Part 15

From the artistic point of view it is interesting to observe the kind of imagery by means of which Chateaubriand, when he is neither borrowing from the Revelation of St. John nor from Milton, attempts to give an idea of the glories of heaven. When Dante makes the same attempt, he has recourse to visions, to the glories of that mystic rose which the Gothic cathedral builders feebly endeavoured to imitate; but Chateaubriand, the man of modern ideas and of much experience as far as the outward world is concerned, has recourse to impressions of travel. The arcades of heaven are compared to the gardens of Babylon, to the pillars of Palmyra in the sands of the desert. When the blessed spirits are hastening through the created world we are told of the scene that displays itself to them: "Thus present themselves to the eye of the traveller the great plains of India, the fertile valleys of Delhi and Kashmir, shores covered with pearls and fragrant with ambergris, where the tranquil waves lay themselves to rest beneath the blossoming cinnamon trees." Such imagery is somewhat too realistic for the spiritual theme. We shrink from representing all these archangels to ourselves in Indian surroundings. But it is in such ways that nature revenges herself upon the man who believes he can set her aside or can produce something superior to her productions. A later author of this same school, De Vigny, who writes as much under the influence of Ossian as of Milton, compares the ether of the firmament to the mists of the Scottish mountains. The indistinct form of Lucifer descried far off in space by the angel Eloa is compared to the waving plaid of some wandering Scotchwoman, seen through the misty clouds falling on the hill-tops. The conjunction of an angel and a plaid strikes us as a curious one.

The scenery which this group of authors considers unquestionably the most beautiful is not the jumbled, potpourri landscape of the German Romanticists; no, what they, in harmony with the spirit of their day, admire is that Paradisaic landscape in which the strictest order prevails--symmetrical, architectural, a sort of dilution of Claude Lorraine. Take, for an example, the commencement of De Vigny's _Le Déluge_:

La terre était riante et dans sa fleur première; Le jour avait encor cette même lumière Qui du ciel embelli couronna les hauturs Quand Dieu la fit tomber de ses doigts créateurs. Rien n'avait dans sa forme altéré la nature, Et des monts _réguliers_ l'immense architecture S'élevait jusqu' aux cieux par ses degrés _égaux_ Sans que rien de leur chaîne eût brisé les anneaux. * * * * * Et des fleuves aux mers le cours était _réglé_ Dans un _ordre_ parfait qui n'était pas troublé. Jamais un voyageur n'aurait, sous le feuillage Rencontré, loin des flots, l'émail du coquillage, Et la perle habitait son palais de cristal; Chaque trésor restait dans l'élément natal, Sans enfreindre jamais la céleste défense.

This partiality for model, ideal landscape tempts our authors more and more frequently to lay the scenes of their works in heaven.

Chateaubriand continues to be a greater master in the description of earthly than of heavenly surroundings.

The action of De Vigny's earliest poems takes place, in genuine Seraphic style, midway between heaven and earth.

The scene of Victor Hugo's ode, _Louis XVII._, is the gate of heaven, that of _La Vision_ heaven itself, the heavenly Jerusalem. In _La Vision_ we come upon familiar imagery:

Le char des Séraphins fidèles, Semé d'yeux, brillant d'étincelles, S'arrêta sur son triple essieu; Et la roue aux traces bruyantes, Et les quatres ailes tournoyantes Se turent au souffle de Dieu. * * * * Adorant l'Essence inconnue Les Saints, les Martyrs glorieux, Contemplaient, sons l'ardente Nue, Le Triangle mystérieux.

Though Lamartine in his first works lingers lovingly over terrestrial scenes, he yet constantly soars in hymns into the celestial ether where, as he tells us, sacred poetry dwells, crowned with palms and stars.

Lord Byron, who, like De Vigny, writes a poem on the Flood (_Heaven and Earth_), is also partial to ether, though not such theological ether, as a surrounding; but he loves wilder scenery, and it is as the painter of the sea that he finds his true sphere. He lifts poetry out of its ethereal environment and deposits it in the fresh, salt element.

Chateaubriand, then, hardly succeeded in proving what he wished to prove, the superiority of Christianity to the purely human sources of poetic inspiration. Each time he attempts to do so he exposes or condemns himself. I adduce one other striking example of this.

His hero, Eudore, sailing up the Gulf of Megara, with Ægina in front of him, Piræus on the right and Corinth on the left, sees all these towns, which once were so flourishing, lying in ruins. A Greek fellow-passenger is moved to tears by the remembrance of his country's ancient glory, and we are told in touching words how the individual feels as if his individual griefs disappeared when he is brought face to face with the great, overwhelming calamities which crush whole nations. Then Eudore says: "Such an idea seemed to be beyond my youthful grasp, and nevertheless I understood it, whilst the other young men who were on board did not. What caused this difference between us? Our religions. They were pagans, I was a Christian."

Chateaubriand plainly desires to impress upon us that such an appreciation of natural surroundings and the lessons taught by them is a special possession of the Christian, of which the pagan, as pagan, is destitute. But his position is considerably weakened by our knowledge that the utterance referred to by Eudore is nothing more nor less than a translation from a famous letter written by Sulpicius to Cicero,[5] that the sentiments in question are actually the sentiments of a pagan. We can hardly be expected to accept this as a proof of the pagan's want of poetic feeling. But the trait is typical. Throughout all Chateaubriand's writings dogmatic religion is constantly proclaimed to be in possession of certain supernatural beauties and qualities of which nature, as nature, is devoid; and yet everything in that religion which is of poetical or moral value is simply an expression of human nature. As Feuerbach puts it: "Every theory of God is, in its essence, a theory of human nature."

Passing this half audacious, half conventional work, _Les Martyrs_, once again in review, we cannot deny that the part of it which directly treats of the supernatural world of Christianity is a failure. Indeed, Chateaubriand himself openly confesses as much in his _Memoirs_. The parts which have any real value are the purely human parts, one of which we shall presently criticise. It was inevitable that the doubt and indifference of the century concerning the supernatural world should set its mark on the work of an author whose own religious enthusiasm was as much a matter of deliberate intention and determination as Chateaubriand's.

Chateaubriand was not a conscious hypocrite, but he deceived himself. Proof of the manner in which he himself was affected by the reading of his _Martyrs_ is to be found in that refined and charming autobiographical work, which all agree in accepting as reliable--_Les Enchantements de Prudence_, by Madame de Saman, otherwise Madame Allart de Méritens, the last woman whom Chateaubriand loved, and who loved him in return.

This lady tells how, in the summer of 1828, they used to meet at the Pont d'Austerlitz and dine together in the Jardin des Plantes in a private room. "He ordered champagne, to dispel my coldness, as he said; and then I sang to him Béranger's songs--_Mon âme, La bonne vieille. Le Dieu des bonnes gens_, &c. He listened as if enchanted." She paints these meetings in the warmest colours,[6] and she mentions that it was one of Chateaubriand's greatest pleasures to listen to her reading passages from his works. (Both in this book and elsewhere Madame de Saman shows herself to have been possessed of excellent literary taste.) He especially loved to hear her read his descriptions of landscape. "But sometimes," she says, "to affect him more profoundly, I produced _Les Martyrs_, and read the speeches and thanksgiving hymns of the confessors, or the thrilling prison and torture-chamber scenes. Then he could not restrain his tears. One day he began to weep; I continued to read; he sobbed convulsively; I still went on, and when I came to the passage which tells how Eudore secretly offered to sacrifice himself in order to win the salvation of his mother, who had been too weak in her love for her children, he could contain himself no longer, and burst into a passion of tears and sobs. It was a case of emotions returning to their source. His highly strung nerves gave way. Completely overcome, exhausted with weeping, he expressed his gratitude to me, said that he had never experienced such rapture, called me by all the sweet names men give to the Muses, told me that I was beautiful, more especially praised my eyes and their expression, imagining in the ardour of his passion that he had never seen anything like them before." The lady was at this time about twenty, Chateaubriand exactly sixty years old.

This quotation shows us that even such frigid passages in _Les Martyrs_ as the speeches of the white-robed elders had really been _felt_ by the author himself. We are touched by this young and noble woman's enthusiastic admiration for an old man, and the man himself rises in the reader's estimation from the fact of his being able, even at that age, to win the love of such a woman. But it is in strange surroundings that we come upon this outburst of strong emotion, a thing so rare with Chateaubriand that it may almost be called unique. Champagne, the songs of his political and religious opponent, Béranger, caresses and declarations of love, fits of weeping and sobbing over _Les Martyrs_, followed by more love-making! What an environment for the epic of orthodoxy! What an excess of human passion in a Seraphic poet, a former minister of state and pilgrim to Jerusalem![7]

_Les Martyrs_ shows Chateaubriand's weakest side as an author. Such a scene as that described with the best intentions by Madame Allart de Méritens shows his weakest side as a man. And yet this outburst of human passion makes almost a satisfactory impression upon us compared with the artificiality by which he is so often distinguished. God and the king are too constantly in his mouth. We must not, however, allow this artificiality to blind us to what is really great in the talent and in the life of this remarkable personage.

In order to get a complete impression of Chateaubriand it is necessary to read the twelve volumes of _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, as also those by which they are supplemented. Just as Rousseau's _Confessions_ form the most interesting of his books, so the _Mémoires_ constitute Chateaubriand's most impressive work. In them we find a complete personality--a whole man, and that a man of mark. This important personage, who possesses no great acuteness of observation as far as humanity in general is concerned, who, in fact, occupies himself very little with humanity in general, has focussed all his acuteness upon the one subject which really interests him, his own ego, and has half consciously, half unconsciously, but in any case very completely, revealed and exhibited it to us. It is an ego proud to the verge of arrogance, melancholy to the verge of despondency, sceptical to the verge of indifference, without faith in progress of any kind, profoundly persuaded of the vanity of even those things which afford it temporary pleasure, such as love, fame, worldly position, and, as time goes on, ever more saturated with ennui and ever more absorbingly occupied with itself. It is an ego which owns a warm, prolific imagination and great artistic talent, and which, at a period (the end of the eighteenth century) when taste was all in favour of the light, the pretty, the small, felt itself solitary in its love of the grand, of the beauty of magnitude.

In a certain sense Chateaubriand was like no other man of his day. He satisfied, as we saw, the requirement of the moment so exactly with his _Génie du Christianisme_ that, as a sort of intellectual standard-bearer, he acquired an importance out of proportion to his character and talent.

In so far the moment at which he made his appearance magnified him.

But, looking at the matter from the other side, it may be maintained with equal certainty that the moment at which he entered upon his career forced on him a part which, for half a century, brought him into conflict with his own inmost nature. That nature was always rebelling against the part; the man's independence and uncontrollableness were in perpetual collision with the politico-religious orthodoxy which it had become his life-task to give expression to and champion. In other words, his position in the world involved him in incurable discord with himself.

In his old age he sometimes plainly confesses this. Towards the conclusion of his work on the congress of Verona he says openly: "As an officer of the regiment of Navarre I had come back from the forests of America to join legitimate monarchy in its exile and to fight under its banner _against my own judgment_ (contre mes propres lumières)--_all this without conviction_, simply from a soldier's sense of duty, and because I, having had the honour of driving in the royal carriages from and to Versailles, considered myself peculiarly bound to support a prince of the blood royal."[8] We find him, however, only two pages farther on in the same book ascribing the fortunate issue of the war in Spain, which he had forced on against the desire of France, Spain, and England, less to his own ability, which he is not at all given to undervaluing, than to "one of the latest miracles performed by Heaven for the race of St. Louis."

Here, as in all his later works, he makes a marked difference between monarchy as an idea and the person of the monarch. He tries to reconcile avowed, unaltered loyalty to ideas with a frank contempt for the capacities and characters of kings.

There is no doubt that the foolish ingratitude of the Bourbons towards the man to whom they owed so much added largely to this contempt. But in his Memoirs he shows that it began early; he would have us believe that it dated from his earliest acquaintance with Louis XVIII, and his environment. He soon perceived that King Louis did not favour him, and it wounded his pride to find that the King's brother, the future Charles X., had not read one of his books, not even _Le Génie du Christianisme_. Looking back on his past life he writes: "Louis the Eighteenth and his brother did not understand me at all. The latter said of me: 'Good-hearted and hot-headed!' These hackneyed words ... were completely misapplied. My head is very cool, and my heart has never beat very warmly for kings."

The old monarchy, unless it actually felt itself so self-dependent as to be indebted to no one, was bound to regard itself as under obligation to Chateaubriand, not only because, as an officer in Condé's army, he had fought and suffered in its cause, not only because, under Napoleon, he had stopped midway in his career and defied the mighty potentate by sending in his resignation after the execution of the Duke of Enghien, but also because, in 1814, even before Napoleon's abdication at Versailles, he had influenced public opinion in favour of the Bourbons by means of a pamphlet which Louis XVIII himself declared to have been as useful to him as a hundred thousand soldiers.

The pamphlet in question, _Buonaparte et les Bourbons_, is perhaps the most passionate, most vindictive, most venomous, and most artificially enthusiastic party work written by Chateaubriand. It is an insane shriek of hatred of the fallen Napoleon, who is stripped of every fragment of his glory, and a hurrah of hollow enthusiasm for sunken-chested Louis XVIII, who is deified. In no other work does Chateaubriand display so much vindictive stupidity. He goes so far as to deny Bonaparte's ability as a general. He describes him as an incompetent officer, who could do nothing but command his troops to go forward, and who gained his victories simply by the excellence of these troops and not by his conduct of them, as a commander who never ensured and never knew when to make a retreat, and who, far from improving the art of war, led it back to its infancy again.[9] The Marquise de Seiglière in Sandeau's famous comedy does not talk greater nonsense about Napoleon.

Louis XVIII, on the other hand, is called a prince famed for his sagacity. We are told that, of all the rulers possible for France at the moment, he is the one most suited to the position of the country and the _spirit of the century_, whilst Bonaparte is the one of all others least fit to reign.

This is what we find in the official pamphlet. But how differently Chateaubriand thinks and speaks in his Memoirs! In them he does justice to Bonaparte's military skill; he says of him that "he invented war in the grand style;" and he has also suddenly discovered that the winning of one battle after another is no inconsiderable part of the duty of a general. Because they flatter his own vanity, he relates various anecdotes which show how Napoleon, unbiassed by his (Chateaubriand's) hatred, displayed his appreciation of him. After Chateaubriand had turned against him, Napoleon demanded to be informed by the Academy, why a prize had not been awarded to the _Génie du Christianisme_. And when (at Fontainebleau) he had read with perfect calmness the offensive pamphlet described above, he merely remarked: "_This_ is correct; _that_ is not correct. I do not blame Chateaubriand. He was my enemy in my day of prosperity; but those miscreants," &c, &c. Apropos of this, Chateaubriand makes the amusing and surprising remark: "My admiration of Bonaparte (this time without the _u_) has always been great and sincere." He is undoubtedly telling the truth. He admired and envied Napoleon. He measured himself with him and felt the disadvantage of having such a contemporary.

In his Memoirs he also tells the truth about those kings for whom he professed such loyalty and reverence.

He tells that in 1814 he dreaded the impression likely to be produced by Louis XVIII's personal appearance, and he gives a copy of the high-flown description which he in consequence circulated of the King's entry into Paris, a description which he wrote, he says, without being asked to do so, and without any taste for such compositions, but _beautifying everything with the aid of the Muses_. "A man makes his appearance before the officers, who have never seen him, before the grenadiers, who hardly know him by name. Who is this man? He is the King! One and all fall down at his feet."

Then he tells the real facts of the entrance, and calmly remarks: _I lied with regard to the soldiers_. He gives a fine description of the attitude of the remnant of Napoleon's Old Guard, who were drawn up outside Notre Dame, and through whose ranks the King had to pass. "I do not believe that human countenances ever wore a more terrible and threatening expression." He declares that they looked as if they were on the point of cutting the King to pieces.

And he makes no endeavour to show the baselessness of their contempt. After telling how his plan of defence during the Hundred Days was foiled by the cowardliness of the King and his immediate following, he exclaims: "Why did I come into the world _in an age in which I am so out of place?_ Why have I been a Royalist _against my instinct_ at a time when a miserable tribe of courtiers would not listen to me, could not understand me? Why was my lot cast amongst that crowd of mediocrities who looked on me as a madman when I spoke of courage, as a revolutionist when I spoke of liberty?"[10]

As the Memoirs advance, the champion of monarchy throws ever more light upon the piety, understanding, and character of Louis XVIII. "It is to be feared that to_ the most Christian King's_ religion was no more than a medicinal liquor, well adapted to form one of the ingredients of the brew called monarchy." He writes of "the voluptuous imagination which the King had inherited from his father." He remarks that he was fond of praising himself and making fun of himself at the same time; for instance, when speaking of possible heirs to the throne, "he drew himself up with a capable, arch air; but it was not my intention to dispute the King's ability in this or any other matter."[11] When giving a more minute description of Louis's character, he says: "Selfish and devoid of prejudices, it was his aim to preserve his own tranquillity at all costs.... Without being cruel, the King was inhuman." He tells how Louis boasted of being able to raise a favourite so high as to make him the object of universal envy, and thereupon remarks: "To be able to raise others, one must be certain of not falling one's self. But what were kings in the days of Louis XVIII.? Though they could still make a man rich, it was no longer in their power to make him great. They were now nothing but their favourites' bankers."

And not content even with such severe language as this, Chateaubriand at times takes to satire. In his account of the Congress of Verona he tells how it came about that he at one time stood so high in the King's favour that his fellow-ministers were positively jealous of him: "The King often went to sleep in the Cabinet Council; and it was the best thing he could do, for when he was not asleep he told stories. He had a great gift of mimicry. But this did not amuse M. de Villèle, who wished to discuss affairs of state. M. de Corcière put his elbows, his snuffbox, and his blue pocket-handkerchief on the table; the other ministers listened in silence. I alone could not help being amused by His Majesty's anecdotes, and this evidently delighted him. When he was searching for an excuse to tell a story, he would say in his little thin, clear voice: 'I want to make M. de Chateaubriand laugh.'"[12]

It does not surprise us that Chateaubriand, after demonstrating how in a democratic community men make their way by talking volubly of liberty, the progress of humanity, the future, &c, should wind up with the following description of the conditions prevailing in the aristocratic, royalist society, the praises of which he had always sung: "Play whist, bring out with an air of seriousness and profundity the impertinences and witticisms which you have prepared, and the brilliant career of your genius is assured."

Thus completely was the man who inaugurates the half-beliefs, the æsthetic Christianity, and the affected royalism of the nineteenth century cured of all illusions.

He was too proud to wear his mask to the end, and he threw it off completely "beyond the grave."

He himself names as his "chief faults" ennui, disgust with everything, and constant doubt. These faults had their good sides. Profound indifference to all this world has to bestow preserved him from the temptations of base ambition; doubt preserved him from placing implicit confidence in the doctrines which a spirit of aristocratic defiance more than anything else led him to champion; his pride sustained him, and though it did not preserve him from hypocrisy, it kept him from ever committing a mean action. But, until the ingratitude of the authority which he had reinstated roused him to rebellion, there was a hopeless discord between his nature and the part he played.

[1] Paul Heyse expresses this thought in an excellent epigram:

Bist du schon gut, weil du gläubig bist? Der Teufel ist sicher kein Atheist.

[2]