Part 30

Their first essay was a drama. It was rejected; whereupon, nothing daunted, they wrote a novel. It was entitled '18--,' and it is interesting to observe that here, at the very outset of their career, they seem to have had in mind the keynote of the chord on which they ever afterwards played: the eighteenth century was the chief source of their inspiration, and it was their life's endeavor to explore it and reproduce it for their contemporaries with painstaking fidelity. The novel engaged their serious and earnest attention, and when it was given to the publisher they watched for its appearance with painful anxiety. Unfortunately it was announced for the very day on which occurred the _Coup d'Etat_. The book came out when Paris was in an uproar; and though Jules Janin, one of the most influential critics of the day, unexpectedly exploited it at great length in the Journal des Debats, its circulation in that first edition was not more than sixty copies, most of which were distributed gratuitously.

The blow was a hard one, but the brothers were not thus to be silenced, nor by the subsequent failure of other dramatic ventures and an effort to found a newspaper. They had been little more than imitators. They now entered the field they soon made their own. The writers of their day were for the most part classicists; a few before Victor Hugo were romanticists. The De Goncourts stood for the modern, what they could see and touch. In this way they became realists. What their own senses could not apprehend they at once rejected; all they saw they deemed worthy to be reproduced. They lived in a period of reconstruction after the devastation of the revolution. The refinement and elegance of the society of the later Bourbon monarchy, still within view, they yearned for and sought to restore. A series of monographs dealing with the art and the stage of these days, which appeared in 1851-2, won for them the first real recognition they enjoyed. These were followed by various critical essays on the same subjects, contributed to newspapers and periodicals, and a novel, 'La Lorette,' which had a large sale and marked the beginning of their success from a financial point of view. "This makes us realize," they wrote in their Journal, "that one can actually sell a book."

Their reputation as men of letters was established by the publication in 1854-5 of 'Histoire de la Societe Pendant la Revolution' and the same 'Pendant le Directoire' the aim of which, they said, was "to paint in vivid, simple colors the France of 1789 to 1800." This object they accomplished, so far as it concerned the society of which they themselves were descendants; but the reactionary spirit in them was too strong for an impartial view of the struggle, and their lack of true philosophic spirit and broad human sympathy led them to make a picture that, interesting as it is, is sadly distorted. Their vivid colors are lavished mainly on the outrages of the rioters and the sufferings of the aristocrats. But for wealth of detail, the result of tireless research, the history is of value as a record of the manners and customs of the fashionable set of the period. Of the same sort were their other semi-historical works: 'Portraits Intimes du XVIIIieme Siecle,' separate sketches of about a hundred more or less well-known figures of the age; 'L'Histoire de Marie Antoinette,' and 'La Femme au XVIIIieme Siecle,' in which the gossip and anecdote of former generations are told again almost as graphically as are those which the authors relate of their own circle in their memoirs. Their most important contribution to literature was their 'L'Art au XVIIIieme Siecle,' monographs gathered and published in seventeen volumes, and representing a dozen years' labor. This was indeed a labor of love, and it was not in vain; for it was these appreciative studies more than anything else that turned public attention to the almost forgotten delicacy of the school of painters headed by Watteau, Fragonard, Latour, Boucher, Debricourt, and Greuze, whose influence has ever since been manifested on the side of sound taste and sanity in French art.

A volume entitled 'Idees et Sensations,' and their Journal and letters, complete the list of the more important of their works outside the field of fiction. The Journal will always be valuable as an almost complete document of the literary history of France in their time, made up as it is of impressions of and from the most important writers of the day, with whom they were on terms of intimate friendship, including Flaubert, Gautier, Renan, Sainte-Beuve, Hugo, Saint-Victor, Michelet, Zola, and George Sand. In fiction the De Goncourts were less prolific, but it is to their novels mainly that they owe their reputation for individuality, and as true "path-breakers" in literature. They have been called the initiators of modern French realism. Their friend Flaubert perhaps better deserves the title. Their determination to see for themselves all that could be seen, the result of which gave real worth to their historical work, even where their prejudice robbed it of weight, was what put the stamp of character upon their novels. How much importance they attached to correct and comprehensive observation may be gathered from their remark, "The art of learning how to see demands the longest apprenticeship of all the arts." They took life as they found it, examined it on every side,--rarely going far under the surface,--and then sought to reproduce it on their pages as the artist would put it on canvas. Capable of terseness, of suggestiveness, quick to note and communicate the vital spark, they were yet rarely content with it alone. Every minute particle of the body it vivified, they insisted on adding to their picture. Nothing was to be taken for granted; as nothing was accepted by them at second hand, so nothing was left to the imagination of the reader until their comprehensive view was his. It was in this way that they were realists. They did not seek out and expose to public view the grossness and unpleasantness of life. Their own preference was for the beautiful, and in their own lives they indulged their refined tastes. But they looked squarely at the world about them, the ugly with the beautiful, the impure with the pure, and they did not hesitate to describe one almost as faithfully as the other.

Curiously, the discrimination against the masses and the bias that mar their history do not appear in their fiction. "They began writing history which was nothing but romance," says one of their critics, "and later wrote romance which in reality is history." Indeed, their novels are little more than sketches of what occurred around them. 'Madame Gervaisais' is a character study of the aunt of strong literary predilections who influenced Edmond; 'Germinie Lacerteux' is the biography of their servant, at whose death, after long and faithful service, they discovered that she had led a life of singular duplicity; 'Soeur Philomene' is a terribly true glimpse of hospital life, and 'Manette Salomon,' with its half-human monkey drawn from the life, is transferred without change from the Parisian studios under the Empire. 'Renee Mauperin' comes nearest to the model of an ordinary novel; but no one can read of the innocent tomboy girl struck down with fatal remorse at the consequences of her own natural action, on learning of her brother's dishonor, without feeling that this picture too was drawn from the life. Several of their stories were dramatized, but with scant success; and a play which they wrote, 'Henriette Marechal' and had produced at the Comedie Francaise through the influence of Princess Mathilde, their constant friend and patroness, was almost howled down,--chiefly however for political reasons.

After the death of Jules de Goncourt, his brother wrote several books of the same character as those which they produced in union, the best known of which are 'La Fille Elisa,' and 'Cherie,' a study of a girl, said to have been inspired by the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. The best critics in France, notably Sainte-Beuve, have given the brothers Goncourt a very high place in literature and conceded their originality. English reviewers have been less ready to exalt them, mainly on account of the offensive part of their realism. They have objected also to their superficiality as historians, and to their sympathy with the sentimental admirers of such types as Marie Antoinette; but they too have been ready to praise the brothers as leaders of a new fashion, and especially for their devotion to style. In this respect the Goncourts have few rivals in French literature. Balzac himself was not more finical in the choice of words, or more unsparing of his time and energy in writing and re-writing until his exact meaning, no more or less, had been expressed; and they covered up the marks of their toil better than he. In a letter to Zola, Edmond de Goncourt said:--"My own idea is that my brother died of work, and above all from the desire to elaborate the artistic form, the chiseled phrase, the workmanship of style." He himself spent a long life at this fine artistry, and died in Paris in July, 1896.

TWO FAMOUS MEN

From the Journal of the De Goncourts

March 3D [1862].--We took a walk and went off to find Theophile Gautier.... The street in which he lives is composed of the most squalid countrified buildings, of court-yards swarming with poultry, fruit shops whose doors are ornamented with little brooms of black feathers: just such a suburban street as Hervier might have painted.... We pushed open the door of a house, and found ourselves in the presence of the lord of epithet. The furniture was of gilded wood, covered with red damask, after the heavy Venetian style; there were fine old pictures of the Italian school; above the chimney a mirror innocent of quicksilver, on which were scraped colored arabesques and various Persian characters,--such a picture of meagre sumptuousness and faded splendor as one would find in the rooms of a retired actress, who had come in for some pictures through the bankruptcy of an Italian manager.

When we asked him if we were disturbing him, he answered: "Not at all. I never work at home. I get through my 'copy' at the printing-office. They set up the type as I write. The smell of the printers' ink is a sure stimulant to work, for one feels the 'copy' must be handed in. I could write only a novel in this way now; unless I saw ten lines printed I could not get on to the next ten. The proof-sheet serves as a test to one's work. That which is already done becomes impersonal, but the actual 'copy' is part of yourself; it hangs like filaments from the root of your literary life, and has not yet been torn away. I have always been preparing corners where I should do my work, but when installed there I found I could do nothing. I must be in the midst of things, and can work only when a racket is going on about me; whereas, when I shut myself up for work the solitude tells upon me and makes me sad."

From there Gautier got on the subject of the 'Queen of Sheba.' We admitted our infirmity, our physical incapacity of taking in musical sound; and indeed, a military band is the highest musical enjoyment of which we are capable. Whereupon Gautier said, "Well, I'm delighted to hear that: I am just like you; I prefer silence to music. I do know bad music from good, because part of my life was spent with a singer, but both are quite indifferent to me. Still it is curious that all the literary men of our day feel the same about music. Balzac abhorred it, Hugo cannot endure it, Lamartine has a horror of it. There are only a few painters who have a taste for it."

Then Gautier fell to complaining of the times. "Perhaps I am getting an old man, but I begin to feel as if there were no more air to breathe. What is the use of wings if there is no air in which one can soar? I no longer feel as if I belonged to the present generation. Yes, 1830 was a glorious epoch, but I was too young by two or three years; I was not carried away by the current; I was not ready for it. I ought to have produced a very different sort of work."

There was then some talk of Flaubert, of his literary methods, of his indefatigable patience, and of the seven years he devoted to a work of four hundred pages. "Just listen," observed Gautier, "to what Flaubert said to me the other day: 'It is finished. I have only ten more pages to write; but the ends of my sentences are all in my head.' So that he already hears in anticipation the music of the last words of his sentences before the sentences themselves have been written. Was it not a quaint expression to use? I believe he has devised a sort of literary rhythm. For instance, a phrase which begins in slow measure must not finish with a quick pace, unless some special effect is to be produced. Sometimes the rhythm is only apparent to himself, and escapes our notice. A story is not written for the purpose of being read aloud: yet he shouts his to himself as he writes them. These shouts present to his own ears harmonies, but his readers seem unaware of them."

Gautier's daughters have a charm of their own, a species of Oriental languor, deep dreamy eyes, veiled by heavy eyelids, and a regularity in their gestures and movements which they inherit from their father; but this regularity is tempered in them by womanly grace. There is a charm about them which is not all French; nevertheless there is a French element about it, their little tomboyish tricks and expressions, their habit of pouting, the shrugging of their shoulders, the irony which escapes through the thin veil of childishness intended to conceal it. All these points distinguish them from ordinary society girls, and make clear a strong individuality of character which renders them fearless in expressing their likings and antipathies. They display liberty of speech, and have often the manner of a woman whose face is hidden by a mask; and yet one finds here simplicity, candor, and a charming absence of reserve, utterly unknown to the ordinary young girl.

* * * * *

November 23D [1863].--We have been to thank Michelet for the flattering lines he wrote about us.

He lives in the Rue de l'Ouest, at the end of the Jardin du Luxembourg, in a large house which might almost be workmen's dwellings. His flat is on the third floor. A maid opened the door and announced us. We penetrated into a small study.

The wife of the historian has a young, serious face; she was seated on a chair beside the desk on which the lamp was placed, with her back to the window. Michelet sat on a couch of green velvet, and was banked up by cushions.

His attitude reminded us of his historical work: the lower portions of his body were in full sight, whilst the upper were half concealed; the face was a mere shadow surrounded with snowy white locks; from this shadowy mass emerged a professorial, sonorous, singsong voice, consciously important, and in which the ascending and descending scale produced a continuous cooing sound.

He spoke to us in a most appreciative manner of our study of Watteau, and then passed on to the interesting study which might be written on French furniture.

"You gentlemen, who are observers of human nature," he cried suddenly, "there is a history you should write,--the history of the lady's-maid. I do not speak of Madame de Maintenon; but you have Mademoiselle de Launai, the Duchesse de Grammont's Julie, who exercised on her mistress so great an influence, especially in the Corsican affair. Madame Du Deffand said sometimes that there were only two people sincerely attached to her, D'Alembert and her maid. Oh! domesticity has played a great part in history, though men-servants have been of comparative unimportance....

"I was once going through England, traveling from York to Halifax. There were pavements in the country lanes, with the grass growing on each side as carefully kept as the pavements themselves; close by, sheep were grazing, and the whole scene was lit up by gas. A singular sight!"

Then after a short pause:--"Have you noticed that the physiognomy of the great men of to-day is so rarely in keeping with their intellect? Look at their portraits, their photographs: there are no longer any good portraits. Remarkable people no longer possess in their faces anything which distinguishes them from ordinary folk. Balzac had nothing characteristic. Would you recognize Lamartine if you saw him? There is nothing in the shape of his head, or in his lustreless eyes, nothing but a certain elegance which age has not affected. The fact is that in these days there is too great an accumulation of people and things, much more so than in former times. We assimilate too much from other people, and this being the case, we lose even the individuality of our features; we present the portrait of a collective set of people rather than of ourselves."

We rose to take our leave; he accompanied us to the door; then by the light of the lamp he carried in his hand we saw, for a second at least, this marvelous historian of dreams, the great somnambulist of the past and brilliant talker of the present.

THE SUICIDE

From 'Sister Philomene'

The next morning the whole hospital knew that Barnier, having scratched his hand on the previous day while dissecting a body in a state of purulent infection, was dying in terrible agonies.

When at four o'clock Malivoire, quitting for a few moments the bedside of his friend, came to replace him in the service, the Sister went up to him. She followed from bed to bed, dogging his steps, without however accosting him, without speaking, watching him intently with her eyes fixed on his. As he was leaving the ward:--

"Well?" she asked, in the brief tone with which women stop the doctor on his last visit at the threshold of the room.

"No hope," said Malivoire, with a gesture of despair; "there is nothing to be done. It began at his right ankle, went up the leg and thigh, and has attacked all the articulations. Such agonies, poor fellow! It will be a mercy when it's over."

"Will he be dead before night?" asked the Sister calmly.

"Oh no! He will live through the night. It is the same case as that of Raguideau three years ago; and Raguideau lasted forty-eight hours."

That evening, at ten o'clock, Sister Philomene might be seen entering the church of Notre Dame des Victoires.

The lamps were being lowered, the lighted tapers were being put out one by one with a long-handled extinguisher. The priest had just left the vestry.

The Sister inquired where he lived, and was told that his house was a couple of steps from the church, in the Rue de la Banque.

The priest was just going into the house when she entered behind, pushing open the door he was closing.

"Come in, Sister," he said, unfurling his wet umbrella and placing it on the tiled floor in the ante-room. And he turned toward her. She was on her knees. "What are you doing, Sister?" he said, astonished at her attitude. "Get up, my child. This is not a fit place. Come, get up!"

"You will save him, will you not?" and Philomene caught hold of the priest's hands as he stretched them out to help her to rise. "Why do you object to my remaining on my knees?"

"Come, come, my child, do not be so excited. It is God alone, remember, who can save. I can but pray."

"Ah! you can only pray," she said in a disappointed tone. "Yes, that is true."

And her eyes sank to the ground. After a moment's pause the priest went on:--

"Come, Sister, sit down there. You are calmer now, are you not? Tell me, what is it you want?"

"He is dying," said Philomene, rising as she spoke. "He will probably not live through the night;" and she began to cry. "It is for a young man of twenty-seven years of age; he has never performed any of his religious duties, never been near a church, never prayed to God since his first communion. He will refuse to listen to anything. He no longer knows a prayer even. He will listen neither to priest nor any one. And I tell you it is all over with him,--he is dying. Then I remembered your Confraternity of Notre Dame des Victoires, since it is devoted to those who do not believe. Come, you must save him!"

"My daughter--"

"And perhaps he is dying at this very moment. Oh! promise me you will do all at once, all that is in the Confraternity book; the prayers,--everything, in short. You will have him prayed for at once, won't you?"

"But, my poor child, it is Friday to-day, and the Confraternity only meets on Thursday."

"Thursday only--why? It will be too late Thursday. He will never live till Thursday. Come, you must save him; you have saved many another."

Sister Philomene looked at the priest with wide-opened eyes, in which through her tears rose a glance of revolt, impatience, and command. For one instant in that room there was no longer a Sister standing before a priest, but a woman face to face with an old man.

The priest resumed:--

"All I can do at present for that young man, my dear daughter, is to apply to his benefit all the prayers and good works that are being carried on by the Confraternity, and I will offer them up to the Blessed and Immaculate Heart of Mary to obtain his conversion. I will pray for him to-morrow at mass, and again on Saturday and Sunday."

"Oh, I am so thankful," said Philomene, who felt tears rise gently to her eyes as the priest spoke to her. "Now I am full of hope; he will be converted, he will have pity on himself. Give me your blessing for him."

"But Sister, I only bless from the altar, in the pulpit, or in the confessional. There only am I the minister of God. Here, my Sister, here I am but a weak man, a miserable sinner."

"That does not signify; you are always God's minister, and you cannot, you would not, refuse me; he is at the point of death."

She fell on her knees as she spoke. The priest blessed her, and added:--

"It is nearly eleven o'clock, Sister; you have nearly three miles to get home, all Paris to cross at this late hour."

"Oh, I am not afraid," replied Philomene with a smile; "God knows why I am in the street. Moreover, I will tell my beads on the way. The Blessed Virgin will be with me."...

The same evening, Barnier, rousing himself from a silence that had lasted the whole day, said to Malivoire, "You will write to my mother. You will tell her that this often happens in our profession."

"But you are not yet as bad as all that, my dear fellow," replied Malivoire, bending over the bed. "I am sure I shall save you."

"No, I chose my man too well for that. How well I took you in, my poor Malivoire!" and he smiled almost. "You understand, I could not kill myself. I did not wish to be the death of my old mother. But an accident--that settles everything. You will take all my books, do you hear? and my case of instruments also. I wish you to have all. You wonder why I have killed myself, don't you? Come nearer. It is on account of that woman. I never loved but her in all my life. They did not give her enough chloroform; I told them so. Ah! if you had heard her scream when she awoke--before it was over! That scream still re-echoes in my ears! However," he continued, after a nervous spasm, "if I had to begin again, I would choose some other way of dying, some way in which I should not suffer so much. Then, you know, she died, and I fancied I had killed her. She is ever before me,... covered with blood.... And then I took to drinking. I drank because I love her still.... That's all!"

Barnier relapsed into silence. After a long pause, he again spoke, and said to Malivoire:--

"You will tell my mother to take care of the little lad."

After another pause, the following words escaped him:--

"The Sister would have said a prayer."

Shortly after, he asked:--

"What o'clock is it?"

"Eleven."

"Time is not up yet;... I have still some hours to live.... I shall last till to-morrow."