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

545

Another scene, which brings on the dénouement and in which Claire is again supposed to have the beau rôle, does not please me much better. Thinking that her husband is flirting with the detested Duchess, she publicly orders her out of the house – a very natural, but a rather "fish-faggy" proceeding.

546

It has been, and will be, pointed out that he was in all ways studious to run before the wind; and it was just at this time, if I remember rightly, that the catchword of "conflict" began to pester one in criticism. Perhaps this was the reason.

547

The argument, or assumption rather, is all the odder because, on the one hand, orthodoxy holds Free-will (if it accepts that) as a Divine endowment of the Soul: and, on the other, serious Atheism is almost always Determinist. But the study of M. Ohnet was probably not much among the Sentences.

548

The obituarist above mentioned, who thought M. Ohnet a belated Romantic, thought also that he was "struggling against the rising tide of Realism." I do not think you would ever have found him struggling against rising tides, and, as a matter of fact, the tide was already on the turn.

549

Already mentioned in the case of M. Cherbuliez (v. sup. p. 447).

550

Note on La Seconde Vie de M. T.

The second part is occupied with two different but connected subjects. Suzanne, the first wife, dies suddenly, and the two daughters, the elder, Annie, quite, and the second, Laurence, nearly grown up – return to the custody of their father, and therefore to the society at least of his second wife, Blanche, who, though of course feeling the awkwardness, welcomes them as well as she can. The situation, though much more awkward, is something like that of Miss Yonge's Young Stepmother: but M. Rod makes it more tragic by Annie's death, partly in consequence of a love-marriage failing, through the lover's father's objection to the state of her family. The other subject is the gradual hankering of Michel after a return to political life, and his (consequentially inevitable) ratting from Right to Left. M. Rod brought into the matter direct reminiscences of the Parnell and Dilke cases, and possibly owed the conception of the whole book to them; but he has, as is sometimes his wont, rather "sicklied it over" with political and other discussion.

551

A pleasant study, in poetic use of imagery and phrase, is the gradation from the bare and grand Lucretian simplicity of silentia noctis, through the "favour and prettiness" (slightly tautological though) of the Virgilian tacitae per amica silentia lunae, to the recovery and intensifying of magnificence in dove il sol tace. By the way, silentia (for the singular undergoes Quintilian's apology for the Latin -um) is one of the few instances in which a Latin word beats the Greek. σιγη is really inferior.

552

What annoys him most of all is that he should have an uncomfortable feeling about the woman "comme si je l'avais aimée!" He had only, you see, done something else.

553

They should not have done this, and I do not think they did; it was the couples that jostled them. And even this ought not to have happened. The fastest waltzing (I am speaking of the old deux-temps, which this must have been) conveyed an almost uncanny extra power of vision, and at the same time of avoidance, to the right persons. Indeed, the first three lines of this extract have been objected to as base and inconsistent. I think not; the common out of which you rise to the uncommon is worth indication.

554

It may be added that the contrast of an earlier mazurka – in the slowness of which the pair had time to look at each other, feel each other, and otherwise remain in Paradise, but outside of the double Nirvana – is highly creditable. But I hope they waltzed to the mazurka. It is rather annoying to other people who are doing the orthodox step; but it is the perfection of the slow movement, which affords, as above, opportunities that do not exist in the faster and more delirious gyration.

555

This (which may be called M. Rod's novel-headquarters) occurs also not merely in L'Eau Courante but in Les Roches Blanches, a book which opens very well in a Mrs. Gaskell or Mrs. Oliphant vein, with the introduction of a new pastor, but ends much less satisfactorily, with a guiltless but not at all convincing love-affair between this pastor and the wife of his chief parishioner.

556

His wife for a time, Madame Judith Gautier, who died very recently, wrote in a fashion not unworthy of her blood both in verse and prose (part of her production being translations from Chinese), and was the only lady-member of the quaint Contre-académie formed by E. de Goncourt.

557

And this shame becomes more acute when I think of one or two individual books, such especially as M. Henry Cochin's Manuscrit de Monsieur C. A. L. Larsonnier– a most pathetic and delightful story of a mental malady which makes time and memory seem to go backward though the victim can force himself to continue his ordinary duties, and record his sufferings.

558

V. sup. "The French Novel in 1850."

559

Called by some a "deadening" one. There was some very cheerful Life in that Death.

560

The better part even of M. Ohnet is a sort of vulgarised Sandeau.

561

La Tentation, like others of the very greatest novels, is independent of its time, save in mere unimportant "colour."

562

How little this change was one back to classicism – as some would have it – we may see presently.

563

The greatest of all – the direction and maintenance of the revolution under the inspiration of what is called Romance – must be again postponed for a little while.

564

Of course the convulsions of '48 were ominous enough, but they seemed to be everywhere repressed or placated for a considerable time; and if there had been a single statesman of genius besides Herr von Bismarck (I anticipate but decline the suggestion of Cavour) in the Europe of the next two decades, they might not have broken out again for a much longer time than was actually the case.

565

Nearly – but fortunately for literature – not quite. The jobbery and the tyranny which are inseparable from democracy in politics find room with difficulty in our "Republic."

566

I am prepared for blame on account of some of the absences of mention. Perhaps the most provoking, to some readers, will be those affecting two industrious members of the aristocracy: Mme. la Comtesse Dash – more beautifully and properly though less exaltedly, Gabrelli Anna Cisterne de Courtiras, Vicomtesse de Saint-Mars – and M. le Comte Xavier de Montépin. They overlapped each other in pouring forth, from the 'forties to the 'nineties, torrents of mostly sensational fiction. But I had rather read them than write about them.

567

In the same place another novelist, M. Amédée de Bast, of whom I again acknowledge ignorance, advertises no less than four novels of four volumes each, as being actually all at press, pour paraître à diverses époques. Dryden says somewhere "in epoches mistakes." Let us hope there were none here.