Part 19

To Frenchmen the idea of living a long, peaceful life once more became a familiar one. For years mothers had trembled when they saw their sons approaching the age of manhood, that is to say, the age at which they became first soldiers and ere long corpses; now they began to hope that these sons had a long life before them. The youths, to whom in their boyhood the rattle of drums and blare of trumpets had been familiar sounds, who even at school had accustomed themselves to the thought of early won honour and an early death, were now obliged to familiarise themselves with the idea of life in time of peace. The natural death to which they now looked forward seemed hideous in comparison with death as it had displayed itself to them heretofore, gloriously beautiful in the purple of victory; what was almost a feeling of disappointment came over them, and they began to brood. Most of the young men who had so long been forced to sacrifice their personal life to the life of the State, the requirements of war, the general aims of their country, welcomed with delight the news that they might break the ranks, and were no longer bound to walk in step behind the drum; they shook the dust of the highways off their feet, threw off their uniforms, and tried to banish every remembrance of military discipline. Coming straight from the battle-fields of the Empire, from the noise and bloodshed of war, they took refuge in the quietness of a country life, far from the bustle and uproar of human crowds. Such was the mood of the moment--a wearied, but complex mood. There was disappointment in it, and hope, and inclination to personal day dreaming. It was not a mood favourable to action, but to brooding, reflection, deliberation.

This national mood explains how it was possible for such poetry as Lamartine's _Les Méditations_ to become the favourite literature of the day. No book since Chateaubriand's _Génie du Christianisme_ had made such a sensation as did the First Part of this work; 45,000 copies of it were sold in four years. Strange as it may seem to us now, the Restoration period found in Lamartine's poetry an interpretation of its feelings and of all that moved its inmost heart--a picture of its ideal longings, painted in the clearest, loveliest dream-colours. It was poetry that resembled the music of an Æolian harp, but the wind that played upon the strings was the spirit of the age. The poems were not so much songs as reflections, not so much heart as spirit harmonies; but in real life there had for long been enough, and more than enough, of the positive--definite forms, decided characters, solid substance, silent acceptance of the strokes of fate. It was by no means considered a fault that there was no strong passion in the poems, no tendency to see the dark and dreadful sides of life, or, in fact, life as it is. There had been enough of all this in reality. After a period during which so many instincts had been forcibly suppressed, men rejoiced in this purely poetic instinct, in this most melodious poet, who had, as he himself said, a chord for every feeling and mood. They longed for just such lyric restfulness after philosophy, revolution, and wars without end. The poem _Le Lac_ was read with delight by the whole French-speaking world, just because it was so long since men had felt in sympathy with nature, so long since they had looked at the face of the earth from any point of view but the tactical one. It was not only, however, as the poet of feeling that Lamartine represented the spirit of the day; he also represented it in his character of orthodox Christian. The leading note in his poetry was the note of Christian royalism, and devotion to the Bourbon family in particular.

To us, who are acquainted with a Lamartine in whom the Revolution of 1848 seemed to find its incarnation, a Lamartine who was universally regarded as a prophet of humanism, it is of interest to examine the poet's spiritual starting-point.

Alphonse de Lamartine was born at Mâcon in 1790, of a family belonging to the ranks of the lesser nobility. His father was one of the king's last faithful adherents at the time of the Revolution, and suffered for his devotion. Alphonse's loving, pious mother taught him to read in an illustrated Bible. He thus received his first literary and artistic impressions from scenes in the lives of the Patriarchs, the stories of Joseph and Samuel, of Sarah, and of Tobias and the Angel. After 1794 the family lived a very retired life upon small means on their little property of Milly. The son was at first taught at home by an amiable abbé, then sent to a school at Lyons, the rough, coarse tone of which was terribly repellent to a boy of a naturally refined disposition. By his mother's and his own wish he was removed to a school at Belley, kept by certain Jesuits who had managed to elude the laws banishing them from France, and who called themselves _Fathers of the Faith_. Here young Lamartine felt himself inexpressibly happy. The teachers were kind and refined; one of them reminded him of Fénélon; in the present century the Jesuits are undoubtedly not only the most unscrupulous, but also the most amiable, cleverest, and consequently most dangerous of all ecclesiastics. Amongst his fellow-pupils Lamartine soon found friends of his own standing, scions of French and Sardinian noble families. Among these were a young Alfieri, young Virieu, who, as V., plays a part in Graziella, and a nephew of Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Vignet. Through de Vignet Lamartine made acquaintance with all the members of the famous de Maistre family; Count Joseph attracted him least as a personality, but influenced him both by letters and by his works.

One day at Belley a master read some passages of Chateaubriand to the boys. The grandeur and charm of the majestic style made the deepest impression upon Lamartine, who had never heard anything like it before. But he declares in his Memoirs that he almost immediately assumed a critical attitude; he fell, he says, into a frenzy of admiration, but "not into a frenzy of bad taste." And he maintains that he presently, in talking to his comrades about the _Génie du Christianisme_, summed up his objections in the following pronouncement: "The main element in all perfect beauty, naturalness, is wanting. It is beautiful; but it is too beautiful." In other words, Lamartine, who himself wrote so instinctively, thought Chateaubriand's style strained. It is probable that he slightly antedates this criticism. In any case his admiration was such that as late as 1824, when hymning the consecration of Charles X., he wrote:--

L'ARCHEVÊQUE. Et ce preux chevalier qui sur l'écu d'airain Porte au milieu des lis la croix du pélerin, Et dont l'œil, rayonnant de gloire et de génie, Contemple du passé la pompe rajeunie?

LE ROI. _Chateaubriand!_ Ce nom à tous les temps répond; L'avenir au passé dans son cœur se confond: Et la France des preux et la France nouvelle Unissent sur son front leur gloire fraternelle.

Tasso was another poet whom Alphonse read with enthusiastic admiration. Ossian taught him that it is possible for true poetry to be vague and misty. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, with his sweetness and his harmony, was Lamartine's, as well as Madame de Krüdener's, favourite model.

Some of the entertaining and immoral books of the eighteenth century which fell into the boy's hands delighted him, and excited his youthful imagination for a short time, but these impressions were effaced by those of the Jesuit school. A combination of religious enthusiasm and delight in the freshness and beauty of nature purified his mind and inspired it with activity.

"Were I to live a thousand years," he writes in his Memoirs, "I should never forget those days of study, those hours of prayer, those nights spent in meditation, and the raptures of joy with which I fulfilled my duties, thinking all the time of God." And almost in the same breath he tells of the bliss of skimming in winter on his skates across the frozen marshes, as if borne on spirit wings, or of sitting under the hornbeams in the mild, still spring air, lost in devotional feeling, and happy in perfect peace of conscience.

The return of the Bourbons was hailed with rejoicing by the Lamartine family, including Alphonse, now a young man. The father (who had been wounded on the 10th of August 1792) conducted his son to Paris, and had him enrolled in the King's Guard. It fell one day to the young officer's lot to walk by the King's bath-chair, when he was being wheeled through the galleries of the Louvre to inspect the art treasures brought back by Napoleon from his various campaigns. The profound reverence of the youth's own mind made him imagine Louis's voice to be melodious, his person majestic and distinguished, his glance commanding, his speech brilliant, his silence eloquent. Several times after this the King addressed a few words to him when he was riding by the side of the royal carriage.

When Napoleon had landed at Cannes and was making his triumphal progress through France, Lamartine followed the Court to the Flemish frontier; there the Guard was disbanded and sent home, and after the Hundred Days Lamartine did not re-enter it, nor did he ever see the King again. But when, in 1820, Louis read the first volume of Lamartine's poems, he remembered their writer as a young officer of his Guard, and sent him, by way of reward, an edition of the poets of ancient Greece and Rome. Lamartine, apropos of this, makes the somewhat hasty remark, that King Louis evidently looked upon himself as an Augustus, who had discovered a Virgil.

The new poet openly proclaims himself to be a disciple of Chateaubriand and Bonald. In his _Raphael_ (chap. 1.) he tells how he came to make Bonald's acquaintance. When he was at Chambéry (in his twenty-fifth year) worshipping the beautiful young Creole celebrated in his poems under the name of Elvire, that lady asked him to write an ode to Bonald, who was a frequent and honoured visitor at her house, Lamartine informs us that all he then knew of Bonald was his name, and the halo shed around it by its owner's fame as a Christian legislator. "I imagined to myself," he says, "that I was addressing a modern Moses, who derived from the rays of a new Sinai the divine light with which he illuminated human laws." And so the ode which is to be found in the first collection of Lamartine's poems under the title _Le Génie_ was written. In it the young poet affirms--

Ainsi des sophistes célèbres Dissipant les fausses clartés, Tu tires du sein des ténèbres D'éblouissantes vérités. Par le désordre à _l'ordre_ même L'univers moral est conduit.

Here, as everywhere, we come upon that meagre conception of good--order. Bonald responded by sending Lamartine a complete edition of his works. The poet read them with enthusiasm. In notes appended to his ode at a later period he denies that they made any really profound impression on him; but he is confusing his earlier with his later conviction. He writes: "I read these works with that poetical enthusiasm for the past and that emotional reverence inspired by ruins which youthful imagination so easily transforms into dogma and doctrine. For some months I tried to believe, on the authority of Chateaubriand and Bonald, in revealed governments; but in my case, as in other people's, the tendency of the day and the development of human reason dispelled these beautiful illusions, and I comprehended that God reveals nothing to man but his social inclinations, and that the various systems of government are revelations of the age, of circumstances, of the vices and virtues of humanity." It is certain that Lamartine considerably antedates this conviction of his. All the _Méditations_ are in the same tone as the ode to Bonald. The one entitled _Dieu_ is dedicated to Lamennais, the dithyramb on the subject of sacred poetry to Genoude, the translator of the Bible. Lamartine himself wrote for _Le Conservateur_, a newspaper from the first appearance of which Chateaubriand dated the pronounced European reaction; and when this paper was given up, he, along with Lamennais and Bonald, started a new one on the same lines, _Le Défenseur_, the special aim of which was to oppose constitutional government. It fell to Lamartine's lot to solicit a contribution from Joseph de Maistre. It is significant that our poet, who by this time was aged thirty, should write to the author of _Du Pape_ in such a tone as this: "Monsieur le Comte! At the time I received your book and your kind and flattering letter, I was very ill. I employ my earliest returning strength to thank you for both, but specially for the honour you do me in calling me nephew, a title of which I boast to all who know you. It is a title which in itself is a reputation, in such estimation is your name held by all those who in this misled and contemptible age understand true and profound genius. M. de Bonald and you, Monsieur le Comte, and one or two others who at a distance follow in your steps, have founded an imperishable school of high philosophy and Christian politics, the influence of which is steadily increasing, especially among the younger generation."

In this same letter Lamartine defines Joseph de Maistre's position in literature to be that of leader of the best writers, and attributes the antagonism to him to "that absurd Gallican presumption" which De Maistre has discountenanced in a manner worthy of all admiration. Lamartine, thus, unmistakably favours the unlimited ecclesiastical authority of the Pope--but, note well, only in theory. In his poetry he is not nearly so dogmatic. When, for example--responding to Chateaubriand's appeal--he considers it his duty, as a Christian poet, to drive heathen mythology out of poetry, it is not really a pious, but an artistic instinct by which he is inspired. The old myths had, as far as lyric poetry was concerned, long ago dwindled into mere allegories or paraphrases, things far too vapid to have an injurious effect upon any one's religion. A crusade against faith in Apollo and Amor was a perfectly unnecessary undertaking.

Lamartine's influence was due to the fact that he uttered, now the sad, now the comforting, now the inspiring words which thousands craved to hear. They did not feel the want of new thoughts in his utterances; they were moved by the sound of his sympathetic voice. They felt once more vibrating within them fibres which, during the period of universal depression, had been completely benumbed; he conjured tones from strings which had long given forth no sound; and men delighted in the novelty which consisted in a revival of old memories. But, besides all this, there was one really new element. For Lamartine the ugly and the bad, nay, even the petty and the mean, did not exist. He clothed everything in a garment of shining light. There was a heavenly radiance over his poetry. For the first time for long years, a wealth of beautiful feeling found expression in melodious verse.

The great naturalist Cuvier, in his speech on the occasion of Lamartine's reception into the Academy in 1830, declared that men, in the profound obscurity which surrounds their reason, require a leader who can snatch them out of the black perplexity of doubt and draw them along with him into the region of light and certainty. He accused Byron of having seen nothing in the universe but a temple for the God of evil, and greeted Lamartine as the poet of hope. Thus did France, like some poor creature recovering from a dangerous illness, confuse hope with belief, comfort with dogma, vital energy with determined vindication of Papal authority--until at last the force of circumstances dispelled the mist, and forced men of letters as well as the general public to adopt definite standpoints.

Even later than this, Lamartine was still the man of the period. Only four months before the outbreak of the Revolution of July, a eulogium of Daru is prescribed as the theme of his oration before the French Academy. He accomplishes the feat of pronouncing it without naming Napoleon's name; and he says frankly: "This century will be dated from our double restoration of lost blessings, the restoration of liberty by the throne and of the throne by liberty.... Let us not forget that our future is inseparably bound up with that of our kings, that it is impossible to separate the tree from its root without drying up the trunk, and that in our country it is monarchy which has borne everything, even the perfect fruit of liberty."

Lamartine now enjoys a period of triumph, the period of budding fame. Fame did not come to him early, for he was thirty years old; but it penetrated like the first rays of the rising sun into his ambitious soul. Let us picture to ourselves a salon in the days of Louis XVIII, as described by writers of the day. About a hundred persons are assembled in a suite of drawing-rooms in the house of some important personage, say General Foy. Lamartine, then an attaché of the embassy in Florence, but for the moment in Paris on one of his short visits, is among the invited guests.[1] A movement of admiration passes through the assembly as he enters--young, erect, handsome, aristocratic in mien and bearing. A crowd, chiefly of ladies, gathers round him; he is conscious of charming faces, splendid toilettes, smiles and flattery on every side. People forget for a moment to offer their congratulations to the deputies present on their last speeches. Even those who have not seen Lamartine before know him at once, for he outshines all. General Foy goes up to him, enthusiastically presses his hand, and assures him that it is in his power, whenever he chooses, to become an ornament of the Chamber, which has long stood in need of just such a talented champion of the sacred principles of royalty. Then Lamartine, in the melodious voice which as yet has never uttered a political catchword, repeats one or two of his first poems--_L'Enthousiasme, Souvenir, Le Désespoir, La Prière, La Foi_, or some such reflective pieces--thereby producing boundless ecstasy, and calling forth outbursts of every shade of enthusiasm and gratitude. Benjamin Constant comes up with his impenetrable, solemnly ironic mien, congratulates him on having discovered this new fountain of poetical inspiration, and assures him that he knows of no such loftiness and purity of thought and expression except in Schiller's reflective poems. The ladies are of opinion that this comparison is very flattering indeed to Schiller, an unknown German bourgeois poet, whose name they just remember having heard. What is he compared with Lamartine!

Various circumstances contributed to heighten the effect produced by the poems themselves--in the first place, the uncommon and almost feminine personal beauty of their author; in the second, the rumours in circulation regarding the lady whose praises were sung with such seraphic enthusiasm, such supernatural purity. It was reported that the poet had loved, and that death had deprived him of the object of his affections. Much trouble was taken to discover the actual circumstances of the case. Who was this Elvire? What was her real name?

We of to-day have been sufficiently enlightened by Lamartine's own later prose works, but with the satisfaction of curiosity on this subject interest in Lamartine's lyric poetry is not extinguished.

It was natural that the contemporaries of the youthful Lamartine should see in him first and foremost the poet of the throne and the altar. His earliest published poem was a heart-felt expression of gratitude to the Jesuit school which had sheltered him in his boyhood. Such a poem as his Ode was simply the essence of Chateaubriand's _Génie du Christianisme_ versified. His lines on the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux (Comte de Chambord), after the death of his father, the Duc de Berry, with their refrain: "He is born, the miraculous child!" expressed the feelings of the most loyal Catholics. And on every occasion, in almost all of the poems, he lauds and magnifies, justifies and adores God, Providence. At times, as for instance in the poem _La Semaine Sainte_, written during a visit to the young Duc de Rohan, who later in life became an archbishop and a cardinal, his verse is almost like a fervently devotional burning of incense. If he is to be taken at his word when he asserts, in writing of this poem many years afterwards, that he alone, among the young men who gathered round the Duke, had no relish whatever for the church's mystic joys, all we can conclude is that his poetic talent was carried away by the current of the tendency of the day.

Most of the purely religious poetry of Lamartine's youthful period is, from its want of simplicity and real feeling, almost unreadable nowadays. It is not lyric; it is not concise; it is reflection without matter, meditation without thoughts, breadth without depth. A good example is the poem dedicated to Byron, entitled _L'Homme_. The French poet's conception of his English contemporary is the traditional, stereotyped, inexpressibly silly one of the day, namely, that he touches only the chords of despair, that his eye, like Satan's, fathoms abysses, &c. To show Byron how the true poet ought to sing, Lamartine strikes up the most servile hymn of praise to a God who, he himself tells us, plagues, tortures, plunders, overwhelms with misfortune and misery, and concludes with the exhortation:

Jette un cri vers le ciel, ô chantre des enfers!

The notes appended at a later period to this poem betray an astonishing ignorance of Lord Byron's history; almost everything affirmed of him is incorrect. Though Lamartine added a poem to Child Harold, he never so much as learned to spell the name correctly.

The same admonitory tone which he here assumes towards Byron he adopted many years later in writing of Alfred de Musset, to whom he also offered pious and moral truisms as medicaments.

The piety which Lamartine felt in duty bound to display is less offensive, because more sincere, in the ode entitled _L'Immortalité_. This poem is addressed to the beloved of his youth, Elvire, whose scepticism was a great grief to him, and its aim is to comfort her on her death-bed with the prospect of an immortality in which until now she has refused to believe. But even here we have such frigid allegorical ideas as: "And Hope, standing by thy side, O Death! dreaming upon a grave, opens to me a fairer world."

In only one of the poems which invoke the Deity is Lamartine really the lyric poet and not merely the fluent verse-writer, namely in _Le Désespoir_, a Meditation which expresses revolt against our idea of God. In this poem we have rhythmic flow, passion, and two qualities rarely found in Lamartine's productions--vigour and conciseness. What has God seen since the creation of the world?

La vertu succombant sous l'audace impunie, L'imposture en honneur, la vérité bannie; L'errante liberté Aux dieux vivants du monde offerte en sacrifice; Et la force, par-tout, fondant de l'injustice Le règne illimité.

And in its original form the poem contained verses, suppressed at the time of publication, which expressed sentiments far more bitter and impious than these. It is characteristic that almost immediately after the appearance of _Le Désespoir_, Lamartine, at his mother's request, refuted the ideas it expressed in a reply-poem, _Dieu à l'Homme_, which, though not wanting in melodious sonority, is, as even its author perceived, not to be compared with the first. The first, he himself correctly observes, is the product of inspiration, the second of reflection.