1869_.
MY GOOD OLD MAX: I feel the need of writing you a long letter. I do notknow whether I shall have strength, but I will try.
Since his return to Rouen, after receiving his nomination for the placeof librarian (August, 1867), our poor Bouilhet was convinced that heshould leave his bones there. Everyone, including myself, pitied him forhis sadness. He did not appear the man he was formerly; he wascompletely changed, except for his literary intelligence, which remainedthe same. In short, when I returned to Paris, in June, I found him alamentable figure. A journey that he made to Paris on account of his_Mademoiselle Aisse_, because the manager demanded that certain changesbe made in the second act, was so difficult for him that he couldscarcely drag himself to the theatre.
On visiting him at his house, the last Sunday in June, I found Dr. P----of Paris, X---- of Rouen, Morel, the alienist, and a good chemist, oneof Bouilhet's friends, named Dupre. Bouilhet dared not ask for aconsultation with my brother, realising that he was very ill and fearingto hear the truth.
Dr. P---- sent him to Vichy, whence Villemain hastened to despatch himback to Rouen. On debarking at Rouen, he finally summoned my brother.The evil was found to be irreparable, as indeed Villemain had writtenme.
During these last two weeks my mother has been at Verneuil, at the houseof the Mesdames V----, and letters have been delayed three days, so yousee what anxiety I have had. I went to see Bouilhet both days that hewas here, and observed some amelioration in his condition. His appetitewas excellent, as well as his courage, and the tumour on his leg haddiminished.
His sisters came from Carny in order to speak to him of religiousmatters, and were so violent that they really scandalised a worthy canonof the cathedral. Our poor Bouilhet was superb--he sent them packing!When I left him for the last time, on Saturday, he had a volume ofLamettrie on his night-table, which recalled to my mind my poor friendAlfred Le Poittevin reading Spinoza. No priest was summoned. His angeragainst his sisters appeared to sustain him until Saturday, and then Ideparted for Paris, in the hope that he would live a long time.
On Sunday, at five o'clock, he became delirious, and recited aloud thescenario of a drama of the Middle Ages on the Inquisition. He called forme, in order to show it to me, and was very enthusiastic over it. Then atrembling seized him; he murmured, "Adieu! Adieu!" His head sank underLeonie's chin, and he died very quietly. Monday morning my porterawakened me with a telegram that announced the death in the usual tersefashion of a despatch. I was alone; I packed my things, sent the news toyou, and went to tell it to Duplan, who was engaged in his businessaffairs. Then I walked the streets an hour, and it was very hot near therailway station. From Paris to Rouen in a coach filled with people.Opposite me was a damsel that smoked cigarettes, stretched her feet outon the seat and sang.
When I saw once more the towers of Mantes I thought I should go mad, andI believe I was not far from it. Seeing me very pale, the damsel offeredme her _eau de Cologne_. It revived me a little, but what a thirst! Thatof the desert of Sahara was nothing to it. At last I arrived at the Ruede Bihorel; but here I will spare you details.
I never met a better fellow than little Philip; he and that good Leonietook admirable care of Bouilhet. I approved of everything they had done.In order to reassure Bouilhet, and to persuade him that he was notdangerously ill, Leonie had refused to marry him, and her son encouragedher in this resistance. This marriage was so much the fixed intention ofBouilhet, however, that he had had all the necessary papers drawn. Asfor the young man, I found that he had behaved in every way like agentleman.
D'Osmoy and I conducted the ceremonies. A great many persons came to thefuneral, two thousand at least; the prefect, the procurer-general,etc.,--all the little dignitaries! Would you believe that even whilefollowing his coffin, I realised keenly the grotesqueness of theceremony? I fancied I could hear him speaking to me; I felt that he wasthere, at my side, and it seemed as if he and I were following thecorpse of some one else! The weather was very hot, threatening a storm.I was covered with perspiration, and the walk to the cemetery finishedme. His friend Caudron had chosen the spot for the grave, near that ofFlaubert senior. I leaned against a railing to breathe. The coffin stoodon the trestles over the grave. The discourses began (there werethree!); then I fainted, and my brother and a stranger took me away.
The next day I went to my mother, at Serquigny. Yesterday I went toRouen, to take charge of Bouilhet's papers; to-day I have read theletters that have been sent to me, and oh! dear Max, it was hard!
In his will he left instructions to Leonie that all his books and papersshould be given to Philip, charging the latter to consult with fourfriends in order to decide what to do with the unedited works: myself,D'Osmoy, you, and Caudron. He left a volume of excellent poems, fourplays in prose, and _Mademoiselle Aisse_. The manager of the Odeon doesnot like the second act of this play; I do not know what he will do.
It will be necessary for you and D'Osmoy to come here this winter, sothat we may decide what shall be published. My head troubles me too muchfor me to continue now, and besides, what more can I say?
Adieu! I embrace you tenderly. There is only you now, only you! Do youremember when we wrote _Solus ad solum_?
In all the letters I have received I find this phrase: "We must close upour ranks." One gentleman, whom I do not know, has sent his card, withthese two words: _Sunt lacrymae!_
TO EDMOND DE GONCOURT.
_Sunday evening, 1870._
HOW I pity you, my poor friend! Your letter overcame me this morning.Except for the personal confidence you made me (which you may be sure Ishall keep), it told me nothing new, or rather, I mean that I hadguessed all that you wrote me. I think of you every day and many times aday. The memory of my lost friends leads me fatally to the thought ofyou! The schedule has been well filled during the past year--yourbrother, Bouilhet, Sainte-Beuve, and Duplan! My dreams are darkened bythe shadows of tombs, among which I walk.
But I dare not complain to you; for your grief must surpass all thoseone could feel or imagine.
Do you wish me to speak of myself, my dear Edmond? Well, I am engrossedin a work that gives me much pain,--it is the preface to Bouilhet'sbook. I have glided over the biographical part as much as possible. Ishall write more at length after an examination of his works, and stillmore upon his (or our) literary doctrines.
I have re-read all that he ever wrote. I have run through our oldletters. I have found a series of souvenirs, some of which are thirtyyears old. It is not very cheerful work, as you may imagine! Andbesides, here at Croisset, I am pursued by his phantom, which I findbehind every bush in the garden, on the divan in my study, and evenamong my garments--in my dressing-gown, which sometimes he used to wear.
I hope to think less about him when this sad work is finished,--in aboutsix weeks. After that I shall try to re-write _Saint Antony_, althoughmy heart is not in it now. You know well that one always writes with thethought of some particular person in view.
The particular person being, for me, no more, my courage fails me.
I hope to go to Paris in August, and then I shall see you. But whereshall you be? Write to me about yourself sometimes, my poor Edmond! Noone pities you more than I. I embrace you warmly.
TO GEORGE SAND.
_Sunday, June 26, 1870._
SOMEONE forgets her old troubadour, who has just come from the funeralof a friend. Of the seven friends that used to gather at the Magnydinners, only three remain! I am stuffed with coffins, like an oldchurchyard! I have had enough of it, frankly!
Yet in the midst of all this, I go on working! I finished last night thepreface to my poor Bouilhet's book. I intend to see whether some meansmay not be found to produce a comedy of his in prose. After that I shalltake up _Saint Antony_ once more.
And you, dear master, what has become of you and yours? My niece is inthe Pyrenees, and I live here alone with my mother, who grows more andmore deaf, so that my existence is far from lively. I should go to somewarmer climate. But to do that I have neither time nor money. So I musterase and re-write, and dig away as hard as possible.
I shall go to Paris early in August. I shall stay here through October,in order to see the performance of _Aisse_. My absence will be limitedto a week at Dieppe about the end of the month. These are my projects.
The funeral of Jules de Goncourt was very sad. Theo was there and shedfloods of tears.
TO MADAME REGNIER.
_Thursday evening, 7 o'clock, 1871._
DEAR MADAME: I have had to occupy me during the last few weeks
_First_: the arrangements regarding Bouilhet's tomb;
_Second_: plans about his monument;
_Third_: looking after his volume of poems, which has just gone topress;
_Fourth_: finding an engraver to make his portrait;
_Fifth_: all my time for two weeks was taken up with _Aisse_, I shallread it to-morrow to the actors. The rehearsals will begin nextSaturday, and the play will be produced about the first of January.
I was obliged to leave Croisset so unexpectedly that my servant and mybelongings will not arrive until three days later. A detailed account ofthe intrigues I have had to demolish would fill a volume.
I have engaged the actors. I have worked myself on the costumes at theCabinet des Estampes; in short, I have not had a moment's rest for twoweeks; and this petty life, so exasperating and so busy, will last atthis rate at least two full months.
What a world! I am not surprised that it killed my good Bouilhet!Besides, I have re-written my preface to his books, as it displeased mein its former state.
I beg you, for heaven's sake, to give me a little liberty for the momentbecause with the best will in the world, it is impossible for me to doeverything at once. I must attend first to the most pressing affairs.Besides, you are wrong to wish to publish _now_. What good will it do?Where would you find readers?
I do not hide from you the fact that I find rather unjust your amiablereproaches regarding the voyage to Mantes. Why can you not understandthat it would be very painful to me to go to Mantes? Every time I passbefore the buffet, I turn away my head! Nevertheless, I will keep mypromise. But it would be easier for me to go from Paris to Mantes thanto stop there in passing. Do not be vexed with me any longer; pity me,rather!
TO GEORGE SAND.
_Tuesday, April 16, 1872._
DEAR GOOD MASTER: I ought to have replied at once to your first letter,so sweet and tender. But I was too sad. The physical force to do itfailed me.
To-day, at last, I have begun to hear the birds sing and to notice thegreen leaves. The sunshine no longer irritates me, which is a good sign.If I could only follow my inclination to travel, I should be saved.
Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears. How good youare! What a kind heart! I have no need of money just at present, thankyou. But if I were in need of it, I should certainly ask you for it.
My mother left Croisset to Caroline, on condition that I should retainmy apartments there. So until the complete liquidation of thesuccession, I shall remain here. Before deciding upon the future, Imust know what I shall have to live upon; after that, we shall see.
Shall I have the courage to live absolutely alone in a solitary place? Idoubt it. I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has twoplaces already, and the house at Croisset is expensive to keep up.
I believe that I shall give up my lodgings in Paris. Nothing calls methere any more. All my friends are dead, and the last, my poor Theo, isnot likely to be here long. I fear it! Ah, it is hard to make oneselfover at fifty years!
I have realised during the last two weeks that my poor good mamma wasthe being I have loved most! To lose her is like tearing away a part ofmy own body.
TO THE BARONESS LEPIC.
AT MY HERMITAGE,
September 14 (the monthcalled Boedromion by theGreeks), 1872.
I TAKE up my pen to write to you, and, shutting myself up in the silenceof my study, I permit myself, O beautiful lady, to burn at your feetsome grains of purest incense!
I say to myself: She has gone to the new Athens with the foster-sons ofMars! Their limbs are covered with brilliant blue, while I wear a rusticcoat! Glittering swords dangle at their sides, while I carry only mypens! Plumes ornament their heads, while I have scarcely any hair! Manycares and much study have ravished from me that crown of youth--thatforest which the hand of Time, the destroyer, strips from our brows.
This is the reason why my breast is torn by blackest jealousy, O lovelylady!
But your missive, thank the gods! came to me like a refreshing breeze,like a veritable perfume of dittany.
If I could only have the certainty of seeing you, at no distant time,amid our fields, settled near us! The rigour of the approaching blastsof winter would be softened by your presence.
As to the political outlook, your anxieties are, perhaps, greater thanthey need be. We must hope that our great national historian will close,for a time, the era of revolutions. May we see the doors of the templeof Janus shut forever! That is the desire of my heart, as a friend ofthe arts and of innocent gaiety.
Ah, if all men, fleeing the pomp of courts and the agitations of theForum, would listen to the simple voice of nature, there would be onlyhappiness here below, the dances of shepherds, fond embraces beneath thetrees on one side and another--here, there, everywhere! But my ideas runaway with me.
Will Madame your mother devote herself always to the occupations ofThalia? Very well! She proposes to face the public in the house ofMoliere. I comprehend that, but I believe it would be better (in theinterest of her dramatic lucubration) if I myself should take this fruitof her muse to the director of that establishment. Then, as soon as Ishould arrive in the capital, I should make my toilet, call my servantand command him to go and find a coach for me in the public square; Ishould enter the vehicle, drive through the streets, arrive at theTheatre Francaise, and finish by finding our man. All this would be forme only the affair of a moment!
In declaring myself, Madame, your unworthy slave, I depose
PRUD' HOMME.
TO EMILE ZOLA.
CROISSET, near Rouen, _June 3, 1874_.
I HAVE read it--_La Conquete de Plassans_--read it all at one breath, asone swallows a glass of good wine; then I ruminated over it, and now, mydear friend, I can talk sensibly about it. I feared, after the _Ventrede Paris_, that you would bury yourself in the "system" in yourresolution. But no! You are a good fellow! And your latest book is afine, swaggering production!
Perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having acentral scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhapsalso there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters.There! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects Idiscover. But what power of observation! what depth! what a masterlyhand!
That which struck me
most forcibly in the general tone of the work wasthe ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. Thatis very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained.
What a perfect _bourgeois_ is Mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice,his resignation, and his flatness! The Abbe Faujas is sinister andgreat--a true director! How well he manages the woman, how ably he makeshimself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then inbrutalising her!
As to her (Marthe), I cannot express to you how much I admire her, andthe art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. Herhysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. How well youdescribe the breaking-up of the household!
I forgot to mention the Tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and theAbbe Bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility.
Provincial life, the little gardens, the Paloque family, the Rastoil,and the tennis-parties,--perfect, perfect!
Your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest wordsand phrases: "The tonsure like a cicatrice;" "I should like it better ifhe went to see the women;" "Mouret had stuffed the stove," etc.
And the circle of youth--that was a true invention! I have noted manyother things on the margins, viz.:
The physical details which Olympe gives regarding her brother; thestrawberry; the mother of the abbe ready to become his pander; and herold trunk.
The harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poorsweetheart, because he detects thereon "an odour of woman."
The description of the sacristy, with the name of M. Delangre on thewall--the whole phrase is a jewel.
But that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work,is the end! I know of nothing more powerful than that _denouement_.Marthe's visit at her uncle's house, the return of Mouret, and hisinspection of the house! One is seized by fear, as in the reading ofsome fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendousrealism, the intensity of truth. The reader feels his head turned, insympathy with Mouret.
The insensibility of the _bourgeois_, who watches the fire seated in hisarmchair, is charming, and you wind up with one sublime stroke: theapparition of the _soutane_ of the Abbe Serge at the bedside of hisdying mother, as a consolation or a chastisement!
There is one bit of chicanery, however. The reader (that has no memory)does not know by instinct what motive prompts M. Rougon and UncleMacquart to act as they do. Two paragraphs of explanation would havebeen sufficient.
Never mind! it is what it is, and I thank you for the pleasure it hasgiven me.
Sleep on both ears, now your work is done!
Lay aside for me all the stupid criticisms it draws forth. That kind ofdocument interests me very much.
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
DIEPPE, _July 28, 1874_.
MY DEAR FRIEND: As Saturday is for you a kind of consecrated day, and asI could be in Paris only one day, which was last Saturday, I shall notbe able to see you on your return from Helvetia.
Know, then, that _Le Sexe Faible_ was enthusiastically received at theCluny Theatre, and it will be acted there after Zola's piece, that is,about the last of November.
Winschenk, the director of this little box of a theatre, predicts agreat pecuniary success. Amen!
It goes without saying, it is the general opinion that I lower myself inmaking my appearance in an inferior theatre. But this is the story:Among the artists engaged by Winschenk for my play was Mlle. AliceRegnault. He feared that she would be taken by the Vaudeville Theatre,and that the Vaudeville would not allow her to appear in my play. Willyou be kind enough to inform yourself discreetly of the state of thecase when you are in Paris?
I shall return to Croisset Friday evening, and Saturday I shall begin_Bouvard et Pecuchet_. I tremble at the prospect, as one would the nightbefore embarking for a voyage around the world!
All the more reason why we should meet and embrace.
TO MAURICE SAND.
CROISSET, _Sunday, June 24, 1876_.
YOU have forestalled me, my dear Maurice! I wished to write to you, butI waited until you should be a little more free, more alone. I thank youfor your kind thought.
Yes, there are few of us left now. And if I do not remain here long, itis because my former friends have drawn me to them.
This has seemed to me like burying my mother a second time. Poor, dear,great woman! What genius and what a heart! But she lacked nothing; itis not she who calls for pity!
What shall you do now? Shall you remain at Nohant? That dear old housemust seem terribly empty to you. But you, at least, are not alone. Youhave a wife--a rare woman!--and two exquisite children. While I was withyou there, I felt above all my sadness, two desires: to run away withAurore, and to kill Monsieur ...! That is the truth: it is useless totry to analyse the psychology of the thing.
I received yesterday a very tender letter from the good Tourgueneff. He,too, loved her! But who did not love her? If you had beheld the grief ofMartine in Paris! It was overwhelming.
Plauchut is still at Nohant, I suppose. Tell him I love him after seeinghim weep so bitterly.
And let your own tears flow freely, my dear friend! Do not try toconsole yourself--it would be almost impossible. Some day you will findwithin yourself a deep and sweet certainty that you were always a goodson, and that she knew it well. She spoke of you as a blessing.
And after you shall have joined her once more, and after thegreat-grandchildren of the grandchildren of your two little daughtersalso shall have rejoined her, and when for a long time people haveceased to talk of the things and the persons that surround us atpresent--in some centuries to come--there will still be hearts that willpalpitate at her words! People will read her books, will ponder over herthoughts, will love as she loved.
But all that _does not give her back to you_! With what shall we sustainourselves, then, if pride fails us, and what man can feel more of thatfor his mother than yourself?
Now, my dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet again? For I feel aninsatiable desire to talk of _her_!
Embrace Madame Maurice for me, as I embraced her on the stairs atNohant, also your little ones.
Yours, from the depths of my heart.
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
_Night of August 28, 1876._
YOUR letter has rejoiced me, young man! But I advise you to moderateyourself, in the interest of literature.
Take care! all depends upon the end one wishes to attain. A man who hasaccredited himself an artist has no right to live like other men.
All that which you tell me about Catulle Mendes does not surprise me atall. He wrote to me the day before yesterday, to ask me to give him_gratis_ the fragments of the _Chateau des Coeurs_, and also theunedited stories that I had just finished. I replied that it was quiteimpossible, which is true. Yesterday I wrote him a rather sharp letter,as I was indignant at the article on Renan. It attacked him in thegrossest fashion, and there was also some humbug about Berthelot. Haveyou read it, and what do you think of it? In short, I said to Catulle,first, that I wished him to efface my name from the list of hiscollaborators; and, second, not to send me his journal any more! I donot wish to have anything in common with such fellows! It is a very badset, my dear friend, and I advise you to do as I have done--let thementirely alone. Catulle will probably reply to my letter, but mydecision is taken, and that is an end of it. That which I cannot pardonis the base democratic envy.
The tiresome article on Offenbach goes to the extremest limits about hiscomic spirit. And what stupidity! I mean the joke that was invented byFiorantino in 1850, and is still alive to-day!
In order to make a triad, add the name of Littre, the gentleman whopretends that we are all descended from apes; and last Friday thebutchery of Sainte-Beuve! Oh, the idiocy of it!
As to myself, I am working very hard, seeing no one, reading nojournals, and bawling away like a maniac in the seclusion of my study. Ipass the whole day, and almost the whole night, bent over my table,
andadmire the sunrise with great regularity! Before my dinner (about seveno'clock) I splash about in the _bourgeoise_ waves of the Seine.--_Apropos_ of health, you do not appear to me to look very ill. All thebetter! Think no more about it!
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
_Wednesday night, 1880._
MY DEAR FRIEND: I do not know yet what day De Goncourt, Zola, AlphonseDaudet and Charpentier will come here to breakfast and dine, and perhapsto sleep. They must decide this evening, so that I may know by Fridaymorning. I think they will come on Monday. If your eye will permit youthen, kindly transport your person to the dwelling of one of theserascals, learn when they expect to leave, and come along with them.
Should they all pass Monday night at Croisset, as I have only four bedsto offer, you will take that of the _femme de chambre_--who is absentjust now.
Commentary: I have conjured up so many alarms and improbabilitiesregarding your malady, that I should be glad, purely for my ownsatisfaction, to have you examined by _my_ Doctor Fortin, a simplehealth officer, but a man I consider very able.
Another observation: If you have not the wherewithal to make thejourney, I have a superb double louis at your service. To refuse throughmere delicacy would be a very stupid thing to do!
A last note: Jules Lemaitre, to whom I have promised your protection inregard to Graziani, will present himself at your place. He has talentand is a true litterateur,--a _rara avis_, to whom we must give a cagelarger than Havre.
Perhaps he too will come to Croisset on Monday; and as it is myintention to stuff you all, I have invited Doctor Fortin, so then he mayextend his services to the sick ones!
The festival would lack much in splendour if my "disciple" were notthere.
Thy old friend.
P.S.--I received this morning an incomprehensible letter, four pageslong, signed Harry Alis. It appears that I have wounded him! How? In anycase, I shall ask his pardon. _Vive_ the young bloods!
I have re-read _Boule de Suif_, and I maintain that it is a masterpiece.Try to write a dozen stories like that, and you will be a man! Thearticle by Wolff has filled me with joy! O eunuchs!
Madame Brainne has written me that she was enchanted with it. So didMadame Lapierre!
You will remember that you promised me to make some inquiries ofD'Aurevilly. He has written this of me: "Can no one persuade M. Flaubertnot to write any more?" It might be a good time now to make certainextracts from this gentleman's works. There is need of it!
How about the _Botanique_? How is your health? And how goes the volumeof verse?
Sarah Bernhardt seems to me gigantic! And the "fathers of families"petition for the congregations!
Decidedly, this is a farcical epoch!
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
erected a sanctury=> erected a sanctuary {pg 9}
Pecuchet=> Pecuchet {pg 62}
two abysse's, twixt=> two abysses, 'twixt {pg 5 RABELAIS}
Le Deluge=> Le Deluge {pg 7 PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}
which Theophile Gautier called=> which Theophile Gautier called {pg 14PREFACE TO LOST SONGS}
Comedie Francaise=> Comedie Francaise {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}
M. Faure=> M. Faure {pg 4 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}
Moliere's=> Moliere's {pg 8 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}
ex-Rue de l'Imperatrice=> ex-Rue de l'Imperatrice {pg 11 LETTER TOMUNICIPALITY}
a seeond-rate=> a second-rate {pg 12 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}
alalthough=> although {pg 34 LETTER TO MUNICIPALITY}
Eugene Sue=> Eugene Sue {pg 66 CORRESPONDENCE}
archaelogical researches=> archaeological researches {pg 86CORRESPONDENCE}
l'Historie de Ma Vie=> l'Histoire de Ma Vie {pg 105 CORRESPONDENCE}
Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 2 Page 8
