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EGOISTS 

A  BOOK  OF  SUPERMEN 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/egoistsbookofsupOOhuneuoft 


Henry  Beyle- Stendhal. 


EGOISTS 

A  BOOK  OF  SUPERMEN 


STENDHAL,    BAUDELAIRE,    FLAUBERT,    ANATOLE    FRANCE, 

HUYSMANS,  BARRES,  NIETZSCHE,  BLAKE,  IBSEN, 

STIRNER,  AND  ERNEST  HELLO 


BY 
JAMES  HUNEKER 


WITH    PORTRAIT    OF    STENDHAL;     UNPUBLISHED     LETTER    OF 
PLAUBERT;   and  original  proof  PAGE  OF  MADAME  BOVARY 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1909 


COPYRIGHT,    1909,   BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER's  SONS 

Published  Makch,  1909 


^1 


TO 
DR.  GEORG  BRANDES 


"  fl,cb*  icily  toenn  snliere  Icben  f  "—Goethe 


The  studies  gathered  here  first  appeared  in  Scribner's 
AfagatifUt  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  the  North  American 
Review,  the  New  York  Times,  and  the  New  York  Sun. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.    A  Sentimental  Education:   Henry  Beyle- 
Stendhal    I 

II.    The  Baudelaire  Legend 66 

III.  The  Real  Flaubert 104 

IV.  Anatole  France 139 

V.     The  Pessimists'  Progress  :  J.-K.  Huysmans  167 

VI.    The  Evolution  of  an  Egoist:      Maurice 

Barres 207 

VII.    Phases  of  Nietzsche 236 

I.  The  Will  to  SufiFer 236 

II.  Nietzsche's  Apostasy 247 

III.  Antichrist  ? 256 

VIII.    Mystics 269 

I.  Ernest  Hello 269 

II.  "  Mad  Naked  Blake  " 277 

III.  Francis  Poictevin 290 

IV.  The  Road  to  Damascus 297 

V.  From  an  Ivory  Tower 304 

IX.    Ibsen .  317 

X.    Max  Stirner      , 350 


I 

A  SENTIMENTAL  EDUCATION 

HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

I 

The  fanciful  notion  that  psychical  delicacy  is 
accompanied  by  a  corresponding  physical  ex- 
terior should  have  received  a  death-blow  in  the 
presence  of  Henry  Beyle,  better  known  as  Sten- 
dhal. Chopin,  Shelley,  Byron  and  Cardinal  New- 
man did  not  in  personal  appearance  contradict 
their  verse  prose  and  music;  but  Stendhal,  pos- 
sessing an  exquisite  sensibility,  was,  as  Hec- 
tor Berlioz  cruelly  wrote  in  his  Memoirs:  "A 
little  pot-bellied  man  with  a  spiteful  smile,  who 
tried  to  look  grave."  Sainte-Beuve  is  more  ex- 
plicit. "  Physically  his  figure,  though  not  short, 
soon  grew  thick-set  and  heavy,  his  neck  short  and 
full-blooded.  His  fleshy  face  was  framed  in  dark 
curly  hair  and  whiskers,  which  before  his  death 
were  assisted  by  art.  His  forehead  was  fine:  the 
nose  turned  up,  and  somewhat  Calmuck  in  shape. 
His  lower  lip,  which  projected  a  little,  betrayed 
his  tendency  to  scoff.  His  eyes  were  rather  small 
but  very  bright,  deeply  set  in  their  cavities,  and 
pleasing  when  he  smiled.     His  hands,  of  which 


EGOISTS 

be  was  proud,  were  small  and  daintily  shaped. 
In  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  grew  heavy  and 
apoplectic.  But  he  always  took  great  pains  to 
coDceal  the  symptoms  of  physical  decay  even  from 
his  own  friends." 

Henri  Monnier,  who  caricatured  him,  ap- 
parently in  a  gross  manner,  denied  that  he  had 
departed  far  from  his  model.  Some  one  said  that 
Stendhal  looked  like  an  apothecary  —  Homais, 
presumably,  or  M.  Prudhomme.  His  maternal 
grandfather.  Doctor  Gagnon,  assured  him  when 
a  youth  that  he  was  ugly,  but  he  consolingly  added 
that  no  one  would  reproach  him  for  his  ugliness. 
The  piercing  and  brilliant  eye  that  like  a  mountain 
lake  could  be  both  still  and  stormy,  his  eloquent  and 
ironical  mouth,  pugnacious  bearing,  Celtic  pro- 
file, big  shoulders,  and  well-modelled  leg  made 
an  ensemble,  if  not  alluring,  at  least  striking. 
No  man  with  a  face  capable  of  a  hundred  shades 
of  expression  can  be  ugly.  Furthermore,  Sten- 
dhal was  a  charming  causeur,  bold,  copious, 
witty.  With  his  conversation,  he  drolly  remarked, 
he  paid  his  way  into  society.  And  this  demigod 
or  monster,  as  he  was  alternately  named  by  his 
admirers  and  enemies,  could  be  the  most  im- 
passioned of  lovers.  His  life  long  he  was  in  love; 
Prosper  M^rim^  declares  he  never  encountered 
such  furious  devotion  to  love.  It  was  his  master 
passion.  Not  Napoleon,  not  his  personal  am- 
bitions, not  even  Italy,  were  such  factors  in  Sten- 
dhal's life  as  his  attachments.  His  career  was 
a  sentimental  education.    This  ugly  man  with 

2 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

the  undistinguished  features  was  a  haughty  cav- 
aHer,  an  intellectual  Don  Juan,  a  tender,  sigh- 
ing swain,  a  sensualist,  and  ever  lyric  where  the 
feminine  was  concerned.  But  once  seated,  pen 
in  hand,  the  wise,  worldly  cynic  was  again  master. 
"My  head  is  a  magic-lantern,"  he  said.  And 
his  literary  style  is  on  the  surface  as  unattractive 
as  were  the  features  of  the  man;  the  inner  ear  for 
the  rhythms  and  sonorities  of  prose  was  missing. 
That  is  the  first  paradox  in  the  Beyle-Stendhal 
case. 

Few  writers  in  the  nineteenth  century  were 
more  neglected;  yet,  what  a  chain  of  great  critics 
his  work  begot.  Commencing  with  Goethe  in 
1818,  who,  after  reading  Rome,  Naples,  and 
Florence,  wrote  that  the  Frenchman  attracted 
and  repulsed  him,  interested  and  annoyed  him, 
but  it  was  impossible  to  separate  himself  from  the 
book  until  its  last  page.  What  makes  the  opinion 
remarkable  is  that  Goethe  calmly  noted  Sten- 
dhal's plagiarism  of  his  own  Italian  Journey. 
About  1 83 1  Goethe  was  given  Le  Rouge  et  le 
Noir  and  told  Eckermann  of  its  worth  in  warm 
terms.  After  Goethe  another  world-hero  praised 
Stendhal's  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme:  Balzac  lit- 
erally exploded  a  bouquet  of  pyrotechnics,  call- 
ing the  novel  a  masterpiece  of  observation,  and 
extolling  the  Waterloo  picture.  Sainte-Beuve  was 
more  cautious.  He  dubbed  Stendhal  a  "ro- 
mantic hussar,"  and  said  that  he  was  devoid  of 
invention;  a  literary  Uhlan,  for  men  of  letters, 
not  for  the  public.  Shortly  after  his  sudden 
3 


EGOISTS 

death,  M.  Bussi^re  wrote  in  the  Revtce  des  Deux 
Mondes  of  Stendhal's  ''clandestine  celebrity." 
Taine's  trumpet-call  in  1857  proclaimed  him 
as  the  great  psychologue  of  his  century.  And 
later,  in  his  English  Literature,  Taine  wrote:  ''His 
talents  and  ideas  were  premature,  his  admirable 
divinations  not  understood.  Under  the  exte- 
rior of  a  conversationalist  and  a  man  of  the  world 
Stendhal  explained  the  most  esoteric  mechanisms 

—  a  scientist  who  noted,  decomposed,  deduced; 
he  first  marked  the  fundamental  causes  of  nation- 
ality, climate,  temperament;  he  was  the  naturalist 
who  classified  and  weighed  forces  and  taught  us 
to  open  our  eyes."  Taine  was  deeply  influenced 
by  Stendhal;  read  carefully  his  Italian  Pilgrimage, 
and  afterward  Thomas  Graindorge.  He  so  per- 
sistently preached  Stendhalism  —  heylisme,  as  its 
author  preferred  to  term  his  vagrant  philosophy 

—  that  Sainte-Beuve  reproved  him.  Melchior 
de  Vogii^  said  that  Stendhal's  heart  had  been 
fabricated  under  the  Directory  and  from  the 
same  wood  as  Barras  and  Talleyrand.  Brune- 
ti^re  saw  in  him  the  perfect  expression  of  ro- 
mantic and  anti-social  individualism.  Caro  spoke 
of  his  "serious  blague,"  while  Victor  Hugo  found 
him  "  somniferous."  But  Mdrim^e,  though  openly 
disavowing  discipleship,  acknowledged  privately 
the  abiding  impression  made  upon  him  by  the 
companionship  of  Beyle.  Much  of  M^rim^e  is 
Stendhal  better  composed,  better  written. 

About  1880  Zola,  searching  a  literary  pedigree 
for    his    newly-born  Naturalism,   pitched    upon 
4 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 

Stendhal  to  head  the  movement.  The  first  Ro- 
mantic —  he  employed  the  term  Romanticism  be- 
fore the  rest  —  the  first  literary  Impressionist,  the 
initiator  of  Individualism,  Stendhal  forged  many 
formulas,  was  a  matrix  of  genres^  literary  and 
psychologic.  Paul  Bourget's  Essays  in  Contem- 
porary Psychology  definitely  placed  Beyle  in  the 
niche  he  now  occupies.  This  was  in  1883.  Since 
then  the  swelling  chorus  headed  by  Tolstoy, 
Georg  Brandes,  and  the  amiable  fanatics  who 
exhumed  at  Grenoble  his  posthumous  work,  have 
given  to  the  study  of  Stendhal  fresh  life.  We 
see  how  much  Nietzsche  owed  to  Stendhal; 
see  in  Dostoievsky's  Raskolnilikow — Crime  and 
Punishment — a  Russian  Julien  Sorel;  note  that 
Bourget,  from  Le  Disciple  to  Sensations  dTta- 
lie,  is  compounded  of  his  forerunner,  the  dilet- 
tante and  cosmopolitan  who  wrote  Promenades 
dans  Rome  and  Lamiel.  What  would  Maurice 
Barres  and  his  "culte  du  Moi"  have  been  without 
Stendhal  —  who  employed  before  him  the  famous 
phrase  "  deracination  "  ?  Amiel,  sick-willed  think- 
er, did  not  alone  invent:  "A  landscape  is  a  state 
of  soul";  Stendhal  had  spoken  of  a  landscape 
not  alone  sufficing;  it  needs  a  moral  or  historic 
interest.  Before  Schopenhauer  he  described 
Beauty  as  a  promise  of  happiness;  and  he  in- 
vented the  romance  of  the  petty  European  Prin- 
cipality. Meredith  followed  him,  as  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  in  his  Prince  Otto  patterned 
after  Meredith.  The  painter-novelist  Fromentin 
mellowed  Stendhal's  procedure;  and  dare  we  con- 
5 


EGOISTS 

ceive  of  Meredith  or  Henry  James  composing 
their  work  without  having  had  a  complete  cog- 
nizance of  Beyle-Stendhal  ?  The  Egoist  is  beylisme 
of  a  superior  artistry;  while  in  America  Henry  B. 
Fuller  shows  sympathy  for  Beyle  in  his  Chevalier 
Pensieri-Vani  and  its  sequel.  Surely  the  Prorege 
of  Arcopia  had  read  the  Chartreuse.  And  with 
Edith  Wharton  the  Stendhal  touch  is  not  absent. 
In  England,  after  the  dull  essay  by  Hayward 
(prefixed  to  E.  P.  Robbin's  excellent  translation 
of  Chartreuse),  Maurice  Hewlett  contributed  an 
eloquent  introduction  to  a  new  edition  of  the 
Chartreuse  and  calls  him  ''a  man  cloaked  in  ice 
and  fire."  Anna  Hampton  Brewster  was  possibly 
the  first  American  essayist  to  introduce  to  us  Sten- 
dhal in  her  St.  Martin's  Summer.  Saintsbury, 
Dowden,  Benjamin  Wells,  Count  Lutzow  have 
since  written  of  him;  and  in  Germany  the  Sten- 
dhal cult  is  growing,  thanks  to  Arthur  Schurig, 
L.  Spach,  and  Friedrick  von  Oppeln-Bronikowski. 
It  has  been  mistaken  criticism  to  range  Beyle 
as  only  a  "literary"  man.  He  despised  the  pro- 
fession of  literature,  remarking  that  he  wrote  as 
one  smokes  a  cigar.  His  diaries  and  letters,  the 
testimony  of  his  biographer,  Colomb,  and  his 
friend  M^rimee,  betray  this  pose  —  a  greater 
poser  and  mystificateur  it  would  be  difficult  to 
find.  He  laboured  like  a  slave  over  his  material, 
and  if  he  affected  to  take  the  Civil  Code  as  his 
model  of  style  it  nettled  him,  nevertheless,  when 
anyone  decried  his  prose.  His  friend  Jacque- 
mont  spoke  of  his  detestable  style  of  a  grocer; 
6 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

Balzac  called  him  to  account  for  his  carelessness. 
Flattered,  astounded,  as  was  Stendhal  by  the 
panegyric  of  Balzac,  his  letter  of  thanks  shows 
that  the  reproof  cut  deeply.  He  abused  Chateau- 
briand, Madame  de  Stael,  and  George  Sand  for 
their  highly  coloured  imagery  and  flowing  manner. 
He  even  jeered  at  Balzac,  saying  that  if  he — Beyle 
—  had  written  "It  snows  in  my  heart,"  or  some 
such  romantic  figure,  Balzac  would  then  have 
praised  his  style. 

Thanks  to  the  labours  of  Casimir  Stryienski 
and  his  colleagues,  we  may  study  the  different 
drafts  Stendhal  made  of  his  novels.  He  seldom 
improved  by  recasting.  The  truth  is  that  his  dry, 
naked  method  of  narration,  despite  its  clumsi- 
ness, despite  the  absence  of  plan,  is  excellently 
adapted  to  the  expression  of  his  ideas.  He  is  a 
psychologue.  He  deals  with  soul-stuff.  An 
eighteenth-century  man  in  his  general  ideas  and 
feelings,  he  followed  the  seventeenth  century  and 
Montesquieu;  he  derives  from  Montaigne  and 
Chamfort,  and  his  philosophy  is  coloured  by 
a  study  of  Condillac,  Hobbes,  Helvetius,  Cabanis, 
Destutt  Tracy,  and  Machiavelli.  He  is  a  de- 
scendant of  Diderot  and  the  Encyclopaedists,  a 
philosophe  of  the  salons,  a  petit  maUre,  a  material- 
ist for  whom  nothing  exists  but  his  ideas  and  sen- 
sations. A  French  epicurean,  his  pendulum 
swings  between  love  and  war — the  adoration  of 
energy  and  the  adoration  of  pleasure.  What 
complicates  his  problem  is  the  mixture  of  war- 
rior and  psychologist.    That  the  man  who  fol- 

7 


EGOISTS 

lowed  Napoleon  through  several  of  his  campaigns, 
serving  successfully  as  a  practical  commissary 
and  fighter,  should  have  been  an  adorer  of 
women,  was  less  strange  than  that  he  should  have 
proved  to  be  the  possessor  of  such  vibrating  sensi- 
bility. Jules  Lemaitre  sees  him  as  "a  grand 
man  of  action  paralysed  little  by  litde  because  of 
his  incomparable  analysis."  Yet  he  never  be- 
trayed unreadiness  when  confronted  by  peril.  He 
read  Voltaire  and  Plato  during  the  burning  of 
Moscow  —  which  he  described  as  a  beautiful 
spectacle  —  and  he  never  failed  to  present  him- 
self before  his  kinsman  and  patron,  Marshal 
Dam,  with  a  clean-shaved  face,  even  when  the 
Grand  Army  was  a  mass  of  stragglers. 

"You  are  a  man  of  heart,"  said  Daru,  French- 
man in  that  phrase.  When  Napoleon  demanded 
five  millions  of  francs  from  a  German  province, 
Stendhal  —  who  adopted  this  pen-name  from  the 
archaeologist  Winckelmann's  birthplace,  a  Prus^ 
sian  town  —  raised  seven  millions  and  was  in  con- 
sequence execrated  by  the  people.  Napoleon 
asked  on  receiving  the  money  the  name  of  the 
agent,  adding,  ''c'est  Men ! "  We  are  constrained  to 
believe  M^rimde's  assertion  that  Stendhal  was 
the  soul  of  honour,  and  incapable  of  baseness, 
after  this  proof.  At  a  time  when  plunder  was 
the  order  of  the  day's  doings,  the  poor  young  aide- 
de-camp  could  have  pocketed  with  ease  at  least 
a  million  of  the  excess  tax.  He  did  not  do  this, 
nor  did  he,  in  his  letters  or  memoirs,  betray  any 
remorse  for  his  honesty. 
8 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

Sainte-Beuve  said  that  Beyle  was  the  dupe  of 
his  fear  of  being  duped.  This  was  confirmed  by 
M^rimee  in  the  concise  little  study  prefixed  to 
the  Correspondence.  It  is  doubtful  if  these  two 
men  were  drawn  to  each  other  save  by  a  certain 
contemptuous  way  of  viewing  mankind.  Sten- 
dhal was  the  more  sentimental  of  the  pair;  he 
frequently  reproached  Merimee  for  his  cold  heart. 
He  had  also  a  greater  sense  of  humour.  That 
each  distrusted  the  other  is  not  to  be  denied. 
Augustin  Filon,  in  his  brochure  on  Merimee,  said 
that  "the  influence  exercised  by  Stendhal  on 
Merimee  during  the  decisive  years  in  which  his 
literary  eclecticism  was  formed,  was  considerable, 
even  more  than  Merimee  himself  was  aware." 
But  the  author  of  Carmen  was  a  much  finer 
artist.  The  Danish  critic,  Georg  Brandes,  has 
described  Beyle's  relation  to  Balzac  as  "that 
of  the  reflective  to  the  observant  mind;  of  the 
thinker  in  art  to  the  seer.  We  see  into  the  hearts 
of  Balzac's  characters,  into  the  'dark-red  mill  of 
passion'  which  is  the  motive  force  of  their  action; 
Beyle's  characters  receive  their  impulse  from  the 
head,  the  'open  light-and-sound  chamber';  the 
reason  being  that  Beyle  was  a  logician,  and  Balzac 
a  man  of  an  effusively  rich  animal  nature.  Beyle 
stands  to  Victor  Hugo  in  much  the  same  position 
as  Leonardo  da  Vinci  to  Michaelangelo.  Hugo's 
plastic  imagination  creates  a  supernaturally 
colossal  and  muscular  humanity  fixed  in  an  eternal 
attitude  of  struggle  and  suffering;  Beyle's  myste- 
rious, complicated,  refined  intellect  produces  a 
9 


EGOISTS 

small  series  of  male  and  female  portraits,  which 
exercise  an  almost  magic  fascination  on  us  with 
their  far-away,  enigmatic  expressions,  and  their 
sweet,  wicked  smile.  Beyle  is  the  metaphysician 
among  the  French  authors  of  his  day,  as  Leonardo 
was  the  metaphysician  among  the  great  painters 
of  the  Renaissance." 

According  to  Bourget,  Beyle's  advent  into 
letters  marked  the  "tragic  dawn  of  pessimism." 
But  is  it  precise  to  call  him  a  pessimist?  He 
was  of  too  vigorous  a  temper,  too  healthy  in  body, 
to  be  classed  with  the  decadents.  His  was  the 
soul  of  a  sixteenth-century  Italian,  one  who  had 
read  and  practised  the  cheerful  scepticism  of 
Montaigne.  As  he  served  bravely  when  a  soldier, 
so,  stout  and  subtle  in  after  life,  he  waged  war 
with  the  blue  devils  —  his  chief  foe.  Disease 
weakened  his  physique,  weakened  his  mentality, 
yet  he  fought  life  to  its  dull  end.  He  was  pur- 
sued by  the  secret  police,  and  this  led  him  to  all 
sorts  of  comical  disguises  and  pseudonyms.  And 
to  the  last  he  experienced  a  childish  delight  in  the 
invention  of  odd  names  for  himself. 

Felix  Feneon,  in  speaking  of  Arthur  Rimbaud, 
asserted  that  his  work  was,  perhaps,  "outside 
of  literature."  This,  with  some  modification,  may 
be  said  of  Beyle.  His  stories  are  always  interest- 
ing; they  may  ramble  and  halt,  digress  and  wander 
into  strange  places;  but  the  psychologic  vision  of 
the  writer  never  weakens.  His  chief  concern  is 
the  mind  or  soul  of  his  characters.  He  hitches  his 
kite  to  earth,  yet  there  is  the  paper  air-ship  float- 

lO 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

ing  above  you,  lending  a  touch  of  the  ideal  to  his 
most  matter-of-fact  tales.  He  uses  both  the 
microscope  and  scalpel.  He  writes,  as  has  been 
too  often  said,  indifferently;  his  formal  sense  is 
nearly  nil;  much  of  his  art  criticism  mere  gossip; 
he  has  little  feeling  for  colour;  yet  he  describes 
a  soul  and  its  manifold  movements  in  precise 
terms,  and  while  he  is  at  furthest  remove  from 
symbolism,  he  often  has  an  irritating  spiritual 
suggestiveness.  The  analogue  here  to  plastic 
art  —  he,  the  least  plastic  of  writers  —  is  unes- 
capable.  Stendhal,  whatever  else  he  may  be, 
is  an  incomparable  etcher  of  character.  His 
acid  phrases  "bite"  his  arbitrary  lines  deeply; 
the  sharp  contrasts  of  black  and  white  enable  him 
to  portray,  without  the  fiery-hued  rhetoric  of 
either  Chateaubriand  or  Hugo,  the  finest  spHt 
shades  of  thought  and  emotion.  Never  colour, 
only  nuance  —  and  the  slash  and  sweep  of  a  drastic 
imagination. 

He  was  an  inveterate  illusionist  in  all  that  con- 
cerned himself;  even  with  himself  he  was  not 
always  sincere  —  and  he  usually  wrote  of  himself. 
His  many  books  are  a  masquerade  behind  which 
one  discerns  the  posture  of  the  mocker,  the  sensi- 
bility of  a  reversed  idealist,  and  the  spirit  of  a  bit- 
ter analyst.  This  sensibility  must  not  be  con- 
founded with  the  sensihilite  of  a  Maurice  de 
Guerin.  Rather  it  is  the  morbid  sensitiveness 
of  a  Swift  combined  with  an  unusual  receptivity 
to  sentimental  and  artistic  impressions.  Pro- 
fessor Walter  Raleigh  thus  describes  the  sensi- 
II 


EGOISTS 

bility  of  those  times:  "The  sensibility  that  came 
into  vogue  during  the  eighteenth  century  was  of 
a  finer  grain  than  its  modern  counterpart.  It 
studied  delicacy,  and  sought  a  cultivated  enjoy- 
ment in  evanescent  shades  of  feeling,  and  the 
fantasies  of  unsubstantial  grief."  Vanity  ruled  in 
Stendhal.  Who  shall  say  how  much  his  unyielding 
spirit  sufifered  because  of  his  poverty,  his  enormous 
ambitions?  His  motto  might  have  been:  Blessed 
are  the  proud  of  spirit,  for  they  shall  inherit  the 
Kingdom  of  Earth.  He  wrote  in  1819:  *'I  have 
had  three  passions  in  my  life.  Ambition — 1800- 
181 1 ;  love  for  a  woman  who  deceived  me,  181 1- 
1818;  and  in  1818  a  new  passion."  But  then  he 
was  ever  on  the  verge  of  a  new  passion,  ever  de- 
ceived—  at  least  he  believed  himself  to  be — and 
he,  the  fearless  theoretician  of  passion,  often  was, 
he  has  admitted,  in  practice  the  timid  amateur. 
He  planned  the  attack  upon  a  woman's  heart  as  a 
general  plans  the  taking  of  an  enemy's  citadel. 
He  wrote  L' Amour  for  himself.  He  defined  the 
rules  of  the  game,  but  shivered  when  he  saw  the 
battle-field.  Magnificent  he  was  in  precept, 
though  not  always  in  action.  He  was  for  this 
reason  never  blasej  despite  continual  grumblings 
over  his  ennui.  In  his  later  years  at  Civitk 
Vecchia  he  yearned  for  companionship  like  a  girl, 
and,  a  despiser  of  Paris  and  the  Parisians,  he 
suffered  from  the  nostalgia  of  the  boulevard. 
He  adored  Milan  and  the  Milanese,  yet  Italy 
finally  proved  too  much  for  his  nerves;  J^ai  tant 
vu  le  soldi,  he  confessed.  Contradictory  and 
12 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

fantastic,  he  hated  all  authority.  Merimee  puts 
down  to  the  account  of  the  sour  old  abbe  Raillane, 
who  taught  him,  the  distaste  he  entertained  for 
the  Church  of  Rome.  Yet  he  enjoyed  its  aesthetic 
side.  He  was  its  admirer  his  life  long,  notwith- 
standing his  gibes  and  irreligious  jests,  just  as  he 
was  a  Frenchman  by  reason  of  his  capacity  for 
reaction  under  depressing  circumstances.  But 
how  account  for  his  monstrous  hatred  for  his 
father?  The  elder  Beyle  was  penurious  and  as 
hard  as  flint.  He  nearly  starved  his  son,  for 
whom  he  had  no  affection.  Henry  could  not  see 
him  salute  his  mother  without  loathing  him. 
She  read  Dante  in  the  original,  and  her  son  as- 
sured himself  that  there  was  Italian  blood  on  her 
side  of  the  house.  The  youth's  hatred,  too,  of  his 
aunt  Seraphie  almost  became  a  mania.  It  has  pos- 
sibly enriched  fiction  by  the  portrait  of  Gina  of  the 
resilient  temperament,  the  delicious  Duchess  of 
Sanseverina.  All  that  she  is,  his  aunt  Seraphie  was 
not,  and  with  characteristic  perversity  he  makes 
her  enamoured  of  her  nephew  Fabrice  del  Dongo. 
Did  he  not  say  that  parents  are  our  first  enemies 
when  we  enter  the  world  ? 

His  criticisms  of  music  and  painting  are  chiefly 
interesting  for  what  they  tell  us  of  his  tempera- 
ment. He  called  himself  ''observer  of  the  human 
heart,"  and  was  taken  by  a  cautious  listener  for 
a  police  spy.  He  seldom  signed  the  same  name 
twice  to  his  letters.  He  delighted  to  boast  of 
various  avocations;  little  wonder  the  Milanese 
police  drove  him  out  of  the  city.  He  said  that  to 
13 


EGOISTS 

be  a  good  ])hilosopher  one  must  be  sec,  and  with- 
out illusions.  Perspicacious,  romantic,  delicate 
in  his  attitude  toward  women,  he  could  be  rough, 
violent,  and  suspicious.  He  scandalised  George 
Sand,  delighted  Alfred  de  Musset;  Madame  La- 
martine  refused  to  receive  him  in  her  drawing- 
room  at  Rome.  His  intercourse  with  Byron  was 
pleasant.  He  disliked  Walter  Scott  and  called 
him  a  hypocrite  —  possibly  because  there  is  no 
freedom  in  his  love  descriptions.  Lord  Byron  in  a 
long  letter  expostulated  with  Stendhal,  defending 
his  good  friend,  Scott;  but  Stendhal  never  quite 
believed  in  the  poet's  sincerity  —  indeed,  suspect- 
ing himself,  he  suspected  other  men's  motives. 
He  had  stage-fright  when  he  first  met  Byron  — 
whom  he  worshipped.  A  tremulous  soul  his,  in 
a  rude  envelope.  At  Venice  he  might  have  made 
the  acquaintance  of  young  Arthur  Schopenhauer 
and  Leopardi,  but  he  was  too  much  interested 
in  the  place  to  care  for  new  faces. 

He  said  that  without  passion  there  is  neither 
virtue  nor  vice.  (Taine  made  a  variation  on  this 
theme.)  A  dagger-thrust  is  a  dignified  gesture 
when  prompted  by  passion.  After  the  Napoleonic 
disaster,  Stendhal  had  lost  all  his  hopes  of  prefer- 
ment; he  kept  his  temper  admirably,  though  occa- 
sionally calling  his  old  chief  bad  names.  It 
was  a  period  of  the  flat,  stale,  platitudinous,  and 
bourgeois.  "In  the  nineteenth  century  one  must 
be  either  a  monster  or  a  sheep,"  wrote  Beyle  to 
Byron.  A  patriot  is  either  a  dolt  or  a  rogue! 
My  country  is  where  there  are  most  people  like 
14 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 

me  —  Cosmopolis !  The  only  excuse  for  God  is 
that  he  does  not  exist!  Verse  was  invented  to  aid 
the  memory!  A  volume  of  maxims,  witty  and 
immoral,  might  be  gathered  from  the  writings  of 
Stendhal  that  would  equal  Rivarol  and  Roche- 
foucauld. "I  require  three  or  four  cubic  feet  of 
new  ideas  per  day,  as  a  steamboat  requires  coal," 
he  told  Romain  Colomb.  What  energy,  what  lassi- 
tude this  man  possessed !  He  spoke  English  — 
though  he  wrote  it  imperfectly  —  and  Italian;  the 
latter  excellently  because  of  his  long  residence  in 
Italy. 

Nietzsche,  in  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,  described 
Stendhal  as  "that  remarkable  man  who,  with  a 
Napoleonic  tempo,  traversed  his  Europe,  in  fact 
several  centuries  of  the  European  soul,  as  a  sur- 
veyor and  discoverer  thereof.  It  has  required  two 
generations  to  overtake  him  one  way  or  other; 
to  divine  long  afterward  some  of  the  riddles  that 
perplexed  and  enraptured  him  —  this  strange 
Epicurean  and  man  of  interrogation,  the  last 
great  psychologist  of  France."  He  also  spoke  of 
him  as  "Stendhal^  who  has,  perhaps,  had  the 
most  profound  eyes  and  ears  of  any  Frenchman 
of  this  century." 

Stendhal  said  that  Shakespeare  knew  the 
human  heart  better  than  Racine;  yet  despite  his 
English  preferences,  Stendhal  is  a  psychologist 
of  the  Racinien  school.  When  an  English  com- 
pany of  players  went  to  Paris  in  1822,  Stendhal 
defended  them  by  pen  and  in  person.  He  was 
chagrined  that  his  fellow-countrymen  should  hiss 
15 


EGOISTS 

Othello  or  The  School  for  Scandal.  He  despised 
chauvinismej  he  the  ideal  globe-trotter.  And  he 
was  contradictory  enough  to  have  understood  Ten- 
nyson's "That  man's  the  best  cosmopolite  who 
loves  his  native  country  best."  He  scornfully  re- 
marked that  in  1819  Parisian  literary  logic  could 
be  summed  up  thus:  "This  man  does  not  agree 
with  me,  therefore  he  is  a  fool;  he  criticises  my 
book,  he  is  my  enemy;  therefore  a  thief,  an  assas- 
sin, a  brigand,  and  forger."  Narrow-mindedness 
must  never  be  imputed  to  Stendhal.  Nor  was  he  a 
modest  man — modesty  that  virtue  of  the  mediocre. 
How  much  Tolstoy  thought  of  the  Frenchman 
may  be  found  in  his  declaration  that  all  he  knew 
about  war  he  learned  first  from  Stendhal.  "  I  will 
speak  of  him  only  as  the  author  of  the  Chartreuse 
de  Parme  and  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir.  These  are 
two  great,  inimitable  works  of  art.  I  am  indebted 
for  much  to  Stendhal.  He  taught  me  to  under- 
stand war.  Read  once  more  in  the  Chartreuse 
de  Parme  his  account  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo. 
Who  before  him  had  so  described  war  —  that  is, 
as  it  is  in  reality?"  In  1854  they  said  Balzac 
and  Hugo;  in  1886,  Balzac  and  Stendhal.  Some 
day  it  may  be  Stendhal  and  Tolstoy.  The  Rus- 
sian with  his  slow,  patient  amassing  of  little  facts 
but  follows  Stendhal's  chaplet  of  anecdotes. 
The  latter  said  that  the  novel  should  be  a  mirror 
that  moves  along  the  highway;  a  novel,  he  writes 
elsewhere,  is  like  a  bow  —  the  violin  which  gives 
out  tlje  sound  is  the  soul  of  the  reader.  And 
Goncourt  assimilated  this  method  with  surpri- 
16 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

sing  results.,  Stendhal  first  etched  the  soul  of  the 
new  Superman,  the  exalted  young  man  and  woman 
—  Julien  Sorel  and  Matilde  de  la  Mole.  They 
are  both  immoralists.  Exceptional  souls,  in  real 
life  they  might  have  seen  the  inside  of  a  prison. 
Stendhal  is  the  original  of  the  one;  the  other  is  the 
source  of  latter-day  feminine  souls  in  revolt,  the 
souls  of  Ibsen  and  Strindberg.  Laclos's  Les 
Liaisons  Dangereuses  and  Marivaux  he  has  re- 
moulded — Valmont  is  a  prototype  of  Julien  Sorel. 
J.  J.  Weiss  has  said  that  profound  immorality 
is  probably  an  attribute  common  to  all  great  ob- 
servers of  human  nature.  It  would  require  a 
devil's  advocate  of  unusual  acuity  to  prove  Sten- 
dhal a  moral  man  or  writer.  His  philosophy  is 
materialistic.  He  wrote  for  the  "  happy  few  "  and 
longed  for  a  hundred  readers,  and  wished  his 
readers  to  be  those  amiable,  unhappy  souls  who 
are  neither  moral  nor  hypocritical.  His  egoism 
brought  him  no  surcease  from  boredom.  His 
diaries  and  letters  and  memoirs,  so  rich  in  general 
ideas,  are  valuable  for  the  student  of  human  nature. 
The  publication  of  his  correspondence  was  a  reve- 
lation —  a  very  sincere,  human  Stendhal  came 
into  view.  His  cosmopolitanism  is  unaffected; 
his  chapters  are  mosaics  of  facts  and  sensations; 
his  manner  of  narrative  is,  as  Bourget  says,  a 
method  of  discovery  as  well  as  of  exposition. 
His  heroes  and  heroines  delve  into  their  motives, 
note  their  ideas  and  sensations.  With  a  few  ex- 
ceptions, modern  romancers,  novelists,  psycholo- 
gists of  fiction  seem  shallow  after  Stendhal.    Taine 

17 


EGOISTS 

confesses  to  reading  Le  Rouge  et  le  Npir  between 
thirty  and  forty  times.  Stendhal  disliked  America; 
to  him  all  things  democratic  were  abhorrent. 
He  loathed  the  mass,  upheld  the  class;  an  indi- 
vidualist and  aristocrat  like  Ibsen,  he  would  not 
recognize  the  doctrine  of  equality.  The  French 
Revolution  was  useful  only  because  it  evolved 
a  strong  man  —  Napoleon.  America,  being  demo- 
cratic, would  therefore  never  produce  art,  tragedy, 
music,  or  romantic  love. 

It  is  the  fate  of  some  men  to  exist  only  as  a  source 
of  inspiration  for  their  fellow-artists.  Shelley  is 
the  poet's  poet,  Meredith  the  novelist's  novelist, 
and  Stendhal  a  storehouse  for  psychologues. 
His  virile  spirit,  in  these  times  of  vapid  socialistic 
theories,  is  a  sparkling  and  sinister  pool  wherein 
all  may  dip  and  be  refreshed  —  perhaps  poisoned. 
He  is  not  orthodox  as  thinker  or  artist;  but  it  is 
a  truism  that  the  wicked  of  a  century  ago  may  be 
the  saints  of  to-morrow.  To  read  him  is  to  in- 
crease one'3  wisdom;  he  is  dangerous  only  to  fools. 
Like  Schopenhauer  and  Ibsen,  he  did  not  flatter 
his  public;  now  he  has  his  own  public.  And 
nothing-  would  have  amused  this  charming  and 
cynical  man  more  than  the  knowledge  of  his  canon- 
isation in  the  church  of  world  literature.  He 
gayly  predicted  that  he  would  be  understood 
about  1 880-1 900;  but  his  impertinent  shadow 
projects  far  into  the  twentieth  century.  Will  he 
be  read  in  1935?  he  has  asked.  Why  not?  A 
monument  is  to  be  erected  to  him  in  Paris. 
Rodin  has  designed  the  medallion  portrait. 
18 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 


n 


The  labours,  during  the  past  twenty  years,  of 
Casimir  Stryienski,  Francois  de  Nion,  L.  Belugon, 
Arthur  Chuquet,  Henry  Cordier,  Pierre  Brun, 
Ricciotto  Canudo,  Octave  Uzanne,  Hugues  Rebell 
—  to  quote  the  names  of  a  few  devoted  Sten- 
dhalians  —  have  enabled  us  to  decipher  Sten- 
dhal's troubled  life.  M.  Stryienski  unearthed 
at  Grenoble  a  mass  of  manuscript,  journals,  tales, 
half-finished  novels,  and  they  have  been  published. 
Was  there  any  reason  to  doubt  the  existence  of  a 
Stendhal  Club  after  the  appearance  of  those  two 
interesting  books.  Soirees  du  Stendhal  Club,  by 
Stryienski  ?  The  compact  little  study  in  the  series, 
Les  Grands  Ecrivains  Franf ais,  by  Edouard  Rod, 
and  Colomb's  biographical  notice  at  the  head  of 
Armance,  and  Stryienski's  Etude  Biographique 
are  the  principal  references  for  Stendhal  students. 
And  this,  too,  despite  the  evident  lack  of  sympathy 
in  the  case  of  M.  Rod.  It  is  a  minute,  pains- 
taking etude,  containing  much  fair  criticism; 
fervent  Stendhalians  need  to  be  reminded  of  their 
master's  defects  and  of  the  danger  of  self-dupery. 
If  Stendhal  were  alive,  he  would  be  the  first  to 
mock  at  his  disciples'  enthusiasm  —  the  enthu- 
siasm of  the  parvenu y  as  he  puts  it.  (He  ill  con- 
cealed his  own  in  the  presence  of  pictorial  master- 
pieces or  the  ballets  of  Vigano.)  Rod,  after  ad- 
mitting the  wide  influence  of  Stendhal  upon  the 
generations    that    followed    him,    patronisingly 

19 


EGOISTS 

concludes  by  a  quotation:  "Les  petits  livres  ont 
leurs  destinees."  What,  then,  does  he  call  great,- 
if  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir  and  La  Chartreuse  de 
Parme  are  ** little  books"  ? 

Marie-Henry  Beyle  was  bom  at  Grenoble, 
Dauphiny,  January  23,  1783.  He  died  at  Paris, 
March  23,  1842,  stricken  on  the  Rue  Neuve 
des  Capucines  by  apoplexy.  Colomb  had  his 
dying  friend  carried  to  his  lodgings.  He  was 
buried  in  Montmartre  Cemetery,  followed  there 
by  Merimee,  Colomb,  and  one  other.  Upon  his 
monument  is  an  epitaph  composed  a  short  time 
before  he  died.  It  is  in  Italian  and  reads:  Arrigo 
Beyle,  Milanese.  Scrisse,  Amb^  Visse.  Ann.  59. 
M.2.  Mori  2.  23  Marzo.  MDCCCXLII.  (Harry 
Beyle,  Milanese.  Wrote,  Loved,  Lived.  59 
years  and  2  months.  He  died  at  2  a.m.  on  the 
23rd  of  March,  1842.)  This  bit  of  mystifica- 
tion was  quite  in  line  with  Beyle's  career.  As  he 
was  baptised  the  English  Henry,  he  preferred  to 
be  known  in  death  as  the  Milanese  Harry.  Pierre 
Brun  says  that  there  was  a  transposition  in  the 
order  of  Scrisse j  Amo^  Visse;  it  should  read  the 
reverse.  The  sculptor  David  d' Angers  made  a 
medallion  of  the  writer  in  1825.  It  is  repro- 
duced in  the  Rod  monograph,  and  his  son  de- 
signed another  for  the  tomb.  This  singular 
epitaph  of  a  singular  man  did  not  escape  the  eyes 
of  his.  enemies.  Charles  Monselet  called  him  a 
renegade  to  his  family  and  country;  which  is 
uncritical  tomfoolery.  Stendhal  was  a  citizen  of 
the  world  —  and  to  the  last  a  Frenchman.  And 
20 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

not  one  of  his  cavilling  contemporaries  risked  his 
life  with  such  unconcern  as  did  this  same  Beyle 
in  the  Napoleonic  campaigns.  Merimde  has 
drawn  for  us  the  best  portrait  of  Stendhal, 
Colomb,  his  earliest  companion,  wrote  the  most 
gossipy  life.  Stryienski,  however,  has  demon- 
strated that  Colomb  attenuated,  even  erased 
many  expressions  of  Stendhal's,  and  that  he  also 
attempted  to  portray  his  hero  in  fairer  colours. 
But  deep-dyed  Stendhalians  will  not  have  their 
master  transformed  into  a  tame  cat  of  the  Parisian 
salons.  His  wickedness  is  his  chief  attraction, 
they  think.  An  oft-quoted  saying  of  Stendhal's 
has  been,  Stryienski  shows,  tampered  with:  *'A 
party  of  eight  or  ten  agreeable  persons,'*  said 
Stendhal,  "where  the  conversation  is  gay  and 
anecdotic,  and  where  weak  punch  is  handed 
around  at  half  past  twelve,  is  the  place  where  I 
enjoy  myself  the  most.  There,  in  my  element, 
I  infinitely  prefer  hearing  others  talk  to  talking 
myself.  I  readily  sink  back  into  the  silence  of 
happiness;  and  if  I  talk,  it  is  only  to  pay  my  ticket 
of  admission."  What  Stendhal  wrote  was  this: 
"Un  salon  de  huit  ou  dix  personnes  dont  toutes 
les  femmes  ont  eu  les  amants,"  etc.  The  touch  is 
unmistakable. 

Henry  was  educated  at  the  Ecole  Centrale  of 
Grenoble.  When  he  was  ten  years  of  age,  Louis 
XVI  was  executed,  and  the  precocious  boy,  to  an- 
noy his  father,  displayed  undisguised  glee  at  the 
news.  He  served  the  mass,  an  altar-boy  at  the  Con- 
vent of  the  Propagation,  and  revealed  unpleasant 

21 


EGOISTS 

traits  of  character.  His  father  he  called  by  a 
shocking  name,  but  the  death  of  his  mother,  when 
he  was  seven,  he  never  forgot.  He  loved  her  in 
true  Stendhalian  style.  His  maiden  aunt  Sera- 
phie  ruled  the  house  of  the  elder  Beyle,  and 
Henry's  two  sisters,  Pauline  —  the  favourite  of 
her  brother  —  and  Zenaide,  most  tyrannically. 
His  young  existence  was  a  cruel  battle  with  his 
elders,  excepting  his  worthy  grandfather.  Doctor 
Gagnon,  2in  esprit  fort  of  the  approved  eighteenth- 
century  variety.  On  his  book-shelves  Henry 
found  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  d'Holbach,  and  eagerly 
absorbed  them.  A  great-aunt  taught  him  that 
the  pride  of  the  Spaniard  was  the  best  quality  of 
a  man.  When  he  heard  of  his  aunt's  death,  he 
threw  himself  on  his  knees  and  passionately 
thanked  the  God  in  whom  he  had  never  believed. 
His  father,  Cherubin- Joseph  Beyle,  was  chevalier 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor  and  his  family  of  old 
though  not  noble  stock.  Its  sympathies  were 
aristocratic,  royalist,  while  Henry  —  certainly  not 
a  radical  in  politics — loved  to  annoy  his  father  by 
his  Jacobin  opinions.  He  in  turn  was  ridiculed 
by  the  Dauphinois  when  he  called  himself  de 
Stendhal.  Not  a  lovable  boy,  certainly,  and,  it  is 
said,  scarcely  a  moral  one.  At  school  they  nick- 
named him  *4a  Tour  ambulante,"  because  of  his 
thick-set  figure.  He  preferred  mathematics  to 
all  other  studies,  as  he  contemplated  entering 
I'Ecole  Polytechnique.  November  lo,  1799, 
found  him  in  Paris  with  letters  for  his  cousins 
Daru.  They  proved  friendly.  He  was  after- 
22 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

ward,  through  the  influence  of  Pierre  Daru,  min- 
ister of  war,  made  lieutenant  of  cavalry,  commis- 
sary and  auditor  of  the  Council  of  State.  He 
served  in  the  Italian  campaign,  following  Napo- 
leon through  the  Saint  Bernard  pass  two  days 
later.  Aide-de-camp  of  General  Michaud,  he 
displayed  sang-froid  under  fire.  He  was  present 
at  Jena  and  Wagram,  and  asked,  during  a  day  of 
fierce  fighting,  ''Is  that  all ?"  War  and  love  only 
provoked  from  this  nonchalant  person  the  same 
question.  He  was  always  disappointed  by  re- 
ality; and,  as  Rod  adds,  "Is  that  all?"  might  be 
the  leit  motiv  of  his  life.  Forced  by  sickness  to 
retire  to  Vienna,  he  was  at  the  top-notch  of  his 
life  in  Paris  and  Milan,  1810-1812.  He  left 
a  brilliant  position  to  rejoin  the  Emperor  in 
Russia.  In  1830  he  was  nominated  consul  at 
Trieste;  but  Metternich  objected  because  of  Sten- 
dhal's reputation  as  a  political  intrigant  in  Milan, 
ten  years  earlier —  a  reputation  he  never  deserved. 
He  was  sent  to  Civita  Vecchia,  where  he  led  a  dull 
existence,  punctuated  by  trips  to  Rome,  and,  at 
long  intervals,  to  Paris.  From  18 14  to  1820  he 
lived  in  Milan,  and  in  love,  a  friend  of  Manzoni, 
Silvio  Pellico,  Monti.  The  police  drove  him  back 
to  Paris,  and  he  says  it  was  the  deadliest  blow  to 
his  happiness.  For  a  decade  he  remained  here, 
leading  the  life  of  a  man  around  town,  a  subli- 
mated gossip,  dilettante,  surface  idler;  withal,  a 
hard  worker.  A  sybarite  on  an  inadequate  in- 
come, he  was  ever  the  man  of  action.  Embroiled 
in  feminine  intrigues,  sanguine,  clairvoyant,  and 
23 


EGOISTS 

a  sentimentalist,  he  seldom  contemplated  mar- 
riage. Once,  at  Civitk  Vecchia,  a  young  woman  of 
bourgeois  extraction  tempted  him  by  her  large 
dot;  but  inquiries  made  at  Grenoble  killed  his 
chances.  Indeed,  he  was  not  the  stuff  from  which 
the  ideal  husband  is  moulded.  He  did  not  en- 
tertain a  high  opinion  of  matrimony.  He  said 
that  the  Germans  had  a  mania  for  marriage,  an 
institution  which  is  servitude  for  men.  On  a  trip 
down  the  Rhone,  in  1833,  ^^  ^^t  George  Sand  and 
Alfred  de  Musset  going  to  Italy  —  to  that  Venice 
which  was  the  poet's  Waterloo  and  Pagello's 
victory.  Stendhal  behaved  so  madly,  so  boister- 
ously, and  uttered  such  paradoxes  that  he  offended 
Madame  Dudevant-Sand,  who  openly  expressed 
her  distaste  for  him,  though  admiring  his  brill- 
iancy. De  Musset  had  a  pretty  talent  for  sketch- 
ing and  drew  Stendhal  dancing  at  the  inn  before 
a  servant.  It  is  full  of  verve.  He  also  wrote 
some  verse  about  the  French  consul  at  Civitk 
Vecchia: 

"Ou  Stendhal,  cet  esprit  charmant, 
Remplissait  si  ddvotement 
Sa  sinecure." 

Sinecure  it  was,  though  ennui  ruled;  but  he 
had  his  memories,  and  Rome  was  not  far  away. 
In  1832,  while  at  San  Pietro  in  Montorio,  he  be- 
thought himself  of  his  age.  Fifty  years  would 
soon  arrive.  He  determined  to  write  his  memoirs. 
And  we  have  the  Vie  de  Henri  Brulard,  Souvenirs 
d'Egotisme,  and  the  Journal  (1801-1814).  In 
24 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

their  numerous  pages — for  he  was  an  indefatigable 
graphomaniac  —  may  be  found  the  thousand  and 
one  experiences  in  love,  war,  diplomacy  that  made 
up  his  life.  His  boasted  impassibility,  like  Flau- 
bert's, does  not  survive  the  test  of  these  letters 
and  intimate  confessions.  Merimee,  too,  wrote 
to  Jenny  Dacquin  without  his  accustomed  mask. 
Stendhal  is  the  most  personal  of  writers;  each 
novel  is  Henry  Beyle  in  various  situations,  making 
various  and  familiar  gestures. 

His  presence  was  welcome  in  a  dozen  salons  of 
Paris.  He  preferred,  however,  a  box  at  la  Scala, 
Hstening  to  Rossini  or  watching  a  Vigano  ballet, 
near  his  beloved  Angela.  But  after  seven  years 
Milan  was  closed  to  him,  and  as  he  was  known  in 
a  restricted  circle  at  Paris  as  a  writer  of  power, 
originality,  and  as  an  authority  on  music  and 
painting,  he  returned  there  in  182 1.  He  fre- 
quented the  salon  of  Destutt  de  Tracy,  whose 
ideology  and  philosophic  writings  he  admired. 
There  he  saw  General  Lafayette  and  wrote  ma- 
liciously of  this  hero,  who,  though  seventy-five, 
was  in  love  with  a  Portuguese  girl  of  nineteen. 
The  same  desire  to  startle  that  animated  Baude- 
laire kept  Beyle  in  hot  water.  He  was  a  visitor 
at  the  home  of  Madame  Cabanis,  of  M.  Cuvier, 
of  Madame  Ancelot,  Baron  Gerard,  and  Castel- 
lane,  and  on  Sundays,  at  the  salon  of  Etienne 
Delacluze,  the  art  critic  of  the  D'ehats^  and  a  daily 
visitor  at  Madame  Pasta's.  He  disliked,  in  his 
emphatic  style,  Victor  Cousin,  Thiers,  and  his  host 
Delacluze.  For  Beyle  to  dislike  a  man  was  to 
25 


EGOISTS 

announce  the  fact  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven, 
and  he  usually  did  so  with  a  brace  of  bon-mots 
that  set  all  Paris  laughing.  Naturally,  his  ene- 
mies retaliated.  Some  disagreeable  things  were 
said  of  him,  though  none  quite  so  sharp  as  the 
remark  made  by  a  certain  Madame  Celine:  "Ah! 
I  see  M.  Beyle  is  wearing  a  new  coat.  Madame 
Pasta  must  have  had  a  benefit."  This  witticism 
was  believed,  because  of  the  long  friendship  be- 
tween the  Italian  cantatrice  and  the  young  French- 
man. He  occupied  a  small  apartment  in  the  same 
building,  though  it  is  said  the  attachment  was 
platonic. 

In  1800  he  met,  at  Milan,  Signora  Angela 
Pietragrua.  He  loved  her.  Eleven  years  later, 
when  he  returned  to  Italy,  this  love  was  revived. 
He  burst  into  tears  when  he  saw  her  again.  Quello 
e  il  Chinese!  explained  the  massive  Angela  to  her 
father.  Even  that  lovetap  did  not  disconcert  the 
furnace-like  affection  of  Henry.  This  Angela  made 
him  miserable  by  her  coquetries.  The  feminine 
characters  in  his  novels  and  tales  are  drawn  from 
life.  His  essay  on  Love  is  a  centaine  of  experiences 
crystallised  into  maxims  and  epigrams.  This  man 
of  too  expansive  heart,  who  confessed  to  trepidation 
in  the  presence  of  a  woman  he  loved,  displayed  sur- 
prising delicacy.  Where  he  could  not  respect,  he 
could  not  love.  His  sensibility  was  easily  hurt; 
he  abhorred  the  absence  of  taste.  Love  was  for 
him  a  mixture  of  moonshine,  esprit^  and  physical 
beauty.  A  very  human  man,  Henry  Beyle,  though 
he  never  viewed  woman  exactly  from  the  same 
26 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

angle  as  did  Dante;  or,  perhaps,  his  many  Bea- 
trices proved  geese. 

Stryienski  relates  that,  on  their  return  from 
Italy  in  i860,  Napoleon  III  and  the  Empress 
Eugenie  visited  Grenoble  and,  in  the  municipal 
library,  saw  a  portrait  of  Stendhal.  "But  that  is 
M.  Beyle,  is  it  not?"  cried  the  Empress.  "How 
comes  his  portrait  here  ?"  "  He  was  bom  at  Gre- 
noble," responded  Gariel,  the  librarian.  She  re- 
membered him,  this  amusing  mature  friend  of  her 
girlhood.  The  daughters  of  Madame  de  Montijo, 
Eugenie  and  Paca,  met  Beyle  through  Merimee, 
who  was  intimate  with  their  mother.  The  two 
girls  liked  him;  he  spun  for  them  his  best  yarns, 
he  initiated  them  into  new  games;  in  a  word,  he 
was  a  welcome  guest  in  the  household,  and  there 
are  two  letters  in  the  possession  of  Auguste  Cor- 
dier,  one  addressed  to  Beyle  by  E.  Guzman  y 
Palafox  dated  December,  1839,  when  the  future 
Empress  of  the  French  was  thirteen;  the  other 
from  her  sister  Paca,  both  affectionate  and  of  a 
charm.  The  episode  was  a  pleasant  one  in  the 
life  of  Beyle. 

Merimee  also  arranged  a  meeting  between 
Victor  Hugo  and  Beyle  in  1829  or  1830.  Sainte- 
Beuve  was  present,  and  in  a  letter  to  Albert  Col- 
lignon,  published  in  Vie  litter  aire,  1874,  he  writes 
of  the  pair  as  two  savage  cats,  their  hair  bristling, 
both  on  the  defensive.  Hugo  knew  that  Beyle 
was  an  enemy  of  poetry,  of  the  lyric,  of  the  "  ideal." 
The  ice  was  not  broken  during  the  evening.  Beyle 
had  an  antipathy  for  Hugo,  Hugo  thoroughly 
27 


EGOISTS 

disliked  Beyle.  And  if  we  had  the  choice  to- 
day between  talking  with  Hugo  or  Beyle,  is  there 
any  doubt  as  to  the  selection?  —  Beyle  the 
raconteur  of  his  day.  He  was  too  clear-sighted 
to  harbour  any  illusions  concerning  literary  folk. 
Praise  from  one's  colleagues  is  a  brevet  of  re- 
semblance, he  has  written.  Doesn't  this  sound 
like  old  Dr.  Johnson's  *'The  reciprocal  civility  of 
authors  is  one  of  the  most  risible  scenes  in  the 
farce  of  life"? 


Ill 


Prosper  Merimee  has  told  us  that  his  friend 
and  master,  Henry  Stendhal-Beyle,  was  wedded 
to  the  old-fashioned  theory:  a  man  should  not  be 
in  a  woman's  company  longer  than  five  minutes 
without  making  love;  granting,  of  course,  that 
the  woman  is  pretty  and  pleasing.  This  idea 
Stendhal  had  imbibed  when  a  soldier  in  the  Na- 
poleonic campaign.  It  was  hussar  tactics  of  the 
First  Empire.  "Attack,  attack,  attack,"  he  cries. 
His  book  De  I'Amour  practically  sets  forth  the 
theory;  but  like  most  theoreticians,  Stendhal  was 
timid  in  action.  He  was  a  sentimentalist — he 
the  pretended  cynic  and  hlase  man  of  the  world. 
Mdrim^e  acknowledges  that  much  of  his  own  and 
Stendhal's  impassibility  was  pure  posing.  Never- 
theless, with  the  exceptions  of  Goethe  and  Byron, 
no  writer  of  eminence  in  the  last  century  enjoyed 
such  a  sentimental  education  as  Stendhal.  At 
Weimar  the  passionate  pilgrim  may  see  a  small 
28 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

plaque  which  contains  portraits  of  the  women 
beloved  by  Goethe  —  omitting  Frederike  Brion. 
True  to  the  compass  of  Teutonic  sentimentality, 
Goethe's  mother  heads  the  list.  Then  follow  the 
names  of  Cornelia,  Katchen  Schonkopf,  Lotte 
Buff,  Lili  Schonemann,  Corona  Schroter,  Frau 
von  Stein,  Christiane  Vulpius  —  later  Frau  von 
Goethe  —  Bettina  von  Arnim,  Minna  Herzlieb, 
and  Marianne  v.  Willemer;  with  their  respec- 
tive birth  and  death  dates.  Several  other  names 
might  have  been  added,  notably  that  of  the  Polish 
pianiste  Goethe  encountered  at  Marienbad.  The 
collection  is  fair-sized,  even  for  a  poet  who  lived 
as  long  as  Goethe  and  one  who  reproached 
Balzac  with  digging  from  a  woman's  heart  each 
of  his  novels.  To  both  Goethe  and  Stendhal  the 
epigram  of  George  Meredith  might  be  applied: 
"Men  may  have  rounded  Seraglio  Point.  They 
have  not  yet  doubled  Cape  Turk." 

The  wonder  is  that  thus  far  no  devoted  Sten- 
dhalian  has  prepared  a  similar  carton  with  the 
names  and  pictures  of  their  master's  —  dare  we 
say  ?  —  victims.  Stendhal  loved  many  women, 
and  like  Goethe  his  first  love  was  his  mother. 
For  him  she  was  the  most  precious  image  of  all, 
and  he  was  jealous  of  his  father.  This  was  at  the 
age  of  seven;  but  the  precocity  of  the  boy  and  his 
exaggerated  sensibility  must  be  remembered — 
which  later  brought  him  so  much  unhappiness  and 
so  little  joy.  A  casual  examination  of  the  list  of 
his  loves,  reciprocated  or  spurned,  would  make  a 
companion  to  that  of  Weimar.  Their  names  are 
29 


EGOISTS 

Melanic  Guilbert-Louason,  Angela  Pietragrua, 
Mile.  Beretter,  the  Countess  Palffy,  Menta,  Elisa, 
Livia  B.,  Madame  Azur,  Mina  de  Grisheim, 
Mme.  Jules,  and  la  petite  P.  The  number  he 
loved  without  consolation  was  still  larger.  De- 
spite his  hussar  manoeuvres,  Stendhal  was  easily- 
rebuffed.  It  is  odd  that  Goethe's  and  Stendhal's 
fair  ones,  upon  whom  they  poured  poems  and 
novels,  did  not  die  —  that  is,  immediately  —  on 
being  deserted.  Goethe  relieved  the  pain  of 
many  partings  by  writing  a  poem  or  a  play  and 
seeking  fresh  faces.  Stendhal  did  the  same  — 
substituting  a  novel  or  a  study  or  innumerable 
letters  for  poems  and  plays.  He  believed  that 
one  nail  drove  out  another;  which  is  very  soothing 
to  masculine  vanity.  But  did  any  woman  break 
her  heart  because  of  his  fickleness?  Frau  von 
Stein  of  all  the  women  loved  by  Goethe  probably 
took  his  defection  seriously.  She  didn't  kill  her- 
self, however.  He  wounded  many  a  heart,  yet 
the  majority  of  his  loves  married,  and  appar- 
ently happily.  Stendhal,  ugly  as  he  was,  slew 
his  hundreds;  they  recovered  after  he  had  passed 
on  to  fresh  conquests;  a  fact  that  he,  with  his  ac- 
customed sincerity,  did  not  fail  to  note.  Yet 
this  same  gallant  was  among  the  few  in  the 
early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  declare 
for  the  enfranchisement,  physical  and  spiritual, 
of  woman.  He  was  Sifeministe.  But,  in  reality, 
his  theory  of  love  resembled  that  of  the  writer 
who  said  that  **it  was  simple  and  brief,  like  a 
pressure  of  the  hand  between  sympathetic  persons, 
30 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

or  a  gay  luncheon  between  two  friends  of  which 
a  pleasant  memory  remains,  if  not  also  a  gentle 
gratitude  toward  the  companion."  I  quote  from 
memory. 

It  was  at  Rome  that  he  first  resolved  to  tell 
the  story  of  his  life.  In  the  dust  he  traced 
the  initials  of  the  beloved  ones.  In  his  book  he 
omitted  no  details.  His  motto  was:  la  verit'e  toute 
nue.  If  he  has  not  spared  himself,  he  has  not 
spared  others.  What  can  the  critics,  who  recently 
blamed  George  Moore  for  his  plain  speech  in  his 
memoirs,  say  to  Stendhal's  journals  and  La  Vie  de 
Henri  Brulard?  Many  of  the  names  were  at 
first  given  with  initials  or  asterisks;  Merimde 
burned  the  letters  Stendhal  sent  him,  and  regretted 
the  act.  But  the  Stendhalians,  the  young  enthusi- 
asts of  the  Stendhal  Club,  have  supplied  the  miss- 
ing names — those  of  men  and  women  who  have 
been  dead  half  a  century  and  more. 

De  I'Amour,  Stendhal's  remarkable  study  of 
the  love-passion,  is  marred  by  the  attempt  to  im- 
prison a  sentiment  behind  the  bars  of  a  mathe- 
matical formula.  He  had  inherited  from  his 
study  of  Condillac,  Helvetius,  Tracy,  Chamfort 
the  desire  for  a  rigid  schematology,  for  geometrical 
demonstration.  The  word  "logic"  was  always 
on  the  tip  of  his  tongue,  and  he  probably  would 
have  come  to  blows  with  Professor  Jowett  for 
his  dictum,  uttered  at  the  close  of  a  lecture: 
"Logic  is  neither  an  art  nor  a  science,  but  a 
dodge."  Love  for  Stendhal  was  without  a  Be- 
yond. It  was  a  matter  of  the  senses  entirely. 
31 


EGOISTS 

The  soul  counted  for  little,  manners  for  much. 
A  sentimental  epicurean,  he  is  the  artistic  de- 
scendant of  Benjamin  Constant's  Adolphe,  both 
by  tradition  and  temperament.  Stendhal  fell 
into  the  mistake  of  the  metaphysician  in  setting 
up  numerous  categorical  traps  to  snare  his  sub- 
ject. They  are  artificial,  and  yet  bear  a  re- 
semblance to  certain  Schopenhauerian  theories. 
Both  men  practised  what  they  did  not  preach. 
"Beauty  is  a  promise  of  happiness,"  wrote  Sten- 
dhal, and  it  was  so  effective  that  Baudelaire  re- 
wrote it  with  a  slight  variation.  The  "  crystallisa- 
tion" formula  of  Stendhal  occurred  to  him  while 
down  in  a  salt  mine  near  Salzburg.  He  saw  an  elm 
twig  covered  with  sparkling  salt  crystals,  and  he 
used  it  as  an  image  to  express  the  love  that  dis- 
cerns in  the  beloved  one  all  perfections.  There 
are  several  crystallisations  during  the  course  of 
"true  love."  His  book  is  more  autobiographical 
than  scientific;  that  the  writer  gleaned  the  facts 
from  his  own  heart-experiences  adds  to  the  value 
and  veracity  of  the  work.  As  a  catechism  for 
lovers,  it  is  unique;  and  it  was  so  well  received 
that  from  1822  to  1833  there  were  exactly  seven- 
teen copies  sold.  But  it  has  been  plundered  by 
other  writers  without  acknowledgment.  Stendhal 
and  Schopenhauer  could  have  shaken  hands  on 
the  score  of  their  unpopularity  —  and  about  1880 
on  their  sudden  recrudescence. 

With  all  his  display  of  worldly  wisdom  Sten- 
dhal really  loved  but  three  times  in    his   life; 
this  statement  may  shock  some  of  his  disciples 
32 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

who  see  in  him  a  second  Casanova,  but  a  study 
of  his  life  will  prove  it.  He  had  gone  to  Paris 
with  the  established  conviction  that  he  must 
become  a  Don  Juan.  That  was  —  comical  or 
shocking  as  it  may  sound  —  his  projected  pro- 
fession. Experience  soon  showed  him  other  as- 
pects. He  was  too  refined,  too  tender-hearted, 
to  indulge  in  the  conventional  dissipations  of  ado- 
lescent mankind.  The  lunar  ray  of  sentiment 
was  in  his  brain;  if  he  couldn't  idealise  a  woman, 
he  would  leave  her.  It  was  his  misfortune,  the 
lady's  fortune  —  whoever  she  might  have  been 
—  and  the  world's  good  luck  that  he  never  was 
married.  As  a  husband  he  would  have  been 
a  glorious  failure.  Melanie  Guilbert-Louason 
was  an  actress  in  Paris,  who,  after  keeping  him  on 
tenter-hooks  of  jealousy,  accepted  his  addresses. 
He  couldn't  marry  her,  because  the  allowance 
made  by  his  father  did  not  suffice  for  himself; 
besides,  she  had  a  daughter  by  a  former  marriage. 
He  confesses  that  lack  of  money  was  the  chief 
reason  for  his  timidity  with  women;  a  millionaire, 
he  might  have  been  a  conquering  and  detestable 
hero.  Like  Frederic  Moreau  in  L' Education 
Sentimentale,  Stendhal  always  feared  interruption 
from  a  stronger  suitor,  and  his  fears  were  usually 
verified.  But  he  went  with  Guilbert  to  Marseilles, 
where  she  was  acting,  and  to  support  himself  took 
a  position  in  a  commercial  house.  That  for  him 
meant  a  grand  passion;  he  loathed  business.  She 
married  a  Russian,  Baskow  by  name.  Sten- 
dhal was  inconsolable  for  weeks.  How  he  would 
33 


EGOISTS 

have  applauded  the  ironical  cry  of  Jules  La- 
forgue's  Hamlet:  ''Stability!  stability!  thy  name 
is  Woman."  Although  he  passed  his  days  em- 
broidering upon  the  canvas  of  the  Eternal  Mascu- 
line portraits  of  the  secular  sex,  Stendhal  first 
said,  denying  a  certain  French  king,  that  women 
never  vary. 

He  fell  into  abysmal  depths  of  love  with  Angela 
Pietragrua  at  Milan.  He  was  a  dashing  soldier, 
and  if  Angela  deceived  him  he  was  youthful 
enough  to  stand  the  shock.  Eleven  years  later 
he  revisited  Milan  and  wept  when  he  saw  Angela 
again.  He  often  wept  copiously,  a  relic  possibly 
of  eighteenth-century  sensibilities.  Angela  did  not 
weep.  She,  however,  was  sufficiently  touched  to 
start  a  fresh  affair  with  her  faithful  Frenchman. 
He  did  not  always  enjoy  smooth  sailing.  There 
were  a  dozen  women  that  either  scorned  him  or 
else  remained  unconscious  of  his  sentiments. 
One  memory  remained  with  him  to  the  last 
—  recall  his  cry  of  loneliness  to  Romain  Colomb 
when  languishing  as  a  French  consul  at  Civitk 
Vecchia:  "I  am  perishing  for  want  of  love!" 
He  thought  doubdess  of  Metilde,  wife  of  Gen- 
eral Dembowsky,  who  from  1818  to  1824  (let 
us  not  concern  ourselves  if  these  dates  coincide 
with  or  overlap  other  love-affairs;  Stendhal  was 
very  versatile)  neither  encouraged  nor  discour- 
aged at  Milan  the  ardent  exile.  So  infatuated  was 
he  that  he  neglected  his  chances  with  the  actress 
Vigan5,  and  also  with  the  Countess  Kassera. 
Madame  Dembowsky,  who  afterward  did  not 
34 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 

prove  so  cruel  to  the  conspirator  Ugo  Foscolo, 
allowed  Stendhal  the  inestimable  privilege  of 
kissing  her  hand.  He  sighed  like  a  schoolboy 
and  trailed  after  the  heartless  one  from  Milan  to 
Florence,  from  Florence  to  Rome.  The  gossip 
that  he  was  the  lover  in  Paris  of  the  singer  Pasta 
caused  the  Dembowsky  to  deny  him  hope.  He 
was  sincerely  attached  to  her.  Had  she  said 
"Kill  yourself,"  he  would  have  done  so.  Yes, 
such  a  romantic  he  was.  She  was  born  Viscon- 
tini  and  separated  from  a  brutal  soldier  of  a  hus- 
band. Her  cousin,  Madame  Traversi,  was  an 
obstacle  in  this  unhappy  passion  of  Stendhal's. 
She  hated  him.  Metilde  died  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
eight,  in  1825.  Because  of  her  he  had  replied 
to  Mile.  Vigano  —  when  she  asked  him:  "Beyle, 
they  say  that  you  are  in  love  with  me!"  "They 
are  fooling  you."  For  this  he  was  never  for- 
given. It  is  a  characteristic  note  of  Stendhalian 
frankness — Stendhal,  who  never  deceived  anyone 
but  himself.  Here  is  a  brace  of  his  amiable 
sayings  on  the  subject  of  Woman  :^ 

"  La  fidelite  des  femmes  dans  le  mariage,  lorsqu' 
il  n'y  a  pas  d' amour,  est  probablement  une 
chose  contre  nature." 

"La  seule  chose  que  je  voie  a  blamer  dans  la 
pudeur,  c'est  de  conduire  a  1' habitude  de  mentir." 


35 


EGOISTS 


IV 


A  promenader  of  souls  and  cities,  Stendhal 
was  a  letter- writer  of  formidable  patience;  his 
published  correspondence  is  enormous.  How 
enormous  may  be  seen  in  the  three  volumes  pub- 
lished at  Paris  by  Charles  Bosse,  the  pages  of 
which  number  1,386.  These  letters  begin  in 
1800,  when  Stendhal  was  a  precocious  youth  of 
seventeen,  and  end  1842,  a  few  days  before  his 
death.  There  are  more  than  700  of  them,  and 
he  must  have  written  more — probably  several 
thousand;  for  we  know  that  Merimee  destroyed 
nearly  all  his  correspondence  with  Stendhal,  and 
we  read  of  300  written  to  a  Milanese  lady  —  his 
one  grand,  because  unsuccessful,  passion.  But 
a  few  of  these  are  included,  the  remainder  doubt- 
less having  been  burned  for  prudence'  sake.  The 
earliest  edition  of  the  Stendhal  letters  appeared 
in  1855,  edited  by  Prosper  Merimde,  with  an  in- 
troduction by  the  author  of  Carmen.  The  present 
edition  is  edited  by  two  devoted  Stendhalians, 
Ad.  Paupe  and  P.  A.  Cheramy.  It  comprises  all 
the  earlier  correspondence,  the  letters  printed  in 
the  Souvenirs  d'Egotisme  (1892),  some  letters 
never  before  published,  Lettres  Intimes  (1892), 
and  letters  published  in  the  first  series  of  Soirees 
du  Stendhal  Club  (1905).  There  are  also  letters 
from  the  archives  of  the  Ministers  of  the  Interior, 
of  War,  and  of  Foreign  Affairs  —  altogether  a 
complete  collection,  though  ugly  in  appearance, 

36 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

resembling  a  volume  of  Congressional  reports, 
but  valuable  to  the  Stendhal  student. 

For  the  first  time  the  names  of  his  correspond- 
ents appear  in  full.  Merimee  suppressed  most 
of  them  or  gave  only  the  initials.  We  learn  who 
these  correspondents  were,  and  there  is  a  general 
key  for  the  deciphering  of  the  curious  names  Sten- 
dhal bestowed  upon  them  —  he  was  a  wag  and 
a  mystifier  in  this  respect.  His  own  signature 
was  seldom  twice  alike.  A  list  is  given  and 
reaches  the  number  of  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
nine  pseudonyms.  Maurice  Barres  has  written 
a  gentle  preface  rather  in  the  air,  which  he 
entitled:  Stendhal's  Sentiment  of  Honour.  One 
passage  is  worthy  of  quotation.  Barres  asserts 
that  Stendhal  never  asked  whether  a  sentiment 
or  an  act  was  useful  or  fecund,  but  whether  it 
testified  to  a  thrilling  energy.  Since  the  prag- 
matists  are  claiming  the  Frenchman  as  one  of 
their  own,  this  statement  may  prove  revelatory. 

The  first  volume  is  devoted  to  his  years  of 
apprenticeship  (1800-1806)  and  his  active  life 
(1808-1814).  The  majority  of  the  letters  are 
addressed  to  his  sister,  Pauline  Beyle,  at  Grenoble, 
a  sympathetic  soul.  With  the  gravity  of  a  young, 
green  philosopher,  he  addresses  to  her  homilies 
by  the  yard.  Sixty  instructing  twenty!  He  tells 
her  what  to  read,  principally  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury philosophers:  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Helvetius, 
Tracy,  Locke  —  amusing  and  highly  moral  read- 
ing for  a  lass  —  and  he  never  wearies  of  praising 
Shakespeare.  "I  am  a  Romantic,"  he  says  else- 
37 


EGOISTS 

where;  "that  is,  I  prefer  Shakespeare  to  Racine, 
Byron  to  Boileau."  This  worldly-wise  youth 
must  have  bored  his  sister.  She  understood  him, 
however,  and  as  her  life  at  home  with  a  disagree- 
able and  avaricious  father  was  not  happy,  her 
correspondence  with  brother  Henry  must  have 
been  a  consolation.  He  does  not  scruple  to  call 
his  father  hard  names,  and  recomm^ends  his  sister 
not  to  marry  for  love  but  for  a  comfortable  home. 
She  actually  did  both.  Edouard  Mounier  is 
another  correspondent;  also  Felix  Faure,  bom  in 
Stendhal's  city,  Grenoble.  We  learn  much  of  the 
Napoleonic  campaigns  in  which  Stendhal  served, 
particularly  of  the  burning  of  Moscow  and  the 
disastrous  retreat  of  the  French  army.  Related 
by  an  eye-witness  whose  style  is  concise,  whose 
power  of  observation  is  extraordinary,  these  letters 
possess  historic  value. 

All  Paris  and  Milan  are  in  the  second  volume. 
The  Man  of  the  World  and  the  Dilettante  (1815- 
1830) ;  while  The  Public  Functionary  and  Novelist 
are  the  themes  of  volume  three  (1830-1842). 
The  friends  with  whom  Stendhal  corresponded 
were  Guizot,  Thiers,  Balzac,  Byron,  Walter  Scott, 
Sainte-Beuve,  and  many  distinguished  noblemen 
and  men  of  affairs.  He  had  friends  in  London, 
Thomas  Moore  and  Sutton-Sharp  among  the 
rest;  and  he  visited  England  several  times.  Baron 
Mareste  and  Romain  Colomb  were  confidants. 
Stendhal,  with  an  irony  that  never  deserted  him, 
wrote  obituary  notices  of  himself  because  Jules 
Janin  had  jestingly  remarked  that  when  Stendhal 

38 


HENRY  BEYLE-STEI^DHAL 

died  he  would  furnish  plenty  of  good  material 
for  the  necrologists.  The  articles  in  guise  of  letters 
sent  to  M.  Stritch  of  the  German  Review,  London, 
are  tedious  reading;  besides,  there  are  too  many 
of  them. 

As  a  man  whose  ears  and  eyes  were  very  close 
to  the  whirring  of  contemporary  events,  his  de- 
scriptions of  Napoleon  and  Byron  are  peculiarly 
interesting.  At  first  Napoleon  had  been  a  demi- 
god, then  he  was  reviled  because  with  the  Corsi- 
can's  downfall  he  lost  his  chances  for  the  future. 
He  had  witnessed  the  coronation  and  did  not 
forget  that  Talma  had  given  the  young  Bona- 
parte free  tickets  to  the  Comddie  Fran^aise; 
also  that  Pope  Pius  VII.  pronounced  Latin 
Italian  fashion,  thus:  Spiritous  sanctous.  As 
the  Emperor  passed  by  on  horseback,  cheered 
by  the  mobs,  "he  smiled  his  smile  of  the  theatre, 
in  which  one  shows  the  teeth,  but  with  eyes  that 
smile  not."  Stendhal  tells  us  that  the  Emperor 
had  forehead  and  nose  in  an  unbroken  line,  a 
common  trait  in  certain  parts  of  France,  he  adds. 

He  first  encountered  Byron  in  the  year  1812, 
at  Milan.  It  was  in  a  box  of  the  Scala.  He 
was  overcome  by  the  beauty  of  the  poet,  by  his 
graciousness.  Here  we  see  Stendhal,  no  longer 
a  soldier  or  a  cynic,  but  a  man  of  sensibility,  al- 
most a  hero-worshipper.  Byron  was  agreeable. 
They  met  often.  When  Byron's  physician  and 
secretary,  Polidori,  was  arrested  by  the  Milan 
secret  police,  Stendhal  relates  that  the  English- 
man's rage  was  appalling.  Byron  resembled 
39 


EGOISTS 

Napoleon,  declared  Stendhal,  in  his  marble 
wrath.  Another  time  the  French  author  advised 
Byron,  who  lived  at  a  distance  from  the  opera 
house,  to  take  a  carriage,  as  after  midnight  walk- 
ing was  dangerous  in  Milan.  Coldly  though 
politely  Byron  asked  for  some  indication  of  his 
route  and  then,  during  a  painful  silence,  he  left 
poor  Stendhal  staring  after  him  as  he  hobbled  away 
in  the  darkness.  Such  human  touches  are  worth 
more  than  the  letters  in  which  the  literature  of 
the  day  is  discussed. 

Ten  years  later,  from  Genoa  (1823),  Byron 
wrote  Stendhal,  whom  he  apparently  liked,  thank- 
ing him  for  a  notice  he  had  read  of  himself  in  the 
latter's  book,  Rome,  Naples,  et  Florence.  Supreme 
master  of  the  anecdote,  these  letters  may  serve 
as  an  introduction  to  Stendhal's  works,  though 
we  wish  for  more  of  the  tender  epistles.  How- 
ever, in  The  Diary,  the  Journal  and  the  Life  of 
Henri  Brulard,  one  may  find  copious  and  frank 
confessions  of  Stendhal's  love-life.  So  little  of 
the  literary  man  was  in  him  that  at  the  close  of 
his  career,  when  he  had  received  the  Legion  of 
Honor,  he  was  indignant  because  this  was  be- 
stowed upon  him  not  in  his  capacity  of  public 
functionary  but  as  a  man  of  letters.  Adolphe 
Paupe,  the  editor  of  this  bulky  correspondence  — 
and  who  knows  how  much  more  material  there 
may  be  in  the  Grenoble  archives !  —  fittingly 
closes  his  brief  introduction  with  a  quotation 
from  a  writer  the  antipodes  of  Stendhal,  the 
parabolic  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  who,  after  calling 
40 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

the  correspondence  "adorable,"  adds  that  it 
possesses  the  unheard-of  charm  of  Stendhal's 
other  books,  a  charm  which  is  inexhaustible. 
Notwithstanding  this  eloquence,  I  prefer  the  old 
edition  compiled  by  Merimee.  There  is  such  a 
thing  as  too  much  Stendhal,  although  every  scrap 
of  his  writing  may  be  sacred  to  his  disciples. 

I  am  glad,  therefore,  to  note  in  the  second 
series  of  the  Soirees  du  Stendhal  Club,  that  the 
principal  Stendhalian  —  or  Beyliste,  as  some 
name  themselves  —  Casimir  Stryienski,  shows 
a  disposition  to  mock  at  the  antics  of  over- 
heated Stendhalians.  M.  Stryienski,  who  has 
been  called  by  Paul  Bourget  "the  man  of  affairs 
of  the  Beyliste  family,"  dislikes  the  idea  of  a 
Stendhal  cult  and  wonders  how  the  ironic  and 
humorous  Beyle  would  have  treated  the  worship- 
pers who  wish  to  make  of  him  a  mystic  god — which 
is  the  proper  critical  attitude.  Beyle-Stendhal 
would  have  been  the  first  man  to  overthrow  any 
altar  erected  to  his  worship.  The  second  series, 
collated  by  Stryienski  and  Paul  Arbelet,  is  hardly 
as  novel  as  the  first.  The  most  important  article 
is  devoted  to  the  question  whether  Stendhal  dedi- 
cated to  Napoleon  his  History  of  Painting  (mostly 
borrowed  from  Lanzi's  book).  The  1817  dedi- 
cation is  enigmatic;  it  might  have  meant  Napoleon, 
or  Louis  XVIIL,  or  the  Czar  Alexander  of  Russia. 
M.  Arbelet  holds  to  the  latter,  as  Stendhal  was  so 
poor  that  he  hoped  for  a  position  as  preceptor  in 
Russia  and  thought  by  the  ambiguity  of  his  dedi- 
cation to  catch  the  favourable  eye  of  the  Czar, 
41 


EGOISTS 

Napoleon  was  at  Saint  Helena  and  a  hateful  king 
was  on  the  throne  of  France.  Let  all  three  be 
duped,  said  to  himself  the  merry  Stendhal. 
That  is  Arbelet's  theory.  When  in  1854  a  new 
edition  of  the  history  appeared,  it  was  headed  by  a 
touching,  almost  tearful  dedication  to  the  exile 
at  Saint  Helena!  Stendhal's  executor,  Romain 
Colomb,  had  found  it  among  the  papers  of  the 
dead  author,  and  as  Napoleon  was  dead  he  pub- 
lished it.  Evidently  Stendhal  had  written  several, 
and  for  politic  reasons  had  selected  the  misleading 
one  of  the  181 7  edition.  Recall  Beethoven's 
magnificent  rage  when  he  tore  into  pieces  the 
dedicatory  page  of  his  Eroica  Symphony,  on 
hearing  that  his  hero.  Napoleon,  had  crowned 
himself  Emperor.  Quite  Stendhalian  this,  Machi- 
avellian, and  also  time-serving.  No  doubt  he 
smiled  his  wicked  smile  —  with  tongue  in  cheek 
—  at  the  trick,  and  no  doubt  his  true  disciples 
applaud  it.  He  was  the  Superman  of  his  day, 
one  who  bothered  little  with  moral  obligations. 
His  favourite  device  was  a  line  of  verse  from  an 
old  opera  bouffe:  ^^Vengo  adesso  di  Cosmo poW^\ 
and  what  has  a  true  cosmopolitan,  a  promenader 
I  of  cities  and  prober  of  souls,  in  common  with  such 
a  bourgeois  virtue  as  truth-telling  ?  If,  as  Metch- 
nikofiF  asserts,  a  man  is  no  older  than  his  arteries, 
then  a  thinker  is  only  as  old  as  his  curiosity. 
Beyle  was  ever  curious,  impertinently  so  —  the 
Paul  Pry  of  psychologists. 


42 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 


His  cult  grows  apace,  and  like  all  cults  will  be 
overdone.  First  France,  then  Italy,  and  now 
Germany  has  succumbed  to  the  novels,  memoirs, 
and  delightful  gossiping  books  of  travel  written  by 
the  Frenchman  from  Grenoble.  But  what  a  literary 
and  artistic  gold-mine  his  letters,  papers,  manu- 
scripts of  unfinished  novels  have  proved  to  men 
like  Casimir  Stryienski  and  the  rest.  Even  in  1909 
the  Stendhal  excavators  are  busy  with  their  pickers 
and  stealers.  Literary  Paris  becomes  enthusiastic 
when  a  new  batch  of  correspondence  is  unearthed 
at  Grenoble  or  elsewhere.  Recently  a  cahier — in- 
complete to  be  sure,  but  indubitably  Stendhal's  — 
was  found  and  printed.  It  was  a  section  of  the 
famous  journal  exhumed  in  the  library  of  Gre- 
noble by  Stryienski  during  1888.  Published  in  the 
Mercure  de  France^  it  bore  the  title  of  Fin  du 
Tour  d'ltalie  en  181 1.  It  consists  of  brief,  al- 
most breathless  notes  upon  Naples,  its  music, 
customs,  streets,  inhabitants.  References  to  An- 
cona,  to  the  author's  second  sojourn  in  Milan,  and 
to  his  numerous  lady-loves  —  each  one  of  whom 
he  lashed  himself  into  believing  unique  —  are 
therein.  He  placed  Mozart  and  Cimarosa  above 
all  other  composers,  and  Shakespeare  above 
Racine.  Naturally  the  man  who  loved  Mozart 
was  bound  to  adore  Raphael  and  Correggio. 
Lombard  and  Florentine  masters  he  rated  higher 
than  the  Dutch.  Indeed,  he  abhorred  Rem- 
43 


EGOISTS 

brandt  and  Rubens  almost  as  much  as  William 
Blake  abhorred  them,  though  not  for  the  same 
reason.  Despite  his  perverse  and  whimsical 
spirit,  Stendhal  was,  in  the  larger  sense,  all  of  a 
piece.  His  likes  and  dislikes  in  art  are  so  many 
witnesses  to  the  unity  of  his  character. 

Maurice  Barr^s  relates  that  at  the  age  of  twenty 
he  was  in  Rome,  where  he  met  in  the  Villa  Medici 
its  director,  M.  Hubert,  the  painter  (died  1908), 
who  promptly  asked  the  young  Frenchman:  "Do 
you  admire  Stendhal?"  and  proceeded  to  explain 
that  the  writer  of  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  was 
his  cousin,  and  once  consul  at  Civitk  Vecchia, 
although  he  spent  most  of  his  time  in  Rome. 
Stendhal's  Promenades  had  offended  the  Pope, 
so  these  visits  were  really  stolen  ones.  Bored  to 
death  in  the  stuffy  little  town  where  he  represented 
the  French  Government,  Stendhal  had  been  re- 
proved more  than  once  for  the  dilatory  perform- 
ance of  his  duties.  Hebert,  after  warning  Barr^s 
not  to  study  him  too  deeply,  described  him  as  an 
old  gentleman  of  exceeding  but  capricious  esprit. 
He  roamed  among  the  picture  galleries,  exclaim- 
ing joyously  before  some  old  Greek  marble  or 
knitting  his  brows  in  the  Sistine  Chapel.  Raphael 
was  more  to  his  taste  than  Michaelangelo,  as  might 
have  been  expected  from  one  who  went  wild  over 
the  ballets  Viganb.  Another  anecdote  is  one  that 
-reveals  the  malicious,  almost  simian  trickiness  of 
Beyle-Stendhal.  An  English  lady,  a  traveller  bent 
on  taking  notes  for  a  book  about  Paris,  was  shown 
around  the  city  by  Stendhal.  Seriously,  and  with 
44 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

his  usual  courtesy,  he  gave  her  an  enormous 
amount  of  misinformation,  misnaming  pubHc 
buildings,  churches,  the  Louvre,  its  pictures,  and 
nicknaming  well-known  personages.  All  this  with 
the  hope  that  she  would  reproduce  it  in  print. 
Not  very  spirituely  this  performance  of  M.  Beyle. 
He  was  an  admirer  of  English  folk  and  their  litera- 
ture, and  corresponded  in  a  grotesque  sort  of 
English  with  several  prominent  men  and  women 
in  London.  We  find  him  writing  a  congratulatory 
letter  to  Thomas  Moore  on  his  Lalla  Rookh,  com- 
placently remarking  that  the  ingrained  Hebraism 
of  English  character  and  literature  made  the  pro- 
duction of  such  an  exotic  poem  all  the  more 
wonderful.  Though  he  could  praise  the  gew- 
gaws and  tinsel  of  Moore's  mock  Orientalism,  he 
openly  despised  the  limpidity  of  Lamartine's 
elegiac  verse  and  the  rhythmic  illuminated  thunder 
of  Victor  Hugo. 

It  is  not  generally  known  that  Stendhal's 
friend  and  disciple,  Prosper  Merimee,  left  an 
anonymous  book,  of  which  there  are  not  many 
examples,  though  it  has  been  partially  reprinted. 
It  is  entitled  "H.  B.  [Henry  Beyle],  par  un  des 
quarante,  avec  un  frontispice  stupdfiant  dessin^ 
et  gravd.  Eleutheropolis,  Tan  1864  du  mensonge 
Nazareen."  Now,  there  is  a  "stupefying"  draw- 
ing, a  project  for  a  statue,  by  Felicien  Rops,  the 
etcher.  It  depicts  the  new  world-city  of  Eleuther- 
opolis —  a  Paris  raised  to  the  seventh  heaven  of 
cosmopolitanism  —  with  Stendhal  set  in  its  midst. 
Rops  was  evidently  contented  to  take  the  little  pot- 
45 


EGOISTS 

bellied  caricature  of  Henri  Monnier,  which  Mon- 
nier  declared  was  not  exaggerated,  and  put  it  on 
a  pedestal.  In  his  familiar  and  amusing  manner 
the  illustrator  shows  us  multitudes  from  every 
quarter  of  the  globe  travelling  by  every  known 
method  of  conveyance.  The  idea  of  teeming 
nationalities  is  evoked.  All  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  and  women  are  hurrying  to  pay  their 
homage  to  Stendhal,  who,  hat  in  hand,  stomach 
advancing,  legs  absurdly  curving,  umbrella  under 
his  arm,  and  his  ironical  lips  compressed,  contem- 
plates with  his  accustomed  imperturbability  these 
ardent  idolators.  He  seems  to  say:  "I  predicted 
that  I  should  be  understood  about  1880." 

But  if  this  cartoon  of  Rops  is  amusing,  the  con- 
tents of  Merimee's  book  are  equally  so,  both 
amusing  and  blasphemous.  Stendhal  and  M^ri- 
mde  got  on  fairly  well  together.  Mdrimde  tells 
what  he  thought  of  Stendhal.  There  are  shock- 
ing passages  and  witty.  An  atheist,  more  be- 
cause of  political  reasons  than  religious,  Sten- 
dhal relates  a  story  about  the  death  of  God  from 
heart  disease.  Since  that  time  the  cosmical 
machine,  he  asserted,  has  been  in  the  hands  of 
his  son,  an  inexperienced  youth  who,  not  being  an 
engineer,  reversed  the  levers;  hence  the  disorder 
in  matters  mundane. 

To  prove  how  out  of  tune  was  Stendhal  with 
his  times,  we  have  only  to  read  his  definitions  of 
romanticism  and  classicism  in  his  Racine  et 
Shakespeare.  He  wrote:  "Romanticism  is  the 
art  of  presenting  to  people  literary  works  which 
46 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

in  the  actual  state  of  their  habitudes  and  beliefs 
are  capable  of  giving  the  greatest  possible  pleasure; 
classicism,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  art  of  presenting 
literature  which  gave  the  greatest  possible  pleasure 
to  their  great-grandfathers."  He  also  proclaimed 
as  a  corollary  to  this  that  every  dead  classic  had 
at  one  time  been  a  live  romantic.  Yet  he  was  far 
from  sympathising,  both  romantic  and  realist  as  he 
was,  with  the  1830  romantic  movement.  Nor  did 
he  suspect  its  potential  historical  significance;  or 
his  own  possible  significance,  despite  his  clairvoy- 
ant prediction.  He  disliked  Hugo,  ignored  Ber- 
lioz, and  had  no  opinion  at  all  on  the  genius  of 
Delacroix.  The  painters  of  1830,  that  we  knew 
half  a  century  later  as  the  Barbizon  school, 
he  never  mentions.  We  may  imagine  him  abu- 
sing the  impressionists  in  his  choleric  vein.  His 
appreciations  of  art,  while  sound  —  who  dare 
flout  Raphael  and  Correggio  ? —  are  narrow.  The 
immense  claims  made  continually  by  the  Sten- 
dhalians  for  their  master  are  balked  by  evidences 
of  a  provincial  spirit.  Yes;  he,  the  first  of  the  cos- 
mopolitans, the  indefatigable  globe-trotter,  keenest 
of  observers  of  the  human  heart,  man  without 
a  country  —  he  has  said,  *'My  country  is  where 
there  are  most  people  like  me"  —  was  often  as 
blindly  prejudiced  as  a  dweller  in  an  obscure 
hamlet.  And  doesn't  this  epigram  contradict  his 
idea  of  the  proud,  lonely  man  of  genius  ?  It  may 
seem  to;  in  reality  he  was  not  like  a  Nietzschian, 
but  a  sociable,  pleasure-loving  man,  seldom  put- 
ting to  the  test  his  theories  of  individualism.  He 
47 


EGOISTS 

always  sought  the  human  quality;  the  passions  of 
humanity  were  the  prime  things  of  existence  for 
him.  A  landscape,  no  matter  how  lovely,  must 
have  a  human  or  a  historic  interest.  The  fiercest 
assassin  in  the  Trastevere  district  was  at  least  a 
man  of  action  and  not  a  sheep.  "Without  pas- 
sion there  is  neither  virtue  nor  vice,"  he  preached. 
Therefore  he  greatly  lauded  Benvenuto  Cellini. 
He  loathed  democracy  and  a  democratic  form  of 
government.  Brains,  not  votes,  should  rule  a 
nation.  He  sneered  at  America  as  being  hope- 
lessly utilitarian. 

In  the  preface  to  his  History  of  Italian  Painting 
he  quoted  Alfieri:  "My  only  reason  for  writing 
was  that  my  gloomy  age  afforded  me  no  other 
occupation."  From  Civita  Vecchia  he  wrote: 
"It's  awful:  women  here  have  only  one  idea,  a 
new  Parisian  hat.  No  poetry  here  or  tolerable 
company  —  except  with  prisoners;  with  whom,  as 
French  Consul,  I  cannot  possibly  seek  friendship." 
To  kill  the  ennui  of  his  existence  he  either  slipped 
into  Rome  for  a  week  or  else  wrote  reams  of  "  copy," 
most  of  which  he  never  saw  in  print.  Among 
certain  intellectual  circles  in  Paris  he  was  known 
and  applauded  as  a  man  of  taste,  a  dilettante  of 
the  seven  arts,  though  his  lack  of  original  inven- 
tion occasionally  got  him  into  scrapes.  Stendhal 
might  have  echoed  Molibre's  "Je  prends  mon 
bien  ou  je  le  trouve";  but  he  would  not  have  for- 
gotten to  remind  the  dramatic  poet  that  the  very 
witticism  was  borrowed  from  Cyrano. 

Stryienski's  Soirees  du  Stendhal  Club  actually 
48 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 

presents  for  the  delectation  of  the  Stendhalians 
parallel  columns  from  Lanzi  and  Stendhal  —  so 
proud  are  the  true  believers  of  the  fold  that  even 
such  evidences  of  plagiarism  do  not  disconcert 
them.  The  cribbing  occurs  in  the  general  re- 
flections devoted  to  the  Renaissance.  It  is  as 
plain  as  a  pikestaff.  Notwithstanding,  we  can 
read  Stendhal  with  more  interest  than  the  original. 
His  lively  spirit  adorns  Lanzi' s  laborious  pages. 
Beyle's  joke  about  the  "reversed  engines  of 
Christianity,"  quoted  by  Merimee,  and  his  im- 
placable dislike  of  the  Jesuits  (as  may  be  seen  in 
his  masterpiece,  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir  —  in  those 
days  the  Yellow  Peril  was  the  Jesuits),  did  not  dull 
his  perception  of  what  the  papacy  had  done  for 
art  in  Italy.  He  nearly  approaches  eloquence 
in  his  Philosophy  of  Art  (which  Taine  appre- 
ciated and  profited  by)  when  writing  of  the  popes 
of  the  Renaissance.  He  does  not  fail  to  note  the 
vivifying  and  reforming  influence  of  the  Church 
at  this  period  upon  the  brutality  and  lusts  of  the 
nobility  and  upon  poets  and  painters.  Adoring 
Raphael  as  much  as  he  did  Napoleon  and  Byron, 
he  declared  that  Raphael  failed  in  chiaroscuro 
and  vaunted  the  superiority  of  Correggio  in  this 
particular.  But  he  did  not  deign  to  mention 
Rembrandt.  Nothing  Germanic  or  Northern 
pleased  him.  He  was  a  Latin  among  Latins,  and 
his  passion  for  Italy  and  the  Italians  was  not  as- 
sumed. He  had  asked  of  his  executor  that  he  be 
buried  in  the  little  Protestant  cemetery  at  Rome. 
Then  he  changed  his  mind  and  ordered  that  the 
49 


EGOISTS 

cemetery  of  Andilly,  near  Montmorency,  be  his 
last  resting-place.  But  the  fates,  that  bum  into 
ashes  the  fairest  fruits  of  man's  ambitions,  dropped 
Stendhal's  remains  in  the  cemetery  of  Montmartre, 
Paris,  where  still  stands  the  prosaic  tomb  with  its 
falsification  of  the  writer's  birth.  His  epitaph  he 
doubtless  discovered  when  fabricating  his  life  of 
Haydn.  In  the  composer's  case  it  runs:  '^Veni, 
scripsi,  vixi."  And  when  we  consider  the  fact 
that  his  happiest  years  were  in  Milan,  that  there 
lived  the  object  of  his  deepest  affection,  Angela 
Pietragrua,  this  inscription  was  as  sincere  as  the 
majority  of  such  marble  ingenuities  in  post-mortem 
politeness. 

With  all  his  critical  limitations,  Stendhal  never 
gave  vent  to  such  ineptitudes  as  Tolstoy  re- 
garding Shakespeare.  The  Russian,  who  has 
spent  the  latter  half  of  his  life  bewailing  the  earlier 
and  more  brilliant  part,  would  have  been  abhor- 
rent to  the  Frenchman,  who  died  as  he  had  lived, 
impenitent.  Stendhal  was  a  man,  not  a  purveyor 
of  words,  or  a  maker  of  images.  Not  poetic,  yet 
he  did  not  fail  to  value  Dante  and  Angelo.  Virile, 
cynical,  sensual,  the  greatest  master  of  psychology 
of  his  age,  he  believed  in  action  rather  than  thought. 
Literature  he  pretended  to  detest.  Not  a  spinner 
of  cobwebs,  he  left  no  definite  system;  it  remained 
for  Taine  to  gather  together  the  loose  strands  of 
his  sane,  strong  ideas  and  formulate  them.  He 
saw  the  world  clearly,  without  sentiment  —  he, 
the  most  sentimental  of  men  —  and  he  had  a 
horror  of  German  mole-hill  metaphysics.    The 

50 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

eighteenth  century  with  its  hard  logic,  its  deifica- 
tion of  Reason,  its  picturesque  atheism,  enlisted 
Beyle's  sympathies.  Socialism  was  for  him  anath- 
ema. 

Love  and  art  were  his  watchwords.  His  love  of 
art  was  on  a  sound  basis.  Joyous,  charming 
music  like  Mozart's,  Rossini's,  Cimarosa's,  ap- 
pealed to  him;  and  Correggio,  with  his  sensuous 
colouring  and  voluptuous  design,  was  his  favour- 
ite painter.  He  was  complex,  but  he  was  not 
morbid.  The  artistic  progenitor  of  a  long  line  of 
analysts,  supermen,  criminals,  and  aesthetic  ninnies, 
he  probably  would  have  disclaimed  the  entire 
crowd,  including  the  faithful  Stendhalians,  be- 
cause the  latter  have  so  widely  departed  from 
his  canons  of  simplicity  and  sunniness  in  art. 

But  Stendhal  left  the  soul  out  of  his  scheme  of 
life;  never  did  he  knock  at  the  gate  of  her  dwelling- 
place.  Believing  with  Napoleon  that  because  the 
surgeon's  scalpel  did  not  lay  bare  any  trace  of  the 
soul,  there  was  none,  Stendhal  practically  denied 
her  existence.  For  this  reason  his  windows  do  not 
open  upon  eternity.  They  command  fair,  charm- 
ing prospects.  Has  he  not  written :  "  J'ai  recherche 
avec  une  sensibilite  exquise  la  vue  des  beaux  pay- 
sages.  .  .  .  Les  paysages  etaient  comme  un  archet 
qui  jouait  sur  mon  ame"  ?  He  meant  his  nerves, 
not  his  soul.  Spiritual  overtones  are  not  sounded 
in  his  work.  A  materialist  (a  singularly  unhappy 
home  and  maladroit  education  are  to  blame  for 
much  of  his  errors  in  after  life),  he  was,  at  least,  no 
hypocrite.  He  loved  beautiful  art,  women,  land- 
Si 


EGOISTS 

scapes,  brave  feats.  He  confesses,  in  a  letter  to 
Colomb,  dated  November  25,  181 7,  to  planning 
a  History  of  Energy  in  Italy  (both  Taine  and 
Barres  later  transposed  the  theme  to  France  with 
varying  results).  A  tissue  of  contradictions,  he 
somehow  or  other  emerges  from  the  mists  and 
artistic  embroilments  of  the  earlier  half  of  the 
last  century  a  robust,  soldierly,  yet  curious,  subtle 
and  enigmatic  figure.  It  is  best  to  employ  in 
describing  him  his  own  favourite  definition  —  he 
was  "different."  And  has  he  not  said  that  differ- 
ence engenders  hatred? 


VI 


In  his  brilliant  and  much-abused  book,  A  Re- 
bours,  the  late  J.-K.  Huysmans  describes  the 
antics  of  a  feeble-brained  young  nobleman  who, 
having  saturated  himself  with  Baedeker's  Lon- 
don, the  novels  of  Dickens,  English  roast  beef  and 
ale,  came  to  the  comical  conclusion  that  he  might 
be  disappointed  if  he  crossed  the  Channel,  so  after 
a  few  hours  spent  within  the  hospitable  walls 
of  a  Parisian  English  bar  he  gathered  up  his  plaids, 
traps,  walking-stick,  and  calmly  returned  to  his 
home  near  the  French  capital.  He  had  travelled 
to  England  in  an  easy-chair,  as  mentioned  by 
Goldsmith  —  better  after  all  than  not  travelling  at 
all.  Circumstances  condemn  many  of  us  to  this 
mode  of  motion,  which  comes  well  within  the 
definition  of  our  great-grandfathers,  who  called  it 
The  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination. 
52 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

But  there  are,  luckily  for  them,  many  who  are 
not  compelled  to  assist  at  this  intellectual  Bar- 
mecide's feast.  They  go  and  they  come,  and 
no  man  says  them  nay.  Whether  they  see  as 
much  as  those  who  voyaged  in  the  more  leisurely 
manner  of  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
centuries  is  open  to  doubt.  Europe  or  Asia 
through  a  car-window  is  only  a  series  of  rapidly 
dissolving  slides,  pictures  that  live  for  brief  seconds. 
Modern  travel  is  impressionistic.  Nature  viewed 
through  a  nebulous  blur.  Our  grandfathers,  if 
they  didn't  go  as  far  as  their  descendants,  con- 
trived to  see  more,  to  see  a  lot  of  delightful  little 
things,  note  a  myriad  of  minute  traits  of  the  coun- 
try through  which  they  paced  at  such  a  snail's 
gait.  Nowadays  we  hurriedly  glance  at  the  names 
of  railroad  stations.  The  ideal  method  of  loco- 
motion is  really  that  of  the  pedestrian  —  shanks'- 
mare  ought  to  be  popular.  Vernon  Lee  spoke 
thus  of  our  hero:  "'Tis  the  mode  of  travelling 
that  constituted  the  delight  and  matured  the 
genius  of  Stendhal,  king  of  cosmopolitans  and 
grand  master  of  the  psychologic  novel." 

It  is  interesting  to  turn  back  and  flutter  the 
pages  of  that  perennially  delightful  book,  Prome- 
nades dans  Rome.  Italy  may  truthfully  be  said  to 
have  been  engraved  upon  the  author's  heart. 
Under  the  heading  Manner  of  Travelling  From 
Paris  to  Rome,  dated  March  25,  1828,  he  tells 
his  readers,  few  but  fit,  how  he  made  that  wonder- 
ful trip. 

One  of  the  best  ways,  writes  Stendhal,  is  to 
53 


EGOISTS 

take  a  post-chaise,  or  a^caleche^  light  and  made  in 
Vienna.  Carry  little  baggage.  It  only  means 
vexation  at  the  various  custom-houses,  bother 
with  the  police  —  who  treat  all  travellers  as  spies 
or  suspected  persons  —  and  it  will  surely  attract 
bandits.  Besides,  prices  are  instantly  doubled 
when  a  post-chaise  arrives.  There  is  the  mail- 
coach.  It  rolls  along  comfortably.  In  its  capa- 
cious interior  one  may  sleep,  watch  the  scenery, 
converse,  or  read.  You  can  go  to  Effort  or  Basel 
if  you  desire  to  pass  the  north  of  la  Suisse,  or  to 
Pontarlier  or  Ferney,  if  desirous  of  reaching  the 
Simplon.  You  may  take  the  mail  to  Lyons  or 
Grenoble,  and  pass  by  Mont  Cenis;  or  until 
Draguignan  if  you  wish  to  escape  the  mountains 
and  enter  Italy  by  the  beautiful  highway,  the 
work  of  M.  de  Chabral.  You  arrive  at  Nice  and 
pass  on  to  Genoa.  This  is  the  ideal  route  for 
scenery. 

But,  continues  Stendhal,  the  most  expeditious 
and  the  interesting  way,  the  one  he  usually  took, 
begins  with  a  forty-eight  hour  ride  in  the  diligence 
as  far  as  Befort;  a  carriage  for  which  you  pay  a 
dozen  francs  will  conduct  you  to  Basel.  Once 
there  you  may  take  a  diligence  for  Lucerne  — 
that  singular  and  dangerous  lake,  the  theatre  of 
William  Tell's  exploits,  remarks  Stendhal  im- 
pressively (they  believed  in  the  Tell  legend,  those 
innocent  times)  —  and  attain  Altdorf.  Here  Tell 
and  the  apple  will  arouse  your  imagination.  Then 
Italy  may  be  entered  by  Saint  Gothard,  Bellin- 
zona,  Como,  and  Milan.  Via  the  Simplon  was 
54 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

more  to  the  taste  of  our  writer.  He  often  took  the 
dihgence,  which  at  Basel  went  to  Bern;  arriving 
in  the  Rhone  valley  by  way  of  Loubche  and 
Tourtemagne,  he  would  find  his  baggage,  which 
had  gone  around  by  Lausanne,  Saint  Maurice, 
and  Sion.  He  tells  us  that  the  conductor  of  the 
excellent  diligence  plying  between  Lausanne  and 
Domo  d'Ossola  was  a  superior  man;  a  glimpse 
of  his  calm  Swiss  features  drives  away  all  fear  of 
danger.  For  ten  years  three  times  a  week  this 
conductor  has  passed  the  Simplon.  He  did  not 
encounter  avalanches.  Anyhow,  the  Simplon 
route  is  less  dangerous  than  Mont  Cenis;  there 
are  fewer  precipices  and  the  edge  of  the  road  is 
bordered  by  trees;  if  the  horses  ran  away  the 
coach  would  not  be  overturned  into  the  abyss. 
And  since  the  opening  of  the  Simplon  route,  Sten- 
dhal gravely  notes,  only  forty  travellers  have 
perished,  nine  of  them  unhappy  Italian  soldiers 
returning  from  Russia.  .  Are  not  these  details  of 
a  savoury  simplicity,  like  the  faded  odour  of  sandal- 
wood which  meets  your  nostrils  when  you  open 
some  old  secretary  of  your  grandparents? 

Kept  by  a  man  from  Lyons  was  a  fine  inn  on 
the  Simplon  route  in  those  days.  Stendhal  never 
failed  to  record  where  could  be  found  good  wines, 
cooking,  and  clean  sheets.  He  usually  paid  twelve 
francs  for  a  carriage  to  Domo  d'Ossola,  Lac 
Majeur  (Lago  Maggiore)  vis-a-vis  to  the  Borro- 
mean  Islands.  Four  hours  in  a  boat  to  Sesto 
Calende,  and  five  hours  in  a  fast  coach  —  behold, 
Milan!  Or  you  can  reach  Milan  via  Varese. 
55 


EGOISTS 

Milan  to  Mantua  in  the  regular  diligence.  Thence 
to  Bologna  by  a  carriage,  there  the  mail-coach. 
You  go  to  Rome  by  the  superb  routes  of  Ancona 
and  Loreto.  You  must  pay  thirty  or  thirty-five 
francs  on  the  coach  between  Milan  and  Bologna. 
Stendhal  assures  us  that  he  often  found  good  com- 
pany in  the  carriages  that  traverse  the  distance 
from  Bologna  to  Florence.  It  took  two  days  to 
cover  twenty  leagues  and  cost  twenty  francs. 
From  Florence  to  Rome  he  consumed  four  or  five 
days,  going  by  Perugia  in  preference  to  Siena. 
Once  he  travelled  in  company  with  three  priests, 
of  whom  he  was  suspicious  until  the  ice  was 
broken;  then  with  joyous  anecdotes  they  passed 
the  time,  and  he  is  surprised  to  find  these  cleri- 
cal men,  who  said  their  prayers  openly  three 
times  a  day  without  being  embarrassed  by  the 
presence  of  strangers,  were  very  human,  very 
companionable.  With  his  accustomed  naive  ex- 
pression of  pleasure,  he  writes  that  they  saved 
him  considerable  annoyance  at  the  custom-house. 
And  to-day,  eighty  years  later,  we  take  a  train 
de  luxe  at  Paris  and  in  thirty  hours  we  are  in  the 
Eternal  City.  It  is  swifter,  more  comfortable, 
and  safer,  our  way  of  travelling,  than  Stendhal's, 
but  that  we  see  as  much  as  he  did  we  greatly 
doubt.  The  motor-car  is  an  improvement  on 
the  mail-coach  and  the  express  train;  you  may, 
if  you  will,  travel  leisurely  and  privately  from 
Paris  to  Rome.  Or,  why  not  hire  a  stout  little  car- 
riage and  go  through  Tuscany  in  an  old-fashioned 
manner  as  did  the  Chevalier  de  Pensieri- Vani ! 

56 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

Few  may  hope  to  store  as  many  memories  as 
Stendhal,  yet  we  should  see  more  than  the  oc- 
cupants of  railroad  drawing-rooms  that  whiz  by  us 
on  the  road  to  Rome. 


vn 


Even  in  our  days  of  hasty  production  the 
numerous  books  of  Stendhal  provoke  respectful 
consideration.  What  leisure  they  had  'in  the 
first  half  of  the  last  century!  What  patience 
was  shown  by  the  industrious  man  who  worked 
to  ward  off  ennui!  He  must  have  written  twenty- 
five  volumes.  In  1906  the  Mercure  de  France 
printed  nineteen  newly  discovered  letters  to  his 
London  friend,  Sutton  Sharpe  (Beyle  visited 
London  occasionally;  he  corresponded  with 
Thomas  Moore  the  poet,  and  once  he  spent  an 
evening  at  a  club  in  the  company  of  the  humourist 
Theodore  Hook).  But  the  titles  of  many  of  his 
books  suffice;  the  majority  of  them  are  negligible. 
Who  wishes  to  read  his  lives  of  Rossini,  Haydn, 
Mozart,  Metastasio?  His  life  of  Napoleon, 
posthumously  published  in  1876,  is  of  more  in- 
terest; Beyle  had  seen  his  subject  in  the  flesh  and 
blood.  His  Racine  et  Shakespeare  is  worth 
while  for  the  Stendhalian;  none  but  the  fanatical 
kind  would  care  to  read  the  History  of  Painting 
in  Italy.  There  is  the  Correspondence,  capital 
diversion,  ringing  with  Stendhalian  wit  and  prej- 
udice; and  Promenades  dans  Rome  is  a  classic; 
not    inferior    are    Memoires    d'un    Touriste,    or 

57 


EGOISTS 

Rome,  Naples,  et  Florence.  Indeed,  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Promenades  has  been  pronounced. 
His  three  finished  novels  are  Armance,  Le  Rouge 
et  le  Noir — which  does  not  derive  its  title  from 
the  gambling  game,  but  opposes  the  sword  and  the 
soutane,  red  and  black — and  La  Chartreuse  de 
Parme.  The  short  stories  show  him  at  his  best, 
his  form  being  enforced  to  concision,  his  style 
suiting  the  brief  passionate  recitals  of  love,  crime, 
intrigue,  and  adventure  —  for  the  most  part,  old 
Italian  anecdotes  recast;  as  the  Italian  tales  of 
Hewlett  are  influenced  by  Stendhal.  L'Abbesse 
de  Castro  could  hardly  have  been  better  done  by 
Merimee.  In  the  same  volume  are  Les  Cenci, 
Vittoria  Accoramboni,  Vanina  Vanini,  and  La 
Duchesse  de  Palliano,  all  replete  with  dramatic 
excitement  and  charged  with  Italian  atmosphere. 
San  Francesca  a  Ripa  is  a  thrilling  tale;  so  are 
the  stories  contained  in  Nouvelles  In^dites, 
Feder  (le  Mari  d' Argent),  Le  Juif  (Filippo 
Ebreo)  —  the  latter  Balzac  might  have  signed; 
and  the  unfinished  novel,  Le  Chasseur  Vert, 
which  was  at  first  given  three  other  titles:  Leu- 
wen,  r  Orange  de  Malte,  Les  Bois  de  Premol. 
It  promised  to  be  a  rival  to  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir. 
Lucien  Leuwen,  the  young  cavalry  officer,  is 
Stendhal  himself,  and  he  is,  like  Julien  Sorel,  the 
first  progenitor  of  a  long  line  in  French  fiction; 
disillusioned  youths  who,  after  the  electric  storms 
caused  by  the  Napoleonic  apparition,  end  in  the 
sultry  dilettantism  of  Jean,  due  d'Esseintes  of 
Huysmans'  A  Rebours  and  in  the  pages  of  Maurice 
S8 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

Barres.  From  Beyle  to  Huysmans  is  not  such  a 
remote  modulation  as  might  be  imagined.  Nor 
are  those  sick  souls,  Goncourt,  Charles  De- 
mailly  and  Coriolis,  without  the  taint  of  beylisme. 
Lucien  Leuwen  is  a  highly  organized  young  man 
who  goes  to  a  small  provincial  town  where  his 
happiness,  his  one  love-affair,  is  wrecked  by  the 
malice  of  his  companions.  There  is  a  sincerer 
strain  in  the  book  than  in  some  of  its  predecessors. 
Armance,  Stendhal's  first  attempt  at  fiction, 
is  unpleasant;  the  theme  is  an  impossible  one  — 
pathology  obtrudes  its  ugly  head.  Yet,  Armance 
de  Zohilhoff  is  a  creature  who  interests;  she  was 
sketched  from  life,  Stendhal  tells  us,  a  companion 
to  a  lady  of  left-handed  rank.  She  is  an  un- 
happy girl  and  her  marriage  to  a  babilan,  Octave 
de  Malivert,  is  a  tragedy.  Lamiel,  a  posthumous 
novel,  published  by  Casimir  Stryienski  in  1888, 
contains  an  avant-propos  by  Stendhal  dated  from 
Civita  Vecchia,  May  25,  1840.  (His  prefaces  are 
masterpieces  of  sly  humour  and  ironical  malice.) 
It  is  a  very  disagreeable  fiction  —  Lamiel  is  the 
criminal  woman  with  all  the  stigmata  described 
by  Lombroso  in  his  Female  Delinquent.  She 
is  wonderfully  portrayed  with  her  cruelty,  cold- 
ness, and  ferocity.  She,  too,  like  her  creator,  ex- 
claimed, *'Is  that  all?"  after  her  first  bought  ex- 
perience in  love.  She  becomes  attached  to  a 
scoundrel  from  the  galleys,  and  sets  fire  to  a  palace 
to  avenge  his  death.  She  is  burned  to  cinders. 
A  hunchback  doctor,  Sansfin  by  name,  might 
have  stepped  from  a  page  of  Le  Sage. 
59 


EGOISTS 

The  Stendhal  heroines  betray  their  paternity. 
Madame  de  Renal,  who  sacrifices  all  for  Julien 
Sorel,  is  the  softest-hearted,  most  womanly  of 
his  characters.  She  is  of  the  same  sweet,  ma- 
ternal type  as  Madame  Arnoux  in  Flaubert's 
L' Education  Sentimentale,  though  more  impul- 
sive. Her  love  passages  with  Julien  are  the 
most  original  in  French  fiction.  Mathilde  de  la 
Mole,  pedant,  frigid,  perverse,  snobbish,  has 
nevertheless  fighting  blood  in  her  veins.  Lamiel 
is  a  caricature  of  her.  What  could  be  more 
evocative  of  Salome  than  her  kneeling  before 
Julien's  severed  head?  Clelia  Conti  in  the 
Chartreuse  is  like  the  conventional  heroine  of 
Italian  romance.  She  is  too  sentimental,  too 
prudish  with  her  vow  and  its  sophistical  evasion. 
The  queen  of  Stendhal  women  is  Gina,  la  duchesse 
Sanseverina.  She  makes  one  of  the  immortal 
quartet  in  nineteenth-century  fiction  —  the  other 
three  being  Valerie  Mameffe,  Emma  Bovary,  and 
Anna  Karenina.  Perhaps  if  Madame  de  Chas- 
teller  in  Le  Chasseur  Vert  had  been  a  finished 
portrait,  she  might  have  ranked  after  Gina  in 
interest.  That  lovable  lady,  with  the  morals  of 
a  grande  dame  out  of  the  Italian  Renaissance, 
will  never  die.  She  embodies  all  the  energy, 
tantalizing  charm,  and  paradox  of  Beyle.  And 
a  more  vital  woman  has  not  swept  through  litera- 
ture since  the  Elizabethans.  At  one  time  he 
dreamed  of  conquering  the  theatre.  Adolphe 
Brisson  saw  the  ebauches  for  several  plays;  at 
least  fifteen  scenarios  or  the  beginnings  of  them 
60 


HENRY   BEYLE-STENDHAL 

have  been  found  in  his  literary  remains.     Nothing 
came  of  his  efforts  to  become  a  second  Moliere. 

Zola  places  Le  Rouge  et  le  Noir  above  La 
Chartreuse  de  Parme;  so  does  Rod.  The  first 
novel  is  more  sombre,  more  tragic;  it  contains 
masterly  characterisations,  but  it  is  depressing 
and  in  spots  duller  than  the  Chartreuse.  Its 
author  was  too  absorbed  in  his  own  ego  to  be- 
come a  master-historian  of  manners.  Yet  what 
a  book  is  the  Chartreuse  for  a  long  day.  What 
etched  landscapes  are  in  it  —  notably  the  descrip- 
tions of  Lake  Como!  What  evocations  of  en- 
chanting summer  afternoons  in  Italy  floating 
down  the  mirror-like  stream  under  a  blue  sky, 
with  the  entrancing  Duchess!  The  episodes  of 
Parmesan  court  intrigue  are  models  of  observa- 
tion and  irony.  Beyle's  pen  was  never  more  de- 
lightful, it  drips  honey  and  gall.  He  is  master 
of  dramatic  situations;  witness  the  great  scene  in 
which  the  old  Duke,  Count  Mosca,  and  Gina 
participate.  At  the  close  you  hear  the  whirring 
of  the  theatre  curtain.  Count  Mosca,  it  is  said, 
was  a  portrait  of  Metternich;  rather  it  was 
Stendhal's  friend,  Count  de  Saurau.  In  sooth, 
he  is  also  very  much  like  Stendhal  —  Stendhal 
humbly  awaiting  orders  from  the  woman  he  loves. 
That  Mosca  was  a  tremendous  scoundrel  we  need 
not  doubt;  yet,  like  Metternich  and  Bismarck,  he 
could  be  cynical  enough  to  play  the  game  honestly. 
Despite  the  rusty  melodramatic  machinery  of  the 
book,  its  passionate  silhouettes,  its  Pellico  prisons, 
its  noble  bandit,  its  poisons,  its  hair-breadth  es- 
6i 


EGOISTS 

capes,  duels  and  assassinations  —  these  we  must 
accept  as  the  slag  of  Beyle's  genius  —  there  is 
ore  rich  enough  in  it  to  compensate  us  for  the 
longueurs. 

Of  his  disquisition,  De  I'Amour,  with  its  famous 
theory  of  ''crystallisation,"  much  could  be  written. 
Not  founded  on  a  basic  physiological  truth  as  is 
Schopenhauer's  doctrine  of  love,  Beyle's  is  wider 
in  scope.  It  deals  more  with  manners  than 
fundamentals.  It  is  a  manual  of  tactics  in  the  art  of 
love  by  a  superior  strategist.  His  knowledge  of 
woman  on  the  social  side,  at  least,  is  unparalleled. 
His  definitions  and  classifications  are  keener, 
deeper  than  Michelet's  or  Balzac's.  "Femmes! 
femmes!  vous  ^tes  bien  toujours  les  memes,"  he 
cries  in  a  letter  to  a  fair  correspondent.  It  is 
a  quotidian  truth  that  few  before  him  had  the 
courage  or  clairvoyancy  to  enunciate.  Crowded 
with  crisp  epigrams  and  worldly  philosophy,  this 
book  on  Love  may  be  studied  without  exhausting 
its  wisdom  and  machiavellianism. 

Stendhal  as  an  art  or  musical  critic  cannot  be 
taken  seriously,  though  he  says  some  illuminating 
things;  embedded  in  platitudes  may  be  found 
shrewd  apercus  and  flashes  of  insight;  but  the 
trail  of  the  " gifted  amateur"  is  over  them  all.  At 
a  time  when  Beethoven  was  in  the  ascendant, 
when  Berlioz  —  who  hailed  from  the  environs 
of  Grenoble  —  was  in  the  throes  of  the  "new 
music,"  when  Bach  had  been  rediscovered,  Beyle 
prattles  of  Cimarosa.  He  provoked  Berlioz 
with  his  praise  of  Rossini  —  "les  plus  irritantes 
62 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

stupidites  sur  la  musique,  dont  il  croyait  avoir  le 
secret,"  wrote  Berlioz  of  the  Rossini  biography. 
Lavoix  went  further:  ''Ecrivain  d'esprit  .  .  . 
fanfaron  d' ignorance  en  musique."  Poor  Sten- 
dhal! He  had  no  flair  for  the  various  artistic 
movements  about  him,  although  he  had  unwittingly 
originated  several.  He  praised  Goethe  and  Schil- 
ler, yet  never  mentioned  Bach,  Beethoven,  Chopin; 
music  for  him  meant  operatic  music,  some  other 
"divine  adventure"  to  fill  in  the  background  of 
conversation.  Conversation!  In  that  art  he 
was  virtuoso.  To  dine  alone  was  a  crime  in  his 
eyes.  A  gourmet^  he  cared  more  for  talk  than 
eating.  He  could  not  make  up  his  mind  about 
Weber's  Freischlitz,  and  Meyerbeer  he  did  not 
very  much  like;  *'he  is  said  to  be  the  first  pianist 
of  Europe,"  he  wrote;  at  the  time,  Liszt  and  Thal- 
berg  were  disputing  the  kingdom  of  the  key- 
board. It  was  Stendhal,  so  the  story  goes,  who 
once  annoyed  Liszt  at  a  musicale  in  Rome  by 
exclaiming  in  his  most  elliptical  style:  ^^Mon  chef 
Liszt,  pray  give  us  your  usual  improvisation  thisi 
evening!" 

As  a  plagiarist  Stendhal  was  a  success.  He 
"adapted"  from  Goethe,  translated  entire  pages 
from  the  Edinburgh  Review^  and  the  material  of 
his  history  of  Painting  in  Italy  he  pilfered  from 
Lanzi.  More  barefaced  still  was  his  wholesale 
appropriation  of  Carpani's  Haydine,  which  he 
coolly  made  over  into  French  as  a  life  of  Haydn. 
The  Italian  author  protested  in  a  Paduan  journal, 
Giornale  delV  Italiana  Letteraturaj  calling  Sten- 

63 


EGOISTS 

dhal  by  his  absurd  pen-name:  ''M.  Louis- Alex- 
ander-Cesar Bombet,  soi-disant  Franfais  auteur 
des  Haydine."  The  original  book  appeared  in 
1812  at  Milan.  Stendhal  published  his  plagia- 
rism at  Paris,  181 4,  but  asserted  that  it  had  been 
written  in  1808.  He  did  not  stop  at  mere  piracy, 
for  in  18 16  and  in  an  open  letter  to  the  Constitution- 
net  he  fabricated  a  brother  for  the  aforesaid 
Bombet  and  wrote  an  indignant  denial  of  the 
facts.  He  spoke  of  Cesar  Bombet  as  an  invalid 
incapable  of  defending  his  good  name.  The 
life  of  Mozart  is  a  very  free  adaptation  from 
Schlichtegroll's.  When  Shakespeare,  Handel,  and 
Richard  Wagner  plundered,  they  plundered  mag- 
nificently; in  comparison,  Stendhal's  stealings 
are  absurd. 

Irritating  as  are  his  inconsistencies,  his  prank- 
ishness,  his  bombastic  affectations,  and  preten- 
sions to  a  superior  immorality,  Stendhal's  is 
nevertheless  an  enduring  figure  in  French  liter- 
ature. His  power  is  now  felt  in  Germany,  where 
it  is  augmented  by  Nietzsche's  popularity —  Nietz- 
sche, who,  after  Merimee,  was  Stendhal's  great- 
est pupil.  Pascal  had  his  ''abyss,"  Stendhal 
had  his  fear  of  ennui  —  it  was  almost  pathologic, 
this  obsession  of  boredom.  One  side  of  his  many- 
sided  nature  was  akin  to  Pepys,  a  French  Pepys, 
who  chronicled  immortal  small-beer.  However, 
it  is  his  heart's  history  that  will  make  this  protean 
old  faun  eternally  youthful.  As  a  prose  artist  he 
does  not  count  for  much.  But  in  the  current 
of  his  swift,  clear  narrative  and  under  the  spell  of 
64 


HENRY  BEYLE-STENDHAL 

his  dry  magic  and  peptonized  concision  we  do 
not  miss  the  peacock  graces  and  coloured  splen- 
dours of  Flaubert  or  Chateaubriand.  Stendhal 
delivers  himself  of  a  story  rapidly;  he  is  all  sinew. 
And  he  is  the  most  seductive  spiller  of  souls  since 
Saint-Simon. 


6s 


II 

THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 
I 

For  the  sentimental  no  greater  foe  exists  than 
the  iconoclast  who  dissipates  literary  legends.  And 
he  is  abroad  nowadays.  Those  golden  times  when 
they  gossipped  of  De  Quincey's  enormous  opium 
consumption,  of  the  gin  absorbed  by  gentle  Charles 
Lamb,  of  Coleridge's  dark  ways,  Byron's  escapades, 
and  Shelley's  atheism — alas!  into  what  faded 
limbo  have  they  vanished.  Poe,  too,  Poe  whom 
we  saw  in  fancy  reeling  from  Richmond  to  Balti- 
more, Baltimore  to  Philadelphia,  Philadelphia  to 
New  York.  Those  familiar  fascinating  anecdotes 
have  gone  the  way  of  all  such  jerry-built  spooks. 
We  now  know  Poe  to  have  been  a  man  suffering 
at  the  time  of  his  death  from  cerebral  lesion,  a 
man  who  drank  at  intervals  and  but  little.  Dr. 
Guerrier  of  Paris  has  exploded  a  darling  super- 
stition about  De  Quincey's  opium-eating.  He 
has  demonstrated  that  no  man  could  have  lived 
so  long  —  De  Quincey  was  nearly  seventy-five 
at  his  death  —  and  worked  so  hard,  if  he  had 
consumed  twelve  thousand  drops  of  laudanum  as 
often  as  he  said  he  did.  Furthermore,  the  Eng- 
66 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

lish  essayist's  description  of  the  drug's  effects  is 
inexact.  He  was  seldom  sleepy  —  a  sure  sign,  as- 
serts Dr.  Guerrier,  that  he  was  not  altogether  en- 
slaved by  the  drug  habit.  Sprightly  in  old  age,  his 
powers  of  labour  were  prolonged  until  past  three- 
score and  ten.  His  imagination  needed  little 
opium  to  produce  the  famous  Confessions.  Even 
Gautier's  revolutionary  red  waistcoat  worn  at  the 
premiere  of  Hernani  was,  according  to  Gautier,  a 
pink  doublet.  And  Rousseau  has  been  white- 
washed. So  they  are  disappearing,  those  literary 
legends,  until,  disheartened,  we  cry  out :  Spare  us 
our  dear,  old-fashioned,  disreputable  men  of 
genius! 

But  the  legend  of  Charles  Baudelaire  is  seem- 
ingly indestructible.  This  French  poet  himself 
has  suffered  more  from  the  friendly  malignant 
biographer  and  Parisian  chroniclers  than  did 
Poe.  Who  shall  keep  the  curs  out  of  the 
cemetery?  asked  Baudelaire  after  he  had  read 
Griswold  on  Poe.  A  few  years  later  his  own 
cemetery  was  invaded  and  the  world  was  put 
in  possession  of  the  Baudelaire  legend;  that  leg- 
end of  the  atrabilious,  irritable  poet,  dandy, 
maniac,  his  hair  dyed  green,  spouting  blasphemies; 
that  grim,  despairing  image  of  a  Diabolic,  a 
libertine,  saint,  and  drunkard.  Maxime  du 
Camp  was  much  to  blame  for  the  promulgation 
of  these  tales  —  witness  his  Souvenirs  Litt^raires. 
However,  it  may  be  confessed  that  part  of  the 
Baudelaire  legend  was  created  by  Charles  Baude- 
laire.    In  the  history  of  literature  it  is  difficult  to 

67 


EGOISTS 

parallel  such  a  deliberate  piece  of  self-stultifica- 
tion. Not  Villon,  who  preceded  him,  not  Ver- 
laine,  who  imitated  him,  drew  for  the  astonishment 
or  disedification  of  the  world  like  unflattering 
portraits.  Mystifier  as  he  was,  he  must  have 
suffered  at  times  from  acute  cortical  irritation. 
And,  notwithstanding  his  desperate  effort  to 
realize  Poe's  idea,  he  only  proved  Poe  correct, 
who  had  said  that  no  man  can  bare  his  heart 
quite  naked;  there  will  be  always  something  held 
back,  something  false  too  ostentatiously  thrust 
forward.  The  grimace,  the  attitude,  the  pomp 
of  rhetoric  are  so  many  buffers  between  the  soul 
of  man  and  the  sharp  reality  of  published  con- 
fessions. Baudelaire  was  no  more  exception  to 
this  rule  than  St.  Augustine,  Bunyan,  Rousseau, 
or  Huysmans;  though  he  was  as  frank  as  any  of 
them,  as  we  may  see  in  the  recently  printed  diary, 
Mon  cceur  mis  a  nu  (Posthumous  Works,  So- 
ciete  du  Mercure  de  France) ;  and  in  the  Journal, 
Fus6es,  Letters,  and  other  fragments  exhumed 
by  devoted  Baudelarians. 

To  smash  legends,  Eugene  Cr^pet's  biographical 
study,  first  printed  in  1887,  has  been  republished 
with  new  notes  by  his  son,  Jacques  Crepet.  This 
is  an  exceedingly  valuable  contribution  to  Baude- 
laire lore;  a  dispassionate  life,  however,  has  yet 
to  be  written,  a  noble  task  for  some  young  poet 
who  will  disentangle  the  conflicting  lies  originated 
by  Baudelaire  —  that  tragic  comedian  —  from 
the  truth  and  thus  save  him  from  himself.  The 
new  Crepet  volume  is  really  but  a  series  of  notes; 
68 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

there  are  some  letters  addressed  to  the  poet  by 
the  distinguished  men  of  his  day,  supplementing 
the  rather  disappointing  volume  of  Letters,  1841- 
1866,  published  in  1908.  There  are  also  docu- 
ments in  the  legal  prosecution  of  Baudelaire,  with 
memories  of  him  by  Charles  Asselineau,  Ldon 
Cladel,  Camille  Lemonnier,  and  others. 

In  November,  1850,  Maxime  du  Camp  and 
Gustave  Flaubert  found  themselves  at  the  French 
Ambassador's,  Constantinople.  The  two  friends 
had  taken  a  trip  in  the  Orient  which  later  bore 
fruit  in  Salammbo.  General  Aupick,  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  French  Government,  received  the 
young  men  cordially;  they  were  presented  to  his 
wife,  Madame  Aupick.  She  was  the  mother  of 
Charles  Baudelaire,  and  inquired  of  Du  Camp, 
rather  anxiously:  "  My  son  has  talent,  has  he  not ?" 
Unhappy  because  her  second  marriage,  a  brilliant 
one,  had  set  her  son  against  her,  the  poor  woman 
welcomed  from  such  a  source  confirmation  of  her 
eccentric  boy's  gifts.  Du  Camp  tells  the  much- 
discussed  story  of  a  quarrel  between  the  youthful 
Charles  and  his  stepfather,  a  quarrel  that  began 
at  table.  There  were  guests  present.  After  some 
words  Charles  bounded  at  the  General's  throat 
and  sought  to  strangle  him.  He  was  promptly 
boxed  on  the  ears  and  succumbed  to  a  nervous 
spasm.  A  delightful  anecdote,  one  that  fills  with 
joy  psychiatrists  in  search  of  a  theory  of  genius 
and  degeneration.  Charles  was  given  some 
money  and  put  on  board  a  ship  sailing  to 
East  Iiidia.     He  became  a  cattle-dealer  in  the 

69 


EGOISTS 

British  army,  and  returned  to  France  years  after- 
ward with  a  Venus  noire,  to  whom  he  addressed 
extravagant  poems!  All  this  according  to  Du 
Camp.  Here  is  another  tale,  a  comical  one. 
Baudelaire  visited  Du  Camp  in  Paris,  and  his 
hair  was  violently  green.  Du  Camp  said  noth- 
ing. Angered  by  this  indifference,  Baudelaire 
asked:  "You  find  nothing  abnormal  about  me?" 
"No,"  was  the  answer.  "But  my  hair  —  it  is 
green!"  "That  is  not  singular,  mon  cher  Baude- 
laire; every  one  has  hair  more  or  less  green  in 
Paris."  Disappointed  in  not  creating  a  sensa- 
tion, Baudelaire  went  to  a  cafe,  gulped  down  two 
large  bottles  of  Burgundy,  and  asked  the  waiter 
to  remove  the  water,  as  water  was  a  disagreeable 
sight  for  him;  then  he  went  away  in  a  rage.  It  is 
a  pity  to  doubt  this  green  hair  legend;  presently 
a  man  of  genius  will  not  be  able  to  enjoy  an 
epileptic  fit  in  peace  —  as  does  a  banker  or  a 
beggar.  We  are  told  that  St.  Paul,  Mahomet, 
Handel,  Napoleon,  Flaubert,  Dostoievsky  were 
epileptoids;  yet  we  do  not  encounter  men  of  this 
rare  kind  among  the  inmates  of  asylums.  Even 
Baudelaire  had  his  sane  moments. 

The  joke  of  the  green  hair  has  been  disposed 
of  by  Crepet.  Baudelaire's  hair  thinning  after 
an  illness,  he  had  his  head  shaved  and  painted 
with  salve  of  a  green  hue,  hoping  thereby  to  escape 
baldness.  At  the  time  when  he  had  embarked 
for  Calcutta  (May,  1841),  he  was  not  seventeen, 
but  twenty,  years  of  age.  Du  Camp  said  he  was 
seventeen  when  he  attacked  General  Aupick. 
70 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

The  dinner  could  not  have  taken  place  at  Lyons 
because  the  Aupick  family  had  left  that  city  six 
years  before  the  date  given  by  Du  Camp.  Charles 
was  provided  with  five  thousand  francs  for  his 
expenses,  instead  of  twenty  —  Du  Camp's  ver- 
sion —  and  he  never  was  a  beef-drover  in  the 
British  army,  for  a  good  reason — he  never  reached 
India.  Instead,  he  disembarked  at  the  Isle 
of  Bourbon,  and  after  a  short  stay  was  seized  by 
homesickness  and  returned  to  France,  being  ab- 
sent about  ten  months.  But,  like  Flaubert,  on 
his  return  home  Baudelaire  was  seized  with  the 
nostalgia  of  the  East;  out  there  he  had  yearned 
for  Paris.  Jules  Claretie  recalls  Baudelaire  say- 
ing to  him  with  a  grimace:  "I  love  Wagner;  but 
the  music  I  prefer  is  that  of  a  cat  hung  up  by  his 
tail  outside  of  a  window,  and  trying  to  stick  to  the 
panes  of  glass  with  its  claws.  There  is  an  odd 
grating  on  the  glass  which  I  find  at  the  same  time 
strange,  irritating,  and  singularly  harmonious." 
Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  Baudelaire,  notorious 
in  Paris  for  his  love  of  cats,  dedicating  poems  to 
cats,  would  never  have  perpetrated  such  revolting 
cruelty  ? 

Another  misconception,  a  critical  one,  is  the 
case  of  Poe  and  Baudelaire.  The  young  French- 
man first  became  infatuated  with  Poe's  writings 
in  1846  or  1847  —  he  gives  these  two  dates,  though 
several  stories  of  Poe  had  been  translated  into 
French  as  early  as  1841  or  1842;  L'Orang-Outang 
was  the  first,  which  we  know  as  The  Murders  in 
the  Rue  Morgue;  Madame  Meunier  also  adapted 

71 


EGOISTS 

several  Poe  stories  for  the  reviews.  Baudelaire's 
labours  as  a  translator  lasted  over  ten  years. 
That  he  assimilated  Poe,  that  he  idolized  Poe,  is 
a  commonplace  of  literary  gossip.  But  that  Poe 
had  overwhelming  influence  in  the  formation  of 
his  poetic  genius  is  not  the  truth.  Yet  we  find 
such  an  acute  critic  as  the  late  Edmund  Clarence 
Stedman  writing,  "Poe's  chief  influence  upon 
Baudelaire's  own  production  relates  to  poetry." 
It  is  precisely  the  reverse.  Poe's  influence  affected 
Baudelaire's  prose,  notably  in  the  disjointed  con- 
fessions, Mon  coeur  mis  k  nu,  which  recall  the 
American  writer's  Marginalia.  The  bulk  of  the 
poetry  in  Les  Fleurs  de  Mai  was  written  before 
Baudelaire  had  read  Poe,  though  not  published 
in  book  form  until  1857.  But  in  1855  some  of 
the  poems  saw  the  light  in  the  Revue  des  deux 
Mondes,  while  many  of  them  had  been  put  forth 
a  decade  or  fifteen  years  before  as  fugitive  verse 
in  various  magazines.  Stedman  was  not  the  first 
to  make  this  mistake.  In  Bayard  Taylor's  The 
Echo  Club  we  find  on  page  24  this  criticism: 
"There  was  a  congenital  twist  about  Poe.  .  .  . 
Baudelaire  and  Swinburne  after  him  have  been 
trying  to  surpass  him  by  increasing  the  dose;  but 
his  muse  is  the  natural  Pythia,  inheriting  her  con- 
vulsions, while  they  eat  all  sorts  of  insane  roots 
to  produce  theirs."  This  must  have  been  written 
about  1872,  and  after  reading  it  one  would  fancy 
Poe  and  Baudelaire  were  rhapsodic  wrigglers 
on  the  poetic  tripod,  whereas  their  poetry  is 
often  reserved,  even  glacial,  Baudelaire,  like 
72 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

Poe,  sometimes  *^  built  his  nests  with  the  birds 
of  Night,"  and  that  was  enough  to  condemn  the 
work  of  both  men  with  critics  of  the  didactic 
school. 

Once,  when  Baudelaire  heard  that  an  American 
man-of-letters  (?)  was  in  Paris,  he  secured  an 
introduction  and  called.  Eagerly  inquiring  after 
Poe,  he  learned  that  he  was  not  considered  a 
genteel  person  in  America.  Baudelaire  with- 
drew, muttering  maledictions.  Enthusiastic  poet ! 
Charming  literary  person!  But  the  American, 
whoever  he  was,  represented  public  opinion  at 
the  time.  To-day  criticisms  of  Poe  are  vitiated 
by  the  desire  to  make  him  an  angel.  It  is  to  be 
doubted  whether  without  his  barren  environ- 
ment and  hard  fortunes  we  should  have  had 
Poe  at  all.  He  had  to  dig  down  deeper  into  the 
pit  of  his  personality  to  reach  the  central  core  of  his 
music.  But  every  ardent  young  soul  entering 
"literature"  begins  by  a  vindication  of  Poe's 
character.  Poe  was  a  man,  and  he  is  now  a  classic. 
He  was  a  half-charlatan  as  was  Baudelaire.  In 
both  the  sublime  and  the  sickly  were  never  far 
asunder.  The  pair  loved  to  mystify,  to  play 
pranks  on  their  contemporaries.  Both  were  im- 
placable pessimists.  Both  were  educated  in 
affluence,  and  both  had  to  face  unprepared  the 
hardships  of  life.  The  hastiest  comparison  of 
their  poetic  work  will  show  that  their  only  common 
ideal  was  the  worship  of  an  exotic  beauty.  Their 
artistic  methods  of  expression  were  totally  dis- 
similar. Baudelaire,  like  Poe,  had  a  harp-like 
73 


EGOISTS 

temperament  which  vibrated  in  the  presence  of 
strange  subjects.  Above  all  he  was  obsessed  by 
sex.  Woman,  as  angel  of  destruction,  is  the  key- 
note of  his  poems.  Poe  was  almost  sexless.  His 
aerial  creatures  never  footed  the  dusty  highways 
of  the  world.  His  lovely  lines,  "Helen,  thy 
beauty  is  to  me,"  could  never  have  been  written 
by  Baudelaire;  while  Poe  would  never  have 
pardoned  the  "fulgurant"  grandeur,  the  Bee- 
thoven-like harmonies,  the  Dantesque  horrors 
of  that  "deep  wide  music  of  lost  souls"  in 
"Femmes  Damndes": 

Descendez,  descendez,  lamentables  victimes. 

Or  this,  which  might  serve  as  a  text  for  one  of 
John  Martin's  vast  sinister  mezzotints: 

J'ai  vu  parfois  au  fond  d'un  theatre  banal 
Qu'enflammait  I'orchestre  sonore, 
Une  fee  allumer  dans  un  ciel  infernal 
Une  miraculeuse  aurore; 

J'ai  vu  parfois  au  fond  d'un  theatre  banal 

Un  etre,  qui  n'dtait  que  lumi^re,  or  et  gaze,     • 

Terrasser  I'^norme  Satan; 

Mais  mon  coeur  que  jamais  ne  visite  I'extase, 

Est  un  theatre  ou  Ton  attend 

Toujours,  toujpurs  en  vain  I'Etre  aux  ailes  de  gaze. 

Professor  Saintsbury  thus  sums  up  the  differ- 
ences between  Poe  and  Baudelaire:  "Both  au- 
thors —  Poe    and    De    Quincey  —  fell    short   of 
Baudelaire  himself  as  regards  depth  and  fulness 
74 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

of  passion,  but  both  have  a  superficial  likeness 
to  him  in  eccentricity  of  temperament  and  af- 
fection for  a  certain  peculiar  mixture  of  grotesque 
and  horror."  Poe  is  without  passion,  except  a 
passion  for  the  macabre;  for  what  Huysmans  calls 
"The  October  of  the  sensations";  whereas,  there 
is  a  gulf  of  despair  and  terror  and  humanity  in 
Baudelaire  which  shakes  your  nerves  yet  stimu- 
lates the  imagination.  However,  profounder  as 
a  poet,  he  was  no  match  for  Poe  in  what  might 
be  termed  intellectual  prestidigitation.  The  math- 
ematical Poe,  the  Poe  of  the  ingenious  detective 
tales,  tales  extraordinary,  the  Poe  of  the  swift 
flights  into  the  cosmical  blue,  the  Poe  the  prophet 
and  mystic  —  in  these  the  American  was  more 
versatile  than  his  French  translator.  That 
Baudelaire  said,  "Evil,  be  thou  my  good," 
is  doubtless  true.  He  proved  all  things  and 
found  them  vanity.  He  is  the  poet  of  original 
sin,  a  worshipper  of  Satan  for  the  sake  of  para- 
dox; his  Litanies  to  Satan  ring  childish  to  us  — 
in  his  heart  he  was  a  believer.  His  was  "an  in- 
finite reverse  aspiration,"  and  mixed  up  with  his 
pose  was  a  disgust  for  vice,  for  life  itself.  He 
was  the  last  of  the  Romanticists;  Sainte-Beuve 
called  him  the  Kamtschatka  of  Romanticism;  its 
remotest  hyperborean  peak.  Romanticism  is  dead 
to-day,  as  dead  as  Naturalism;  but  Baudelaire  is 
alive,  and  is  read.  His  glistening  phosphorescent 
trail  is  over  French  poetry  and  he  is  the  begetter 
of  a  school: —  Verlaine,  Villiers  de  I'Isle  Adam^ 
Carducci,    Arthur    Rimbaud,    Jules    Laforgue^ 

75 


EGOISTS 

Verhaeren,  and  many  of  the  youthful  crew.  He 
affected  Swinburne,  and  in  Huysmans,  who  was 
not  a  poet,  his  splenetic  spirit  lives.  Baudelaire's 
motto  might  be  the  opposite  of  Browning's  lines: 
''The  Devil  is  in  heaven.  All's  wrong  with  the 
world." 

When  Goethe  said  of  Hugo  and  the  Romanti- 
cists that  they  all  came  from  Chateaubriand,  he 
should  have  substituted  the  name  of  Rousseau  — 
"Romanticism,  it  is  Rousseau,"  exclaims  Pierre 
Lasserre.  But  there  is  more  of  Byron  and  Petrus 
Borel  —  a  forgotten  mad  poet — in  Baudelaire; 
though,  for  a  brief  period,  in  1848,  he  became  a 
Rousseau  reactionary,  sported  the  workingman's 
blouse,  shaved  his  head,  shouldered  a  musket, 
went  to  the  barricades,  wrote  inflammatory  edi- 
torials calling  the  proletarian  "Brother!"  (oh, 
Baudelaire!)  and,  as  the  Goncourts  recorded  in 
their  diary,  had  the  head  of  a  maniac.  How  seri- 
ously we  may  take  this  swing  of  the  pendulum  is 
to  be  noted  in  a  speech  of  the  poet's  at  the  time 
of  the  Revolution:  "Come,"  he  said,  "let  us  go 
shoot  General  Aupick!"  It  was  his  stepfather 
that  he  thought  of,  not  the  eternal  principles  of 
Liberty.  This  may  be  a  false  anecdote;  many 
were  foisted  upon  Baudelaire.  For  example, 
his  exclamations  at  cafes  or  in  public  places, 
such  as:  "Have  you  ever  eaten  a  baby?  I 
find  it  pleasing  to  the  palate!"  or,  "The  night 
I  killed  my  father!"  Naturally  people  stared 
and  Baudelaire  was  happy  —  he  had  startled  the 
bourgeois.     The  cannibalistic  idea  he  may  have 

76 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

borrowed  from  Swift's  amusing  pamphlet,  for 
this  French  poet  knew  English  literature. 

Gautier  compares  the  poems  to  a  certain 
tale  of  Hawthorne's  in  which  there  is  a  garden  of 
poisoned  flowers.  But  Hawthorne  worked  in 
his  laboratory  of  evil  wearing  mask  and  gloves; 
he  never  descended  into  the  mud  and  sin  of  the 
street.  Baudelaire  ruined  his  health,  smudged 
his  soul,  yet  remained  withal,  as  Anatole  France 
says,  "a  divine  poet."  How  childish,  yet  how 
touching  is  his  resolution  —  he  wrote  in  his  diary 
of  prayer's  dynamic  force  —  when  he  was  penni- 
less, in  debt,  threatened  with  imprisonment,  sick, 
nauseated  with  sin:  ''To  make  every  morning 
my  prayer  to  God,  the  reservoir  of -all  force,  and 
all  justice;  to  my  father,  to  Mariette,  and  to  Poe 
as  intercessors."  (Evidently,  Maurice  Barres 
encountered  here  his  theory  of  Intercessors.) 
Baudelaire  loved  the  memory  of  his  father  as 
much  as  Stendhal  hated  his.  His  mother  he 
became  reconciled  with  after  the  death  of  General 
Aupick,  in  1857.  He  felt  in  1862  that  his  own 
intellectual  eclipse  was  approaching,  for  he 
wrote:  "I  have  cultivated  my  hysteria  with  joy 
and  terror.  To-day  imbecility's  wing  fanned  me 
as  it  passed."  The  sense  of  the  vertiginous  gulf 
was  abiding  with  him;  read  his  poem,  "Pascal 
avait  son  gouffre." 

In  preferring  the  Baudelaire  translations  of 

Poe  to  the  original  —  and  they  give  the  impression 

of  being  original  works  —  Stedman  agreed  with 

Asselineau  that  the  French  is  more  concise  than 

77 


EGOISTS 

the  English.  The  prose  of  Poe  and  Baudelaire 
is  clear,  sober,  rhythmic;  Baudelaire's  is  more 
lapidary,  finer  in  contour,  richer  coloured,  more 
supple,  though  without  the  "honey  and  tiger's 
blood"  of  Barbey  d'Aurevilly's.  Baudelaire's 
soul  was  patiently  built  up  as  a  fabulous  bird 
might  build  its  nest  —  bits  of  straw,  the  sobbing 
of  women,  clay,  cascades  of  black  stars,  rags, 
leaves,  rotten  wood,  corroding  dreams,  a  spray 
of  roses,  a  sparkle  of  pebble,  a  gleam  of  blue  sky, 
arabesques  of  incense  and  verdigris,  despairing 
hearts  and  music  and  the  abomination  of  desolation 
for  ground-tones.  But  this  soul-nest  is  also  a  ceme- 
tery of  the  seven  sorrows.  He  loved  the  clouds 
.  .  .  .  lesnuages  .  .  .  Id  has,  ...  It  was  Id  has 
with  him  even  in  the  tortures  of  his  wretched  love- 
life.  Corruption  and  death  were  ever  floating  in  his 
consciousness.  He  was  like  Flaubert,  who  saw 
everywhere  the  hidden  skeleton.  Fdlicien  Rops 
has  best  interpreted  Baudelaire:  the  etcher  and 
poet  were  closely  knit  spirits.  Rodin,  too,  is  a 
Baudelarian.  If  there  could  be  such  an  anomaly 
as  a  native  wood-note  evil,  it  would  be  the  lyric 
and  astringent  voice  of  this  poet.  His  sensibility 
was  both  catholic  and  morbid,  though  he  could  be 
frigid  in  the  face  of  the  most  disconcerting  mis- 
fortunes. He  was  a  man  for  whom  the  visible 
word  existed;  if  Gautier  was  pagan,  Baudelaire 
was  a  strayed  spirit  from  mediaeval  days.  The 
spirit  ruled,  and,  as  Paul  Bourget  said,  *'he  saw 
God."  A  Manichean  in  his  worship  of  evil,  he 
nevertheless  abased  his  soul:  *'0h!  Lord  God! 

78 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

Give  me  the  force  and  courage  to  contemplate  my 
heart  and  my  body  without  disgust,"  he  prays: 
But  as  some  one  remarked  to  Rochefoucauld, 
"Where  you  end,  Christianity  begins." 

Baudelaire  built  his  ivory  tower  on  the  borders 
of  a  poetic  Maremma,  which  every  miasma  of 
the  spirit  pervaded,  every  marsh-light  and  glow- 
worm inhabited.  Like  Wagner,  Baudelaire  paint- 
ed in  his  sultry  music  the  profundities  of  abysms, 
the  vastness  of  space.  He  painted,  too,  the  great 
nocturnal  silences  of  the  soul. 

Pacem  summam  tenent!  He  never  reached 
peace  on  the  heights.  Let  us  admit  that  souls  of 
his  kind  are  encased  in  sick  frames;  their  steel  is  too 
shrewd  for  the  scabbard;  yet  the  enigma  for  us 
is  none  the  less  unfathomable.  Existence  for 
such  natures  is  a  sort  of  muffled  delirium.  To 
affiliate  him  with  Poe,  De  Quincey,  Hoffmann, 
James  Thomson,  Coleridge,  and  the  rest  of  the 
sombre  choir  does  not  explain  him;  he  is,  perhaps, 
nearer  Donne  and  Villon  than  any  of  the  others 
—  strains  of  the  metaphysical  and  sinister  and 
supersubtle  are  to  be  discovered  in  him.  The 
disharmony  of  brain  and  body,  the  spiritual  bi- 
location,  are  only  too  easy  to  diagnose;  but  the 
remedy  ?  Hypocrite  lecteur  —  mon  semhlable  — 
mon  frerel  When  the  subtlety,  force,  grandeur, 
of  his  poetic  production  be  considered,  together 
with  its  disquieting,  nervous,  vibrating  qualities,  it 
is  not  surprising  that  Victor  Hugo  wrote  to  the 
poet:  "You  invest  the  heaven  of  art  with  we  know 
not  what  deadly  rays;  you  create  a  new  shudder." 

79 


EGOISTS 

Hugo  could  have  said  that  he  turned  Art  into  an 
Inferno.  Baudelaire  is  the  evil  archangel  of 
poetry.  In  his  heaven  of  fire,  glass,  and  ebony 
he  is  the  blazing  Lucifer.  *'A  glorious  devil, 
large  in  heart  and  brain,  that  did  love  beauty 
only  ..."  sang  Tennyson. 


II 


As  long  ago  as  1869  and  in  our  "barbarous  gas- 
lit  country,"  as  Baudelaire  named  the  land  of 
Poe,  an  unsigned  review  appeared  in  which  this 
poet  was  described  as  "unique  and  as  interesting 
as  Hamlet.  He  is  that  rare  and  unknown  being, 
a  genuine  poet  —  a  poet  in  the  midst  of  things 
that  have  disordered  his  spirit  —  a  poet  excessively 
developed  in  his  taste  for  and  by  beauty  .  .  .  very 
responsive  to  the  ideal,  very  greedy  of  sensation." 
A  better  description  of  Baudelaire  does  not  exist. 
The  Hamlet-motive,  particularly,  is  one  that 
sounded  throughout  the  disordered  symphony  of 
the  poet's  life. 

He  was,  later,  revealed  to  American  readers 
by  Henry  James.  This  was  in  1878,  when  ap- 
peared the  first  edition  of  French  Poets  and 
Novelists.  Previous  to  that  there  had  been  some 
desultory  discussion,  a  few  essays  in  the  maga- 
zines, and  in  1875  ^  sympathetic  paper  by  Pro- 
fessor James  Albert  Harrison  of  the  University 
of  Virginia.  But  Mr.  James  had  the  ear  of  a 
cultured  public.  He  denounced  the  Frenchman 
for  his  reprehensible  taste,  though  he  did  not 
80 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

mention  his  beautiful  verse  or  his  originality  in 
the  matter  of  criticism.  Baudelaire,  in  his  eyes, 
was  not  only  immoral,  but  he  had,  with  the  ap- 
probation of  Sainte-Beuve,  introduced  Poe  as  a 
great  man  to  the  French  nation.  (See  Baudelaire^s 
letter  to  Sainte-Beuve  in  the  newly  published 
Letters,  1841-1866.)  Perhaps  Mr.  Dick  Minim 
and  his  projected  Academy  of  Criticism  might 
make  clear  these  devious  problems. 

The  Etudes  Critiques  of  Edmond  Scherer 
were  collected  in  1863.  In  them  we  find  this 
unhappy,  uncritical  judgment:  "Baudelaire,  lui, 
n'a  rien,  ni  le  cceur,  ni  I'esprit,  ni  I'idee,  ni  le  mot, 
ni  la  raison,  ni  la  fantaisie,  ni  la  verve,  ni  meme 
la  facture  .  .  .  son  unique  titre  c'est  d' avoir  con- 
tribue  k  creer  I'esthetique  de  la  debauche."  It  is 
not  our  intention  to  dilate  upon  the  injustice  of 
this  criticism.  It  is  Baudelaire  the  critic  of 
aesthetics  in  whom  we  are  interested.  Yet  I 
cannot  forbear  saying  that  if  all  the  negations  of 
Scherer  had  been  transformed  into  affirmations, 
only  justice  would  have  been  accorded  Baudelaire, 
who  was  not  alone  a  poet,  the  most  original  of  his 
century,  but  also  a  critic  of  the  first  rank,  one 
who  welcomed  Richard  Wagner  when  Paris  hooted 
him  and  his  fellow  composer,  Hector  Berlioz, 
played  the  role  of  the  envious;  one  who  fought  for 
Edouard  Manet,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Gustave 
Flaubert,  Eugene  Delacroix;  fought  with  pen  for 
the  modern  etchers,  illustrators,  Meryon,  Dau- 
mier,  Felicien,  Rops,  Gavarni,  and  Constantin 
Guys.  He  literally  identified  himself  with  De 
81 


EGOISTS 

Quincey  and  Poe,  translating  them  so  wonder- 
fully well  that  some  unpatriotic  critics  like  the 
French  better  than  the  originals.  So  much  was 
Baudelaire  absorbed  in  Poe  that  a  writer  of  his 
times  asserted  the  translator  would  meet  the  same 
fate  as  the  American  poet.  A  singular,  vigorous 
spirit  is  Baudelaire's,  whose  poetry  with  its  ''icy 
ecstasy"  is  profound  and  harmonic,  whose  criti- 
cism is  penetrated  by  a  catholic  quality,  who  antici- 
pated modern  critics  in  his  abhorrence  of  schools 
and  environments,  preferring  to  isolate  the  man 
and  study  him  uniquely.  He  would  have  sub- 
scribed to  Swinburne's  generous  pronouncement: 
"I  have  never  been  able  to  see  what  should  at- 
tract man  to  the  profession  of  criticism  but  the 
noble  pleasure  of  praising."  The  Frenchman 
has  said  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  a  critic 
to  become  a  poet;  and  it  is  impossible  for  a  poet 
not  to  contain  a  critic. 

Theophile  Gautier's  study  prefixed  to  the 
definitive  edition  of  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai  is  not  only 
the  most  sympathetic  exposition  of  Baudelaire  as 
man  and  genius,  but  it  is  also  the  high-water  mark 
of  Gautier's  gifts  as  an  essayist.  We  learn  therein 
how  the  young  Charles,  an  incorrigible  dandy, 
came  to  visit  Hotel  Pimodan  about  1844.  In  this 
H6tel  Pimodan  a  dilettante,  Ferdinand  Boissard, 
held  high  revel.  His  fantastically  decorated 
apartments  were  frequented  by  the  painters, 
poets,  sculptors,  romancers,  of  the  day  —  that  is, 
carefully  selected  ones  such  as  Liszt,  George  Sand, 
M^rimde,  and  others  whose  verve  or  genius  gave 
82 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

them  the  privilege  of  saying  Open  Sesame!  to 
this  cave  of  forty  Supermen.  Balzac  has  in 
his  Peau  de  Chagrin  pictured  the  same  sort  of 
scenes  that  were  supposed  to  occur  weekly  at  the 
Pimodan.  Gautier  eloquently  describes  the  meet- 
ing of  these  kindred  artistic  souls,  where  the 
beautiful  Jewess  Maryx,  who  had  posed  for 
Ary  Scheffer's  Mignon  and  for  Paul  Delaroche's 
La  Gloire,  met  the  superb  Mme.  Sabatier,  the 
only  woman  that  Baudelaire  loved,  and  the  original 
of  that  extraordinary  group  of  Clesinger's  —  the 
sculptor  and  son-in-law  of  George  Sand  —  la 
Femme  au  Serpent,  a  Salammbo  a  la  mode  in 
marble.  Hasheesh  was  eaten,  so  Gautier  writes, 
by  Boissard  and  by  Baudelaire.  As  for  the  cre- 
ator of  Mademoiselle  Maupin,  he  was  too  robust 
for  such  nonsense.  He  had  to  work  for  his  living 
at  journalism,  and  he  died  in  harness  an  irre- 
proachable father,  while  the  unhappy  Baudelaire, 
the  inheritor  of  an  intense,  unstable  temperament, 
soon  devoured  his  patrimony  of  75,000  francs  and 
for  the  remaining  years  of  his  life  was  between 
the  devil  of  his  dusky  Jenny  Duval  and  the  deep 
sea  of  debt. 

It  was  at  these  Pimodan  gatherings,  which  were 
no  doubt  much  less  wicked  than  the  participants 
would  have  us  believe,  that  Baudelaire  encountered 
Emile  Deroy,  a  painter  of  skill,  who  made  his  por- 
trait, and  encouraged  the  fashionable  young  fel- 
low to  continue  his  art  studies.  We  have  seen 
an  album  containing  sketches  by  the  poet.  They 
betray  talent  of  about  the  same  order  as  Thack- 

83 


EGOISTS 

Cray's,  with  a  superadded  note  of  the  horrific  — 
that  favourite  epithet  of  the  early  Poe  critics. 
Baudelaire  admired  Thackeray,  and  when  the 
Englishman  praised  the  illustrations  of  Guys, 
he  was  delighted.  Deroy  taught  his  pupil  the 
commonplaces  of  a  painter's  technique;  also  how 
to  compose  a  palette  —  a  rather  meaningless 
phrase  nowadays.  At  least  he  did  not  write 
of  the  arts  without  some  technical  experience. 
Delacroix  took  up  his  enthusiastic  disciple,  and 
when  the  Salons  of  Baudelaire  appeared  in  1845, 
1846,  1855,  and  1859,  the  praise  and  blame  they 
evoked  were  testimonies  to  the  training  and  knowl- 
edge of  their  author.  A  new  spirit  had  been  bom. 
The  names  of  Diderot  and  Baudelaire  were 
coupled.  Neither  academic  nor  spouting  the 
jargon  of  the  usual  critic,  the  Salons  of  Baudelaire 
are  the  production  of  a  humanist.  Some  would 
put  them  above  Diderot's.  Mr.  Saintsbury, 
after  Mr.  Swinburne  the  warmest  advocate  of 
Baudelaire  among  the  English,  thinks  that  the 
French  poet  in  his  picture  criticism  observed  too 
little  and  imagined  too  much.  "In  other  words," 
he  adds,  "to  read  a  criticism  of  Baudelaire's  with- 
out the  title  affixed  is  by  no  means  a  sure  method 
of  recognizing  the  picture  afterward."  Now, 
word-painting  was  the  very  thing  that  Baudelaire 
avoided.  It  was  his  friend  Gautier,  with  the 
plastic  style,  who  attempted  the  well-nigh  impossi- 
ble feat  of  competing  in  his  verbal  descriptions 
with  the  certitudes  of  canvas  and  marble.  And 
if  he  with  his  verbal  imagination  did  not  entirely 
84 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

succeed,  how  could  a  less  adept  manipulator  of 
the  vocabulary?  We  do  not  agree  with  Mr. 
Saintsbury.  No  one  can  imagine  too  much  when 
the  imagination  is  that  of  a  poet.  Baudelaire 
divined  the  work  of  the  artist  and  set  it  down 
scrupulously  in  prose  of  rectitude.  He  did  not 
paint  pictures  in  prose.  He  did  not  divagate.  He 
did  not  overburden  his  pages  with  technical  terms. 
But  the  spirit  he  did  disengage  in  a  few  swift 
phrases.  The  polemics  of  historical  schools  were 
a  cross  for  him  to  bear,  and  he  bore  all  his  learn- 
ing lightly.  Like  a  true  critic,  he  judged  more 
by  form  than  theme.  There  are  no  types;  there 
is  only  life,  he  had  cried  before  Jules  Laforgue. 
He  was  ever  for  art-for-art,  yet,  having  breadth 
of  comprehension  and  a  Heine-like  capacity  for 
seeing  both  sides  of  his  own  nature  and  its  idio- 
syncrasies, he  could  write:  "The  puerile  Utopia 
of  the  school  of  art  for  art,  in  excluding  morality, 
and  often  even  passion,  was  necessarily  sterile. 
All  literature  which  refuses  to  advance  fraternally 
between  science  and  philosophy  is  a  homicidal 
and  a  suicidal  literature." 

Baudelaire,  then,  was  no  less  sound  a  critic  of 
the  plastic  arts  than  of  music  and  literature.  Like 
his  friend  Flaubert,  he  had  a  horror  of  democracy, 
of  the  democratisation  of  the  arts,  of  all  the  senti- 
mental fuss  and  fuddle  of  a  pseudo-humanitarian- 
ism.  During  the  1848  agitation  the  former 
dandy  of  1840  put  on  a  blouse  and  spoke  of  barri- 
cades. These  things  were  in  the  air.  Wagner 
rang  the  alarm-bells  during  the  Dresden  uprising. 

85 


EGOISTS 

Chopin  wrote  for  the  pianoforte  a  revolutionary 
^tude.  Brave  lads!  Poets  and  musicians  fight 
their  battles  best  in  the  region  of  the  ideal.  Baude- 
laire's little  attack  of  the  equality-measles  soon 
vanished.  He  lectured  his  brother  poets  and 
artists  on  the  folly  and  injustice  of  abusing  or  de- 
spising the  bourgeois  (being  a  man  of  paradoxes, 
he  dedicated  a  volume  of  his  Salons  to  the  bour- 
geois), but  he  would  not  have  contradicted  Mr. 
George  Moore  for  declaring  that "  in  art  the  demo- 
crat is  always  reactionary.  In  1830  the  demo- 
crats were  against  Victor  Hugo  and  Delacroix.'' 
And  Les  Fleurs  du  Mai,  that  book  of  opals,  blood, 
and  evil  swamp-flowers,  can  never  be  savoured 
by  the  mob. 

In  his  Souvenirs  de  Jeunesse,  Champfleury 
speaks  of  the  promenades  in  the  Louvre  he  en- 
joyed in  company  with  Baudelaire.  Bronzino 
was  one  of  the  latter' s  preferences.  He  was  also 
attracted  to  El  Greco  —  not  an  unnatural  ad- 
miration, considering  the  sombre  extravagance 
of  his  own  genius.  Goya  he  has  written  of  in 
exalted  phrases.  Velasquez  was  his  touchstone. 
Being  of  a  perverse  nature,  his  nerves  ruined  by 
abuse  of  drink  and  drugs,  the  landscapes  of  his 
imagination  or  those  by  his  friend  Rousseau  were 
more  beautiful  than  Nature  herself.  The  coun- 
try, he  declared,  was  odious.  Like  Whistler, 
whom  he  often  met  —  see  the  Hommage  k  Dela- 
croix by  Fantin-Latour,  with  its  portraits  of 
Whisder,  Baudelaire,  Manet,  Bracquemond  the 
etcher,  Legros,  Delacroix,  Cordier,  Duranty  the 
86 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  I.EGEND 

critic,  and  De  Balleroy  —  he  could  not  help  show- 
ing his  aversion  to  "foolish  sunsets."  In  a  word, 
Baudelaire,  into  whose  brain  had  entered  too 
much  moonlight,  was  the  father  of  a  lunar  school 
of  poetry,  criticism  and  fiction.  His  Samuel 
Cramer,  in  La  Fanfarlo,  is  the  literary  progenitor 
of  Jean,  Due  d'Esseintes,  of  Huysmans's  A 
Rebours.  Huysmans  modelled  at  first  himself  on 
Baudelaire.  His  Le  Drageoir  aux  Epices  is  a 
continuation  of  Petits  Poemes  en  Prose.  And  to 
Baudelaire's  account  must  be  laid  much  artificial 
morbid  writing.  Despite  his  pursuit  of  perfection 
in  form,  his  influence  has  been  too  often  baneful  to 
impressionable  artists  in  embryo.  A  lover  of 
Gallic  Byronism,  and  high-priest  of  the  Satanic 
school,  there  was  no  extravagance,  absurd  or  terri- 
ble, that  he  did  not  commit,  from  etching  a  four- 
part  fugue  on  ice  to  skating  hymns  in  honour  of 
Lucifer.  In  his  criticism  alone  was  he  the  sane, 
logical  Frenchman.  And  while  he  did  not  live  to 
see  the  success  of  the  Impressionist  group,  he 
would  have  surely  acclaimed  their  theories  and 
practice.  Was  he  not  an  impressionist  himself? 
As  Richard  Wagner  was  his  god  in  music,  so 
Delacroix  quite  overflowed  his  aesthetic  conscious- 
ness. Read  Volume  11.  of  his  collected  works, 
Curiosities  Esthetiques,  which  contains  his  Salons; 
also  his  essay,  De  1' Essence  du  Rire  (worthy  to  be 
placed  side  by  side  with  George  Meredith's  es- 
say on  Comedy).  Caricaturists,  French  and 
foreign,  are  considered  in  two  chapters  at  the  close 
of  the  volume.    Baudelaire  was  as  conscientious 

87 


EGOISTS 

as  Gautier.  He  toiled  around  miles  of  mediocre 
canvas,  saying  an  encouraging  word  to  the  less 
talented,  boiling  over  with  holy  indignation, 
glacial  irony,  before  the  rash  usurpers  occupying 
the  seats  of  the  mighty,  and  pouncing  on  new 
genius  with  promptitude.  Upon  Delacroix  he 
lavished  the  largesse  of  his  admiration.  He 
smiled  at  the  platitudes  of  Horace  Vernef,  and 
only  shook  his  head  over  the  Schnetzes  and  other 
artisans  of  the  day.  He  welcomed  William 
Hausoullier,  now  so  little  known.  He  premised 
Deveria,  Chasseriau  —  who  waited  years  before 
he  came  into  his  own;  his  preferred  landscapists 
were  Corot,  Rousseau  and  Troyon.  He  im- 
politely spoke  of  Ary  Scheffer  and  the  "apes  of 
sentiment";  while  his  discussions  of  Hogarth, 
Cruikshank,  Pinelli  and  Breughel  proclaim  his 
versatility  of  vision.  In  his  essay  Le  Peintre  de 
la  Vie  Moderne  he  was  the  first  among  critics  to 
recognize  the  peculiar  quality  named  "  modernity," 
that  nervous,  naked  vibration  which  informs  the 
novels  of  Goncourt,  Flaubert's  L' Education  Senti- 
mentale,  and  the  pictures  of  Manet,  Monet, 
Degas  and  RafTaelli  with  their  evocations  of  a 
new,  nervous  Paris.  It  is  in  his  Volume  III.,  en- 
titled, L'Art  Romantique,  that  so  many  things 
dear  to  the  new  century  were  then  subjects  of  furi- 
ous quarrels.  This  book  contains  much  just  and 
brilliant  writing.  It  was  easy  for  Nietzsche  to 
praise  Wagner  in  Germany  in  1876,  but  dangerous 
at  Paris  in  186 1  to  declare  war  on  Wagner's  critics. 
This  Baudelaire  did. 

S8 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

The  relations  of  Baudelaire  and  Edouard 
Manet  were  exceedingly  cordial.  In  a  letter  to 
Theophile  Thore,  the  art  critic  (Letters,  p.  361), 
we  find  Baudelaire  defending  his  friend  from  the 
accusation  that  his  pictures  were  pastiches  of 
Goya.  He  wrote:  "Manet  has  never  seen  Goya, 
never  El  Greco;  he  was  never  in  the  Pourtales 
Gallery."  Which  may  have  been  true  at  the 
time,  1864,  but  Manet  visited  Madrid  and  spent 
much  time  studying  Velasquez  and  abusing  Span- 
ish cookery.  (Consider,  too,  Goya's  Balcony  with 
Girls  and  Manet's  famous  Balcony.)  Raging  at 
the  charge  of  imitation,  Baudelaire  said  in  this 
same  epistle:  "They  accuse  even  me  of  imitating 
Edgar  Poe.  ...  Do  you  know  why  I  so  patiently 
translated  Poe?  Because  he  resembled  we."  The 
poet  italicised  these  words.  With  stupefaction, 
therefore,  he  admired  the  mysterious  coincidences 
of  Manet's  work  with  that  of  Goya  and  El  Greco. 

He  took  Manet  seriously.  He  wrote  to  him  in 
a  paternal  and  severe  tone.  Recall  his  reproof 
when  urging  the  painter  to  exhibit  his  work. 
"You  complain  about  attacks,  but  are  you  the 
first  to  endure  them?  Have  you  more  genius 
than  Chateaubriand  and  Wagner?  They  were 
not  killed  by  derision.  And  in  order  not  to  make 
you  too  proud  I  must  tell  you  that  they  are  models, 
each  in  his  way,  and  in  a  very  rich  world,  while 
you  are  only  the  -first  in  the  decrepitude  of  your 
arty     (Letters,  p.  436.) 

Would  Baudelaire  recall  these  prophetic  words 
if  he  were  able  to  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the 

89 


EGOISTS 

Champs  Elysees  at  the  autumn  Salons?  What 
would  he  think  of  C^sanne?  Odilon  Redon  he 
would  understand,  for  he  is  the  transpose!  of 
Baudelairianism  to  terms  of  design  and  colour. 
And  perhaps  the  poet  whose  verse  is  saturated 
with  tropical  hues  —  he,  when  young,  sailed  in 
southern  seas  —  might  appreciate  the  monstrous 
debauch  of  form  and  colour  in  the  Tahitian  can- 
vases of  Paul  Gauguin. 

Baudelaire's  preoccupation  with  pictorial  themes 
may  be  noted  in  his  verse.  He  is  par  excellence 
the  poet  of  aesthetics.  To  Daumier  he  inscribed 
a  poem;  and  to  the  sculptor  Ernest  Christophe, 
to  Delacroix  (Sur  Le  Tasse  en  Prison),  to 
Manet,  to  Guys  (Reve  Parisien),  to  an  un- 
known master  (Une  Martyre);  and  Watteau,  a 
Watteau  a  rebours,  is  seen  in  Un  Voyage  k  Cy there; 
while  in  Les  Phares  this  poet  of  ideal,  spleen, 
music,  and  perfume  shows  his  adoration  for  Rubens, 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  Michaelangelo,  Rembrandt, 
Puget,  Goya,  Delacroix  — "  Delacroix,  lac  de 
sang  hante  des  mauvais  anges."  And  what  could 
be  more  exquisite  than  his  quatrain  to  Lola  de 
Valence,  a  poetic  inscription  for  the  picture  of 
Edouard  Manet,  with  its  last  line  as  vaporous, 
as  subtle  as  Verlaine:  Le  charme  inattendu  d'un 
bijou  rose  et  noir!  Heine  called  himself  the  last 
of  the  Romantics.  The  first  of  the  ''Moderns" 
and  the  last  of  the  Romantics  was  the  many- 
sided  Charles  Baudelaire. 


90 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 


III 


He  was  born  at  Paris  April  9,  182 1  (Flauberf  s 
birth  year),  and  not  April  21st  as  Gautier  has  it. 
His  father  was  Joseph  Francis  Baudelaire,  or 
Beaudelaire,  who  occupied  a  government  posi- 
tion. A  cultivated  art  lover,  his  taste  was  ap- 
parent in  the  home  he  made  for  his  second  wife, 
Caroline  Archimbaut-Dufays,  an  orphan  and 
the  daughter  of  a  military  officer.  There  was  a 
considerable  difference  in  the  years  of  this  pair; 
the  mother  was  twenty-seven,  the  father  sixty-two, 
at  the  birth  of  their  only  child.  By  his  first  mar- 
riage the  elder  Baudelaire  had  one  son,  Claude, 
who,  like  his  half-brother  Charles,  died  of  paral- 
ysis, though  a  steady  man  of  business.  That  great 
neurosis,  called  Commerce,  has  its  mental  wrecks, 
too,  but  no  one  pays  attention;  only  when  the 
poet  falls  by  the  wayside  is  the  chase  begun  by 
neurologists  and  other  soul-hunters  seeking  for 
victims.  After  the  death  of  Baudelaire's  father, 
the  widow,  within  a  year,  married  the  handsome, 
ambitious  Aupick,  then  chef  de  bataillon,  lieu- 
tenant-colonel, decorated  with  the  Legion  of 
Honour,  and  later  general  and  ambassador  to 
Madrid,  Constantinople,  and  London.  Charles 
was  a  nervous,  frail  youth,  but  unlike  most  chil- 
dren of  genius,  he  was  a  scholar  and  won  brilliant 
honours  at  school.  His  step-father  was  proud  of 
him.  From  the  Royal  College  of  Lyons,  Charles 
went  to  the  Lyc^e  Louis-le- Grand,  Paris,  but  was 
91 


EGOISTS 

expelled  in  1839.  Troubles  soon  oegan  at  home 
for  him.  He  was  v  irascible,  vain,  very  precocious, 
and  given  to  dissipation.  He  quarrelled  with 
General  Aupick,  and  disdained  his  mother.  But 
she  was  to  blame,  she  has  confessed;  she  had  quite 
forgotten  the  boy  in  the  flush  of  her  second  love. 
He  could  not  forget,  or  forgive  what  he  called  her 
infidelity  to  the  memory  of  his  father.  Hamlet- 
like, he  was  inconsolable.  The  good  bishop  of 
Montpellier,  who  knew  the  family,  said  that 
Charles  was  a  little  crazy  —  second  marriages 
usually  bring  woe  in  their  train.  "When  a 
mother  has  such  a  son,  she  doesn't  remarry," 
said  the  young  poet.  Charles  signed  himself 
Baudelaire-Dufays,  or  sometimes,  Dufais.  He 
wrote  in  his  journal:  *'My  ancestors,  idiots  or 
maniacs  ...  all  victims  of  terrible  passions"; 
which  was  one  of  his  exaggerations.  His  grand- 
father on  the  paternal  side  was  a  Champenois 
peasant,  his  mother's  family  presumably  Nor- 
man, but  not  much  is  known  of  her  forbears. 
Charles  believed  himself  lost  from  the  time  his 
half-brother  was  stricken.  He  also  believed  that 
his  instability  of  temperament  —  and  he  studied 
his  "case"  as  would  a  surgeon  —  was  the  result 
of  his  parents'  disparity  in  years. 

After  his  return  from  the  East,  where  he  did 
not  learn  English,  as  has  been  said  —  his  mother 
taught  him  as  a  boy  to  converse  in  and  write  the 
language  —  he  came  into  his  little  inheritance, 
about  fifteen  thousand  dollars.  Two  years  later 
he  was  so  heavily  in  debt  that  his  family  asked 
92 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

for  a  guardian  on  the  ground  of  incompetency. 
He  had  been  swindled,  being  young  and  green. 
How  had  he  squandered  his  money  ?  Not  exactly 
on  opera-glasses,  like  Gerard  de  Nerval,  but  on 
clothes,  pictures,  furniture,  books.  The  rem- 
nant was  set  aside  to  pay  his  debts.  Charles 
would  be  both  poet  and  dandy.  He  dressed  ex- 
pensively but  soberly,  in  the  English  fashion;  his 
linen  dazzling,  the  prevailing  hue  of  his  habili- 
ments black.  In  height  he  was  medium,  his 
eyes  brown,  searching,  luminous,  the  eye  of  a 
nyctalops,  "  eyes  like  ravens' " ;  nostrils  palpitating, 
cleft  chin,  mouth  expressive,  sensual,  the  jaw 
strong  and  square.  His  hair  was  black,  curly,  and 
glossy,  his  forehead  high,  square,  white.  In  the 
Deroy  portrait  he  wears  a  beard;  he  is  there,  what 
Catulle  Mendes  nicknamed  him:  His  Excellence, 
Monseigneur  Brummel!  Later  he  was  the  elegiac 
Satan,  the  author  of  L'Imitation  de  N.  S.  le 
Diable;  or  the  Baudelaire  of  George  Moore:  "the 
clean-shaven  face  of  the  mock  priest,  the  slow 
cold  eyes  and  the  sharp  cunning  sneer  of  the  cyni- 
cal libertine  who  will  be  tempted  that  he  may 
better  know  the  worthlessness  of  temptation." 
In  the  heyday  of  his  blood  he  was  perverse  and 
deliberate.  Let  us  credit  him  with  contradicting 
the  Byronic  notion  that  ennui  could  be  best  cured 
by  dissipation;  in  sin  Baudelaire  found  the  sad- 
dest of  all  tasks.  Mendes  laughs  at  the  legend 
of  Baudelaire's  violence,  of  his  being  given  to 
explosive  phrases.  Despite  Gautier's  stories  about 
the  H6tel  Pimadon  and  its  club  of  hasheesh- 
93 


EGOISTS 

eaters,  M.  Mendbs  denies  that  Baudelaire  was  a 
victim  of  the  hemp.  What  the  majority  of  man- 
kind does  not  know  concerning  the  habits  of  liter- 
ary workers  is  this  prime  fact :  men  who  work  hard, 
writing  verse  —  and  there  is  no  mental  toil  com- 
parable to  it — cannot  drink,  or  indulge  in  opium, 
without  the  inevitable  collapse.  The  old-fashioned 
ideas  of  "inspiration,"  spontaneity,  easy  impro- 
visation, the  sudden  bolt  from  heaven,  are  de- 
lusions still  hugged  by  the  world.  To  be  told 
that  Chopin  filed  at  his  music  for  years,  that  Bee- 
thoven in  his  smithy  forged  his  thunderbolts,  that 
Manet  toiled  like  a  labourer  on  the  dock,  that 
Baudelaire  was  a  mechanic  in  his  devotion  to 
poetic  work,  that  Gautier  was  a  hard-working 
journalist,  is  a  disillusion  for  the  sentimental. 
Minerva  springing  full-fledged  from  Jupiter's 
skull  to  the  desk  of  the  poet  is  a  pretty  fancy;  but 
Balzac  and  Flaubert  did  not  encourage  this  fancy. 
Work  literally  killed  Poe,  as  it  killed  Jules  de 
Goncourt,  Flaubert,  and  Daudet.  Maupassant 
went  insane  because  he  would  work  and  he  would 
play  the  same  day.  Baudelaire  worked  and  wor- 
ried. His  debts  haunted  him  his  life  long.  His 
constitution  was  flawed  —  Sainte-Beuve  told  him 
that  he  had  worn  out  his  nerves  —  from  the  start, 
he  was  detraque;  but  that  his  entire  life  was  one 
huge  debauch  is  a  nightmare  of  the  moral  po- 
lice in  some  white  cotton  night-cap  country. 

His  period  of  mental  production  was  not  brief 
or    barren.     He    was    a    student.     Du    Camp's 
charge  that  he  was  an  ignorant  man  is  disproved 
94 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

by  the  variety  and  quality  of  his  published  work. 
His  range  of  sympathies  was  large.  His  mistake, 
in  the  eyes  of  his  colleagues,  was  to  write  so  well 
about  the  seven  arts.  Versatility  is  seldom  given 
its  real  name  —  which  is  protracted  labour. 
Baudelaire  was  one  of  the  elect,  an  aristocrat, 
who  dealt  with  the  quintessence  of  art;  his  delicate 
air  of  a  bishop,  his  exquisite  manners,  his  modu- 
lated voice,  aroused  unusual  interest  and  admira- 
tion. He  was  a  humanist  of  distinction;  he  has 
left  a  hymn  to  Saint  Francis  in  the  Latin  of  the 
decadence.  Baudelaire,  like  Chopin,  made  more 
poignant  the  phrase,  raised  to  a  higher  intensity 
the  expressiveness  of  art. 

Women  played  a  commanding  role  in  his  life. 
They  always  do  with  any  poet  worthy  of  the  name, 
though  few  have  been  so  frank  in  acknowledging 
this  as  Baudelaire.  Yet  he  was  in  love  more  with 
Woman  than  the  individual.  The  legend  of  the 
beautiful  creature  he  brought  from  the  East  re- 
solves itself  into  the  dismal  affair  with  Jeanne 
Duval.  He  met  her  in  Paris,  after  he  had  been 
in  the  East.  She  sang  at  a  cafe-concert  in  Paris. 
She  was  more  brown  than  black.  She  was  not 
handsome,  not  intelligent,  not  good;  yet  he  ideal- 
ized her,  for  she  was  the  source  of  half  his  inspira- 
tion. To  her  were  addressed  those  marvellous 
evocations  of  the  Orient,  of  perfume,  tresses,  de- 
licious mornings  on  strange  far-away  seas  and 
"superb  Byzant"  domes  that  devils  built.  Baude- 
laire is  the  poet  of  perfumes;  he  is  also  the  patron 
saint  of  ennui.  No  one  has  so  chanted  the  praise 
95 


EGOISTS 

of  odours.  His  soul  swims  on  perfume  as  do  other 
souls  on  music,  he  has  sung.  As  he  grew  older 
he  seemed  to  hunt  for  more  acrid  odours;  he  often 
presents  an  elaborately  chased  vase  the  carving  of 
which  transports  us,  but  from  which  the  head  is 
quickly  averted.  Jeanne,  whom  he  never  loved, 
no  matter  what  may  be  said,  was  a  sorceress. 
But  she  was  impossible;  she  robbed,  betrayed  him; 
he  left  her  a  dozen  times  only  to  return.  He  was 
a  capital  draughtsman  with  a  strong  nervous  line 
and  made  many  pen-and-ink  drawings  of  her. 
They  are  not  prepossessing.  In  her  rapid  decline, 
she  was  not  allowed  to  want;  Madame  Aupick 
paying  her  expenses  in  the  hospital.  A  sordid 
history.  She  was  a  veritable  flower  of  evil  for 
Baudelaire.  Yet  poetry,  like  music,  would  be 
colourless,  scentless,  if  it  sounded  no  dissonances. 
Fancy  art  reduced  to  the  beatific  and  banal  chord 
of  C  major! 

He  fell  in  love  with  the  celebrated  Madame 
Sabatier,  a  reigning  beauty,  at  whose  salon  artistic 
Paris  assembled.  She  had  been  christened  by 
Gautier  Madame  la  Presidente,  and  her  sumptuous 
beauty  was  portrayed  by  Ricard  in  his  La  Femme 
au  Chien.  She  returned  Baudelaire's  love.  They 
soon  parted.  Again  a  riddle  that  the  published 
letters  hardly  solve.  One  letter,  however,  does 
show  that  Baudelaire  had  tried  to  be  faithful, 
and  failed.  He  could  not  extort  from  his  ex- 
hausted soul  the  sentiment;  but  he  put  its  music 
on  paper.  His  most  seductive  lyrics  were  ad- 
dressed to  Madame  Sabatier:  "A  la  tr^s  ch^re, 
96 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

k  la  tres-belle,"  a  hymn  saturated  with  love. 
Music,  spleen,  perfumes  —  "colour,  sound,  per- 
fumes call  to  each  other  as  deep  to  deep;  perfumes 
like  the  flesh  of  children,  soft  as  hautboys,  green 
like  the  meadows"  —  criminals,  outcasts,  the 
charm  of  childhood,  the  horrors  of  love,  pride,  and 
rebellion.  Eastern  landscapes,  cats,  soothing  and 
false;  cats,  the  true  companions  of  lonely  poets; 
haunted  clocks,  shivering  dusks,  and  gloomier 
dawns  —  Paris  in  a  hundred  phases  —  these  and 
many  other  themes  this  strange-souled  poet,  this 
"Dante,  pacer  of  the  shore,"  of  Paris  has  cele- 
brated in  finely  wrought  verse  and  profound 
phrases.  In  a  single  line  he  contrives  atmos- 
phere; the  very  shape  of  his  sentence,  the  ring  of 
the  syllables,  arouses  the  deepest  emotion.  A 
master  of  harmonic  undertones  is  Baudelaire.  His 
successors  have  excelled  him  in  making  their  music 
more  fluid,  more  singing,  more  vapourous  —  all 
young  French  poets  pass  through  their  Baude- 
larian  green-sickness  —  but  he  alone  knows  the 
secrets  of  moulding  those  metallic,  free  sonnets, 
which  have  the  resistance  of  bronze;  and  of  the 
despairing  music  that  flames  from  the  mouths  of 
lost  souls  trembling  on  the  wharves  of  hell.  He 
is  the  supreme  master  of  irony  and  troubled 
voluptuousness. 

Baudelaire  is  a  masculine  poet.  He  carved 
rather  than  sang;  the  plastic  arts  spoke  to  his 
soul.  A  lover  and  maker  of  images.  Like  Poe, 
his  emotions  transformed  themselves  into  ideas. 
Bourget  classified  him  as  mystic,  libertine,  and 
97 


EGOISTS 

analyst.  He  was  born  with  a  wound  in  his  soul, 
to  use  the  phrase  of  Pere  Lacordaire.  (Curi- 
ously enough,  he  actually  contemplated,  in  1861, 
becoming  a  candidate  for  Lacordaire's  vacant  seat 
in  the  French  Academy.  Sainte-Beuve  dissuaded 
him  from  this  folly.)  Recall  Baudelaire's  prayer: 
"Thou,  O  Lord,  my  God,  grant  me  the  grace  to 
produce  some  fine  lines  which  will  prove  to  my- 
self that  I  am  not  the  last  of  men,  that  I  am  not  in- 
ferior to  those  I  contemn."  Individualist,  egoist, 
anarchist,  his  only  thought  was  of  letters.  Jules 
Laforgue  thus  described  Baudelaire:  "Cat,  Hin- 
doo, Yankee,  Episcopal,  alchemist."  Yes,  an 
alchemist  who  suffocated  in  the  fumes  he  created. 
He  was  of  Gothic  imagination,  and  could  have 
said  with  RoUa:  Je  suis  venu  trop  tard  dans 
un  monde  trop  vieux.  He  had  an  unassuaged 
thirst  for  the  absolute.  The  human  soul  was  his 
stage,  he  its  interpreting  orchestra. 

In  1857  The  Flowers  of  Evil  was  published  by 
the  devoted  Poulet-Malassis,  who  afterward  went 
into  bankruptcy  —  a  warning  to  publishers  with 
a  taste  for  fine  literature.  The  titles  contemplated 
were  Limbes,  or  Lesbiennes.  Hippolyte  Babou 
suggested  the  one  we  know.  These  poems  were 
suppressed  on  account  of  six,  and  poet  and  pub- 
lisher summoned.  As  the  municipal  government 
had  made  a  particular  ass  of  itself  in  the  prose- 
cution of  Gustave  Flaubert  and  his  Madame 
Bovary,  the  Baudelaire  matter  was  disposed  of 
in  haste.  He  was  condemned  to  a  fine  of  three 
hundred  francs,  a  fine  which  was  never  paid,  as 

98 


THE  BAUDELAIRE   LEGEND 

the  objectionable  poems  were  removed.  They 
were  printed  in  the  Belgian  edition,  and  may  be 
read  in  the  new  volume  of  (Euvres  Posthumes. 

Baudelaire  was  infuriated  over  the  judgment, 
for  he  knew  that  his  book  was  dramatic  in  ex- 
pression. He  had  expected,  like  Flaubert,  to 
emerge  from  the  trial  with  flying  colours;  to  be 
classed  as  one  who  wrote  objectionable  literature 
was  a  shock.  "Flaubert  had  the  Empress  back 
of  him,"  he  complained;  which  was  true;  the 
Empress  Eugenie,  also  the  Princess  Mathilde. 
But  he  worked  as  ever  and  put  forth  those  polished 
intaglios  called  Poems  in  Prose,  for  the  form  of 
which  he  had  taken  a  hint  from  Aloys  Bertrand's 
Gaspard  de  la  Nuit.  He  filled  this  form  with  a  new 
content;  not  alone  pictures,  but  moods,  are  to  be 
found  in  these  miniatures.  Pity  is  their  keynote, 
a  tenderness  for  the  abject  and  lowly,  a  revelation 
of  sensibility  that  surprised  those  critics  who  had 
discerned  in  Baudelaire  only  a  sculptor  of  evil. 
In  one  of  his  poems  he  described  a  landscape  of 
metal,  of  marble  and  water;  a  babel  of  staircases 
and  arcades,  a  palace  of  infinity,  surrounded  by 
the  silence  of  eternity.  This  depressing  yet 
magical  dream  was  utilised  by  Huysmans  in  his 
A  Rebours.  But  in  the  tiny  landscapes  of  the 
Prose  Poems  there  is  nothing  rigid  or  artificial. 
Indeed,  the  poet's  deliberate  attitude  of  artificiality 
is  dropped.  He  is  human.  Not  that  the  deep 
fundamental  note  of  humanity  is  ever  absent  in 
his  poems;  the  eternal  diapason  is  there  even  when 
least  overheard.  Baudelaire  is  more  human  than 
99 


EGOISTS 

Poe.  His  range  of  sympathy  is  wider.  In  this 
he  transcends  him  as  a  poet,  though  his  subject- 
matter  often  issues  from  the  very  dregs  of  life. 
Brother  to  pitiable  wanderers,  there  is,  never- 
theless, no  trace  of  cant,  no  "Russian  pity"  a 
la  Dostoievsky,  no  humanitarian  or  socialistic 
rhapsodies  in  his  work.  Baudelaire  is  an  egoist. 
He  hated  the  sentimental  sapping  of  altruism.  His 
prose-poem.  Crowds,  with  its  "bath  of  multitude," 
may  have  been  suggested  by  Poe;  but  in  Charles 
Lamb  we  find  the  idea:  "Are  there  no  solitudes 
out  of  caves  and  the  desert  ?  or,  cannot  the  heart, 
in  the  midst  of  crowds,  feel  frightfully  alone?" 

His  best  critical  work  is  the  Richard  Wagner 
and  Tannhauser,  a  more  significant  essay  than 
Nietzsche's  Richard  Wagner  in  Bayreuth;  Bau- 
delaire's polemic  appeared  at  a  more  critical 
period  in  Wagner's  career.  Wagner  sent  a  brief, 
hearty  letter  of  thanks  to  the  critic  and  made  his 
acquaintance.  To  Wagner  Baudelaire  intro- 
duced a  young  Wagnerian,  Villiers  de  I'lsle 
Adam.  This  Wagner  letter  is  included  in  the 
volume  of  Crepet;  but  there  are  no  letters  pub- 
lished from  Baudelaire  to  Franz  Liszt,  though  they 
were  friends.  In  Weimar  I  saw  at  the  Liszt  house 
several  from  Baudelaire  which  should  have  been 
included  in  the  Letters.  The  poet  understood 
Liszt  and  his  reforms  as  he  understood  Wagner's. 
The  German  composer  admired  the  French  poet, 
and  his  Kundry,  of  the  sultry  second  act,  Parsifal, 
has  a  Baudelairian  hue,  especiallv  in  the  tempta- 
tion scene. 

ICO 


THE   BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

The  end  was  at  hand.  Baudelaire  had  been 
steadily,  rather,  unsteadily,  going  downhill;  a 
desperate  figure,  a  dandy  in  shabby  attire.  He 
went  out  only  after  dark,  he  haunted  the  exterior 
boulevards,  associated  with  birds  of  nocturnal 
plumage.  He  drank  without  thirst,  ate  without 
hunger,  as  he  has  said.  A  woeful  decadence  for 
this  aristocrat  of  life  and  letters.  Most  sorrow- 
ful of  sinners,  his  morose  delectation  scourged 
his  nerves  and  extorted  the  darkest  music  from 
his  lyre.  He  fled  to  Brussels,  there  to  rehabili- 
tate his  dwindling  fortunes.  He  gave  a  few  lec- 
tures, and  met  Rops,  Lemonnier,  drank  to 
forget,  and  forgot  to  work.  He  abused  Brussels, 
Belgium,  its  people.  A  country  where  the  trees 
are  black,  the  flowers  without  odour,  and  where 
there  is  no  conversation.  He,  the  brilliant  causeur, 
the  chief  blaguer  of  a  circle  in  which  young 
James  McNeill  Whistler  was  reduced  to  the  role 
of  a  listener  —  this  most  spirituel  among  artists 
found  himself  a  failure  in  the  Belgium  capital.  It 
may  not  be  amiss  to  remind  ourselves  that  Baude- 
laire was  the  creator  of  most  of  the  paradoxes 
attributed,  not  only  to  Whistler,  but  to  an  entire 
school  —  if  one  may  employ  such  a  phrase.  The 
frozen  imperturbability  of  the  poet,  his  cutting 
enunciation,  his  power  of  blasphemy,  his  hatred 
of  Nature,  his  love  of  the  artificial,  have  been 
copied  by  the  aesthetic  blades  of  our  day.  He 
it  was  who  first  taunted  Nature  with  being  an 
imitator  of  art,  with  being  always  the  same. 
Oh,  the  imitative    sunsets!    Oh,  the  quotidian 

lOI 


EGOISTS 

eating  and  drinking!  And  as  pessimist,  too, 
he  led  the  mode.  Baudelaire,  like  Flaubert, 
grasped  the  murky  torch  of  pessimism  once 
held  by  Chateaubriand,  Benjamin  Constant, 
and  Senancour.  Doubtless  all  this  stemmed 
from  Byronism.  To-day  it  is  all  as  stale  as  By- 
ronism. 

His  health  failed  rapidly,  and  he  didn't  have 
money  enough  to  pay  for  doctor's  prescriptions; 
he  owed  for  the  room  in  his  hotel.  At  Namur, 
where  he  was  visiting  the  father-in-law  of  Felicien 
Rops  (March,  1866),  he  suffered  from  an  at- 
tack of  paralysis.  He  was  removed  to  Brussels. 
His  mother,  who  lived  at  Honfieur,  in  mourning 
for  her  husband,  came  to  his  aid.  Taken  to 
France,  he  was  placed  in  a  sanatorium.  Aphasia 
set  in.  He  could  only  ejaculate  a  mild  oath,  and 
when  he  caught  sight  of  himself  in  the  mirror  he 
would  bow  pleasantly  as  if  to  a  stranger.  His 
friends  rallied,  and  they  were  among  the  most 
distinguished  people  in  Paris,  the  elite  of  souls. 
Ladies  visited  him,  one  or  two  playing  Wagner 
on  the  piano  —  which  must  have  added  a  fresh 
nuance  to  death  —  and  they  brought  him  flowers. 
He  expressed  his  love  for  flowers  and  music  to  the 
last.  He  could  not  bear  the  sight  of  his  mother; 
she  revived  in  him  some  painful  memories,  but 
that  passed,  and  he  clamoured  for  her  when  she 
was  absent.  If  anyone  mentioned  the  names  of 
Wagner  or  Manet,  he  smiled.  Madame  Sabatier 
came;  so  did  the  Manets.  And  with  a  fixed  stare, 
as  if  peering  through  some  invisible  window  open- 
102 


THE  BAUDELAIRE  LEGEND 

ing   upon   eternity,   he   died,   August  31,    1867, 
aged  forty-six. 

Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  himself  a  Satanist  and 
dandy  (oh,  those  comical  old  attitudes  of  litera- 
ture!), had  prophesied  that  the  author  of  Fleurs  du 
Mai  would  either  blow  out  his  brains  or  prostrate 
himself  at  the  foot  of  the  cross.  (Later  he  said 
the  same  of  Huysmans.)  Baudelaire  had  the 
latter  course  forced  upon  him  by  fate  after  he 
had  attempted  spiritual  suicide  for  how  many 
years?  (He  once  tried  actual  suicide,  but  the 
slight  cut  in  his  throat  looked  so  ugly  that  he  went 
no  farther.)  His  soul  had  been  a  battle-field 
for  the  powers  of  good  and  evil.  That  at  the 
end  he  brought  the  wreck  of  both  soul  and  body 
to  his  God  is  not  a  subject  of  comment.  He 
was  an  extraordinary  poet  with  a  bad  conscience, 
who  lived  miserably  and  was  buried  with  honours. 
Then  it  was  that  his  worth  was  discovered  (funeral 
orations  over  a  genius  are  a  species  of  public 
staircase  wit).  His  reputation  waxes  with  the 
years.  He  is  an  exotic  gem  in  the  crown  of 
French  poetry.  Of  him  Swinburne  has  chanted 
Ave  Atque  Vale: 

Shall  I  strew  on  thee  rose  or  rue  or  laurel, 
Brother,  on  this  that  was  the  veil  of  thee? 


103 


Ill 

THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

Ah,  did  you  once  see  Shelley  plain, 
And  did  he  stop  and  speak  to  you  .  .  . 


It  was  some  time  in  the  late  spring  or  early 
summer  of  1879.  I  was  going  through  the 
Chaussee  d'Antin  when  a  huge  man,  a  terrific 
old  man,  passed  me.  His  long  straggling  gray 
hair  hung  low.  His  red  face  was  that  of  a  soldier 
or  a  sheik,  and  was  divided  by  drooping  white 
moustaches.  A  trumpet  was  his  voice,  and  he 
gesticulated  freely  to  the  friend  who  accompanied 
him.  I  did  not  look  at  him  with  any  particular 
interest  until  some  one  behind  me  —  if  he  be 
dead  now  may  he  be  eternally  blest!  —  exclaimed: 
'X'est  Flaubert!"  Then  I  stared;  for  though  I 
had  not  read  Madame  Bovary  I  adored  the 
verbal  music  of  Salammbo,  secretly  believing, 
however,  that  it  had  been  written  by  Melchior, 
one  of  the  three  Wise  Kings  who  journeyed  under 
the  beckoning  star  of  Bethlehem  —  how  else  ac- 
count for  its  planturous  Asiatic  prose,  for  its  evo- 
cations of  a  vanished  past  ?  But  I  knew  the  name 
104 


THE  REAL   FLAUBERT 

of  Flaubert,  that  magic  collocation  of  letters,  and 
I  gazed  at  him.  He  returned  my  glance  from 
prominent  eyeballs,  the  colour  of  the  pupil  a  bit 
of  faded  blue  sky.  He  did  not  smile.  He  was 
too  tender-hearted,  despite  his  appreciation  of  the 
absurd.  Besides,  he  knew,  He,  too,  had  been 
young  and  foolish.  He,  too,  had  worn  a  velvet 
coat  and  a  comical  cap,  and  had  dreamed.  I 
must  have  been  a  ridiculous  spectacle.  My  hair 
was  longer  than  my  technique.  I  was  studying 
Chopin  or  lunar  rainbows  then  —  I  have  forgotten 
which  —  and  fancied  that  to  be  an  artist  one  must 
dress  like  a  cross  between  a  brigand  and  a  studio 
model.  But  I  was  happy.  Perhaps  Flaubert 
knew  this,  for  he  resisted  the  temptation  to  smile. 
And  then  he  passed  from  my  view.  To  be  frank,  I 
was  not  very  much  impressed,  because  earlier 
in  the  day  I  had  seen  Paul  de  Cassagnac  and  that 
famous  duellist  was  romantic-looking,  which  the 
old  Colossus  of  Croisset  was  not.  When  I  re- 
turned to  the  Batignolles  I  told  the  concierge  of 
my  day's  outing. 

''Ah!"  he  remarked,  "M.  Flaubert!  M.  Paul 
de  Cassagnac!  —  a  great  man,  Monsieur  P-paul!" 
He  stuttered  a  little.  Now  I  only  remember 
''M.  Flaubert,"  with  his  eyes  like  a  bit  of  faded 
blue  sky.  Was  it  a  dream?  Was  it  Flaubert? 
Did  some  stranger  cruelly  deceive  me?  But  I'll 
never  relinquish  the  memory  of  my  glorious  mirage. 

Where  was  he  going,  Gustave  Flaubert,  on  that 
sunny  afternoon?  It  was  at  the  time  when  Jules 
Ferry  appointed  him  an  assistant-librarian  at 
105 


EGOISTS 

the  Mazarine;  hors  cadre,  a  sinecure,  a  veiled 
pension  with  3,000  francs  a  year;  a  charity,  as  the 
great  writer  bitterly  complained.  He  was  poor. 
He  had  given  up,  without  a  murmur,  his  entire 
fortune  to  his  niece,  then  Madame  Caroline  Com- 
malnville,  and  through  the  influence  of  Turgenev 
and  a  few  others  this  position  had  been  created 
for  him.  He  had  no  duties,  yet  he  insisted  on 
arriving  at  his  post  as  early  as  half-past  seven  in 
the  morning.  He  planned  later  that  the  govern- 
ment should  be  reimbursed  for  its  outlay.  His 
brother,  Dr.  Achille  Flaubert,  of  Rouen,  gave  him 
a  similar  allowance,  so  the  unhappy  man  had 
enough  to  live  upon.  Perhaps  he  was  going  to 
the  Gare  Saint-Lazare  to  take  a  train  for  Crois- 
set;  perhaps  he  was  starting  for  Ancient  Corinth 
—  I  thought  —  to  see  once  more  his  Salammb6 
veiled  by  the  sacred  Zaimph;  or  he  might  have 
been  on  the  point  of  departing  for  Taprobana,  the 
Ceylon  of  the  antique  world;  that  island  whose  very 
name  he  repeated  with  the  same  pleasure  as  did  the 
old  woman  the  blessed  name  of  "  Mesopotamia. '* 
Taprobana!  Taprobana!  would  cry  Gustave 
Flaubert,  to  the  despair  of  his  friends.  He  was  a 
man  in  love  with  beautiful  sounds.  He  filled  his 
books  with  them  and  with  beautiful  pictures.  You 
must  go  to  Beethoven  or  Liszt  for  a  like  variety  in 
rhythms;  the  Flaubertian  prose  rhythms  change  in 
every  sentence,  like  a  landscape  alternately  swept 
by  sunlight  or  shadowed  by  clouds.  They  vary 
with  the  moods  and  movements  of  the  characters. 
They  are  music  for  ear  and  eye.  And  they  can 
106 


«  >>/*,/    ^'Jit  ^i^^   h,^i^    ^u^ 

/»W-   *    V»v,,     /*/^    i/^>."^     >•    ^-^^ 


^V^ 


k 


Fac-sinule  of  an  unpublished  Flaubert  letter. 
107 


EGOISTS 

never  be  translated.  He  is  poet,  painter,  and 
composer,  and  he  is  the  most  artistic  of  novelists. 
If  his  work  is  deficient  in  sentiment;  if  he  fails  to 
strike  the  chords  of  pity  of  Dostoievsky,  Turgenev, 
and  Tolstoy;  if  he  lacks  the  teeming  variety  of  Bal- 
zac, he  is  superior  to  them  all  as  an  artist.  Because 
of  his  stern  theories  of  art,  he  renounced  the  facile 
victories  of  sentimentalism.  He  does  not  invite 
his  readers  to  smile  or  weep  with  him.  He  is  not 
a  manipulator  of  marionettes.  And  he  can  com- 
press in  a  page  more  than  Balzac  in  a  volume.  In 
part  he  derives  from  Chateaubriand,  Gautier,  and 
Hugo,  and  he  was  a  lover  of  Rabelais,  Shakespeare, 
and  Montaigne.  His  psychology  is  simple;  he 
believed  that  character  should  express  itself  by 
action.  His  landscapes  in  the  Dutch,  "tight," 
miniature  style,  or  the  large,  luminous,  "loose" 
manner  of  Hobbema;  or  again  full  of  the  silver 
repose  of  Claude  and  the  dark  romantic  beauty 
of  Rousseau  —  witness  the  forest  of  Fontaine- 
bleau  in  Sentimental  Education  —  are  ravishing. 
He  has  painted  interiors  incomparably  —  this 
novel  is  filled  with  them:  balls,  cafe-life,  political 
meetings,  receptions,  ladies  in  their  drawing- 
rooms,  Meissonier-like  virtuosity  in  details  or  the 
bourgeois  elegance  of  Alfred  Stevens.  As  a  por- 
traitist Flaubert  recalls  Velasquez,  Rembrandt, 
or  Hals,  and  not  a  little  of  the  diablerie  to  be  found 
in  the  Flemish  masters  of  grotesque.  Emma 
Bovary  is  the  most  perfectly  finished  portrait  in 
fiction  and  Fr^ddric  Moreau  is  nearly  as  life-like 
—  the  eternal  middle-class  Young  Man.  Madame 
io8 


THE   REAL   FLAUBERT 

Arnoux,  chiefly  rendered  by  marvellous  evasions, 
is  in  the  clear-obscure  of  Rembrandt.  Homais 
stands  alone,  a  subject  the  delineation  of  which 
Swift  would  have  envied.  And  Rosannette  Bron 
—  the  truest  record  of  her  class  ever  depicted,  and 
during  the  same  decade  that  saw  the  odious  senti- 
mental and  false  Camille.  Or  Salome  in  Herodias, 
that  vision,  cruel,  feline,  exquisite,  which  lesser 
writers  have  sought  vainly  to  imitate.  (Gustavo 
Moreau  alone  transposed  her  to  paint — Moreau, 
too,  was  a  cenobite  of  art.)  Or  Felicite  in  Trois 
Contes.  Or  the  perpetual  journalist,  Hussonet, 
the  swaggering  politician,  Regimbart,  Pellerin, 
the  dilettante  painter,  the  socialist,  Senecal,  and 
Arnoux,  the  immortal  charlatan.  Whatever  sub- 
ject Flaubert  attacked,  a  masterpiece  emerged. 
He  left  few  books;  each  represents  the  pinnacle 
of  its  genre:  Bovary,  Salammbo,  Sentimental 
Education,  Herodias,  Bouvard  and  Pdcuchet  — 
this  last-named  an  epitome  of  human  stupidity. 
Not  an  original  philosophic  intellect,  neverthe- 
less a  philosophy  has  been  drawn  from  Flaubert's 
work  by  the  brilliant  French  philosopher  Jules 
Gaultier,  who  defines  Bovaryisme  as  that  ten- 
dency in  mankind  to  appear  other  than  it  is; 
a  tendency  which  is  an  important  factor  in  our 
mental  and  social  evolution.  Without  illusions 
mankind  would  take  to  the  trees,  the  abode,  we 
are  told,  of  our  prehistoric  arboreal  ancestors. 
Nevertheless,  Emma  Bovary  as  a  philosophic 
symbol  would  have  greatly  astonished  Gustavo 
Flaubert. 

109 


EGOISTS 


II 


"Since  Goethe,"  might  be  a  capital  title  for  an 
essay  on  the  epics  that  were  written  after  the  death 
of  the  noblest  German  of  them  all.  The  list 
would  be  small.  In  France  there  are  only  the 
rather  barren  rhetorical  exercise  of  Edgar  Qui- 
net's  Ahasverus,  the  surging  insurrectionary  poems 
of  Hugo,  and  the  faultlessly  frigid  performance 
of  Leconte  de  Lisle.  But  a  work  of  such  heroic 
power  and  proportions  as  Faust  there  is  not,  ex- 
cept Flaubert's  Temptation  of  Saint  Antony, 
which  is  so  impregnated  by  the  Faustian  spirit  — 
though  poles  apart  from  the  German  poem  in  its 
development  —  that,  when  we  hear  the  youthful 
Gustave  was  a  passionate  admirer  and  student  of 
Goethe,  even  addressing  a  long  poem  in  alexan- 
drines to  his  memory,  we  are  not  surprised.  The 
real  Flaubert  is  only  beginning  to  be  revealed. 
His  four  volumes  of  correspondence,  his  single 
volume  of  letters  addressed  to  George  Sand,  and 
the  recently  published  letters  to  his  niece  Caroline 
—  now  Madame  Franklin  Grout  of  Antibes  — 
have  shown  us  a  very  different  Flaubert  from  the 
legend  chiefly  created  by  Maxime  du  Camp. 
Dr.  Felix  Dumesnil,  in  his  remarkable  study,  has 
told  us  of  the  Rouen  master's  neurasthenia  and 
has  utterly  disproved  Du  Camp's  malicious  yarns 
about  epilepsy.  Above  all,  Flaubert's  devotion 
to  Goethe  and  the  recent  publication  of  the  first 
version  of  his  Saint  Antony  have  presented  a 
no 


THE   REAL   FLAUBERT 

novel  picture  of  his  personality.  We  now  know 
that,  striving  to  become  impersonal  in  art,  he  is 
personal  and  present  in  every  page  he  ever  wrote; 
furthermore  that,  despite  his  incessant  clamours 
and  complaints,  he,  in  reality,  loved  his  galley- 
like, self-imposed  labours. 

The  Temptation  of  Saint  Antony  is  the  only 
modern  poem  of  epical  largeness  that  may  be 
classed  with  Brand  or  Zarathustra.  It  recalls 
at  times  the  Second  Part  of  Faust  in  its  sweep  and 
grandeur,  in  its  grandiose  visions;  but  though  it  is 
superior  in  verbal  beauty  it  falls  short  of  Goethe 
in  its  presentation  of  the  problems  of  human  will. 
Faust  is  a  man  who  wills;  Antony  is  static,  not 
dynamic;  the  one  is  tempted  by  the  Devil  and 
succumbs,  but  does  not  lose  his  soul;  Flaubert's 
hermit  resists  the  Devil  at  his  subtlest,  yet  we  do 
not  feel  that  his  soul  is  as  much  worth  the  saving 
as  Faust's.  Ideas  are  the  heroes  in  Flaubert's 
prose  epic.  Saint  Antony  is  a  metaphysical 
drama,  not  a  human  one  like  Faust;  neverthe- 
less, to  Faust  alone  may  we  compare  it. 

Flaubert  was  born  at  Rouen,  December  12, 
1821,  where  he  died  May  18,  1880.  That  he 
practically  passed  his  years  at  Croisset,  his  moth- 
er's home,  below  Rouen  facing  the  Seine,  and  in 
his  study  toiling  like  a  titan  over  his  books,  should 
be  recorded  in  every  text-book  of  literature.  For 
he  is  the  patron-saint  of  all  true  literary  men. 
He  had  a  comfortable  income.  He  thought, 
talked,  lived  literature.  His  friends  Du  Camp, 
Louis  Bouilhet,  Turgenev,  Taine,  Baudelaire, 
III 


EGOISTS 

Zola,  the  Goncourts,  Daudet,  Renan,  Maupassant, 
Henry  James,  have  testified  to  his  absorption  in 
his  art.  It  is  almost  touching  in  these  times  when 
a  man  goes  into  the  writing  business  as  if  vend- 
ing tripe,  to  recall  the  example  of  Flaubert  for 
whom  art  was  more  sacred  than  religion.  Natu- 
rally, he  has  been  proved  by  the  madhouse  doctors 
to  have  been  half  cracked.  Perhaps  he  was  not 
as  sane  as  a  stockbroker,  but  it  takes  all  sorts  to 
make  a  world  and  a  writer  of  Flaubert's  rank 
should  not  be  weighed  in  the  same  scales  with, 
say,  a  successful  politician. 

He  was  endowed  with  a  nervous  temperament, 
though  up  to  his  twenty-second  year  he  was  as 
handsome  and  as  free  from  sickness  as  a  god.  He 
was  very  tall  and  his  eyes  were  sea-green.  A 
nervous  crisis  supervened  and  at  wide  intervals 
returned.  It  was  almost  fatal  for  Gustave.  He 
became  pessimistic  and  afraid  of  life.  However, 
the  talk  of  his  habitual  truculent  pessimism  has 
been  exaggerated.  Naturally  optimistic,  with  a 
powerful  constitution  and  a  stout  heart,  he  worked 
like  the  Trojan  he  was.  His  pessimism  came 
with  the  years  during  his  boyhood  —  Byronic 
literary  spleen  was  in  the  air.  He  was  a  grumbler 
and  rather  overdid  the  peevish  pose.  As  Zola 
asked:  "What  if  he  had  been  forced  to  earn  his 
living  by  writing?"  But,  even  in  his  blackest 
moods,  he  was  glad  to  see  his  friends  at  Croisset, 
glad  to  go  up  to  Paris  for  recreation.  His  let- 
ters, so  free,  fluent,  explosive,  give  us  the  true 
Flaubert  who  childishly  roared  yet  was  so  hearty, 

112 


THE  REAL   FLAUBERT 

so  friendly,  so  loving  to  his  mother,  niece,  and 
intimates.  His  heredity  was  puzzling.  His  father 
was,  like  Baudelaire's  grandfather,  of  Champe- 
nois  stock;  bourgeois,  steady,  a  renowned  surgeon. 
From  him  Gustave  inherited  his  taste  for  all  that 
pertained  to  medicine  and  science.  Recall  his 
escapades  as  a  boy  when  he  would  peep  for  hours 
into  the  dissecting-room  of  the  Rouen  hospital. 
Such  matters  fascinated  him.  He  knew  more 
about  the  theory  and  practice  of  medicine  than 
many  professional  men.  An  air  of  mortality  ex- 
hales from  his  pages.  He  is  in  Madame  Bovary 
the  keen  soul-surgeon.  His  love  of  a  quiet,  sober 
existence  came  to  him  from  his  father.  He  clung 
to  one  house  for  nearly  a  half  century.  He  has 
said  that  one  must  live  like  a  bourgeois  and  think 
like  an  artist;  to  be  ascetic  in  life  and  violent  in 
art  —  that  was  a  Flaubert  maxim.  "I  live  only 
in  my  ideas,"  he  wrote.  But  from  the  mother's 
side,  a  Norman  and  aristocrat  she  was,  he  inherited 
his  love  of  art,  his  disdain  for  philistines,  his  ad- 
venturous disposition  —  transposed  because  of 
his  malady  to  the  cerebral  region,  to  his  imagina- 
tion. He  boasted  Canadian  blood,  "red  skin," 
he  called  it,  but  that  was  merely  a  mystification. 
The  dissonance  of  temperament  made  itself  felt 
early.  He  was  the  man  of  Goethe  with  two  spirits 
struggling  within  him.  Dual  in  temperament,  he 
swxmg  from  an  almost  barbaric  Romanticism  to 
a  cruel  analysis  of  life  that  made  him  the  pontiff 
of  the  Realistic  school.  He  hated  realism,  yet  an 
inner  force  set  him  to  the  disagreeable  task  of 
113 


EGOISTS 

writing  Madame  Bovary  and  Sentimental  Edu- 
cation —  the  latter,  with  its  daylight  atmosphere, 
the  supreme  exemplar  of  realism  in  fiction.  So 
was  it  with  his  interior  life.  He  was  a  mystic  who 
no  longer  believed.  These  dislocations  of  his 
personality  he  combated  all  his  life,  and  his  books 
show  with  what  success.  ''Flaubert,"  wrote 
Turgenev,  his  closest  friend,  to  George  Sand, 
"has  tenacity  without  energy,  just  as  he  has  self- 
love  without  vanity."     But  what  tenacity! 

Touching  on  the  question  of  epilepsy,  a  careful 
reading  of  Dumesnil  convinces  anyone,  but  the 
neurologist  with  a  fixed  idea,  that  Flaubert  was 
not  a  sufferer  from  genuine  epilepsy.  Not  that 
there  is  any  reason  why  epilepsy  and  genius  should 
be  divorced;  we  know  in  many  cases  the  contrary 
is  the  reverse.  Take  the  case  of  Dostoievsky  — 
his  epilepsy  was  one  of  the  most  fruitful  of  motives 
in  his  stories.  Nearly  all  his  heroes  and  heroines 
are  attainted.  (Read  The  Idiot  or  the  Karamsoff 
Brothers.)  But  Flaubert's  epilepsy  was  arranged 
for  him  by  Du  Camp,  who  thought  that  by  calling 
him  an  epilept  in  his  untrustworthy  Memoirs  he 
would  belittle  Flaubert.  And  he  did,  for  in  his 
time  the  now  celebrated  —  and  discredited  — 
theory  of  genius  and  its  correlation  with  the  falling- 
sickness  had  not  been  propounded.  Flaubert 
had  hystero-neurasthenia.  He  was  rheumatic, 
asthmatic,  predisposed  to  arterio-sclerosis  and 
apoplexy.  He  died  of  an  apoplectic  stroke.  His 
early  nervous  fits  were  without  the  aura  of  epilepsy; 
he  did  not  froth  at  the  mouth  nor  were  there  mus- 
114 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

cular  contractions;  not  even  at  his  death.  Dr. 
Toumeaux,  who  hastened  to  aid  him  in  the  ab- 
sence of  his  regular  physician,  Dr.  Fortin,  denied 
the  rumours  of  epilepsy  that  were  so  gaily  spread 
by  that  sublime  old  gossip,  Edmond  de  Goncourt, 
also  by  Zola  and  Du  Camp.  The  contraction  of 
Flaubert's  hands  was  caused  by  the  rigidity  of 
death;  most  conclusive  of  all  evidence  against  the 
epileptic  theory  is  the  fact  that  during  his  oc- 
casional fits  Gustave  never  lost  consciousness. 
Nor  did  he  suffer  from  any  attacks  before  he  had 
attained  his  majority,  whereas  epilepsy  usually 
begins  at  an  early  age.  He  studied  with  intense 
zeal  his  malady  and  in  a  dozen  letters  refers  to  it, 
tickets  its  symptoms,  tells  of  plans  to  escape 
the  crises,  and  altogether,  has  furnished  students 
of  pathology  many  examples  of  nerve-exhaustion 
and  its  mitigation.  His  first  attacks  began  at 
Pont-Audemar,  in  1843.  In  1849  he  had  a  fresh 
attack.  His  trip  to  the  Orient  relieved  him. 
He  was  a  Viking,  a  full-blooded  man,  who  scorned 
sensible  hygiene;  he  took  no  exercise  beyond  a 
walk  in  the  morning,  a  walk  in  the  evening  on 
his  terrace,  and  in  summer  an  occasional  swim 
in  the  Seine.  He  ate  copiously,  was  moderate 
in  drinking,  smoked  fifteen  or  twenty  pipes  a 
day,  abused  black  coffee,  and  for  months  at  a 
stretch  worked  fifteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty- 
four  at  his  desk.  He  warned  his  disciple,  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  against  too  much  boating  as 
being  destructive  of  mental  productivity.  After 
Nietzsche  read  this  he  wrote:  "Sedentary  applica- 
115 


EGOISTS 

tion  is  the  very  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost.  Only 
thoughts  won  by  walking  are  valuable."  In  1870 
another  crisis  was  brought  on  by  protracted  la- 
bours over  the  revision  of  the  definitive  version  of 
the  Saint  Antony.  His  travels  in  Normandy,  in 
the  East,  his  visits  to  London  (185 1)  and  to  Righi- 
Kaltbad,  together  with  sojourns  in  Paris  —  where 
he  had  a  little  apartment  —  make  up  the  itinerary 
of  his  fifty-eight  years.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  he 
died  of  apoplexy,  stricken  at  his  desk,  he  of  a 
violently  sanguine  temperament,  bull-necked,  and 
the  blood  always  in  his  face  ? 

Maurice  Spronck,  who  took  too  seriously  the 
saying  of  Flaubert  —  a  lover  of  extravagant 
paradox  —  thinks  the  writer  had  a  cerebral  lesion, 
which  he  called  audition  coloree.  It  is  a  malady 
peculiar  to  imaginative  natures,  which  transposes 
tone  to  colour,  or  odour  to  sound.  As  this  "mal- 
ady" may  be  found  in  poets  from  the  dawn  of 
creation,  "coloured  audition"  must  be  a  necessary 
quality  of  art.  Flaubert  took  pains  to  exaggerate 
his  speech  when  in  company  with  the  Goncourts. 
He  suspected  their  diary-keeping  weakness  and 
he  humoured  it  by  telling  fibs  about  his  work. 
"I  have  finished  my  book,  the  cadence  of  the 
last  paragraph  has  been  found.  Now  I  shall 
write  it."  Aghast  were  the  brothers  at  the  idea 
of  an  author  beginning  his  book  backward. 
Flaubert  boasted  that  the  colour  of  Salammbo 
was  purple.  Sentimental  Education  (a  bad 
title,  as  Turgenev  wrote  him;  Withered  Fruits,  his 
first  title,  would  have  been  better)  was  gray,  and 
116 


THE   REAL  FLAUBERT 

Madame  Bovary  was  for  him  like  the  colouring 
of  certain  mouldy  wood-vermin.  The  Goncourts 
solemnly  swallowed  all  this,  as  did  M.  Spronck. 
Which  moved  Anatole  France  to  exclaim:  *'0h 
these  young  clinicians!" 

But  what  is  all  this  when  compared  with  the 
magnificent  idiocy  of  Du  Camp,  who  asserted  that 
if  Flaubert  had  not  suffered  from  epilepsy  he 
would  have  become  a  genius!  Henaurme!  as  the 
man  who  made  such  masterpieces  as  Madame 
Bovary,  Sentimental  Education,  Temptation  of 
Saint  Antony,  the  Three  Tales,  Bouvard  et  P6- 
cuchet,  had  a  comical  habit  of  exclaiming. 
Enormous,  too,  was  Guy  de  Maupassant's  man- 
ner of  avenging  his  master's  memory.  In  the 
final  edition  —  eight  volumes  long  —  Maupassant, 
with  the  unerring  eye  of  hatred,  affixed  an  intro- 
duction to  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet.  Therein  he 
printed  Maxime  du  Camp's  letters  to  Flaubert 
during  the  period  when  Madame  Bovary  was 
appearing  in  the  Revue  de  Paris.  Du  Camp 
was  one  of  its  editors.  He  urged  Flaubert  to 
cut  the  novel  —  the  concision  of  which  is  so  ad- 
mirable, the  organic  quality  of  which  is  absolute. 
Worse  still  remains.  If  Flaubert  couldn't  per- 
form the  operation  himself,  then  the  aforesaid 
Du  Camp  would  hire  some  experienced  hack  to 
do  it  for  the  sensitive  author;  wounded  vanity 
Du  Camp  believed  to  be  the  cause  of  indignant 
remonstrances.  They  eliminated  the  scene  of  the 
agricultural  fair  and  the  operation  on  the  hostler's 
foot — one  scene  as  marvellous  as  a  genre  paint- 
117 


EGOISTS 

ing  by  Teniers  with  its  study  of  the  old  farm 
servant,  and  psychologically  more  profound;  the 
other  necessary  to  the  development  of  the  story. 
Thus  Madame  Bovary  was  slaughtered  serially 
by  a  man  ignorant  of  art,  that  Madame  Bovary 
which  is  one  of  the  glories  of  French  literature, 
as  Mr.  James  truly  says.  Flaubert  scribbled  on 
Du  Camp's  letters  another  of  his  favourite  ex- 
pletives, Gigantesqiie!  Flaubert  never  forgave 
him,  but  they  were  apparently  reconciled  years 
later.  Du  Camp  went  into  the  Academy; 
Flaubert  refused  to  consider  a  candidacy,  though 
Victor  Hugo  —  wittily  nicknamed  by  Jules  La- 
forgue  ''Aristides  the  Just"  —  urged  him  to  do 
so.  Even  the  mighty  Balzac  was  too  avid  of 
glory  and  gold  for  Flaubert,  to  whom  art  and  its 
consolations  were  all-sufficing. 


Ill 


Bouvard  et  Pecuchet  was  never  finished.  Its 
increasing  demands  killed  Flaubert.  In  his  desk 
were  found  many  cahiers  of  notes  taken  to  illus- 
trate the  fatuity  of  mankind,  its  stupidity,  its 
b^Hse.  He  was  as  pitiless  as  Swift  or  Schopen- 
hauer in  his  contempt  for  low  ideals  and  vulgar 
pretensions,  for  the  very  bourgeois  from  whom 
he  sprung.  In  the  collection  we  find  this  gem  of 
wisdom  uttered  by  Louis  Napoleon  in  1865: 
"The  richness  of  a  country  depends  on  its  gen- 
eral prosperity."  To  it  should  be  included  the 
Homais-like  dictum  of  Maxime  du  Camp  that 
118 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

if  Flaubert  had  not  been  an  epilept  he  would 
have  been  a  genius!  Or,  the  following  hospital 
criticism;  Flaubert  was  denied  creative  ability! 
Who  has  denied  it  to  him?  Homais  alone  in  his 
supreme  asininity  should  be  a  beacon-light  of 
warning  for  any  one  of  these  inept  critics.  Flau- 
bert once  wrote:  "I  am  reading  books  on  hygiene; 
how  comical  they  are!  What  impertinence  these 
physicians  have!  What  asses  for  the  most  part 
they  are!"  And  he,  the  son  of  a  celebrated  sur- 
geon and  the  brother  of  another,  a  medical 
student  himself,  might  have  made  Homais  a 
psychiatrist  instead  of  a  druggist,  if  he  had  lived 
longer. 

Du  Camp — who,  clever  and  witty  as  well  as  in- 
exact and  reckless  in  statement,  was  a  man  given 
to  envies  and  literary  jealousies  —  never  got 
over  Flaubert's  startling  success  with  Madame 
Bovary.  He  once  wrote  a  fanciful  epitaph  for 
Louise  Colet,  a  French  woman  of  mediocrity,  the 
"Muse"  of  Flaubert,  a  general  trouble-breeder 
and  a  recipient  of  Flaubert's  correspondence.  The 
Colet  had  embroiled  herself  with  De  Musset  and 
published  a  spiteful  romance  in  which  poor 
Flaubert  was  the  villain.  This  the  Du  Camp 
inscription:  "Here  lies  the  woman  who  com- 
promised Victor  Cousin,  made  Alfred  de  Musset 
ridiculous,  calumniated  Gustave  Flaubert,  and 
tried  to  assassinate  Alphonse  Karr:  Requiescat 
in  pacey  A  like  epitaph  suggests  itself  for 
Maxime  du  Camp:  Hie  jacet  the  man  who 
slandered  Baudelaire,  traduced  his  loving  friend 
119 


EGOISTS 

Gustave  Flaubert,  and  was  snuffed  out  of  critical 
existence  by  Guy  de  Maupassant. 

The  massive-shouldered  Hercules,  Flaubert,  a 
Hercules  spinning  prose  for  his  exacting  Dejanira 
of  art,  was  called  unintelligent  by  Anatole  France. 
He  had  not,  it  is  true,  the  subtle  critical  brain  and 
thorough  scholarship  of  M.  France;  yet  Flaubert 
was  learned.  Brunetiere  even  taxed  him  with 
an  excess  of  erudition.  But  his  multitudinous 
conversation,  his  lack  of  logic,  his  rather  gross 
sense  of  humour,  are  not  to  be  found  in  his  work. 
Without  that  work,  without  Salammb6,  for  ex- 
ample, should  we  have  had  the  pleasure,  thrice- 
distilled,  of  reading  Anatole  France's  Thais  ?  (See 
a  single  instance  in  the  definitive  edition  Tempta- 
tion, page  115,  the  episode  of  the  Gymnosophist.) 
All  revivals  of  the  antique  world  are  unsatis- 
factory at  best,  whether  Chateaubriand's  Mar- 
tyrs, or  the  unsubstantial  lath  and  plaster  of 
Bulwer's  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  or  the  flab- 
biness  and  fustian  of  Quo  Vadis.  The  most 
perfect  attempt  is  Salammbo,  an  opera  in  words, 
and  its  battlements  of  purple  prose  were  rid- 
dled by  Sainte-Beuve,  by  Froehner,  and  lately 
by  Maurice  Pezard  —  who  has  proved  to  his 
own  satisfaction  that  Flaubert  was  sadly  amiss  in 
his  Punic  archaeology.  Well,  who  cares  if  he 
was  incorrect  in  details  ?  His  partially  successful 
reconstruction  of  an  epoch  is  admitted,  though 
the  human  element  is  somewhat  obliterated. 
Flaubert  was  bound  to  be  more  Carthaginian 
than  Carthage. 

120 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

After  the  scandal  caused  by  the  prosecution  of 
Madame  Bovary  Flaubert  was  afraid  to  publish 
his  1856,  second  version  of  Saint  Antony.  He  had 
been  advised  by  the  sapient  Du  Camp  to  cast  the 
manuscript  into  the  fire,  after  a  reading  before 
Bouilhet  and  Du  Camp  lasting  thirty-three  hours. 
He  refused.  This  was  in  September,  1849.  ^^ 
Camp  declares  that  he  asked  him  to  essay  "  the  De- 
launay  affair,"  meaning  the  Delamarre  story.  This 
Flaubert  did,  and  the  result  was  the  priceless  his- 
tory of  Charles  and  Emma  Bovary.  D'Aurevilly 
attacked  the  book  viciously;  Baudelaire  defended 
it.  Later  Turgenev  wrote  to  Flaubert:  "  After  all 
you  are  Flaubert!"  George  Sand  was  a  mother- 
ly consoler.  Their  letters  are  delightful.  She 
did  not  quite  understand  the  bluff,  naive  Gustave, 
she  who  composed  so  flowingly,  and  could  turn 
on  or  off  her  prose  like  the  tap  of  a  kitchen 
hydrant  (the  simile  is  her  own).  How  could  she 
fathom  the  tormented  desire  of  her  friend  for 
perfection,  for  the  blending  of  idea  and  image, 
for  the  eternal  pursuit  of  the  right  word,  the 
shapely  sentence,  the  cadenced  coda  of  a  para- 
graph? And  of  the  larger  demands  of  style,  of 
the  subtle  tone  of  a  page,  a  chapter,  a  book, 
why  should  this  fluent  and  graceful  writer,  called 
George  Sand,  concern  herself  with  such  super- 
fluities! It  was  always  O  altitudo  in  art  with 
Flaubert  —  the  most  copious,  careless  of  corre- 
spondents. He  had  set  for  himself  an  im- 
possible standard  of  perfection  and  an  ideal 
of  impersonality  neither  of  which  he  realized. 
121 


EGOISTS 

But  there  is  no  outward  sign  of  conflict  in  his 
work;  all  trace  of  the  labour  bestowed  upon  his 
paragraphs  is  absent.  His  style  is  simple,  direct, 
large,  above  all,  clear,  the  clarity  of  classic  prose. 

His  declaiming  aloud  his  sentences  has  been 
adduced  to  prove  his  absence  of  sanity.  Bee- 
thoven, too,  was  pronounced  crazy  by  his  various 
landladies  because  he  sang  and  howled  in  his 
voice  of  a  composer  his  compositions  in  the  ma- 
king. Flaubert  was  the  possessor  of  an  accurate 
musical  ear;  not  without  justice  did  Copp^e  call 
him  the  "Beethoven  of  French  prose."  His 
sense  of  rhythm  was  acute;  he  carried  it  so  far  that 
he  would  sacrifice  grammar  to  rhythmic  flow. 
He  tested  his  sentences  aloud.  Once  in  his  apart- 
ment, Rue  Murillo,  overlooking  Pare  Monceau,  he 
rehearsed  a  page  of  a  new  book  for  hours.  Be- 
lated coachmen,  noting  the  open  windows,  hearing 
an  outrageous  vocal  noise,  concluded  that  a  musi- 
cal soiree  was  in  progress.  Gradually  the  street 
filled  on  either  side  with  carriages  in  search  of 
passengers.  But  the  guests  never  emerged  from 
the  house.  In  the  early  morning  the  lights  were 
extinguished  and  the  oaths  of  the  disappointed 
ones  must  have  been  heard  by  Flaubert. 

He  would  annotate  three  hundred  volumes  for 
a  page  of  facts.  His  bump  of  scrupulousness  was 
large.  In  twenty  pages  he  sometimes  saved  three 
or  four  from  destruction.  He  did  not  become, 
however,  as  captious  as  Balzac  in  the  handling  of 
proofs.  A  martyr  of  style,  he  was  not  altogether 
an  enameller  in  precious  stones,  not  a  patient 

122 


THE   REAL   FLAUBERT 

mosaic-maker,  superimposing  here  and  there  a 
precious  verbal  jewel.  First,  the  image,  and  then 
its  appropriate  garb;  sometimes  image  and  phrase 
were  born  simultaneously,  as  was  the  case  with 
Richard  Wagner.  These  extraordinary  things 
may  happen  to  men  of  genius,  who  are  neither 
opium-eaters  nor  lunatics.  The  idea  that  Flau- 
bert was  ever  addicted  to  drugs  —  beyond  the  qui- 
nine with  which  his  good  father  dosed  him  after 
the  fashion  of  those  days  —  is  ridiculous.  The 
gorgeous  visions  of  Saint  Antony  are  the  results 
of  stupendous  preparatory  studies,  a  stupendous 
power  of  fantasy,  and  a  stupendous  concentration. 
Opium  superinduces  visions,  but  not  the  power 
and  faculty  of  attention  to  record  them  in  terms  of 
literature  for  forty  years.  George  Saintsbury 
has  pronounced  Saint  Antony  the  most  perfect 
specimen  of  dream  literature  extant.  And  be- 
cause of  its  precision  in  details,  its  architectonic, 
its  deep-hued  waking  hallucinations. 

Flaubert  was  a  very  nervous  man,  "  as  hysterical 
as  an  old  woman,"  said  Dr.  Hardy  of  the  hospital 
Saint-Louis,  but  neither  mad  nor  epileptic.  His 
mental  development  was  not  arrested  in  his  youth, 
as  asserted  by  Du  Camp;  he  had  arranged  his  life 
from  the  time  he  decided  to  become  a  writer. 
He  was  one  with  the  exotic  painter,  Gustave 
Moreau,  in  his  abhorrence  of  the  mob.  He  was  a 
poet  who  wrote  a  perfect  prose,  not  prose-poetry. 
Enamoured  of  the  antique,  of  the  Orient,  of 
mystical  subjects,  he  spent  a  lifetime  in  the  elabora- 
tion of  his  beloved  themes.  That  he  was  ob- 
123 


EGOISTS 

sessed  by  them  is  merely  to  say  that  he  was  the 
possessor  of  mental  energy  and  artistic  gifts.  He 
was  not  happy.  He  never  brought  his  interior 
and  exterior  lives  into  complete  harmony.  An 
unparalleled  observer,  an  imaginative  genius,  he 
was  a  child  outside  the  realm  of  art.  Soft  of 
heart,  he  raised  his  niece  as  a  daughter;  a  loving 
son,  he  would  console  himself  after  his  mother's 
death  by  looking  at  the  dresses  she  once  wore. 
Flaubert  a  sentimentalist!  He  outlived  his  fam- 
ily and  his  friends,  save  a  few;  death  was  never 
far  away  from  his  thoughts;  he  would  weep  over 
his  souvenirs.  At  Croisset  I  have  talked  with  the 
faithful  Colange,  whose  card  reads:  "E.  Colange, 
ex-cook  of  Gustave  Flaubert!"  The  affection  of 
the  novelist  for  cats  and  dogs,  he  told  me,  was 
marked.  The  study  pavilion  is  to-day  a  Flau- 
bert Memorial.  The  parent  house  is  gone,  and 
in  1 90 1  there  was  a  distillery  on  the  grounds, 
which  is  now  a  printing  establishment.  Flaubert 
cherished  the  notion  that  Pascal  had  once  stopped 
in  the  old  Croisset  homestead;  that  Abbe  Prevost 
had  written  Manon  Lescaut  within  its  walls.  He 
had  many  such  old-fashioned  and  darling  tics,  and 
he  is  to  be  envied  them. 

Since  Madame  Bovary  French  fiction,  for  the 
most  part,  has  been  Flaubert  with  variations.  His 
influence  is  still  incalculable.  Francois  Coppde 
wrote:  "By  the  extent  and  the  magnificence  of 
his  prose,  Gustave  Flaubert  equals  Bossuet  and 
Chateaubriand.  He  is  destined  to  become  a 
great  classic.  And  several  centuries  hence  —  ev- 
124 


THE   REAL  FLAUBERT 

erything  perishes  —  when  the  French  language 
shall  have  become  only  a  dead  language,  candi- 
dates for  the  bachelor's  degree  will  be  able  to 
obtain  it  only  by  expounding  (along  with  the 
famous  exordium,  He  Who  Reigns  in  the  Heavens, 
etc.,  or  The  Departure  of  the  Swallows,  of  Rene) 
the  portrait  of  Catharine  le  Roux,  the  farm 
servant,  in  Madame  B ovary,  or  the  episode  of  the 
Crucified  Lions  in  Salammbd." 


IV 


With  the  critical  taste  that  uncovers  bare  the 
bones  of  the  dead  I  have  no  concern,  nor  shall  I 
enter  the  way  which  would  lead  me  into  the 
dusty  region  of  professional  ethics.  Every  por- 
trait painter  from  Titian  to  John  Sargent,  from 
Velasquez  to  Zuloaga,  has  had  a  model.  Novel- 
ists are  no  less  honest  when  they  build  their  char- 
acters upon  human  beings  they  have  known  and 
studied,  whether  their  name  be  Fielding  or  Balzac 
or  Flaubert. 

The  curiosity  which  seeks  to  unveil  the  anonym- 
ity of  a  novelist's  personages  may  not  be  exactly 
laudable;  it  is  yet  excusable.  I  am  reminded  of 
its  existence  by  a  certain  Parisian  journalist  who, 
acting  upon  information  that  appeared  in  the 
pages  of  a  well-known  French  literary  review,  went 
to  Normandy  in  search  of  the  real  Emma  Bovary. 
Once  called  wicked,  the  novel  has  been  pronounced 
as  moral  as  a  Sunday-school  tract.  Thackeray 
admired  its  style,  but  deplored,  with  his  accus- 

12^ 


EGOISTS 

tomed  streak  of  sentimentalism,  the  cold-blooded 
analysis  which  hunted  Emma  to  an  ignominious 
grave.  Yet  the  author  of  Vanity  Fair  did  not 
hesitate  to  pursue  through  many  chapters  his 
mercurial  Rebecca  Sharp. 

The  story  of  Emma  Bovary  would  hardly  at- 
tract, if  published  in  the  daily  news  columns, 
much  attention  nowadays.  A  good-looking  young 
provincial  woman  tires  of  her  honest,  slow-going 
husband.  She  reads  silly  novels,  as  do  thousands 
of  silly  married  girls  to-day.  Emma  lived  in  a 
little  town  not  far  from  Rouen.  Flaubert  named 
it  Yonville.  We  read  that  Emma  flirted  with  a 
country  squire  who  in  order  to  escape  eloping  with 
the  romantic  goose  suddenly  disappeared.  She 
consoled  herself  with  a  young  law  student,  but 
when  he  tired  of  her  the  consequences  were  lam- 
entable. Harassed  by  debt,  Emma  took  poison. 
Her  stupid  husband,  a  hard-working  district 
doctor,  was  aghast  at  her  death  and  puzzled  by 
the  ruin  which  followed  fast  at  its  heels.  He 
found  it  all  out,  even  the  love-letters  of  the  squire. 
He  died  suddenly. 

A  sordid  tale,  but  perfectly  told  and  remarkable 
not  only  for  the  fidelity  of  the  landscapes,  the 
chaste  restraint  of  the  style,  but  also  because 
there  are  half  a  dozen  marvellously  executed 
characters,  several  of  which  have  entered  into 
the  living  current  of  French  speech.  Homais, 
the  vainglorious,  yet  human  and  likable  Homais, 
is  a  synonym  for  pedantic  bragging  mediocrity. 
He  is  a  druggist.  He  would  have  made  an  ideal 
126 


THE   REAL   FLAUBERT 

politician.  He  stands  for  a  shallow  ''modernity" 
but  is  more  superstitious  than  a  mediaeval  sexton. 
Flaubert's  novel  left  an  indelible  mark  in  French 
fiction  and  philosophy.  Even  Balzac  did  not 
create  a  Homais. 

Now  comes  the  curious  part  of  the  story.  It 
was  the  transcription  of  a  real  occurrence. 
Flaubert  did  not  invent  it.  In  a  town  near 
Rouen  named  Ry  there  was  once  a  young  phy- 
sician, Louis  Delamarre.  He  originally  hailed 
from  Catenay,  where  his  father  practised  medi- 
cine. In  the  novel  Ry  is  called  Yonville.  Dela- 
marre paid  his  addresses  to  Delphine  Couturier, 
who  in  1843  was  twenty- three  years  of  age.  She 
was  comely,  had  a  bright  though  superficial 
mind,  spoke  in  a  pretentious  manner,  and  over- 
dressed. From  her  father  she  inherited  her 
vanity  and  the  desire  to  appear  as  occupying  a 
more  exalted  position  than  she  did.  The  elder 
Couturier  owned  a  farm,  though  heavily  mort- 
gaged, at  Vieux-Chateau.  He  was  a  close-fisted 
Norman  anxious  to  marry  off  his  daughters — 
Emma  had  a  sister.  He  objected  to  the  advances 
of  the  youthful  physician,  chiefly  because  he 
saw  no  great  match  for  his  girl.  Herein  the  tale 
diverges  from  life. 

But  love  laughs  at  farmers  as  well  as  lock- 
smiths, and  by  a  ruse  worthy  of  Paul  de  Kock, 
Delphine,  by  feigning  maternity,  got  the  parental 
permission.  She  soon  regretted  her  marriage. 
The  husband,  Louis,  was  prosaic.  He  earned 
the  daily  bread  and  butter  of  the  household, 
127 


EGOISTS 

and  even  economised  so  that  his  pretty  wife 
could  buy  fallals  and  foolish  books.  She  hired 
a  servant  and  had  her  day  at  home  —  Fridays. 
No  one  visited  her.  She  was  only  an  unim- 
portant spouse  of  a  poverty-stricken  country 
doctor.  At  Saint- Germain  des  Essours  there 
still  lives  an  octogenarian  peasant  woman  once 
the  domestic  of  the  Delamarres-Bovarys.  She 
said,  when  asked  to  describe  her  mistress:  "Heav- 
ens, but  she  was  pretty.  Face,  figure,  hair,  all 
were  beautiful." 

In  Ry  there  was  a  druggist  named  Jouanne.  He 
is  the  original  Homais.  Delphine's,  or  rather 
Emma  Bovary's,  first  admirer  was  a  law  clerk, 
Louis  Bottet.  He  is  described  as  a  small,  im- 
patient, alert  old  man  at  the  time  of  his  death. 
The  faithless  Rodolphe  —  what  a  name  for 
sentimental  melodrama  —  was  really  a  proprietor 
named  Campion.  He  lost  his  farm  and  revenue 
after  Emma's  death  and  went  to  America  to 
make  his  fortune.  Unsuccessful,  he  returned 
to  Paris,  and  about  1852  shot  himself  on  the 
boulevard.  Who  may  deny,  after  this,  that  truth 
is  stranger  than  Flaubert's  fiction? 

The  good,  sensible  old  Abbe  Bournisien,  who 
advised  Emma  Bovary,  when  she  came  to  him 
for  spiritual  consolation,  to  consult  her  doctor 
husband,  was,  in  reality,  an  Abbe  Lafortune. 
The  irony  of  events  is  set  forth  in  sinister  relief 
by  the  epitaph  which  the  real  Emma's  husband 
had  carved  on  her  tomb:  ''She  was  a  good 
mother,  a  good  wife."  Gossips  of  Ry  aver  that 
128 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

after  the  truth  came  to  Dr.  Delamarre  he  took 
a  slow  poison.  But  this  seems  turning  the  screw 
a  trifle  too  far.  Mme.  Delamarre,  or  Emma 
Bovary,  was  buried  in  the  graveyard  of  the  only 
church  at  Ry.  To-day  the  tomb  is  no  longer  in 
existence.  She  died  March  6,  1848.  The  in- 
habitants still  show  the  church,  —  the  porch  of 
which  was  too  narrow  to  allow  the  passage  of 
unlucky  Emma's  cofhn  —  the  house  of  her  hus- 
band, and  the  apothecary  shop  of  M.  Homais. 
The  latter  survived  for  many  years  the  unhappy 
heroine,  who  stole  the  poison  that  killed  her 
from  his  stock.  A  delightful  touch  of  Homais- 
like  humour  was  displayed  —  one  that  exoner- 
ated Flaubert  from  the  charge  of  exaggeration 
in  portraying  Homais  —  when  the  novel  appeared. 
The  characters  were  at  once  recognized,  both  in 
Rouen  and  Ry.  This  druggist,  Jouanne-Homais, 
was  flattered  at  the  lengthy  study  of  himself, 
of  course  missing  its  relentless  ironic  strokes. 
He  regretted  openly  that  the  author  had  not 
consulted  him;  for,  said  he,  "I  could  have  given 
him  many  points  about  which  he  knew  nothing." 
The  epitaph  which  the  real  Homais  composed 
for  the  tomb  of  his  wife  —  surely  you  can  never 
forget  her  after  reading  the  novel  —  is  magnifi- 
cent in  its  bombast.     Flaubert  knew  his  man. 

The  distinguished  writer  is  a  sober  narrator  of 
facts.  His  is  not  a  domain  of  delicate  thrills. 
His  women  are  neither  doves  nor  devils.  He 
does  not  paint  those  acrobats  of  the  soul  so  dear 
to  psychological  fiction.  Despite  his  pretended 
129 


EGOISTS 

impassibility,  he  is  tender-hearted;  the  pity  he 
felt  for  his  characters  is  not  effusively  expressed. 
But  the  larger  rhythms  of  humanity  are  ever 
present.  If  he  had  been  hard  of  heart,  he  would 
have  related  the  Bovary  tale  as  it  happened  in  life. 
Charles  Bovary  finds  the  love-letters  and  meets 
Rodolphe.  Nothing  happens.  The  real  Charles 
never  knew  of  the  real  Emma's  treachery, 
Madame  d'Epinay  was  not  far  amiss  when  she 
wrote:    "The  profession  of  woman  is  very  hard. 


No  less  a  masterpiece  than  Don  Quixote  has 
been  cited  in  critical  comparison  with  Madame 
Bovary.  Flaubert  was  called  the  Cervantes 
who  had  ridiculed  from  the  field  the  Romantic 
School.  This  irritated  him,  for  he  never  posed 
as  a  realist;  indeed,  he  confessed  that  he  had 
intended  to  mock  the  Realistic  School  —  then 
headed  by  Champfleury  —  in  his  Bovary.  The 
very  name  of  this  book  would  arouse  a  storm  of 
abuse  from  him.  He  knew  that  he  had  more 
than  one  book  in  him,  he  believed  better  books; 
the  indifference  of  the  public  to  Sentimental 
Education  and  the  Temptation  he  never  under- 
stood. Much  astonishment  was  expressed,  after 
the  appearance  of  Bovary,  that  such  a  mature 
work  of  art  should  have  been  the  author's  first. 
But  Beethoven,  Chopin,  Brahms  did  not  permit 
their  juvenile  efforts  to  see  the  light;  the  same 
130 


THE   REAL  FLAUBERT 

was  the  case  with  Flaubert.  In  1835  —  he 
was  fourteen  at  the  time  —  he  wrote  Mort  du 
Due  de  Guise;  in  1836  another  historical  study. 
Short  stories  in  the  style  of  Hoffmann,  with 
thrilling  titles,  such  as  Rage  et  Impuissance,  Le 
Reve  d'Enfer  (1837),  ^^^  a  psychologic  effort, 
Agonies  (dedicated  to  Alfred  le  Poittevin  —  as  are 
both  versions  of  the  Temptation;  Alfred's  sister 
later  became  the  mother  of  Guy  de  Maupas- 
sant): all  these  exercises,  as  is  a  Dance  of  Death, 
are  still  in  manuscript.  But  in  1839  a  scenario  of  a 
mystery  bearing  the  cryptic  title  of  Smarh  was 
written;  and  this  with  Novembre,  and  a  study  of 
Rabelais,  and  Nuit  de  Don  Juan,  have  been  pub- 
lished in  the  definitive  edition;  witii  a  record  of 
travels  in  Normandy.  The  Memoirs  of  a  Mad- 
man appeared  a  few  years  ago  in  a  Parisian  mag- 
azine. It  was  a  youthful  effort.  There  is  also 
in  the  collection  of  Madame  Grout  a  300-page 
manuscript  (i  843-1 845)  named  L'Education 
Sentimentale  —  vaguely  inspired  by  Wilhelm 
Meister  —  which  has  nothing  in  common 
with  his  novel  of  the  same  name  published 
in    1869. 

Flaubert's  taste  in  the  matter  of  titles  was  la- 
mentable. He  made  a  scenario  for  a  tale  called 
Spiral,  and  he  often  asserted  that  he  ha.nkered 
to  write  in  marmoreal  prose  the  Combat  of 
Thermopylae;  he  meditated,  too,  a  novel  the 
scene  and  characters  laid  in  the  Second  Empire, 
and  dilated  upon  the  beauty  of  a  portrait  ex- 
ecuted in  microscopic  detail  of  that  immortal 
131 


EGOISTS 

character,  M.  le  Prefet.  We  might  have  had 
a  second  Homais  if  he  had  made  this  project 
a  reahty.  He  told  Turgenev  that  he  had  an- 
other idea,  a  sort  of  modern  Matron  of  Ephesus 
—  in  the  Temptation  there  is  an  episode  that 
suggests  the  Ephesus.  He  did  not  lack  invention 
and  he  was  an  extremely  rapid  writer  —  but  his 
artistic  conscience  was  morbidly  sensitive.  It 
pained  him  to  see  Zola  throwing  his  better  self 
to  the  dogs  in  his  noisy,  inartistic  novels  —  in 
which,  he  said,  was  neither  poetry  nor  art.  And 
he  wrote  this  opinion  to  Zola,  who  promptly 
called  him  an  idiot.  In  that  correct  but  colour- 
less book  of  Faguet's  on  Flaubert,  the  critic  makes 
note  of  all  the  novelist's  grammatical  errors  and 
reaches  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a  stylist 
unique,  but  not  careful  in  his  grammar.  Now, 
while  this  is  pifHing  pedantry,  the  facts  are  in 
Faguet's  favour;  Faguet,  who  holds  the  critical 
scales  nicely,  as  he  always  does,  though  listlessly. 
But  in  the  handling  of  such  a  robust,  red-blooded 
subject  as  Flaubert  the  college  professor  was 
hardly  a  wise  selection.  The  Faguet  study  is 
clear  and  painstaking  but  not  sympathetic.  Mr. 
James  has  praised  it,  possibly  because  Faguet 
agrees  with  him  as  to  the  psychology  of  Senti- 
mental Education.  Not  a  study,  Faguet's,  for 
Flaubertians,  who  see  the  faults  of  their  Saint 
Polycarp  —  his  favourite  self-appellation  —  and 
love  him  for  his  all-too-human  imperfections. 

In  1845  Flaubert,  on  a  visit  to  Italy,  stopped 
at  Genoa.    There,    in   the    Palace   Balbi-Sena- 
132 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

rega  —  and  not  at  the  Doria,  as  Du  Camp  wrote, 
with  his  accustomed  carelessness  —  the  young 
Frenchman  saw  an  old  picture  by  Breughel 
(probably  by  Pieter  the  Younger,  surnamed 
Hell-Breughel)  that  represents  a  temptation  of 
Saint  Antony.  It  is  hardly  a  masterpiece,  this 
Breughel,  and  is  dingy  in  colour.  But  Flaubert, 
who  loved  the  grotesque,  procured  an  engraving 
of  this  picture  and  it  hung  in  his  study  at  Croisset 
until  the  day  of  his  death.  It  was  the  spring- 
board of  his  own  Temptation.  The  germ 
may  be  found  in  his  mystery,  Smarh,  with  its 
Demon  and  metaphysical  colouring.  Breughel 
set  into  motion  the  mental  machinery  of  the 
Temptation  that  never  stopped  whirring  until 
1874.  The  first  hrouillon  of  the  Temptation 
was  begun  May  24,  1848,  and  finished  Sep- 
tember 12,  1849.  It  numbered  540  pages  of 
manuscript.  Set  aside  for  Bovary,  Flaubert 
took  up  the  draft  again  and  made  the  second 
version  in  1856.  When  he  had  done  with  it,  the 
manuscript  was  reduced  to  193  pages.  Not 
satisfied,  he  returned  to  the  work  in  1872,  and 
when  ready  for  publication  in  1874  the  number 
of  pages  were  136.  He  even  then  cut,  from  ten 
chapters,  three.  Last  year  the  French  world 
read  the  second  version  of  1856  and  was  aston- 
ished to  find  it  so  different  from  the  definitive 
one  of  1874.  The  critical  sobriety  and  courage 
of  Flaubert  were  vindicated.  In  1849,  reading 
to  Bouilhet  and  Du  Camp,  he  had  been  advised 
to  burn  the  stuff;  instead  he  boiled  it  down  for 


EGOISTS 

the  1856  version.  To  Turgenev  he  had  sub- 
mitted the  1872  draft,  and  thus  it  came  that  this 
wonderful  coloured-panorama  of  philosophy,  this 
Gulliver-like  travelling  amid  the  master  ideas  of 
the  antique  and  the  early  Christian  worlds,  was 
published. 

All  the  youthful  romantic  Flaubert  —  the 
"spouter'*  of  blazing  phrases,  the  lover  of  jewelled 
words,  of  monstrous  and  picturesque  ideas  and 
situations  —  is  in  the  first  turbulent  version  of 
the  Temptation.  In  the  later  version  he  is  more 
critical  and  historical.  Flaubert  had  grown  in- 
tellectually as  his  emotions  had  cooled  with  the 
years.  The  first  Temptation  is  romantic  and 
religious;  the  1874  version  cooler  and  more 
sceptical.  Dramatic,  arranged  more  theatrically 
than  the  first,  the  author's  affection  for  mysticism, 
the  East,  and  the  classic  world  shows  more  in  this 
version.  Psychologic  gradations  of  character 
and  events  are  clearer  in  the  second  version.  I 
cannot  agree  with  Louis  Bertrand,  who  edited 
the  1856  version,  that  it  is  superior  in  interest  to 
the  1874  version.  It  is  a  novelty,  but  Flaubert 
was  never  so  much  the  surgeon  as  when  he 
operated  upon  his  own  manuscript.  He  often 
hesitated,  he  always  suffered,  and  he  never 
flinched  when  his  mind  was  finally  satisfied. 
Faguet  calls  the  Temptation  an  abstract  pessi- 
mistic novel.  He  also  complains  that  the  phil- 
osophic ideas  are  not  novel;  a  new  philosophy 
would  be  a  veritable  phoenix.  Why  should  they 
be?  Flaubert  does  not  enunciate  a  new  philos- 
134 


THE   REAL  FLAUBERT 

ophy.  He  is  the  artist  who  shows  us  apocalyptic 
visions  of  all  philosophies,  all  schools,  ethigal 
systems,  cultures,  religions.  The  gods  from 
every  land  defile  by  and  are  each  in  turn  swept 
away  by  the  relentless  Button-Moulder,  Oblivion. 
There  was  a  talking  and  amusing  pig  in  the  first 
version;  he  is  not  present  in  the  second  —  possibly 
because  Flaubert  discovered  that  it  was  not  Saint 
Antony  of  Egypt,  but  Saint  Antony  of  Padua, 
who  had  a  pig.  (Rops  has  remembered  the 
animal  in  his  etching  of  Flaubert's  Antony.) 
The  Antony  of  1856  has  a  more  modern  soul;  the 
second  reveals  the  determinism  of  Flaubert. 
He  is  phlegmatic,  almost  stupid,  a  supine  Faust  in- 
capable of  self-irony.  Everything  revolves  about 
him  —  the  multi-coloured  splendours  of  Alex- 
andria, of  the  Queen  of  Sheba;  Satan,  Death 
and  Luxury,  Hilarion,  Simon  Magus  and  Apol- 
lonius  of  Tyana  tempt  him;  upon  his  ears  fall 
the  enchanting  phrases  of  the  eternal  dialogue 
between  Sphinx  and  Chimera  —  we  dream  of 
the  Songs  of  Solomon  when  reading:  "  Je  cherche 
des  parfums  nouveaux,  des  fleurs  plus  larges,  des 
plaisirs  ineprouves";  the  speech  of  the  Chimera. 
Flaubert  knew  the  Old  Testament  rhythms  and 
beauty  of  phrase;  witness  this  speech  of  Death's: 
"et  on  fait  la  guerre  avec  de  la  musique,  des 
panaches,  des  drapeaux,  des  harnais  d'or  ..." 
You  seem  to  overhear  the  golden  trumpets  of 
Bayreuth. 

The  demon  retires  baffled  at  the  end  of  the 
first  version.    He  is  diabolic  and  not  a  little 
135 


EGOISTS 

theatrical.  The  Devil  of  1874  is  more  artful. 
He  shows  Antony  the  Cosmos,  but  he  is  not  the 
victor  in  the  duel.  The  new  Antony  studies  the 
protean  forms  of  life  and  at  the  end  is  ravished 
by  the  sight  of  protoplasm.  "O  bliss!"  he  cries, 
and  longs  to  be  transformed  into  every  species 
of  energy,  *'  to  be  matter."  Then  the  dawn  comes 
up  like  the  uplifted  curtains  of  a  tabernacle  — 
Flaubert's  image  —  and  in  the  very  disc  of  the 
sun  shines  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  ''Antony 
makes  the  sign  of  the  cross  and  resumes  his  pray- 
ers." Thus  ends  the  1874  edition,  ends  a  book 
of  irony,  dreams,  and  sumptuous  landscapes. 
A  sense  of  the  nothingness  of  human  thought, 
human  endeavour,  assails  the  reader,  for  he  has 
traversed  all  the  metaphysical  and  religious  ideas 
of  the  ages,  has  viewed  all  the  gods,  idols,  demi- 
gods, ghosts,  heresies,  and  heresiarchs;  Jupiter 
on  his  throne  and  the  early  warring  Christian 
sects  vanish  into  smoke,  crumble  into  the  gulf 
of  NeanL  A  vivid  episode  was  omitted  in  the 
definitive  version.  At  the  close  of  the  gods' 
procession  the  Saviour  appears.  He  is  old, 
white-haired,  and  weary  from  the  burden  of  the 
cross  and  the  sins  of  mankind.  Some  mock  him; 
He  is  reproached  by  kings  for  propounding  the 
equality  of  the  poor;  but  by  the  majority  He  is 
unrecognised;  and,  spumed,  the  Son  of  Man  falls 
into  the  dust  of  life.  A  poignant  page,  the  spirit 
of  which  may  be  recognised  in  some  latter-day 
French  pictures  and  in  the  eloquent  phrases  of 
Jehan  Rictus.  M.  Bertrand  has  pointed  out 
136 


<^t^^r 


,^ 


^3^k   ^\^ 


A 


^  fee  A ; 


^u.  ,j.   Oi^^  j^  -^-^  ^  ^ 


A  corrected  proof  page  of  Madame 


/wtM^cL"  Jit.  ^^ 


reproduced  from  the  original  manuscript. 


^ 


-Ns 


THE  REAL  FLAUBERT 

that  the  1849  version  of  the  Temptation  contains 
colour  and  imagery  similar  to  the  Legendes  des 
Siecles,  though  written  ten  years  before  Hugo's 
poem.  The  Temptation  of  Saint  Antony  was 
neither  a  popular  nor  a  critical  success  in  1874. 
France  realises  that  in  Flaubert's  prose  epic 
she  has  a  masterpiece  of  intellectual  power,  pro- 
found irony,  and  unsurpassed  beauty.  The 
reader  is  alternately  reminded  of  the  Apocalypse, 
of  Dante's  grim  visions,  and  of  the  second  Faust. 

Almost  numberless  are  the  studies  of  Flaubert's 
method  in  composing  his  books.  A  small  library 
could  be  filled  by  books  about  his  style.  We 
have  seen  the  reproductions  of  the  various  drafts 
that  he  made  in  the  description  of  Emma  Bovary's 
visit  to  Rouen.  Armand  Weil,  with  a  patience 
that  is  itself  Flaubertian,  has  shown  us  the  varia- 
tions in  the  manuscript  of  Salammb6  (see.  Revue 
Universitaire,  April  15,  1902).  Yet,  compared 
with  Balzac's  spider-haunted,  scribbled-over  proofs, 
Flaubert's  seem  virginal  of  corrections.  The  one 
reproduced  here  is  from  two  pages  of  original 
manuscript  that  I  was  lucky  enough  to  secure  at 
Paris  in  1903.  They  contain  instructions  to  the 
printer,  as  may  be  seen,  and  demonstrate  Flau- 
bert's sharp  eye;  in  every  instance  his  changes 
are  an  improvement.  One  of  the  arguments  in 
favour  of  the  last  version  of  the  Temptation  is 
its  shrinkage  in  bulk  from  the  1856  manuscript. 
The  letter,  hitherto  unpublished  —  for  it  will  not 
be  found  in  the  six  volumes  of  the  Correspondence 
137 


EGOISTS 

—  is  possibly  addressed  to  his  niece,  Caroline 
Hamard.  Unusual  for  Flaubert  is  the  absence 
of  any  date;  he  was  scrupulous  in  giving  hour, 
day,  month,  and  year,  in  his  letters.  The  princess 
referred  to  is  the  Princess  Mathilde  Bonaparte- 
Demidoff,  the  patron  of  artists  and  literary  men, 
an  admirer  of  Flaubert's.  He  often  dined  with  her 
at  Saint- Gratien.  Madame  Pasca  the  actress  was 
also  a  friend  and  visited  Croisset  when  he  fractured 
his  leg.  He  had  a  genius  for  friendships  with 
both  women  and  men.  His  mother,  often  tell- 
ing him  that  his  devotion  to  style  had  dried  up 
his  natural  affections,  admitted  that  he  had  a 
bigger  heart  than  head.  And,  after  all,  this 
motherly  estimate  gives  us  the  measure  of  the 
real  Flaubert. 


138 


IV 
ANATOLE  FRANCE 


In  the  first  part  of  that  great,  human  Book, 
dear  to  all  good  Pantagruelists,  is  this  picture: 
"From  the  Tower  Anatole  to  the  Messembrine 
were  faire  spacious  galleries,  all  coloured  over 
and  painted  with  the  ancient  prowesses,  his- 
tories and  descriptions  of  the  world."  The 
Tower  Anatole  is  part  of  the  architecture  of  the 
Abbey  of  Theleme,  in  common  with  the  other 
towers  named,  Artick,  Calaer,  Hesperia,  and 
Caiere. 

For  lovers  of  the  exquisite  and  whimsical 
artist,  Anatole  France,  a  comparison  to  Rabelais 
may  not  appear  strained.  Anatole,  the  man, 
has  written  much  that  contains,  as  did  the  gracious 
Tower  Anatole,  "faire  spacious  galleries  .  .  . 
painted  with  ancient  .  .  .  histories."  He  has 
in  his  veins  some  infusion  of  the  literary  blood 
of  that  "bon  gros  libertin,"  Rabelais,  a  figure  in 
French  literature  who  refuses  to  be  budged  from 
his  commanding  position,  notwithstanding  the 
combined  prestige  of  Pascal,  Voltaire,  Rousseau, 
Chateaubriand,  Hugo,  and  Balzac.  And  the 
139 


EGOISTS 

gentle  Anatole  has  a  pinch  of  Rabelais's  esprit 
gaulois,  which  may  be  found  in  both  Balzac  and 
Maupassant. 

To  call  France  a  sceptic  is  to  state  a  common- 
place. But  he  is  so  many  other  things  that  he 
bewilders.  The  spiritual  stepson  of  Renan,  a 
partial  inheritor  of  his  gifts  of  irony  and  pity,  and 
a  continuator  of  the  elder  master's  diverse  and 
undulating  style,  France  displays  affinities  to 
Heine,  Aristophanes,  Charles  Lamb,  Epicurus, 
Sterne,  and  Voltaire.     The  "glue  of  unanimity" 

—  to  use  an  expression  of  the  old  pedantic  Budaeus 

—  has  united  the  widely  disparate  qualities  of 
his  personality.  His  outlook  upon  life  is  the  out- 
look of  Anatole  France.  His  vast  learning  is 
worn  with  an  air  almost  mocking.  After  the 
bricks  and  mortar  of  the  realists,  after  the  lyric 
pessimism  of  the  morally  and  politically  disil- 
lusioned generation  following  the  Franco-German 
war,  his  genius  comes  in  the  nature  of  a  consoling 
apparition.  Like  his  own  Dr.  Trublet,  in  Histoire 
Comique,  he  can  say:  *'7e  liens  boutique  de  men- 
songes,  Je  soulage,  je  console.  Peul-il  consoler 
el  soulager  sans  mentir  V  And  he  does  deceive 
us  with  the  resources  of  his  art,  with  the  waving 
of  his  lithe  wand  which  transforms  whales  into 
weasels,  mosques  into  cathedrals. 

Perhaps  too  much  stress  has  been  set  upon  his 
irony.  Ironic  he  is  with  a  sinuosity  that  yields 
only  to  Renan.  It  is  irony  rather  in  the  shape  of 
the  idea,  than  in  its  presentation;  atmospheric 
is  it  rather  than  surface  antithesis,  or  the  witty 
140 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

inversion  of  a  moral  order;  he  is  a  man  of  senti- 
ment, Shandean  sentiment  as  it  is  at  times. 
But  the  note  we  always  hear,  if  distantly  reverber- 
ant, is  the  note  of  pity.  To  be  all  irony  is  to 
mask  one's  humanity;  and  to  accuse  Anatole 
France  of  the  lack  of  humanity  is  to  convict  one- 
self of  critical  colour-blindness.  His  writings 
abound  in  sympathetic  overtones.  His  pity  is 
without  Olympian  condescension.  He  is  a  most 
lovable  man  in  the  presence  of  the  eternal  spectacle 
of  human  stupidity  and  guile.  It  is  not  alone  that 
he  pardons,  but  also  that  he  seeks  to  comprehend. 
Not  emulating  the  cold  surgeon's  eye  of  a  Flau- 
bert, it  is  with  the  kindly  vision  of  a  priest  he 
studies  the  maladies  of  our  soul.  In  him  there 
is  an  ecclesiastical  fond.  He  forgives  because 
he  understands.  And  after  his  tenderest  bene- 
diction he  sometimes  smiles;  it  may  be  a  smile  of 
irony;  yet  it  is  seldom  cruel.  He  is  an  adroit  de- 
terminist,  yet  sets  no  store  by  the  logical  faculties. 
Man  is  not  a  reasoning  animal,  he  says,  and 
human  reason  is  often  a  mirage. 

But  to  label  him  with  sentimentalism  a  la 
russe  —  the  Russian  pity  that  stems  from  Dick- 
ens —  would  shock  him  into  an  outburst.  Con- 
ceive him,  then,  as  a  man  to  whom  all  emotional 
extravagance  is  foreign;  as  a  detester  of  rhetoric, 
of  declamation,  of  the  phrase  facile;  as  a  thinker 
who  assembles  within  the  temple  of  his  creations 
every  extreme  in  thought,  manners,  sentiment, 
and  belief,  yet  contrives  to  fuse  this  chaos  by  the 
force  of  his  sober  style.  His  is  a  style  more  linear 
141 


EGOISTS 

than  coloured,  more  for  the  eye  than  the  ear;  a 
style  so  pellucid  that  one  views  it  suspiciously  — 
it  may  conceal  in  its  clear,  profound  depths  strange 
secrets,  as  does  some  mountain  lake  in  the  shine 
of  the  sun.  Even  the  simplest  art  may  have  its 
veils. 

In  the  matter  of  clarity,  Anatole  France  is  the 
equal  of  Renan  and  John  Henry  Newman,  and 
if  this  same  clarity  was  at  one  time  a  conven- 
tional quality  of  French  prose,  it  is  rarer  in  these 
days.  Never  syncopated,  moving  at  a  mod- 
erate tempo,  smooth  in  his  transitions,  replete 
with  sensitive  rejections,  crystalline  in  his  diction, 
a  lover  and  a  master  of  large  luminous  words, 
limpid  and  delicate  and  felicitous,  the  very  mar- 
row of  the  man  is  in  his  unique  style.  Few  writers 
swim  so  easily  under  such  a  heavy  burden  of 
erudition.  A  loving  student  of  books,  his  knowl- 
edge is  precise,  his  range  wide  in  many  literatures. 
He  is  a  true  humanist.  He  loves  learning  for 
itself,  loves  words,  treasures  them,  fondles  them, 
burnishes  them  anew  to  their  old  meanings  — 
though  he  has  never  tarried  in  the  half-way  house 
of  epigram.  But,  over  all,  his  love  of  humanity 
sheds  a  steady  glow.  Without  marked  dramatic 
sense,  he  nevertheless  surprises  mankind  at  its 
minute  daily  acts.  And  these  he  renders  for  us 
as  candidly  *'as  snow  in  the  sunshine";  as  the  old 
Dutch  painters  stir  our  nerves  by  a  simple  shaft 
of  light  passing  through  a  half-open  door,  upon 
an  old  woman  polishing  her  spectacles.  M. 
France  sees  and  notes  many  gestures,  inutile  or 
142 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

tragic,  notes  them  with  tho  enthralling  simplicity 
of  a  complicated  artist.  He  deals  with  ideas  so 
vitally  that  they  become  human ;  yet  his  characters 
are  never  abstractions,  nor  serve  as  pallid  alle- 
gories; they  are  all  alive,  from  Sylvestre  Bonnard 
to  the  group  that  meets  to  chat  in  the  Foro  Romano 
of  Sur  la  Pierre  Blanche.  He  can  depict  a  cat 
or  a  dog  with  fidelity;  his  dog  Riquet  bids  fair 
to  live  in  French  literature.  He  is  an  interpreter 
of  life,  not  after  the  manner  of  the  novelist,  but 
of  life  viewed  through  the  temperament  of  a 
tolerant  poet  and  philosopher. 

This  modern  thinker,  who  has  shed  the  despot- 
ism of  the  positivist  dogma,  boasts  the  soul  of  a 
chameleon.  He  understands,  he  loves,  Christianity 
with  a  knowledge  and  a  fervour  that  surprise 
until  one  measures  the  depth  of  his  affection  for 
the  antique  world.  To  further  confuse  our  per- 
ceptions, he  exhibits  a  sympathy  for  Hebraic  lore 
that  can  only  be  set  down  to  a  remote  lineage. 
He  has  rifled  the  Talmud  for  its  forgotten  stories; 
he  delights  in  juxtaposing  the  cultured  Greek  and 
the  strenuous  Paul;  he  adores  the  contrast  of 
Mary  Magdalen  with  the  pampered  Roman 
matron.  Add  to  this  a  familiarity  with  the  pro- 
ceeds of  latter-day  science,  astronomy  in  particular, 
with  the  scholastic  speculation  of  the  Renaissance, 
mediaeval  piety,  and  the  Pyrrhonism  of  a  boule- 
vard philosopher.  So  commingled  are  these  con- 
tradictory elements,  so  many  angles  are  there 
exposed  to  numerous  cultures,  so  many  surfaces 
avid  for  impressions,  that  we  end  in  admiring  the 
143 


EGOISTS 

exercise  of  a  magic  which  blends  into  a  happy 
synthesis  such  a  variety  of  moral  dissonances, 
such  moral  preciosity.  It  is  magic  —  though  there 
are  moments  when  we  regard  the  operation  as  in- 
tellectual legerdemain  of  a  superior  kind.  We  sus- 
pect dupery.  But  the  humour  of  France  is  not  the 
least  of  his  miraculous  solvents;  it  is  his  humour 
that  often  transforms  a  doubtful  campaign  into 
a  radiant  victory.  We  see  him,  the  protagonist 
of  his  own  psychical  drama,  dancing  on  a  tight 
rope  in  the  airiest  manner,  capering  deliciously  in 
the  void,  and  quite  like  a  prestidigitator  bidding 
us  doubt  the  existence  of  his  rope. 

His  life  long,  Renan,  despite  his  famous 
phrase,  "the  mania  of  certitude,"  was  pursued 
by  the  idea  of  an  absolute.  He  cried  for  proofs. 
To  Berthelot  he  wrote:  "I  am  eager  for  mathe- 
matics." It  promised  finality.  As  he  aged,  he 
was  contented  to  seek  an  atmosphere  of  moral 
feeling;  though  he  declared  that  "the  real  is  a 
vast  outrage  on  the  ideal."  He  tremulously 
participated  in  the  ritual  of  social  life,  and  in  the 
worship  of  the  unknown  god.  He  at  last  felt 
that  Nature  abhorred  an  absolute;  that  Being  was 
ever  a  Becoming;  that  religion  and  philosophy 
are  the  result  of  a  partial  misunderstanding.  All 
is  relative,  and  the  soul  of  man  must  ever  feed 
upon  chimeras!  The  Breton  harp  of  Renan 
became  sadly  unstrung  amid  the  shallow  thunders 
of  agnostic  Paris. 

But  France,  his  eyes  quite  open  and  smiling, 
gayly  Pagan  Anatole,  does  not  demand  proofs. 
144 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

He  rejoices  in  a  philosophic  indifference,  he  has 
the  gift  of  paradox.  To  Kenan's  plea  for  the 
rigid  realities  of  mathematics,  he  might  ask,  with 
Ibsen,  whether  two  and  two  do  not  make  five  on 
the  planet  Jupiter!  To  Montaigne's  "What 
Know  I?"  he  opposes  Rabelais's  "Do  What 
Thou  Wilt!"  And  then  he  adorns  the  wheel  of 
Ixion  with  garlands. 

He  believes  in  the  belief  of  God.  He  swears 
by  the  gods  of  all  times  and  climes.  His  is  the 
cosmical  soul.  A  man  who  unites  in  his  tales 
something  of  the  Alimes  of  Herondas,  La  Bruyere's 
Characters,  and  the  Lucian  Dialogues,  with  faint 
flavours  of  Racine  and  La  Fontaine,  may  be  par- 
doned his  polygraphic  faiths.  With  Baudelaire  he 
knows  the  tremours  of  the  believing  atheist;  with 
Baudelaire  he  would  restrain  any  show  of  irreverence 
before  an  idol,  be  it  wooden  or  bronze.  It  might 
be  the  unknown  god !  —  as  Baudelaire  once  cried. 

This  pleasing  chromatism  in  beliefs,  a  behef 
in  all  and  none,  is  not  a  new  phenomenon.  The 
classical  world  of  thought  has  several  matches  for 
Anatole  France,  from  the  followers  of  Aristippus 
to  the  Sophists.  But  there  is  a  specific  note  of 
individuality,  a  roulade  quite  Anatolian  in  the 
Frenchman's  writings.  No  one  but  this  ac- 
complished Parisian  sceptic  could  have  framed 
The  Opinions  of  Jerome  Coignard  and  his 
wholly  delightful  scheme  for  a  Bureau  of  Vanity; 
"man  is  an  animal  with  a  musket,"  he  declares; 
Sylvestre  Bonnard  and  M.  Bergeret  are  new 
with  a  dynamic  novelty. 
145 


EGOISTS 

As  Walter  Pater  was  accused  of  a  silky  dilettan- 
teism,  so  France,  as  much  a  Cyrenaic  as  the  Eng- 
lish writer,  was  nevertheless  forced  to  step  down 
from  his  ivory  tower  to  the  dusty  streets  and  there 
demonstrate  his  sincerity  by  battling  for  his  con- 
victions. After  the  imbecile  Dreyfus  affair  had 
rolled  away,  there  was  little  talk  in  Paris  of  Ana- 
tole  France,  Epicurean.  He  was  saluted  with 
every  variety  of  abuse,  but  this  amateur  of  fine 
sensations  had  forever  settled  the  charge  of  morose 
aloofness,  of  voluptuous  cynicism.  (Though  to- 
day he  is  regarded  with  a  certain  suspicion  by  all 
camps.)  At  a  similar  point  where  the  endurance 
of  Ernest  Renan  had  failed  him,  Anatole  France 
proved  his  own  faith.  Renan  during  the  black 
days  of  the  Commune  retired  to  Versailles,  there 
to  meditate  upon  the  shamelessness  of  the  brute, 
Caliban,  with  his  lowest  instincts  unleashed. 
But  France  believes  in  the  people,  he  has  said 
that  the  future  belongs  to  Caliban,  and  he  would 
scout  his  master's  conception  of  the  Tyrant-Sage, 
a  conception  that  Nietzsche  partially  transposed 
later  to  the  ecstatic  key  of  the  Superman.  M. 
France  would  probably  advocate  the  head-chop- 
ping of  such  wise  monster-despots.  An  aristocrat 
by  culture  and  fastidiousness,  he  is  without  an 
arriere-pensee  of  the  snobbery  of  the  intellect,  of 
the  cerebral  exaltation  displayed  by  Hugo,  Baude- 
laire, and  the  Goncourts. 

When  France  published  his  early  verse  —  his 
d^butwas  as  a  poet  and  Parnassian  poet  —  CatuUe 
Mend^s  divined  the  man.  He  wrote,  "I  can 
146 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

never  think  of  Anatole  France  .  .  .  without 
fancying  I  see  a  young  Alexandrian  poet  of  the 
second  century,  a  Christian,  doubtless,  who  is 
more  than  half  Jew,  above  all  a  neoplatonist, 
and  further  a  pure  theist  deeply  imbued  with 
the  teachings  of  Basilides  and  Valentinus,  and 
the  Perfumes  of  the  Orphic  poems  of  some  recent 
rhetorician,  in  whom  subtlety  was  pushed  to 
mysticism  and  philosophy  to  the  threshold  of  the 
Kabbalah." 

Some  critics  have  accused  him  of  not  being  able 
to  build  a  book.  He  knows  the  rhythms  of  poems, 
but  he  ''does  not  know"  the  harmony  of  essences, 
said  the  late  Bernard  Lazare;  he  is  an  excellent 
Parnassian  but  a  mediocre  philosopher:  he  is  a 
charming  raconteur,  but  he  cannot  compose  a 
book.  Precise  in  details,  diffuse  in  ensembles, 
clear  and  confused,  neat  and  ambiguous,  con- 
tinued M.  Lazare,  he  searches  his  object  in  con- 
centric circles.  Furthermore,  he  has  the  soul 
of  a  Greek  in  the  decadence,  and  the  voice  of  a 
Sistine  Chapel  singer  —  pure  and  irresolute. 
To  all  this  admission  may  be  made  without  fear 
of  decomposing  the  picture  which  France  has 
set  up  before  us  of  his  own  personality  —  a  picture, 
however,  he  does  not  himself  hesitate  to  efface 
from  the  canvas  whenever  his  perversity  prompts. 
He  is  all  that  his  critic  asserts  and  much  more. 
It  is  this  moral  eclecticism,  this  jumble  of  op- 
posites,  this  violent  contrast  of  traits,  and  these 
apparently  irreconcilable  elements  of  his  char- 
acter, which  appal,  interest,  yet  make  him  so 
147 


EGOISTS 

human.  But  his  art  never  swerves;  it  records 
invariably  the  fluctuations  of  his  spirit,  a  spirit 
at  once  desultory,  savant,  and  subtle,  records  all 
in  a  style,  concrete  and  clairvoyant. 

His  books  are  not  so  much  novels  as  chronicles 
of  designedly  simple  structure;  his  essays  are 
confessions;  his  confessions,  a  blending  of  the 
naive  and  the  corrupt,  for  there  are  corroding 
properties  in  these  novel  persuasive  disenchant- 
ments.  Upon  the  robust  of  faith  Anatole  France 
makes  no  more  impression  than  do  Augustine, 
Saint  Teresa,  the  Imitation  of  Christ,  or  the 
Provincial  Letters.  Such  nuances  of  scepticism 
as  his  are  for  those  who  love  the  comedies  of 
belief  and  disbelief.  Not  possessing  the  Huys- 
mans  intensity  of  temperament,  France  will  never 
be  betrayed  into  such  affirmations;  Huysmans, 
who  dropped  like  a  ripe  plum  into  the  basket  of 
the  ecclesiastical  fruit-gatherer.  France  will 
never  lose  his  balance  in  the  fumes  of  a  personal 
conversion.  Of  Plato  himself  he  would  ask: 
''What  is  Truth?"  and  if  Pilate  posed  the  same 
question,  France  would  reply  by  handing  him 
his  Jardin  d' Epicure  —  a  veritable  breviary  of 
scepticism.  In  Socrates  he  would  discover  a  con- 
genial companion;  yet  he  might  mischievously 
allude  to  Montaigne  ''concerning  cats,"  or  quote 
Aristotle  on  the  form  of  hats.  A  wilful  child  of 
philosophy  and  belles-lettres,  he  may  be  always 
expected  to  say  the  startling. 

Be  humble!  he  exhorts.  Be  without  intellec- 
tual pride!  for  the  days  of  man,  who  is  naught 
148 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

but  a  bit  of  animated  pottery,  are  brief,  and  he 
vanishes  like  a  spark.  Thus  Job  —  Anatole. 
Be  humble!  Even  virtue  may  be  unduly  praised : 
"Since  it  is  overcoming  v^hich  constitutes  merit, 
we  must  recognise  that  it  is  concupiscence  which 
makes  saints.  Without  it  there  is  no  repentance, 
and  it  is  repentance  which  makes  saints."  To 
become  a  saint  one  must  have  been  first  a  sinner. 
He  quotes,  as  an  example,  the  conduct  of  the 
blessed  Pelagia,  who  accomplished  her  pilgrimage 
to  Rome  by  rather  unconventional  means.  Here, 
too,  we  recognise  the  amiable  casuistry  of  Ana- 
tole —  Voltaire.  And  there  is  something  of 
Baudelaire  and  Barbey  d'Aurevilly's  piety  of 
imagination  with  impiety  of  thought,  in  France's 
pronouncement.  He  is  a  Chrysostom  reversed; 
from  his  golden  mouth  issue  spiritual  blasphemies. 
Mr.  Henry  James  has  said  that  the  province 
of  art  is  ''all  life,  all  feeling,  all  observation,  all 
vision."  According  to  this  rubric,  France  is  a 
profound  artist.  He  plays  with  the  appearances 
of  life,  occasionally  lifting  the  edge  of  the  curtain 
to  curdle  the  blood  of  his  spectators  by  the  sight 
of  Buddha's  shadow  in  some  grim  cavern  beyond. 
He  has  the  Gallic  tact  of  adorning  the  blank 
spaces  of  theory  and  the  ugly  spots  of  reality. 
A  student  of  Kant  in  his  denial  of  the  objective, 
we  can  never  picture  him  as  following  Konigs- 
berg's  sage  in  his  admiration  of  the  starry  heavens 
and  the  moral  law.  Both  are  relative,  would  be 
the  report  of  the  Frenchman.  But,  if  he  is 
sceptical  about  things  tangible,  he  is  apt  to  dash 
149 


EGOISTS 

off  at  a  tangent  and  proclaim  the  existence  of 
that  ** school  of  drums  kept  by  the  angels," 
which  the  hallucinated  Arthur  Rimbaud  heard 
and  beheld.  His  method  of  surprising  life,  de- 
spite his  ingenuous  manner,  is  sometimes  as 
oblique  as  that  of  Jules  Laforgue.  And,  in  the 
words  of  Pater,  his  is  ''one  of  the  happiest  temper- 
aments coming  to  an  understanding  with  the 
most  depressing  of  theories." 

For  faith  he  yearns.  He  humbles  himself 
beneath  the  humblest.  He  excels  in  picturing 
the  splendours  of  the  simple  soul;  yet  faith  has 
not  anointed  his  intellect  with  its  chrism.  He 
admires  the  golden  filigree  of  the  ciborium;  its 
spiritual  essence  escapes  him.  He  stands  at 
the  portals  of  Paradise;  there  he  lingers.  He 
stoops  to  some  rare  and  richly  coloured  feather. 
He  eloquently  vaunts  its  fabulous  beauty,  but 
he  will  not  listen  to  the  whirring  of  the  wings  from 
which  it  has  fallen.  Pagan  in  his  irony,  his  pity 
wholly  Christian,  Anatole  France  has  in  him 
something  of  Petronius  and  not  a  little  of  Saint 
Francis. 


150 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 


II 


Bom  to  the  literary  life,  one  of  the  elect  whose 
career  is  at  once  a  beacon  of  hope  and  despair 
for  the  less  gifted  or  less  fortunate,  Anatole 
Francois  Thibault  first  saw  the  heart  of  Paris  in 
the  year  1844.  The  son  of  a  bookseller,  Noel 
France  Thibault,  his  childhood  was  spent  in  and 
around  his  father's  book-shop.  No.  9  du  quai 
Voltaire,  and  his  juvenile  memories  are  clustered 
about  books.  There  are  many  faithful  pictures 
of  old  libraries  and  book-worms  in  his  novels. 
He  has  a  moiety  of  that  Oriental  blood  which  is 
said  to  have  tinctured  the  blood  of  Montaigne, 
Charles  Lamb,  and  Cardinal  Newman.  The  de- 
lightful Livre  de  Mon  Ami  gives  his  readers  many 
glimpses  of  his  early  days.  Told  with  incompara- 
ble naivete  and  verve,  we  feel  in  its  pages  the 
charm  of  the  writer's  personality.  A  portrait 
of  the  youthful  Anatole  reveals  his  excessive 
sensibility.  His  head  was  large,  the  brow  was 
too  broad  for  the  feminine  chin,  though  the  long 
nose  and  firm  mouth  contradict  the  possible 
weakness  in  the  lower  part  of  the  face.  It  was 
in  the  eyes,  however,  that  the  future  of  the  child 
might  have  been  discerned  —  they  were  lustrous, 
beautiful  in  shape,  with  the  fulness  that  argued 
eloquence  and  imagination.  He  was,  he  tells  us, 
a  strange  boy,  whose  chief  ambition  was  to  be  a 
saint,  a  second  St.  Simon  Stylites,  and,  later,  the 
author  of  a  history  of  France  in  fifty  volumes. 
151 


EGOISTS 

Fascinating  are  the  chapters  devoted  to  Pierre 
and  Suzanne  in  this  memoir.  His  tenderness  of 
touch  and  power  of  evoking  the  fairies  of  child- 
hood are  to  be  seen  in  Abeille.  The  further  de- 
velopment of  the  boy  may  be  followed  in  Pierre 
Noziere.  In  college  life,  he  was  not  a  shining 
figure,  Hke  many  another  budding  genius.  He 
loved  Virgil  and  Sophocles,  and  his  professors 
of  the  Stanislas  College  averred  that  he  was  too 
much  given  to  day-dreaming  and  preoccupied 
with  matters  not  set  forth  in  the  curriculum,  to 
benefit  by  their  instruction.  But  he  had  wise 
parents  —  he  has  paid  them  admirable  tributes 
of  his  love  —  who  gave  him  his  own  way.  After 
some  further  study  in  L'Ecole  des  Chartes,  he 
launched  himself  into  literature  through  the 
medium  of  a  little  essay,  La  Legende  de  Sainte 
Rad^gonde,  reine  de  France.  This  was  in  1859. 
Followed  nine  years  later  a  study  of  Alfred  de 
Vigny,  and  in  1873  Les  Poemes  dories  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  Parnassian  group  then  under 
the  austere  leadership  of  Leconte  de  Lisle. 
Les  Noces  Corinthiennes  established  for  him  a 
solid  reputation  with  such  men  as  Catulle  Mendes, 
Xavier  de  Ricard,  and  De  Lisle.  For  this  last- 
named  poet  young  France  exhibited  a  certain 
disrespect  —  the  elder  was  irritable,  jealous  of 
his  dignity,  and  exacted  absolute  obedience  from 
his  neophytes;  unluckily  a  species  of  animosity 
arose  between  the  pair.  When,  in  1874,  he  ac- 
cepted a  post  in  the  Library  of  the  Senate,  Leconte 
de  Lisle  made  his  displeasure  so  heavily  felt  that 
152 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

France  soon  resigned.  But  he  had  his  revenge 
in  an  article  which  appeared  in  Le  Temps ^  and 
one  that  put  the  pompous  academician  into  a 
fury.  Catulle  Mendes  sang  the  praises  of  the 
early  France  poems:  ^'Les  Noces  Corinthiennes 
alone  would  have  sufficed  to  place  him  in  the 
first  rank,  and  to  preserve  his  name  from  the 
shipwreck  of  oblivion,"  declared  M.  Mendes. 

In  1 88 1,  with  The  Crime  of  Sylvestre  Bonnard 
he  won  the  attention  of  the  reading  world,  a 
crown  from  the  Academy,  and  the  honour  of  being 
translated  into  a  half-dozen  languages.  From 
that  time  he  became  an  important  figure  in  liter- 
ary Paris,  while  his  reputation  was  further  forti- 
fied by  his  criticisms  of  books  —  vagrom  criticism, 
yet  charged  with  charm  and  learning.  He  fol- 
lowed Jules  Claretie  on  Le  Temps ^  and  there  he 
wrote  for  five  years  (i  886-1 891)  the  critiques ^ 
which  appeared  later  in  four  volumes,  entitled 
La  Vie  Litteraire.  Georg  Brandes  had  said  that, 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  M.  France  is  not 
a  great  critic.  But  Anatole  France  has  said  this 
before  him.  He  despises  pretentious  official 
criticism,  the  criticism  that  distributes  good  and 
bad  marks  to  authors  in  a  pedagogic  fashion. 
He  may  not  be  so  "objective"  as  his  one-time 
adversary,  Ferdinand  Bruneti^re,  but  he  is  cer- 
tainly more  convincing. 

The  quarrel,  a  famous  one  in  its  day,  seems 

rather  faded  in  our  days  of  critical  indifference. 

After  his  clever  formula,  that  there  is  no  such 

thing  as  objective  criticism,  that  all  criticism  but 

153 


EGOISTS 

records  the  adventures  of  one's  soul  among  the 
masterpieces,  France  was  attacked  by  Brunetiere 
—  of  whom  the  ever-acute  Mr.  James  once  re- 
marked that  his  "intelligence  has  not  kept  pace 
with  his  learning."  Those  critical  watchwords, 
''subjective"  and  "objective,"  .  are  things  of 
yester-year,  and  one  hopes,  forever.  But  in  this 
instance  there  was  much  ink  spilt,  witty  on  the 
part  of  France,  deadly  earnest  from  the  pen  of 
Brunetiere.  The  former  annihilated  his  adversary 
by  the  mode  metaphysical.  He  demonstrated  that 
in  the  matter  of  judgment  we  are  prisoners  of 
our  ideas,  and  he  also  formed  a  school  that  has 
hardly  done  him  justice,  for  every  impressionistic 
value  is  not  necessarily  valid.  It  is  easy  to  send 
one's  soul  boating  among  masterpieces  and  call 
the  result  "criticism";  the  danger  lies  in  the  con- 
tingency that  one  may  not  boast  the  power  of 
artistic  navigation  possessed  by  Anatole  France, 
a  master  steersman  in  the  deeps  and  shallows  of 
literature. 

His  own  critical  contributions  are  notable. 
Studies  of  Chateaubriand,  Flaubert,  Renan,  Bal- 
zac, Zola,  Pascal,  Villiers  de  ITsle  Adam,  Bar- 
bey  d'AurevjUy,  Rabelais,  Hamlet,  Baudelaire, 
George  Sand,  Paul  Verlaine  —  a  masterpiece 
of  intuition  and  sympathy  this  last  —  and  many 
others,  vivify  and  adorn  all  they  touch.  A  critic 
such  as  Sainte-Beuve,  or  Taine,  or  Brandes, 
France  is  not;  but  he  exercises  an  unfailing 
spell  in  everything  he  signs.  His  "august  vaga- 
bondage"—  the  phrase  is  Mr.  Whibley's  — 
154 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

through  the  land  of  letters  has  proved  a  boon 
to  all  students. 

In  1897  ^^  w^s  received  at  the  Academie 
Franjaise,  as  the  successor  of  Ferdinand  de  Les- 
seps.  His  addresses  at  the  tombs  of  Zola  and 
Ren  an  are  matters  of  history.  As  a  public 
speaker,  France  has  not  the  fiery  eloquence  of 
Jean  Jaures  or  Laurent  Tailhade,  but  he  dis- 
plays a  cool  magnetism  all  his  own.  And  he  is 
absolutely  fearless. 

It  is  not  through  lack  of  technique  that  the 
structure  of  the  France  novels  is  so  simple,  his 
tales  plotless,  in  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the 
word.  Elaborate  formal  architecture  he  does  not 
afifect.  The  novel  in  the  hands  of  Balzac,  Flau- 
bert, Goncourt,  and  Zola  would  seem  to  have 
reached  its  apogee  as  a  canvas  upon  which  to 
paint  a  picture  of  manners.  In  the  sociological 
novel,  the  old  theatrical  climaxes  are  absent,  the 
old  recipes  for  cooking  character  find  no  place. 
Even  the  love  motive  is  not  paramount.  The 
genesis  of  this  form  may  be  found  in  Balzac,  in 
whom  all  the  modem  fiction  is  rooted.  Certain 
premonitions  of  the  genre  are  also  encountered  in 
L' Education  Sentimentale  of  Flaubert,  with  its 
wide  gray  horizons,  its  vague  murmurs  of  the  im- 
memorial mobs  of  vast  cities,  its  presentation  of 
undistinguished  men  and  women.  Truly  demo- 
cratic fiction,  by  a  master  who  hated  democracy 
with  creative  results. 

Anatole  France,  Maurice  Barres,  Edouard 
Estaunie,     Rosny     (the    brothers    Bex),     Ren^ 

155 


EGOISTS 

Bazin,  Bertrand,  and  the  astonishing  Paul  Adam 
are  in  the  van  of  this  new  movement  of  fiction 
with  ideas,  endeavouring  to  exorcise  the  ''demon 
of  staleness."  French  fiction  in  the  last  decade 
of  the  past  century  saw  the  death  of  the  natural- 
istic school.  Paris  had  become  a  thrice-told  tale, 
signifying  the  wearisome  "triangle"  and  the 
chronicling  of  flat  beer.  Something  new  had  to 
be  evolved.  Lo!  the  sociological  novel,  which 
discarded  the  familiar  machinery  of  fiction, 
rather  than  miss  the  new  spirit.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  add  that  in  America  the  fiction  of  ideas  has 
not  been,  thus  far,  of  prosperous  growth;  indeed, 
it  is  viewed  with  suspicion. 

Loosely  stated,  the  fiction  of  Anatole  France 
may  be  divided  into  three  kinds:  fantastic,  phil- 
osophic, and  realistic.  This  arbitrary  grouping 
need  not  be  taken  literally;  in  any  one  of  his  tales 
we  may  encounter  all  three  qualities.  For  ex- 
ample, there  is  much  that  is  fantastic,  philosophic, 
real,  in  that  moving  and  wholly  human  narrative 
of  Sylvestre  Bonnard.  France's  familiarity  with 
cabalistic  and  exotic  literatures,  his  deep  love 
and  comprehension  of  the  Latin  and  Greek 
classics,  his  knowledge  of  mediaeval  legends  and 
learning,  coupled  with  his  command  of  supple 
speech,  enable  him  to  project  upon  a  ground-plan 
of  simple  narrative  extraordinary  variations. 

The  full  flowering  of  France's  knowledge  and 
imagination  in  things  patristic  and  archaeologic 
is  to  be  seen  in  Thais,  a  masterpiece  of  colour  and 
construction.    Thais  is  that  courtesan  of  Alex- 

156 


ANATOLE   FRANCE 

andria,  renowned  for  her  beauty,  wit,  and  wick- 
edness, who  was  converted  by  the  holy  Paphnutius, 
saint  and  hermit  of  the  Thebaid.  How  the  devil 
finally  dislodges  from  the  heart  of  Paphnutius  its 
accumulation  of  virtue,  is  told  in  an  incompara- 
ble manner.  If  Flaubert  was  pleased  by  the  first 
offering  of  his  pupil,  Guy  de  Maupassant,  (Boule 
de  Suif),  what  would  he  not  have  said  after  read- 
ing Thais  ?  The  ending  of  the  wretched  monk, 
following  his  spiritual  victories  as  a  holy  man 
perched  on  a  pillar — a  memory  of  the  author's 
youthful  dream  —  is  lamentable.  He  loves  Thais, 
who  dies;  and  thenceforth  he  is  condemned  to 
wander,  a  vampire  in  this  world,  a  devil  in  the 
next.  A  monument  of  erudition,  thick  with  pages 
of  jewelled  prose,  Thais  is  a  book  to  be  savoured 
slowly  and  never  forgotten.  It  is  the  direct  parent 
of  Pierre  Loliys's  Aphrodite,  and  later  evocations 
of  the  antique  world. 

Of  great  emotional  intensity  is  Histoire  Comique 
(1903).  It  is  a  study  of  the  histrionic  tempera- 
ment, and  full  of  the  major  miseries  and  petty 
triumphs  of  stage  life.  It  also  contains  a  startling 
incident,  the  suicide  of  a  lovelorn  actor.  The 
conclusion  is  violent  and  morbid.  The  nature 
of  the  average  actress  has  never  been  etched  with 
such  acrid  precision.  There  are  various  tableaux 
of  behind  and  before  the  footlights;  a  rehearsal, 
an  actor's  funeral,  and  the  life  of  the  greenroom. 
Set  forth  in  his  most  disinterested  style,  M. 
France  shows  us  that  he  can  handle  with  ease  so- 
called  "objective"  fiction.    His  Doctor  Trublet 

157 


EGOISTS 

is  a  new  France  incarnation,  wonderful  and  kindly 
old  consoler  that  he  is.  He  is  attached  as  house 
physician  to  the  Od6on,  and  to  him  the  comedians 
come  for  advice.  He  ministers  to  them  body  and 
soul.  His  discourse  is  Socratic.  He  has  wit  and 
wisdom.  And  he  displays  the  motives  of  the 
heroine  so  that  we  seem  to  gaze  through  an  open 
window.  As  vital  as  Sylvestre  Bonnard,  as 
Bergeret,  Trublet  is  truly  an  avatar  of  Anatole 
France.  Histoire  Comique!  The  title  is  a  rare 
jest  aimed  at  mundane  and  bohemian  vanity. 

Passing  Jocaste  et  le  Chat  maigre,  and  Le 
Puits  de  Sainte-Claire,  we  come  to  L'Etui  de 
Nacre,  a  volume  of  tales  published  in  1892. 
This  book  may  be  selected  as  typical  of  a  certain 
side  of  its  author,  a  side  in  which  his  fantasy  and 
historic  sense  meet  on  equal  terms.  The  most 
celebrated  is  Le  Procurateur  de  Jud^e,  who  is 
none  other  than  Pontius  Pilate,  old,  disillusioned 
of  public  ambition,  and  grumbling,  as  do  many 
retired  public  officers,  at  the  ingratitude  of  gov- 
ernments and  princes.  To  his  friend  he  confesses 
finally,  after  his  memory  has  been  vainly  prompted, 
that  he  has  no  recollection  of  Jesus,  a  certain  anar- 
chistic prophet  of  Judea,  condemned  by  him  to 
death.  His  final  phrases  give  us,  as  in  the  flare 
of  lightning,  the  withering,  double-edged  irony 
of  the  author.  He  has  quite  forgotten  the  tre- 
mendous events  that  occurred  in  Jerusalem;  for- 
gotten, too,  is  Jesus.  Not  all  the  stories  that  fol- 
low, not  the  pious  records  of  Sainte  Euphrosine, 
of  Sainte  Oliverie  et  Liberetta,  of  Amyeus  and 
158 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

Celestin,  of  Scolastica,  can  rob  the  reader  of  this 
first  cruel  impression.  In  Balthasar  the  narra- 
tives are  of  a  superior  quality.  Nothing  could 
be  better,  for  example,  than  the  recital  of  the 
Ethiopian  king  who  sought  the  love  of  Balkis, 
Queen  of  Sheba,  was  accepted,  after  proofs  of 
his  bravery,  and  then  quietly  forgotten.  He 
studies  the  secrets  of  the  spheres,  and  when  Balkis, 
repenting  of  her  behaviour,  seeks  Balthasar 
anew,  it  is  too  late.  He  has  discovered  the  star 
of  Bethlehem  which  leads  him  straightway  to  the 
crib  in  company  with  Caspar  and  Melchior, 
there  to  worship  the  King  of  Kings.  Powerful, 
too,  in  its  fantastic  evocation  is  La  Fille  de 
Lilith,  which  relates  the  adventure  of  a  modern 
Parisian  with  a  deathless  daughter  of  Adam's 
first  wife,  Lilith,  so  named  in  the  Talmud.  Laeta 
Acilia  tells  us  one  of  France's  best  anecdotes 
about  a  Roman  matron  residing  at  Marseilles  dur- 
ing the  reign  of  Tiberius.  She  encounters  Mary 
Magdalen,  who  almost  converts  the  woman  by  a 
promise  of  children,  long  desired.  The  con- 
clusion is  touching.  It  discloses  admirably  the 
psychology  of  the  two  women.  L'Oeuf  Rouge 
is  a  tale  of  Caesarian  madness,  and  the  bizarre 
Le  Reseda  du  Cure  is  so  simply  related  that  we 
are  disarmed  by  the  style. 

A  graceful  collection  is  that  called  Clio,  illus- 
trated in  the  highly  decorative  manner  of  Mucha. 
Possibly  the  first  is  the  best,  a  story  of  Homer. 
Some  confess  a  preference  for  a  Gaulish  recital 
of  the  times  when  Caesar  went  to  Britain.  Na- 
159 


EGOISTS 

poleon,  too,  is  in  the  list.  An  interesting  dis- 
cussion of  Napoleon  and  the  Napoleonic  legend 
is  in  a  full-fledged  novel,  The  Red  Lily.  "Na- 
poleon," says  one  of  its  characters,  "was  violent 
and  frivolous;  therefore  profoundly  human.  .  .  . 
He  desired  with  singular  force,  all  that  most  men 
esteem  and  desire.  He  had  the  illusions  which 
he  gave  to  the  people.  He  believed  in  glory. 
He  retained  always  the  infantile  gravity  which 
finds  pleasure  in  playing  with  swords  and  drums, 
and  the  sort  of  innocence  which  makes  good  mil- 
itary men.  It  is  this  vulgar  grandeur  which 
makes  heroes,  and  Napoleon  is  the  perfect  hero. 
His  brain  never  surpassed  his  hand  —  that  hand, 
small  and  beautiful,  which  crumpled  the  world. 
.  .  .  Napoleon  lacked  interior  life.  ...  He  lived 
from  the  outside."  In  the  art  of  attenuating 
great  reputations  Anatole  France  has  had  few 
superiors. 

This  novel  displeased  his  many  admirers,  who 
pretend  to  see  in  it  the  influence  of  Paul  Bourget. 
Yet  it  is  a  memorable  book.  Paul  Verlaine  is 
depicted  in  it  with  freshness,  that  poet  Paul,  and 
his  childish  soul  so  ironically,  yet  so  lovingly  dis- 
tilled by  his  critic.  There  are  glimpses  of  Flor- 
ence, of  Paris;  the  study  of  an  English  girl-poet 
will  arouse  pleasant  memories  of  a  lady  well 
known  to  Italian,  Parisian,  and  London  art  life. 
And  there  is  the  sculptor,  Jacques  Dechartres, 
who  may  be  a  mask,  among  many  others  of  M. 
France.  But  Choulette- Verlaine  is  the  lode- 
stone  of  the  novel. 

1 60 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

Where   the   ingenuity  and   mental   flexibility, 
not  to  say  historical  mimicry,  of  France  are  seen 
at  their  supreme,  is  in  La  Rotisserie  de  la  Reine 
P^dauque.     Jacques  Tournebroche,  or  Turnspit, 
is  an  assistant  in  the  cook-shop  of  his  father,  in 
old  Paris.     He  is  of  a  studious  mind,  and  becomes 
the  pupil  of  the  Abbe  Jerome  Coignard,  "who 
despises  men  with  tenderness,"  a  figure  that  might 
have  stepped  out  of  Rabelais,  though  baked  and 
tempered  in  the  refining  fires  of  M.   France's 
imagination.     Such" a  man!     Such  an  ecclesiastic ! 
He  adores  his  maker  and  admires  His  manifold 
creations,    especially  wine,    women,   and    song. 
He  has  more  than  his  share  of  human  weakness, 
and  yet  you  wonder  why  he  has  not  been  canon- 
ised for  his  adorable  traits.     He  is  a  glutton  and 
a  wine-bibber,  a  susceptible  heart,  a  pious  and 
deeply  versed  man.     Nor  must  the  rascally  friar 
be   forgotten,    surely    a   memory   of    Rabelais's 
Friar  Jhon.     There  are  scenes  in  this  chronicle 
that  would  have  made  envious  the  elder  Dumas; 
scenes    of   swashbuckling,  feasting,   and    blood- 
shed.    There  is  an  astrologer  who  has  about  him 
the  atmosphere  of  the  black  art  with  its  imps  and 
salamanders,  and   an   ancient   Jew  who   is   the 
Hebraic  law  personified.     So  lifelike  is  Jerome 
Coignard  that  a  book  of  his  opinions  was  bound 
to  follow.     His  whilom  pupil   Jacques  is  sup- 
posed to  be  its  editor.     Le  Jardin  d' Epicure  and 
Sur  la  Pierre  Blanche  (1905)  are  an  excuse  for 
the  opinions  of  M.   France  on  many  topics  — 
religion,  politics,  science,  and  social  life.     Not- 
161 


EGOISTS 

withstanding  their  loose  construction,  they  are 
never  inchoate.  That  the  ideas  put  forth  may 
astound  by  their  perversity,  their  novelty,  their 
nihilism,  their  note  of  cosmic  pessimism,  is  not 
to  be  denied.  Our  earth,  *'a  miserable  small 
star,"  is  a  drop  of  mud  swimming  in  space,  its 
inhabitants  mere  specks,  whose  doings  are  not  of 
importance  in  the  larger  curves  of  the  universe's 
destiny.  Every  illustration,  geological,  astro- 
nomical, and  mathematical,  is  brought  to  bear 
upon  this  thesis  —  the  littleness  of  man  and  the 
uselessness  of  his  existence.  But  France  loves 
this  harassed  animal,  man,  and  never  fails  to 
show  his  love.  Interspersed  with  moralising 
are  recitals  of  rare  beauty,  Gallion  and  Par  la 
Porte  de  Corne  ou  par  la  Porte  d'lvoire.  Here 
the  classic  scholar,  that  is  the  base  of  France's 
temperament,  fairly  shines. 

In  the  four  volumes  of  Histoire  Contemporaine 
we  meet  a  new  Anatole  France,  one  who  has  de- 
serted his  old  attitude  of  Parnassian  impassi- 
bility for  a  suave  anarchism,  one  who  enters  the 
arena  of  contemporaneous  life  bent  on  slaughter, 
though  his  weapon  is  the  keen  blade,  never  the 
rude  battle-axe  of  polemics.  It  is  his  first  ven- 
ture in  the  fiction  of  sociology;  properly  speaking, 
it  is  the  psychology  of  the  masses,  not  exactly 
as  Paul  Adam  handles  it  in  his  striking  and  tem- 
pestuous Les  Lions  (a  book  Balzacian  in  its  fury 
of  execution),  but  with  the  graver  temper  of  the 
philosopher.  He  paints  for  us  a  provincial  uni- 
versity town  with  its  intrigues,  religious,  political, 
162 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

and  social.  The  first  of  the  series  is  L'Orme  du 
Mail;  follow  Le  Mannequin  d' Osier,  L'Anneau 
d'Amethyste,  and  Monsieur  Bergeret  a  Paris  (1901). 
The  loop  that  ensnares  this  quartet  of  novels  is 
the  simple  motive  of  ecclesiastical  ambition. 
Not  since  Ferdinand  Fabre's  L'Abbe  Tigrane 
has  French  literature  had  such  portraits  of  the 
priesthood;  Zola's  ecclesiastics  are  ill-natured 
caricatures.  The  Cardinal  Archbishop,  Abb^ 
Lataigne,  and  the  lifelike  Abbe  Guitrel,  with  the 
silent,  though  none  the  less  desperate,  fight  for 
the  vacant  bishopric  of  Turcoing  —  these  are  the 
three  men  who  with  Bergeret  carry  the  story  on 
their  shoulders.  About  them  circle  the  entire 
diocese  and  the  tepid  life  of  a  university  town. 
Yet  anything  further  from  melodramatic  machina- 
tions cannot  be  imagined.  Even  the  clerics  of 
Balzac  seem  exaggerated  in  comparison.  The 
protagonist  is  a  professor,  a  master  of  conference 
of  the  University  Faculty,  a  worthy  man  and 
earnest,  though  by  no  means  of  an  exalted  talent. 
He  has  the  misfortune  of  being  married  to  a 
worldly  woman  who  does  not  attempt  to  under- 
stand him,  much  less  to  love  him.  She  deceives 
him.  The  discovery  of  this  deceit  is  an  episode 
the  most  curious  in  fiction.  It  would  be  diverting 
if  it  were  not  painful.  It  reveals  in  Bergeret  the 
preponderance  of  the  man  of  thought  over  the 
man  of  action.  His  pupil  and  false  friend  is 
a  classical  scholar,  therefore  the  affair  might  have 
been  worse!  And  he  is  given  the  scholar's  ex- 
cuse as  a  plea  for  forgiveness!  But  hesitating 
163 


EGOISTS 

as  appears  Bergeret,  he  utilises  his  wife's  treachery 
as  a  springboard  from  which  to  fly  his  miserable 
household.  Henceforth,  with  his  devoted  sister 
and  daughter,  he  philosophises  at  ease  and  be- 
comes a  Dreyfusard.  His  dog  Riquet  is  the  re- 
cipient of  his  deepest  thoughts.  His  monologues 
in  the  presence  of  this  animal  are  the  best  in  the 
book. 

There  are  many  characters  in  this  serene  and 
bitter  tragi-comedy.  A  contempt,  almost  mo- 
nastic, peeps  out  in  the  treatment  of  his  women. 
They  are  often  detestable.  They  behave  as  if 
an  empire  was  at  stake,  though  it  is  only  a  con- 
spiracy whereby  Abbe  Guitrel  is  made  Bishop  of 
Turcoing.  France  always  displays  more  pity 
for  the  frankly  sinful  woman  than  for  the  frivolous 
woman  of  fashion.  There  is  also  a  subplot,  the 
effort  of  a  young  Hebrew  snob,  Bonmont  by 
name  (Guttenberg,  originally),  to  get  into  the 
exclusive  hunting  set  of  the  Due  de  Brece.  This 
hunt-button  wins  for  the  diplomatic  Abbe  Gui- 
trel his  coveted  see.  M.  France  is  unequalled 
in  his  portrayal  of  the  modem  French-Hebrew 
millionaire,  the  Wallsteins  and  Bonmonts.  He 
draws  them  without  parti-pris.  His  prefect, 
the  easy-going,  cynical  Worms-Clavelin,  w^ith 
his  secret  contempt  of  Jews  and  Gentiles  alike, 
and  his  wife  who  collects  ecclesiastical  bric-a-brac, 
are  executed  by  a  great  painter  of  character.  He 
exposes  with  merciless  impartiality  a  mob  of 
men  and  women  in  high  life.  But  his  aristocrats 
are  no  better  than  his  ecclesiastics  or  bankers. 
164 


ANATOLE  FRANCE 

There  is  a  comic  Orleanist  conspiracy.     There 
are  happenings  that  set  your  hair  on  end,  and  a 
cynicism  at  times  which  forces  one  to  regret  that 
the  author  left  his  study  to  mingle  with  the  world. 
Nor  is  the  strain  relieved  when  poor  Bergeret  goes 
to  Paris;    there  he  is  enmeshed  by  the  Dreyfus 
party.   There  he  comes  upon  stormy  days,  though 
high  ideals  never  desert  him.     He  is  as  placid  in 
the  face  of  contemptuous  epithets  and  opprobrious 
newspaper  attacks  as  he  was  calm  when  stones 
were  hurled   at  his  windows  in   the  provinces. 
A  man  obsessed  by  general  ideas,  he  is  lovable 
and  never  a  bore,  though  M.  Faguet  and  several 
other  critics  have  cried  him  stupid.     In  the  *'fire 
of  the  footlights"  M.  Bergeret  pales.     For  the 
drama  M.  France  has  no  particular  voice,  though 
he  has  written  several  charming  playlets.     Even 
the  superior  acting  of  Guitry  could  not  make  of 
Crainquibille  much  more  than  a  touching  episode. 
There  is  enough  characterisation  and  incident 
in  Histoire  Contemporaine  to  ballast  a  half-dozen 
novelists  with  material.     And  there  are  treasures 
of   humour    and    pathos.     The    success    of    the 
series    has    been    awe-inspiring;     indeed,    awe- 
inspiring  is  the  success  of  all  the  France  books, 
and  at  a  time  when  Parisian  prophets  of  woe  are 
lamenting  the  decline  of  literature.     Neverthe- 
less, here  is  a  man  who  writes  like  an  artist,  whose 
work,  web  and  woof,  is  literature,  whose  themes, 
with  few  exceptions,  are  not  of  the  popular  kind, 
whose  politics  are  violently  opposed  to  current 
superstition,  whose  very  form  is  hybrid;  yet  he 

165 


EGOISTS 

sells,  and  has  sold,  in  the  hundreds  of  thousands. 
Literature  cannot  be  called  moribund  in  the  face 
of  such  a  result.  His  is  a  case  that  sets  one  specu- 
lating without  undue  emphasis  upon  a  certain 
superiority  of  French  taste  over  English  in  the 
matter  of  fiction. 

The  Life  of  Jeanne  d'Arc  (1908),  a  work  of 
scholarship  and  mixed  prejudices,  does  not,  I  am 
forced  to  admit,  unduly  interest  me.  Whether 
the  astonishing  statements  set  forth  therein  are 
true  is  a  question  that  may  concern  Mr.  Lang, 
but  hardly  the  lovers  of  the  real  Anatole.  The 
Isle  of  Penguins  (1908)  gave  him  back  to  us  in 
all  his  original  glory. 

An  art,  ironical,  easy,  fugitive,  divinely  un- 
trammelled, divinely  artificial,  which,  like  a  pure 
flame,  blazes  forth  in  an  unclouded  heaven  .  .  . 
la  gay  a  scienza;  light  feet;  wit;  fire;  grace;  the 
dance  of  the  stars;  the  tremor  of  southern  light; 
the  smooth  sea  —  these  Nietzschean  phrases 
might  serve  as  an  epigraph  for  the  work  of  that 
apostle  of  innocence  and  experience,  Anatole 
France. 


i66 


THE  PESSIMIST'S  PROGRESS 

J.-K.  HUYSMANS 

"Ah!  Seigneur,  donnez-moi  la  force  et  le  courage 
De  contempler  mon  cceur  et  mon  corps  sans  dugout." 

— Baudelaire. 


Joris-Karl  Huysmans  has  been  called  mystic, 
naturalist,  critic,  aristocrat  of  the  intellect;  he  was 
all  these,  a  mandarin  of  letters  and  a  pessimist 
besides  —  no  matter  what  other  qualities  persist 
throughout  his  work,  pessimism  is  never  absent; 
his  firmament  is  clotted  with  black  stars.  He  had 
a  mediaeval  monk's  contempt  for  existence,  con- 
tempt for  the  mangy  flock  of  mediocrity;  yet  his 
genius  drove  him  to  describe  its  crass  ugliness  in 
phrases  of  incomparable  and  enamelled  prose. 
It  is  something  of  a  paradox  that  this  man  of 
picturesque  piety  should  have  lived  to  be  the 
accredited  interpreter,  the  distiller  of  its  quintes- 
sence, of  that  elusive  quahty,  "modernity."  The 
"intensest  vision  of  the  modern  world,"  as  Have- 
lock  Ellis  puts  it,  Huysmans  unites  to  the  endow- 
ment of  a  painter  the  power  of  a  rare  psychologist, 
167 


EGOISTS 

superimposed  upon  a  lycanthropic  nature.  A 
collective  title  for  his  books  might  be  borrowed  from 
Zola:  My  Hatreds.  He  hated  life  and  its  eternal 
hetise.  His  theme,  with  variations,  is  a  strangling 
Ennui.  With  those  devoted  sons  of  Mother 
Church,  Charles  Baudelaire,  Barbey  D'Aurevilly, 
Villiers  de  I'Isle  Adam,  and  Paul  Verlaine; 
eccentric  sons  whose  actions  so  often  dismayed 
their  fellow  worshippers  of  less  genius,  Huysmahs 
has  been  affiliated.  He  was  not  a  poet  or,  in- 
deed, a  man  of  overwhelming  imagination.  But 
he  had  the  verbal  imagination.  He  did  not  possess 
the  novelist's  talent.  His  was  not  the  flamboyant 
genius  of  Barbey,  nor  had  he  the  fantastic  inven- 
tion of  Villiers.  He  seems  closer  to  Baudelaire, 
rather  by  reason  of  his  ironic,  critical  temperament 
than  because  of  his  creative  gifts.  Baudelaire's 
oriflamme,  embroidered  with  preciously  devised 
letters  of  gold,  reads :  Spleen  and  Ideal;  upon  the 
emblematic  banner  of  Huysmans  this  motto  is 
Spleen.  His  work  at  times  seems  like  a  prolonga- 
tion in  prose  of  Baudelaire's.  And  by  reason 
of  his  exacerbated  temper  he  became  the  most 
personal  writer  of  his  generation.  He  belonged 
to  no  school,  and  avoided,  after  his  beginnings, 
all  literary  groups. 

He  is  recording-secretary  of  the  petty  miseries 
and  ironies  of  the  life  about  him.  Over  ugliness 
he  becomes  almost  lyric.  ''The  world  is  a  forest 
of  differences."  His  pen,  when  he  depicts  an 
attack  of  dyspepsia  or  neuralgia,  or  the  nervous 
distaste  of  a  hypochondriac  for  meeting  people, 
i68 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

is  like  the  triple  sting  of  a  hornet.  He  is  the  prose 
singer  of  neurasthenia,  a  Hamlet  doubting  his 
digestion,  a  Schopenhauer  of  the  cook-shops. 
When  he  paints  the  nuance  of  rage  and  disgust  that 
assails  a  middle-aged  man  at  the  sight  of  a  burnt 
mutton-chop,  his  phrases  are  unforgettable.  The 
tragedy  of  the  gastric  juices  he  has  limned  with 
a  fulness  of  expression  that  almost  lifts  pathology 
to  the  dignity  of  art.  A  descendant  of  Flemish 
painters,  sculptors,  architects  (Huysmans  of 
Mechlin,  the  Antwerp-bom  painter  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  is  said  to  be  a  forebear),  he  in- 
herited their  powers  of  envisaging  exterior  life; 
those  painters  for  whom  flowers,  vegetable 
markets,  butcher-shops,  tiny  gentle  Dutch  land- 
scapes, gray  skies,  skies  of  rutilant  flames,  and 
homely  details  were  surfaces  to  be  passionately 
and  faithfully  rendered.  This  vision  he  has  in- 
terpreted with  pen  instead  of  brush.  He  is  a 
virtuoso  of  the  phrase.  He  is  a  performer  on 
the  single  string  of  self.  He  knows  the  sultry 
enharmonics  of  passion.  He  never  improvises, 
he  observes.  All .  is  willed  and  conscious,  the 
cold-fire  scrutiny  of  a  trained  eye,  one  keen  to 
note  the  ignoble  or  any  deviation  from  the  normal. 
His  pages  are  often  sterile  and  smell  of  the  lamp, 
but  he  has  the  candour  of  his  chimera.  Well  has 
Remy  de  Gourmont  called  him  an  eye.  In  his 
prose,  he  sacrifices  rhythmic  variety  and  tone  to 
colour.  His  rhythms  are  massive,  his  colour  at 
times  a  furious  fanfare  of  scarlet.  Every  word, 
like  a  note  in  a  musical  score,  has  its  value  and 
169 


EGOISTS 

position.  He  intoxicates  because  of  his  marvel- 
lous speech,  but  he  seldom  charms.  It  is  a  sort 
of  sinister  verbal  magic  that  steals  upon  one  as 
this  ancient  mariner  from  the  lower  moral  deeps 
of  Paris  fixes  you  with  his  glittering  eye,  and  in 
his  strangely  modulated  language  tells  tales  of 
blasphemy  and  fish-wives'  tales  of  a  half-for- 
gotten river  below  the  bed  of  the  Seine,  of  dull 
cafes  and  dreary  suburbs,  of  bored  men  and 
stupid  women,  of  sordid,  opulent  souls,  souls 
spongy  and  voluptuous,  mean  lives  and  meaner 
alleys  —  such  an  epic  of  ennui,  mediocrity, 
bizzare  sins,  and  neurotic,  superstitious  creatures 
was  never  given  the  world  until  Huysmans  wrote 
Les  Sceurs  Vatard  and  A  Rebours.  Entire 
vanished  districts  of  Paris  may  be  reconstructed 
from  his  chapters.  Zola  declared,  when  Guy 
de  Maupassant  and  Huysmans  appeared  side 
by  side  in  Les  Soirees  de  Medan,  that  the  latter 
was  the  realist. 

The  unity  of  form  and  substance  in  Huysmans 
is  a  distinguishing  trait.  He  had  early  mastered 
literary  technique,  and  the  handling  of  his  themes 
varies  but  little.  There  are,  however,  two  or 
three  typical  varieties  of  description  which  may 
be  quoted  as  illustrations  of  his  etched  and 
jewel-like  prose.  A  cow  hangs  outside  a  butcher- 
shop: 

As  in  a  hothouse,  a  marvellous  vegetation  flourished 
in  the  carcass.   Veins  shot  out  on  every  side  like  the 
trails   of    bindweed;    dishevelled    branch- work    ex- 
tended itself  along  the  body,  an  efflorescence  of  en- 
170 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

trails  unfurled  their  violent-tinted  corollas,  and  big 
clusters  of  fat  stood  out,  a  sharp  white,  against  the 
red  medley  of  quivering  flesh. 

Surely  a  subject  for  Snyders  or  Jan  Steen. 

Leon  Bloy  somewhere  describes  Huysmans's 
treatment  of  the  French  language  as  ''dragging 
his  images  by  the  heels  or  the  hair  up  and  down 
the  worm-eaten  staircase  of  terrified  syntax." 
Huysmans,  in  A  Rebours,  had  called  M.  Bloy 
*'an  enraged  pamphleteer  whose  style  was  at 
once  exasperated  and  precious."  And  can  mag- 
nificence of  phrase  in  evoking  a  picture  go  further 
than  the  following  which  shows  us  Gustave 
Moreau's  Salome: 

In  the  perverse  odour  of  perfumes,  in  the  overheated 
atmosphere  of  this  church,  Salome,  her  left  arm  ex- 
tended in  a  gesture  of  command,  her  bent  right  arm 
holding  on  the  level  of  the  face  a  great  lotus,  advances 
slowly  to  the  sound  of  a  guitar,  thrummed  by  a 
woman  who  crouches  on  the  floor.  With  collected, 
almost  anguished  countenance,  she  begins  the  lascivi- 
ous dance  that  should  waken  the  sleeping  senses  of 
the  aged  Herod;  her  breasts  undulate,  become  rigid 
at  the  contact  of  the  whirling  necklets;  diamonds 
sparkle  on  the  dead  whiteness  of  her  skin,  her  brace- 
lets, girdles,  rings,  shoot  sparks;  on  her  triumphal 
robes  sewn  with  pearls,  flowered  with  silver,  sheeted 
with  gold,  the  jewelled  breast-plate,  whose  every 
stitch  is  a  precious  stone,  bursts  into  flame,  scatters 
in  snakes  of  fire,  swarms  on  the  ivory-toned,  tea-rose 
flesh,  like  splendid  insects  with  dazzling  wings, 
marbled  with  carmine,  dotted  with  morning  gold, 
diapered  with  steel  blue,  streaked  with  peacock  green. 
171 


EGOISTS 

Gautier, — who  was  forHuysmans  only  a  prodig- 
ious reflector  —  Flaubert,  Goncourt,  could  not 
have  excelled  this  verbal  painting,  this  bronze 
and  baroque  prose,  which  is  both  precise  and  of  a 
splendour.  Huysmans  can  describe  a  herring 
as  would  a  great  master  of  sumptuous  still-life : 

•  Thy  garment  is  the  palette  of  setting  suns,  the  rust 
of  old  copper,  the  brown  gilt  of  Cordovan  leather, 
the  sandal  and  saffron  tints  of  the  autumn  foliage. 
When  I  contemplate  thy  coat  of  mail  I  think  of  Rem- 
brandt's pictures.  I  see  again  his  superb  heads, 
his  sunny  flesh,  his  gleaming  jewels  on  black  velvet. 
I  see  again  his  rays  of  light  in  the  night,  his  trailing 
gold  in  the  shade,  the  dawning  of  suns  through  dark 
arches. 

Or  this  invocation  when  Huysmans  had  begun 
to  experience  that  shifting  of  moral  emotion 
which  we  call  his  "conversion" — he  was  a 
Roman  Catholic  bom,  therefore  was  not  con- 
verted; he  but  reverted  to  his  early  faith: 

Take  pity,  O  Lord,  on  the  Christian  who  doubts, 
on  the  sceptic  who  desires  to  believe,  on  the  convict 
of  life  who  embarks  alone,  in  the  night,  beneath  a  sky 
no  longer  lit  by  the  consoling  beacons  of  ancient  faith. 

His  method  is  not  the  recital  of  events,  but  the 
description  of  a  situation;  a  scene,  not  a  narra- 
tion, but  large  tableaux.  Action  there  is  little; 
he  is  more  static  than  dynamic.  His  characters, 
like  Goncourt's,  sufi"er  from  paralysis  of  the  will, 
from  hyperaesthesia.  The  soul  in  its  primordial 
172 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

darkness  interests  him,  and  he  describes  it  with 
the  same  penetrating  prose  as  he  does  the  carcass 
of  an  animal.  He  is  a  luminous  mystic  who 
speaks  in  terms  of  extravagant  naturalism.  A 
physiologist  of  the  soul,  at  times  his  soul  dwelt  in 
a  boulevard.  His  violent,  vivid  style  so  excellent 
in  setting  forth  coloured  sensations  is  equally 
admirable  in  the  construction  of  metaphors 
which  make  concrete  the  abstract.  There  is  the 
element  of  the  grotesque,  of  the  old,  ribald'  Flem- 
ing, in  Huysmans,  though  without  a  trace  of  hearty 
Flemish  humour.  He  once  said  that  the  mem- 
ory of  the  inventor  of  card-playing  ought  to 
be  blessed,  the  game  kept  closed  the  mouths  of 
imbeciles.  Nor  is  the  pepper  of  sophistry  ab- 
sent. He  sculptures  his  ideas.  He  is  both 
morose  and  fulgurating.  He  squanders  his  emo- 
tions with  polychromatic  resignation  unlike  a 
Saint  Augustine  or  a  Newman;  yet  we  are  not 
deeply  moved  by  his  soul-experiences.  It  is  not 
vibrating  sincerity  that  we  miss;  it  would  be 
wrong  to  question  his  return  to  Catholicism. 
He  is  more  convincing  than  Tolstoy;  for  one 
thing,  there  was  no  dissonance  between  his  daily 
life  and  his  writings,  after  the  publication  of 
En  Route.  Lucid  as  is  his  manner,  clairvoyant 
as  the  exposition  of  his  soul  at  the  feet  of  God, 
there  is,  nevertheless,  an  absence  of  unction,  of 
tenderness,  which  repels.  Sympathy  and  tender- 
ness are  bourgeois  virtues  for  Huysmans.  Too 
complicated  to  admire,  even  recognise,  the  sane 
or  the  simple,  he  remained  the  morbid  carper  after 
173 


EGOISTS 

he  entered  La  Trappe  and  Solesmes.  As  an 
oblate,  his  fastidiousness  was  wounded  by  the 
minor  annoyances  of  a  severe  regimen;  his 
stomach  always  ailed  him.  Perhaps  to  his  weak 
digestion  and  a  neuralgic  tendency  we  owe  the 
bitterness  and  pessimism  of  his  art.  He  was  not 
a  normal  man.  He  loathed  the  inevitable  dis- 
cords of  life  with  a  startling  intensity.  The 
venomous  salt  of  his  wit  he  sprinkles  over  the 
raw  turpitude  of  men  and  women.  Woman  for 
him  was  not  of  the  planetary  sex,  but  either  a 
stupid  or  a  vicious  creature;  sometimes  both. 
Impassible  as  he  was,  he  could  be  shocked  into 
a  species  of  sub-acid  eloquence  if  the  theme  were 
the  inutility  of  mankind.  No  Hebraic  prophet 
ever  launched  such  poignant  phrases  of  disgust 
and  horror  at  the  world  and  its  works.  His 
favourite  reading  was  in  the  mystics,  a  Kempis, 
Saint  Theresa,  St.  John  of  the  Cross,  and  the 
Flemish  Ruysbroeck. 

In  a  new  edition  of  A  Rebours  he  has  told  us 
that  he  was  not  pious  as  a  youth,  having  been 
educated  not  at  a  religious  school.  A  Rebours 
came  out  in  1884,  and  it  was  in  July,  1892,  at  the 
age  of  forty-four,  that  he  went  to  La  Trappe 
de  Notre- Dame  d'lgny,  situated  near  Fismes, 
and  the  Aisne  and  Mame.  He  confessed  that 
he  could  not  discover,  during  the  eight  inter- 
vening years,  why  he  swerved  to  the  Church  of 
Rome.  Diminution  of  vital  energy  was  not 
the  chief  reason  for  his  reversion.  The  opera- 
tions of  divine  grace  in  Huysmans's  case  may 
174 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

be  dated  back  to  A  Rebours.  The  modulation 
by  the  way  of  art  was  not  a  difficult  one.  And 
he  had  the  good  taste  of  giving  us  his  experiences 
in  the  guise  of  art.  It  is  the  history  of  a  conver- 
sion, though  he  is,  without  doubt,  the  Durtal  of 
the  books.  The  final  explosion  of  grace  after 
years  of  unconscious  mining,  the  definite  illumina- 
tion on  some  unknown  Road  to  Damascus,  took 
place  between  the  appearance  of  Lk  Bas  and 
En  Route.  We  are  spared  the  technique  of  faith 
reawakened.  It  had  become  part  of  his  cerebral 
tissue.  We  are  shown  a  Durtal,  believer;  also 
a  Durtal  profoundly  disgusted  with  the  oily, 
rancid  food  of  La  Trappe,  and  with  the  faces  of 
some  of  his  companions,  and  a  Durtal  who  puffs 
surreptitious  cigarettes.  At  Lourdes,  in  his  last 
book,  he  is  the  same  Durtal-Huysmans,  grum- 
bling at  the  odours  of  unwashed  bodies,  at  the  per- 
spiring crowds,  at  the  ignorance  and  cupidity 
of  the  shrine's  guardians.  A  pessimist  to  the 
end.  And  for  that  reason  he  has  often  outraged 
the  sensibilities  of  his  coreligionists,  who  ques- 
tioned his  sincerity  after  such  an  exclamation  as: 
"How  like  a  rind  of  lard  I  must  look!"  uttered 
when  he  carried  a  dripping  candle  in  a  religious 
procession.  But  through  the  dreary  mists  of 
doubtings  and  black  fogs  of  unf aith  the  lamp  of  the 
Church,  a  shining  point,  drew  to  it  from  his  chilly 
ecstasies  this  hedonist.  Like  Taine  and  Nietz- 
sche, he  craved  for  some  haven  of  refuge  to  escape 
the  whirring  wings  of  Wotan's  ravens.  And  in 
the  pale  woven  air  he  saw  the  cross  of  Christ. 
175 


EGOISTS 

Leslie  Stephen  wrote  of  Pascal:  ** Eminent 
critics  have  puzzled  themselves  as  to  whether 
Pascal  was  a  sceptic  or  a  genuine  believer,  having, 
I  suppose,  convinced  themselves,  by  some  process 
not  obvious  to  me,  that  there  is  an  incompatibility 
between  the  two  characters."  Huysmans  may 
have  been  both  sceptic  and  believer,  but  the  dry 
fervour  of  the  later  books  betrays  a  man  who  wil- 
lingly humiliates  and  depreciates  the  intellect 
for  the  greater  glory  of  God.  Abbe  Mugnier  says 
that  his  sincerity  is  itself  the  form  of  his  talent. 
His  portrait  of  Simon  the  swineherd  in  En  Route 
is  mortifying  to  humans  with  proud  stomachs; 
Huysmans  penetrates  the  husks  and  filth  and  sees 
only  a  God-intoxicated  soul.  Here  is,  indeed, 
the  "treasure  of  the  humble."  At  first,  religion 
with  Durtal  was  aesthetic,  the  beauty  of  Gothic 
architecture,  the  pyx  that  ardently  shines,  the 
bells  that  boom,  the  odours  of  frankincense  that 
rolled  through  the  nave  of  some  old  vast  cathedral 
with  flame-coloured  windows.  In  L'Oblat  the 
feeling  has  widened  and  deepened.  The  walls 
of  life  have  fallen  asunder,  the  soul  glows  in  the 
twilight  of  the  subliminal  self,  glows  with  a  spirit- 
ual phosphorescence.  Huysmans  is  nearer,  though 
not  face  to  face  with,  God.  The  object  of  his 
prayer  is  the  Virgin  Mary;  to  the  hem  of  her  robe  he 
clings  like  a  frightened  child  at  its  mother's  dress. 
All  this  may  have  been  auto-suggestion,  or  the  result 
of  the  "will  to  beheve,"  according  to  the  formula 
of  Professor  William  James,  yet  it  was  satisfying 
to  Huysmans,  whose  life  was  singularly  lonely. 
176 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

He  was  born  on  February  5,  1848,  in  Paris, 
and  died  in  that  city  on  May  1 2, 1907.  Christened 
Charles-Marie-George,  he  signed  his  books  Joris- 
Karl.  He  was  educated  at  the  Lyceum  Saint- 
Louis.  His  family  originally  resided  at  Breda, 
Holland.  His  father  was  lithographer  and  paint- 
er. His  mother  was  of  Burgundian  stock  and 
boasted  a  sculptor  in  her  ancestral  line.  Huys- 
mans  came  fairly  by  his  love  of  art.  He  con- 
templated the  profession  of  law;  but,  at  the  age 
of  twenty,  he  entered  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior, 
where  he  remained  until  1897,  a  model,  unassu- 
ming official,  fond  of  first  editions,  posters,  rare 
prints,  and  a  few  intimates.  He  went  then  to 
live  at  Ligug6,  but  returned  to  Paris  after  the 
expulsion  of  the  Benedictines.  He  was  elected 
first  president  of  the  Academy  Goncourt,  April 
7,  1900.  He  was  nominated  chevalier  of  the 
Legion  of  Honour,  and  given  the  rosette  of  officer 
by  Briand,  though  Huysmans  begged  that  he 
should  have  no  military  honours  at  his  funeral. 
It  was  for  his  excellent  work  as  a  civil  servant 
that  he  was  decorated,  and  not  as  a  man  of  letters. 
At  the  time  of  his  death,  his  reputation  had  suffered 
an  eclipse;  he  was  distrusted  both  by  Catholics 
and  free-thinkers.  But  he  never  wavered.  At- 
tacked by  a  cancerous  malady,  he  suffered  the 
atrocious  martyrdom  of  his  favourite  Saint  Lyd- 
wine.  Ldon  Daudet,  Francois  Copp^e,  and 
Lucien  Descaves  were  his  unwearying  attendants. 
At  the  last,  he  could  still  read  the  prayers  for  the 
dying.  He  was  buried  in  his  Benedictine  habit. 
177 


EGOISTS 

But  what  an  artist  perished  in  the  making  of  an 
amateur  monk! 

"His  face,"  said  an  English  friend,  ''with  the 
sensitive,  luminous  eyes,  reminded  one  of  Baude- 
laire's portrait,  the  face  of  a  resigned  and  benevo- 
lent Mephistopheles  who  has  discovered  the  ab- 
surdity of  the  divine  order,  but  has  no  wish  to 
make  improper  use  of  his  discovery.  He  gave 
me  the  impression  of  a  cat,  courteous,  perfectly 
polite,  most  amiable,  but  all  nerves,  ready  to  shoot 
out  his  claws  at  the  least  word."  (Huysmans,  like 
Baudelaire,  was  fond  of  cats).  When  I  saw  him 
five  years  ago  in  Paris,  I  was  struck  by  the  es- 
sentially Semitic  contour  of  his  head  —  some 
legacy  of  remote  ancestors  from  the  far-away 
Meuse. 

II 

As  a  critic  of  painting  Huysmans  revealed 
himself  the  possessor  of  a  temperament  that  was 
positively  ferocious  in  the  presence  of  an  unsym- 
pathetic canvas.  His  vocabulary  and  peculiar 
gift  of  invective  were  then  exercised  with  astound- 
ing verbal  if  not  critical  results.  Singularly  nar- 
row in  his  judgments  for  a  man  of  his  general 
culture,  his  intensity  of  vision  concentrated  itself 
upon  a  few  painters  and  etchers;  during  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  only  religious  art  interested  him, 
as  had  the  exotic  and  monstrous  in  earlier  years. 
And  even  in  the  former  sphere  he  restricted  his 
admiration,  rather  say  idolatry,  to  a  few  men;  he 
sought  for  character,  an  ascetic  type  of  char- 
178 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

acter,  the  lean  and  meagre  Saviours  and  saints 
of  the  Flemish  primitives  arousing  in  him  a  fire 
almost  fanatical.  Between  a  Roger  Van  der 
Weyden  and  a  Giorgione  there  would  be  little 
doubt  as  to  Huysmans's  choice;  the  golden  colour- 
music  of  the  great  Venetian  harmonist  would 
have  reached  deaf  ears.  His  Flemish  ancestry 
told  in  his  aesthetic  tastes.  He  once  said  that  he 
preferred  a  Leipsic  man  to  a  Marseilles  man, 
"the  big,  phlegmatic,  taciturn  Germans  to  the 
gesticulating  and  rhetorical  people  of  the  south." 
Huysmans  never  betrayed  the  slightest  interest 
in  doctrines  of  equality;  for  him,  as  for  Baude- 
laire, socialism,  the  education  of  the  masses,  or 
democratic  prophylactics  were  hateful.  The  virus 
of  the  "exceptional  soul"  was  in  his  veins.  Noth- 
ing was  more  horrible  to  him  than  the  idea  of 
universal  religion,  universal  speech,  universal 
government,  with  their  concomitant  universal 
monotony.  The  world  is  ugly  enough  without 
the  ugliness  of  universal  sameness.  Variety  alone 
makes  this  globe  bearable.  He  did  not  believe 
in  art  for  the  multitude,  and  the  tableau  of  a 
billion  humans  bellowing  to  the  moon  the  hymn 
of  universal  brotherhood  made  him  shiver  —  as 
well  it  might.  Tolstoy  and  his  semi-idiotic 
mujik,  to  whom  Beethoven  was  impossible, 
aroused  in  Huysmans  righteous  indignation.  Art 
is  for  those  who  have  the  brains  and  patience  to 
understand  it.  It  is  not  a  free  port  of  entry  for 
poet  and  philistine  alike.  To  it,  though  many  are 
called,  few  are  chosen.  So  is  it  with  religion. 
179 


EGOISTS 

That  mar\ellous  specimen  of  psychology,  En 
Route,  gave  more  ofiFence  to  Roman  Cathohcs 
than  it  did  to  sectarians  of  other  faiths.  Huys- 
mans  was  a  mystic,  and  to  his  temperament,  as 
taut  as  a  finely  attuned  fiddle,  the  easy-going 
methods  of  the  average  worshipper  were  abso- 
lutely blasphemous.  So  he  could  write  in  En 
Route:  ''And  he  —  Durtal  —  called  to  mind 
orators  petted  like  tenors,  Monsabrd,  Didon, 
those  Coquelins  of  the  Church,  and,  lower  yet 
than  those  products  of  the  Catholic  training 
school,  that  bellicose  booby  the  Abbd  d'Hulst." 
That  same  abbe  lived  to  see  the  writer  repentant 
and,  himself,  not  only  to  forgive,  but  to  write 
eulogistic  words  of  the  man  who  had  abused  him. 
L'Art  Moderne  was  published  between  covers 
in  1883.  It  deals  with  the  official  salons  of  1879, 
1880-81  and  the  exposition  of  the  Independents, 
1880-81.  The  appendix,  1882,  contains  thumb- 
nail sketches  of  Caillebotte,  whose  bequest  to 
the  Luxembourg  of  impressionistic  paintings, 
including  Manet's  Olympe,  stirred  all  artistic 
and  inartistic  Paris;  Gauguin,  Mile.  Morisot, 
Guillaumin,  Renoir,  Pissaro,  Sisley,  Claude 
Monet,  "the  marine  painter  par  excellences^) 
Manet,  Roll,  Redon,  all  men  then  fighting  the 
stream  of  popular  and  academic  disfavour. 
Since  Charles  Baudelaire's  Salons,  no  volume  on 
the  current  Paris  exhibitions  has  appeared  of 
such  solid  knowledge  and  literary  power  as  Huys- 
mans's.  Admitting  his  marked  prejudices,  his 
numerous  dogmatic  utterances,  there  is  never- 
180 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

theless  an  attractive  artistic  quality  backed  up 
by  the  writer's  stubborn  convictions  that  persuade 
v^here  the  more  liberal  and  brilliant  Theophile 
Gautier  never  does.  *'Theo,"  who  said  that  if 
he  pitched  his  sentences  in  the  air  they  always  fell 
on  their  feet,  like  a  cat,  leaned  heavily  on  his 
verbal  magic.  But  even  in  that  particular  he  is 
no  match  for  Huysmans,  who,  boasting  the  blood  of 
Fleming  painters,  sculptors,  and  architects,  uses 
his  pen  as  an  artist  his  brush.  Take  another 
bit  from  his  study  of  Moreau's  Salome: 

*'A  throne,  like  the  high  altar  of  a  cathedral, 
rose  beneath  innumerable  arches  springing  from 
columns,  thick-set  as  Roman  pillars,  enamelled 
with  varicoloured  bricks,  set  with  mosaics,  en- 
crusted with  lapis-lazuli  and  sardonyx  in  a  pal- 
ace like  the  basilica  of  an  architecture  at  once 
Mussulman  and  Byzantine.  In  the  centre  of 
the  tabernacle  surmounting  the  altars,  fronted 
with  rows  of  circular  steps,  sat  the  Tetrarch 
Herod,  the  tiara  on  his  head,  his  legs  pressed  to- 
gether, his  hands  on  his  knees.  His  face  was 
yellow,  parchmentlike,  annulated  with  wrinkles, 
withered  by  age;  his  long  beard  floated  like  a 
cloud  on  the  jewelled  stars  that  constellated  the 
robe  of  netted  gold  across  his  breast.  Around 
this  statue,  motionless,  frozen  in  the  sacred  pose 
of  a  Hindu  god,  perfumes  burned,  throwing  out 
clouds  of  vapour,  pierced,  as  by  the  phospho- 
rescent eyes  of  animals,  by  the  fire  of  precious 
stones  set  in  the  sides  of  the  throne;  then  the 
vapour  mounted,  unrolling  itself  beneath  arches 
i8i 


EGOISTS 

where  the  blue  smoke  mingled  with  the  powdered 
gold  of  great  sun-rays  fallen  from  the  dome."  .  .  . 
And  of  Salome  he  writes:  **In  the  work  of  Gus- 
tave  Moreau,  conceived  on  no  Scriptural  data, 
Des  Esseintes  saw  at  last  the  realisation  of  the 
strange,  superhuman  Salome  that  he  had  dreamed. 
She  was  no  more  the  mere  dancing  girl  .  .  .  she 
had  become  the  symbolic  deity  of  indestructible 
Lust,  the  goddess  of  immortal  Hysteria;  the 
monstrous,  indifferent,  irresponsible,  insensible 
Beast,  poisoning  like  Helen  of  old  all  that  go  near 
her,  all  that  look  upon  her,  all  that  she  touches." 

Not  only  is  there  an  evocation  of  material 
splendour  in  the  above  passages  taken  from 
A  Rebours,  but  a  note  of  cenobitic  contempt  for 
woman's  beauty,  which  sounds  throughout  the 
books  of  Huysmans.  It  may  be  heard  at  its 
deepest  in  his  study  of  Felicien  Rops,  the  Belgian 
etcher  and  painter,  who  interpreted  Baudelaire's 
jemmes  damnees,  Rops,  too,  regarded  woman 
in  the  light  of  a  destroyer,  a  being  banned  by  the 
early  fathers  of  the  Church,  the  matrix  of  sin. 
Huysmans's  incomparable  study  of  Rops  —  whose 
great  powers  have  never  been  fully  recognized 
because  of  his  erotic  and  diabolic  subjects  —  may 
be  found  in  his  Certains  (1889). 

In  his  description  of  the  Independent  exposition 
(1880)  to  which  Degas,  Mary  Cassatt  and  Berthe 
Morisot,  Forain,  and  others  sent  canvases, 
Huysmans  drifts  into  literary  criticism;  he  saw 
analogies  between  the  paintings  of  the  realists, 
impressionists,  and  the  modem  men  of  fiction, 
182 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

Flaubert,  Goncourt,  Zola.  "Have  not/^  he 
asks,  "the  Gon courts  fixed  in  a  style  deliberate 
and  personal,  the  most  ephemeral  of  sensations, 
the  most  fugacious  of  nuances  V  So,  too,  have 
Manet,  Monet,  Pissaro,  Rafifaelli.  Nor  does  he 
hesitate  to  make  the  avowal,  still  incomprehensible 
for  those  who  are  deceived  by  the  prodigious 
blaring  of  critical  trumpets,  that  Baudelaire  is 
a  true  poet  of  genius;  and  that  the  che]  d^oeuvre 
of  fiction  is  Flaubert's  L' Education  Sentimentale. 
Naturally  Edgar  Degas  is  the  only  psychological 
interpreter  of  latter-day  life.  There  is  also  a 
careful  analysis  of  Manet's  masterpiece,  the  Bar 
at  the  Folies-Bergeres.  Huysmans  recognised 
Manet's  indebtedness  to  Goya. 

Certains  is  a  valuable  volume.  Therein  are 
Puvis  de  Chavannes,  Gustave  Moreau,  Degas, 
Bartholome,  Raffaelli,  Stevens,  Tissot,  Wagner 
—  the  painter,  not  the  composer;  Huysmans 
admits  but  one  form  in  music,  the  Plain  Chant  — 
Cdzanne,  Cheret,  Whistler  —  which  true  to  the 
tradition  of  Parisian  carelessness  is  spelled 
"Wisthler,"  as  Liszt  years  before  was  called 
"Litz"  —  Rops,  Jan  Luyken,  Millet,  Goya, 
Turner,  Bianchi,  and  other  men.  He  gives  to 
Millet  his  just  meed  of  praise,  no  more  —  he 
views  him  as  a  designer  rather  than  as  a  great 
painter.  We  get  Huysmans  in  his  quintessence. 
Scattered  through  his  novels  —  if  one  may  dare 
to  ascribe  this  title  to  such  an  amorphous  form  — 
there  are  eloquent  and  burning  pages  devoted 
to  various  painters,  but  not  with  the  amplitude 

183 


EGOISTS 

and  cool  science  displayed  in  his  studies  of  Degas, 
Moreau,  Rops,  The  Monster  in  Art  —  a  mon- 
strous subject  masterfully  handled  —  and  Whis- 
tler. He  literally  discovered  Degas,  and  in  future 
books  on  rhetoric  surely  Huysmans's  descriptions 
of  Degas's  old  workwomen  sponging  their  creased 
backs  cannot  be  excluded  without  doing  violence 
to  the  expressive  powers  of  the  French  language. 
His  eye  mirrored  the  most  minute  details  —  in 
that  he  was  Dutch-Flemish;  the  same  merci- 
less scrutiny  is  pursued  in  the  life  of  the  soul  — 
he  was  Flemish  and  Spanish:  Ruysbroeck  and 
St.  John  of  the  Cross,  mystics  both,  with  an 
amazing  sense  of  the  realistic. 

Without  a  spacious  imagination,  Huysmans  was 
a  man  of  the  subtlest  sensibilities.  There  is  a 
wealth  of  critical  divination  in  his  studies  of  Moreau 
and  Whistler.  Twenty  or  thirty  years  ago  it  was 
not  so  easy  to  range  these  two  enigmas.  Huys- 
mans did  so,  and,  in  company  with  Degas  and 
Rops,  placed  them  so  definitely  that  critics  have 
paraphrased  his  ideas  ever  since.  Baudelaire 
had  recognised  the  glacial  genius  of  Rops; 
Huysmans  definitely  consecrated  it  in  Certains. 
For  Huysmans  the  theme  of  love  aroused  his  mor- 
dant wit  —  Flaubert,  Goncourt,  Baudelaire  were 
all  summoned  at  one  time  or  another  in  their 
respective  careers  to  answer  the  charge  of  poi- 
soning public  morals!  And  what  malicious  com- 
mentaries were  drawn  and  etched  by  the  versa- 
tile Rops. 

Extraordinary  as  are  Rops's  delineations  of 
184 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

Satan,  the  prose  of  Huysmans  is  not  less  graphic 
in  interpreting  the  etched  plate.  In  De  Tout 
(1901)  there  is,  literally,  a  little  about  everything. 
Not  only  are  several  unknown  quarters  of  Paris 
sketched  with  a  surprising  freshness,  but  Huys- 
mans goes  far  afield  for  his  themes.  He  studies 
sleeping-cars  and  the  sleepy  city  Bruges,  the 
aquarium  at  Berlin  —  "most  fastidious  and 
most  ugly" — the  Gobelins,  Quentin  Matsys 
at  Antwerp;  but  whether  in  illustrating  with  his 
pen  the  mobs  at  Lourdes  or  the  intimate  habits 
of  a  Parisian  cafe,  he  never  fails  to  achieve  the 
exact  phrase  that  illuminates.  Nor  is  it  all  crass 
realism.  His  eye,  the  eye  of  a  visionary  as  well 
as  of  a  painter,  penetrates  to  the  marrow  of  the 
soul. 

A  Rebours  is  the  history  of  a  decadent  soul  in 
search  of  an  earthly  paradise.  His  palace  of 
art  is  near  Paris,  and  in  it  the  Due  des  Esseintes 
assembles  all  that  is  rare,  perverse,  beautiful, 
morbid,  and  crazy  in  modern  art  and  literature. 
A  Rebours  is  in  reality  a  very  precious  work  of 
criticism  by  a  distinguished  critical  temperament, 
written  in  a  prose  jewelled  and  shining,  sharp  as 
a  Damascene  dagger.  This  French  writer's  ad- 
miration for  Moreau  has  been  mentioned.  Luy- 
ken  comes  in  for  his  share;  the  bizarre  Luyken 
of  Amsterdam  (1649-17 12).  Odilon  Redon,  the 
lithographer  and  illustrator  of  Poe,  is  lauded  by 
Des  Esseintes.  Redon's  work  is  not  lacking  in 
subtlety,  and  it  is  sometimes  disagreeable;  possi- 
bly the  latter  quality  is  aimed  at  by  the  painter. 

185 


EGOISTS 

Redon  certainly  had  in  Poe  a  congenial  subject; 
in  Baudelaire  also,  for  he  has  accomplished  some 
shivering  plates  commemorating  Fleurs  du  Mai. 
Not  such  intractable  reading  as  L'Oblat,  withal 
difficult  enough,  is  The  Cathedral,  which  abounds 
in  glorious  chapters  devoted  to  ecclesiastical  paint- 
ing, sculpture,  and  architecture.  "It"  —  the 
Cathedral  —  "was  as  slender  and  colourless  as 
Roger  Van  der  Weyden's  Virgins,  who  are  so 
fragile,  so  ethereal,  that  they  might  blow  away 
were  they  not  held  down  to  earth  by  the  weight 
of  their  brocades  and  trains,"  is  a  passage  in 
this  storehouse  of  curious  liturgical  learning. 
Matsys,  Memling,  Dierck  Bouts,  Van  der  Wey- 
den,  painted  great  religious  pictures  because 
they  possessed  a  naive  faith.  Nowadays  your 
painter  has  no  faith;  better,  then,  stick  like  Degas 
to  ballet-girls  and  not  soil  canvas  with  profane 
burlesques.  Always  extreme,  Huysmans  jumped 
from  the  worldly  audacities  of  Manet  to  the  re- 
bellious Christ  of  Griinewald.  Van  Eyck  touched 
him  where  Van  Dyck  did  not.  He  disliked  the 
"  supersensual  and  sublimated  Virgins  of  Cologne," 
and  pronounced  Botticelli's  Virgins  masquer- 
ading Venuses.  The  Van  der  Weyden  triptych 
of  the  Nativity  in  the  old  museum,  Berlin, 
filled  him  with  raptures,  pious  and  aesthetic. 
The  "theatrical  crucifixions,  the  fleshly  coarse- 
ness of  Rubens"  are  naught  when  compared 
to  the  early  Flemings.  His  pages  on  Rembrandt 
are  admirable  reading,  "Rembrandt,  who  had 
the  soul  of  a  Judaising  Protestant  .  .  .  with  his 
i86- 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

serious  but  fervid  wit,  his  genius  for  concentra- 
tion, for  getting  a  spot  of  the  essence  of  sunlight 
into  the  heart  of  darkness  .  .  .  has  accomplished 
great  results;  and  in  his  Biblical  scenes  has 
spoken  a  language  which  no  one  before  him  had 
attempted  to  lisp."  As  Huysmans  loathed  the 
rancid  and  voluptuous  "sacred"  music  of  Gounod 
and  other  comic-opera  writers  of  masses  and 
hymns  in  the  Church,  so  he  abominated  the 
modern  "sacred"  painters.  James  Tissot  and 
Munkacsy  come  in  for  a  critical  flagellation. 
What  could  be  more  dazzling  than  his  account 
of  a  certain  stained-glass  window  in  his  beloved 
Cathedral  at  Chartres: 

'Up  there  high  in  the  air,  as  they  might  be 
Salamanders,  human  beings,  with  faces  ablaze 
and  robes  on  fire,  dwelt  in  a  firmament  of  glory; 
but  these  conflagrations  were  enclosed  and  limited 
by  an  incombustible  frame  of  darker  glass  which 
set  off  the  youthful  and  radiant  joy  of  the  flames 
by  the  contrast  of  melancholy,  the  suggestion  of 
the  more  serious  and  aged  aspect  presented  by 
gloomy  colouring.  The  bugle-cry  of  red,  the 
limpid  confidence  of  white,  the  repeated  hallelu- 
jahs of  yellow,  the  virginal  glory  of  blue,  all  the 
quivering  crucible  of  glass  was  dimmed  as  it 
neared  this  border  dyed  with  rusty  red,  the  tawny 
hues  of  sauces,  the  harsh  purples  of  sandstone, 
bottle  green,  tinder  brown,  fuliginous  blacks,  and 
ashy  grays."  Not  even  Arthur  Rimbaud,  in 
his  half-jesting  sonnet  on  the  "Vowels,"  in- 
dulged in  such  daring  colour  symbolism  as  Huys- 

187 


EGOISTS 

mans.  For  a  specimen  of  his  most  fulgurating 
style  read  his  Camieu  in  Red,  in  a  little  volume 
edited  by  Mr.  Howells  entitled  Pastels  in  Prose, 
and  translated  by  Stuart  Merrill. 

"To  be  rich,  very  rich,  and  found  in  Paris  in 
face  of  the  triumphal  ambulance,  the  Luxem- 
bourg, a  public  museum  of  contemporary  paint- 
ing!" he  cries  in  one  of  his  essays.  He  was  the 
critic  of  Modernity,  as  Degas  is  its  painter, 
Goncourt  its  exponent  in  Hction,  Paul  Bourget 
its  psychologist.  He  lashes  himself  into  a  fine 
rage  over  the  enormous  prices  paid  some  years 
ago  by  New  York  millionaires  for  the  work  of 
such  artists  as  Bouguereau,  Dubufe,  Gerome, 
Constant,  Rosa  Bonheur,  Knaus,  Meissonier. 
The  Christ  before  Pilate,  sold  for  600,000  francs, 
sets  him  fulminating  against  its  painter.  "Cet 
indigent  decor  brosse  par  le  Bresilien  de  la 
piete,  par  le  rastaquoubre  de  la  peinture,  par 
Munkacsy." 

Joris-Karl  Huysmans  should  have  been  a 
painter;  his  indubitable  gift  for  form  and  colour 
were  by  some  trick  of  nature  or  circumstance 
transposed  to  literature.  So  he  brought  to  the 
criticism  of  pictures  an  eye  abnormal  in  its  keen- 
ness, and  to  this  was  superadded  an  abnormal 
power  of  expression. 

After  reading  his  Three  Primitives  you  may 
be  tempted  to  visit  Colmar,  where  hang  in  the 
museum  several  paintings  by  Mathias  Griine- 
wald,  who  is  the  chief  theme  of  the  French  writer's 
book.     Colmar  is  not  difficult  to  reach  if  you  are 

m 


JORIS-KARL-  HUYSMANS 

in  Paris,  or  pass  through  Strasburg.  It  is  a 
town  of  over  35,000  inhabitants,  the  capital  of  Up- 
per Alsace  and  about  forty  miles  from  Strasburg. 
There  are  several  admirable  specimens  of  the 
Rhenish  school  there.  Van  Eyck  and  -Martin 
Schongauer  (bom  1450  in  Colmar),  the  great  en- 
graver. His  statue  by  Bartholdi  is  in  the  town, 
and,  as  Huysmans  rather  delicately  puts  it,  is 
an  "emetic  for  the  eyes."  He  always  wrote  what 
he  thought,  and  notwithstanding  the  odour  of 
sanctity  in  which  he  departed  this  life,  his 
name  and  his  books  are  still  anathema  to 
many  of  his  fellow  Catholics.  But  as  to  the  qual- 
ity of  this  last  study  there  can  be  no  mistake. 
It  is  masterly,  revealing  the  various  Huysmanses 
we  admire:  the  mystic,  the  realist,  the  penetra- 
ting critic  of  art,  and  the  magnificent  tamer  of 
language.  Hallucinated  by  his  phrases,  you  see 
cathedrals  arise  from  the  mist  and  swim  so  close 
to  you  that  you  discern  every  detail  before  the 
vision  vanishes;  or  some  cruel  and  bloody  can- 
vas of  the  semi-demoniacal  Griinewald,  on  which 
a  hideous  Christ  is  crucified,  surrounded  by 
scowling  faces.  The  swiftness  in  executing  the 
verbal  portrait  allows  you  no  time  to  wonder  over 
the  method;  the  evocation  is  complete,  and  after- 
ward you  realise  the  magic  of  Huysmans. 

In  his  La  Bas  he  described  the  Griinewald 
Crucifixion,  once  in  the  Cassel  Museum,  now 
as  Carlsruhe.  A  tragic  realism  invests  this  work 
of  Grunewald,  who  is  otherwise  a  very  unequal 
painter.  Huysmans  puzzled  over  the  Bavarian, 
189 


EGOISTS 

who  was  probably  born  at  Aschaffenburg.  Sund- 
vart,  Waagen,  Goutzwiller,  and  Passavant  have 
written  of  him.  He  was  born  about  1450  and 
died  about  1530.  He  lived  his  later  years  in  Ma- 
yence,  lonely  and  misanthropic.  Every  one  speaks 
of  Diirer,  the  Cranachs,  Schongauer,  Holbein, 
but  even  during  his  lifetime  Griinewald  was  not 
famous.  To-day  he  is  esteemed  by  those  for 
whom  the  German  and  Belgian  Primitives  mean 
more  than  all  Italian  art.  There  is  a  bitterness, 
a  pessimism,  a  delight  in  torture  for  the  sake  of 
torture  in  Grlinewald's  treatment  of  sacred  sub- 
jects that  must  have  shocked  his  more  easy-going 
contemporaries.  Huysmans,  as  is  his  wont,  does 
not  spare  us  in  his  recital  of  the  horrors  of  that 
Colmar  Crucifixion.  For  me  the  one  now  at 
Carlsruhe  suffices.  It  causes  a  shudder,  and 
some  echo  of  the  agony  of  the  Passion  permeates 
that  solemn  scene.  Griinewald  must  have  been 
a  painter  of  fierce  and  exalted  temperament. 
His  Christs  are  ugly  —  the  ugliness  symbolical 
of  the  sins  of  the  world ;  —  this  doctrine  was  up- 
held by  Tertullian  and  Cyprian,  Cyril  and  St. 
Justin. 

And  the  cadaverous  flesh  tones!  Such  is  his 
fidelity,  a  fidelity  almost  pathologic,  that  two  such 
eminent  men  as  Charcot  and  Richet  testified, 
after  study,  to  the  too  painful  verity  of  this  early 
German's  brushwork.  He  depicted  with  shock- 
ing realism  the  malady  known  as  St.  Anthony's 
Fire,  and  a  still  more  pathological  interpretation 
by  Huysmans  follows.  But  he  warmly  praises 
190 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

the  fainting  mother,  one  of  the  noble  figures  in 
German  art.  We  allude  now  to  the  Colmar 
Crucifixion,  with  its  curious  intlroduction  of  St. 
John  the  Baptist  in  Golgotha,  and  the  dark 
landscape  through  which  runs  a  gloomy  river. 
Fainting  Mary,  the  mother  of  Christ,  is  upheld, 
by  the  disciple  John.  There  is  a  mysterious 
figure  of  a  girl,  an  ugly  but  sorrowful  face,  and 
the  lamb  bearing  the  cross  is  at  the  foot  of  the 
cross.  Audacious  is  the  entire  composition. 
It  wounds  the  soul,  and  that  is  what  Griinewald 
wished.  His  harsh  nature  saw  in  the  crucifixion 
not  a  pious  symbol  but  the  death  of  a  god,  an 
unjust  death.  So  he  fulminates  upon  his  canvas 
his  hatred  of  the  outrage.  How  tender  he  can 
be  we  see  in  this  Virgin. 

On  the  back  of  this  polyptique  are  a  Resur- 
rection and  Annunciation.  The  latter  is  bad. 
The  former  is  a  dynamic  picture  representing 
Christ  in  a  vast  aureole  arising  to  the  sky.  His 
guards  tumbled  over  at  the  side  of  the  tomb. 
There  is  an  explosion  of  luminosity.  Christ's 
face  is  radiant;  He  displays  his  palms  upward, 
pierced  by  the  nails.  The  floating  aerial  effect 
and  the  draperies  are  wonderfully  handled. 
The  museum  wherein  hang  these  works  was 
formerly  a  convent  of  nuns,  founded  in  1232,  and 
in  1849  turned  into  a  museum.  Huysmans 
rages,  of  course,  over  the  change. 

He  finds  among  the  Grunewalds  at  Colmar  — 
there  are  nine  in  all  —  a  St.  Anthony  bearded, 
that  reminds  him  of  a  Father  Hecker  born  in 
191 


EGOISTS 

Holland.  What  a  simile,  made  by  a  man  who 
probably  never  saw  the  American  priest,  except 
pictured ! 

He  visits  Frankfort-on-the-Main,  and  after- 
ward, characteristically  pouring  his  vials  of  wrath 
upon  this  New  Jerusalem,  he  visits  the  Staedel 
Museum  and  goes  into  ecstasies  over  that  lovely 
head  of  a  young  woman  called  the  Florentine, 
by  an  unknown  master.  Though  he  admires 
the  Van  der  Weyden,  the  Bouts,  and  the  Virgin 
of  Van  Eyck,  he  really  has  eyes  only  for  this 
exquisite,  vicious  androgynous  creature  and  for 
the  Virgin  by  the  Master  of  Flemalle.  After 
a  vivid  description  of  the  Florentine  Cybele  he 
inquires  into  her  artistic  paternity,  waving  aside 
the  suggestion  that  one  of  the  Venezianos  painted 
her.  But  which  one?  There  are  over  eleven, 
according  to  Lanzi.  Huysmans  will  not  allow 
Botticelli's  name  to  be  mentioned,  though  he 
discerns  certain  Botticellian  qualities.  But  he 
has  never  forgiven  Botticelli  for  painting  the 
Virgin  looking  like  the  Venus,  and  he  hates  the 
paganism  of  the  Renaissance  with  an  early 
Christian  fervour.  (Fancy  the  later  Joris-Karl 
Huysmans  and  the  early  Walter  Pater  in  a  dis- 
cussion about  the  Renaissance.)  Huysmans  him- 
self was  a  Primitive.  Much  that  he  wrote  would 
have  been  understood  in  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
old  Adam  in  this  Fleming,  however,  comes  to  the 
surface  as  he  conjectures  the  name  of  the  enig- 
matic heroine.  Is  it  that  Giulia  Farnese,  called 
"Giulia  la  bella" — pur  Has  impuritatis  —  who 
192 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

became  the  favourite  of  Pope  Alexander  VI.  ?  If 
it  is  —  and  then  Huysmans  writes  some  pages  of 
perfect  prose  which  suggest  joyful  depravity,  as 
depraved  as  the  people  he  paints  with  such  mar- 
vellous colour  and  precision.  It  is  a  peep  be- 
hind the  scenes  of  a  pagan  Christian  Rome. 

The  Master  of  Flemalle,  whose  Virgin  he 
describes  at  the  close  of  this  volume,  was  the 
Jacques  Daret  bom  in  the  early  years  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  a  fellow  student  of  Roger  van 
der  Weyden  under  Campin  at  Toumay.  We 
confess  that,  while  we  enjoy  the  verbal  rhapsodies 
of  the  author,  we  were  not  carried  away  by  this 
stately  Virgin  and  Child  by  Daret,  though  there 
are  many  Darets  that  once  passed  as  the  work  of 
Roger  van  der  Weyden.  It  has  not  the  sweet 
melancholy,  this  picture,  of  Hans  Memlinc's 
Madonnas,  and  the  Van  Eyck  in  the  same  gal- 
lery, as  well  as  the  Van  der  Weyden,  are  both 
worth  a  trip  across  Europe  to  gaze  upon.  How- 
ever, on  the  note  of  a  rapt  devotion  Huysmans 
ends  his  book.  The  first  edition,  illustrated,  was 
published  in  1905,  by  Vanier-Messein.  But 
there  is  a  new  (1908)  edition,  pubHshed  by  Plon, 
at  Paris,  and  called  Trois  Eglises  et  Trois  Primi- 
tifs.  This  latter  is  not  illustrated.  The  three 
churches  discussed  are  Notre  Dame  de  Paris  and 
its  symbolism.  Saint  Germain-l'Auxerrois,  and 
Saint  Merry. 

Poor,  unhappy,  suffering  Huysmans!  He  trod 
the  Road  to  Damascus  on  foot  and  not  in  a 
pleasant  motor-car  like  several  of  his  successors. 
193 


EGOISTS 

The  intimate  side  of  the  man,  so  hidden  by  him, 
is  now  being  revealed  to  us  by  his  friends.  Re- 
cently, in  the  Revue  de  Paris,  Mme.  Myriam 
Harry,  the  writer  of  The  Conquest  of  Jerusalem, 
tells  us  of  her  friendship  with  Huysmans,  with  a 
rather  sentimental  anecdote  about  his  weeping 
over  a  dead  love.  When  she  met  him  he  was 
already  attainted  with  the  malady  which  tortured 
him  to  the  end.  A  lifetime  sufferer  from  neuralgia 
and  dyspepsia,  he  was  half  blind  for  a  few  months 
before  his  death.  He  touchingly  alludes  to  his 
illness  as  both  a  punishment  and  a  reparation  for 
things  he  wrote  in  his  Lourdes.  In  a  letter  dated 
January  5,  1907,  he  avows  that  nothing  is  more 
dangerous  than  to  celebrate  sorrow;  all  his  books 
celebrate  the  physical  miseries  of  life,  the  sorrows 
of  the  soul.  Humbly  this  great  writer  admits 
that  he  must  pay  for  the  pages  of  that  cruel  book, 
the  life  of  Sainte-Lydwine.  The  disease  he  so 
often  described  came  to  him  at  last  and  slew  him. 


Ill 


To  traverse  the  books  of  Huysmans  is  a  true 
pessimistic  progress;  from  Le  Drageoir  aux 
Epices  (1874)  to  Les  Foules  de  Lourdes  (1906), 
the  note,  at  times  shrill,  often  profound,  is  never 
one  of  dulciiication.  The  first  book,  a  veritable 
little  box  of  spices,  was  modelled  on  Baudelaire*s 
Poemes  en  Prose,  but  revealed  to  the  acute  critic 
a  new  personal  shade.  Its  plainness  is  Gallic. 
That  amusing,  ironic  sketch,  L'Extase,  gives 
194 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

us  a  key-note  to  the  writer's  disillusioned  soul. 
Marthe  (1876)  caused  a  sensation.  It  was 
speedily  suppressed.  La  Fille  Elise  and  Nana 
the  public  could  endure;  but  the  cold-blooded 
delineation  of  vice  in  this  first  novel  was  too 
much  for  the  Parisian,  who  likes  a  display  of 
sentiment  or  sympathy  in  the  treatment  of 
unsavoury  themes.  Now,  sympathy  for  sin  or 
suffering  is  missing  in  Huysmans.  Slow  veils  of 
pity  never  descend  upon  his  sufferers.  Like 
a  surgeon  who  will  show  you  a  *' beautiful 
disease,"  a  "classic  case,"  he  exposed  the  life  of 
the  wretched  Mkrthe,  and,  while  he  called  a  cat 
a  cat,  he  forgot  that  certain  truths  are  unfit  for 
polite  ears  accustomed  to  the  rotten-ripe  Dumas 
■jils,  or  the  thrice-brutal  Zola.  It  was  in  Marthe 
that  Huysmans  proclaimed  his  adherence  to 
naturalism  in  these  memorable  words:  "I  write 
what  I  see,  what  I  feel,  and  what  I  have  ex- 
perienced, and  I  write  it  as  well  as  I  can :  that  is 
all."  This  rubric  he  adhered  to  his  life  long, 
despite  his  change  of  spiritual  base.  He  also  said 
that  there  are  writers  who  have  talent,  and  others 
who  have  not  talent.  All  schools,  groups,  cliques, 
whether  romantic  or  naturalistic  or  decadent,  need 
not  count. 

It  was  1880  before  Huysmans  was  again  heard 
from,  this  time  in  collaboration  with  Zola,  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  Henry  Ceard,  Leon  Hennique, 
and  Paul  Alexis.  Les  Soirees  de  Medan  was 
the  inappropriate  title  of  a  book  of  interesting 
tales.  Huysmans's  contribution,  Sac  au  Dos,  is 
195 


EGOISTS 

a  story  of  the  Franco-Prussian  war  that  would 
have  pleased  Stendhal  by  its  sardonic  humour. 
The  hero  never  reaches  the  front,  but  spends  his 
time  in  hospitals,  and  the  nearest  he  gets  to  the 
glory  of  war  is  a  chronic  stomach-ache.  The 
variations  on  this  ignoble  motive  showed  the 
malice  of  Huysmans.  War  is  not  hell,  he  says  in 
effect,  but  dysentery  is;  how  often  a  petty  ailing 
has  unmade  a  heroic  soul.  Yet  in  the  Brussels 
edition  of  this  story  there  was  published  the  fol- 
lowing verse — the  author  seldom  wrote  poetry; 
he  was  hardly  a  poet,  but  as  indicating  certain 
religious   preoccupations   it   is  worth   repeating: 

"O  croix  qui  veux  I'austere,  6  chair  qui  veux  le  doux, 
O  monde,  6  ^vangile,  immortels  adversaiTes, 
Les  plus  grands  ennemis  sont  plus  d' accord  que  vous, 
Et  les  p61es  du  ciel  ne  sont  pas  plus  contraires. 
On  monte  dans  le  ciel  par  un  chemin  de  pleurs, 
Mais,  que  leur  amertume  a  de  douceurs  divines! 
On  descend  aux  enfers  par  un  chemin  de  fleurs, 
Mais  hdas!  que  ces  fleurs  nous  preparent  d'^pines!    • 
La  fleur  qui,  dans  un  jour,  s^che  et  s'epanouit, 
Les  bulles  d'air  et  d'eau  qu'un  petit  souflle  casse, 
Une  ombre  qui  paratt  et  qui  s*evanouit 
Nous  reprdsentent  bien  comme  le  monde  passe." 

Naturally,  in  the  face  of  Maupassant's  brilliant 
Boule  de  Suif,  Huysmans' s  sly  attack  on  patriot- 
ism was  overlooked.  Croquis  Parisiens  (1880) 
contains  specimens  of  Huysmans's  astounding 
virtuosity.  No  one  before  has  ever  described 
sundry  aspects  of  Paris  with  such  verisimilitude  — 
that  Paris  he  said  was,  because  of  the  Americans, 
196 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

fast  becoming  a  "sinister  Chicago."  Balls, 
caf^s,  bars,  omnibus-conductors,  washerwomen, 
chestnut-sellers,  hairdressers,  remote  landscapes 
and  corners  of  the  city,  cabarets,  la  Bievre,  the 
underground  river,  with  prose  paraphrases  of 
music,  perfumes,  flowers  —  Huysmans  aston- 
ishes by  his  prodigality  of  epithet  and  justness  of 
observation.  What  Manet,  Pissaro,  Raffaelli, 
Forain,  were  doing  with  oil  and  pastel  and  pencil, 
he  accomplished  with  his  pen.  A  Vau  I'Eau 
followed  in  1882.  It  is  considered  the  typical 
Huysmans  tale,  and  some  see  in  Jean  Folantin 
its  unhappy  hero,  obsessed  by  the  desire  for  a 
juicy  beefsteak,  the  prototype  of  Durtal.  Folan- 
tin is  a  poor  employee  in  the  Ministry  who  must 
exist  on  his  annual  salary  of  fifteen  hundred  francs. 
He  haunts  cheap  restaurants,  lives  in  cheap  lodg- 
ings, is  seedy  and  sour,  with  the  nerves  of  a  volup- 
tuary. His  sense  of  smell  makes  his  life  a  night- 
mare. The  sordid  recital  would  be  comical  but 
that  it  is  so  villainously  real.  It  is  an  Odyssey 
of  a  dyspeptic.  Dickens  would  have  set  us  laugh- 
ing over  the  woes  of  this  Folantin,  or  Dostoievsky 
would  have  made  us  weep  —  as  he  did  in  Poor 
Folk.  But  Huysmans  has  no  time  for  tears  or 
laughter;  he  must  register  his  truth,  and  at  the 
end  an  odor  of  stale  cheese  exhales  from  the 
printed  page.  Wretched  Monsieur  Folantin.  Of 
the  official  life  so  clearly  presented  in  some  of 
Maupassant's  tales,  we  get  little;  Huysmans  is 
too  much  preoccupied  with  Folantin's  stomach 
troubles.  In  the  same  volume,  though  published 
197 


EGOISTS 

first  in  1887,  is  Un  Dilemme,  which  is  a  pitiful 
tale  of  a  girl  abandoned.  Huysmans,  while  he 
came  under  the  influence  of  L'Education  Senti- 
mentale,  seems  to  have  taken  as  a  hit  motiv  the 
idiotic  antics  of  Flaubert's  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet. 
This  pair  of  mediocre  maniacs  were  his  models 
for  mankind  at  large.  Les  Soeurs  Vatard  (1879), 
praised  so  warmly  by  Zola  in  The  Experimental 
Novel,  is  not  a  novel,  but  kaleidoscopic  Parisian 
pictures  of  intimate  low  life,  executed  with  con- 
summate finish,  and  closeness  to  fact.  The  two 
sisters  Vatard,  Celine  and  Desiree,  with  their  love 
affairs,  fill  a  large  volume.  There  are  minute 
descriptions  of  proletarian  interiors,  sewing-shops 
full  of  perspiring  girls,  railroad-yards,  loco- 
motives, and  a  gingerbread  fair.  The  men  are 
impudent  scamps,  bullies,  souteneurs,  the  women 
either  weak  or  vulgar.  Veracity  there  often  is 
and  an  air  of  reality  —  though  these  swaggerers 
and  simpletons  are  silhouettes,  not  half  as  vital 
as  Zola's  Lise  or  Goncourt's  Germinie  Lacerteux. 
But  atmosphere,  toujours  atmosphere  —  of  that 
Huysmans  is  the  compeller.  Not  a  disagreeable 
scene,  smell,  or  sound  does  he  spare  his  readers. 
And  how  many  genre  pictures  he  paints  for  us  in 
this  book. 

We  reach  bourgeois  life  with  En  Menage  (1881). 
Andrd  and  Cyprien  the  novelist  and  painter  are 
not  so  individual  as,  say,  old  pere  Vatard  in  the 
preceding  story.  They  but  serve  as  stalking 
horses  for  Huysmans  to  show  the  stupid  miseries 
of  the  married  state;  that  whether  a  man  is  or 
198 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

is  not  married  he  will  regret  it.  Love  is  the  su- 
preme poison  of  life.  Andre  is  deceived  by  his 
wife,  C)^rien  lives  lawlessly.  Neither  one  is  con- 
tented. The  novel  is  careful  in  workmanship; 
it  is  like  Goncourt  and  Flaubert,  both  gray  and 
masterful.  But  it  leaves  a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth. 
Like  the  early  Christian  fathers,  Huysmans  had  a 
conception  of  Woman,  *Hhe  eternal  feminine  of 
the  eternal  simpleton,"  which  is  hardly  ennobling. 
The  painter  Cyprien  is  said  to  be  a  portrait  of 
the  author. 

A  Rebours  appeared  at  the  psychologic  mo- 
ment. Decadence  was  in  the  air.  Either  you 
were  a  decadent  or  violently  opposed  to  the  move- 
ment. Verlaine  had  consecrated  the  word  — 
hardly  an  expressive  one.  The  depraved  young 
Jean,  Duke  of  Esseintes,greedy  of  exotic  sensations, 
who  figures  as  the  hero  of  this  gorgeous  prose 
mosaic,  is  said  to  be  the  portrait  of  a  Parisian 
poet,  and  a  fashionable  dilettante  of  art  painted 
by  Whistler.  But  there  is  more  of  Huysmans  — 
the  exquisite  literary  critic  that  is  Huysmans  — 
in  the  work.  If,  as  Henry  James  remarks: 
"When  you  have  no  taste  you  have  no  discretion 
—  which  is  the  conscience  of  taste,"  then  Huys- 
mans must  be  acclaimed  a  man  of  unexampled 
tact.  His  handling  of  a  well-nigh  impossible 
theme,  his  ''technical  heroism,"  above  all,  his 
soul-searching  tactics  in  that  wonderful  Chapter 
VII,  when  Des  Esseintes,  suffering  from  the 
malady  of  the  infinite,  proceeds  to  examine  his 
conscience  and  portrays  for  us  the  most  fluctu- 
199 


EGOISTS 

ating  shades  of  belief  and  feeling  —  his  touch  here 
is  sure,  and  casuistically  immoral,  as  "all  art  is 
immoral  for  the  inartistic."  The  chief  value  of 
the  book  for  future  generations  of  critics  lies  in 
Chapters  XII  and  XIV.  Huysmans's  literary 
and  artistic  preferences  are  catalogued  with 
delicacy  and  erudition.  More  Byzantine  than  By- 
zance,  A  Rebours  is  a  storehouse  of  art  treasures, 
and  it  was  once  the  battle-field  of  the  literary 
dlite.  It  is  a  history  of  the  artistic  decadent,  the 
man  of  disdainful  inquietudes  who  searches  for 
an  earthly  artificial  paradise.  The  mouth  or- 
chestra which,  by  the  aid  of  various  liquors, 
gives  to  the  tongue  sensations  analogous  to  music; 
the  flowers  and  perfume  concerts,  the  mechanical 
landscape,  the  mock  sea  —  all  these  are  mysti- 
fications. Huysmans  the  jarceur,  the  Jules 
Verne  of  aesthetics,  is  enjoying  himself.  His 
liquor  symphony  he  borrowed  from  La  Chimie  du 
Gotlt  by  Polycarpe  Poncelet;  from  Zola,  perhaps, 
his  concert  of  flowers.  As  for  the  originality  of 
these  diversions,  we  may  turn  to  Goethe  and 
find  in  his  Triumph  der  Empfindsamkeit  the 
mechanical  landscape  of  the  Prince,  who  can 
enjoy  sunlight  or  moonlight  at  will.  He  has  also 
a  doll  to  whom  he  sighs,  rhapsodises,  and  passes 
in  its  silent  company  hours  of  rapture.  Villiers 
de  ITsle  Adam  evidently  read  Goethe:  see  his 
Eve  of  the  Future.  All  of  which  shows  the  folly 
of  certain  critics  who  recognise  in  Huysmans  the 
prime  exemplar  of  the  decadent  —  that  much 
misunderstood  word.  But  how  about  Goethe? 
200 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

A  Rebours,  notwithstanding  Huysmans's  later 
pilgrimage  to  Canossa,  he  never  excelled.  It  is 
his  most  personal  achievement.  It  also  contains 
the  most  beautiful  writing  of  this  Paganini  of 
prose. 

En  Rade  (1887)  did  not  attract  much  attention. 
It  is  not  dull;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  very  Huys- 
mansish.  But  it  is  not  a  subject  that  enthralls. 
Jacques  Maries  and  his  wife  have  lost  their  money. 
They  go  into  the  country  to  live  cheaply.  The 
author's  detestation  of  nature  was  apparently 
the  motive  for  writing  the  book.  There  are 
fantastic  dreams  worthy  of  H.  G.  Wells,  and 
realistic  descriptions  of  a  calf's  birth  and  a  cat's 
agony;  the  last  two  named  prove  the  one-time 
disciple  of  Zola  had  not  lost  his  vision;  the  truth 
is,  Zola's  method  is  melodramatic,  romantic, 
vague,  when  compared  to  Huysmans's  implacable 
manner  of  etching  petty  facts. 

But  in  La-Bas  he  takes  a  leap  across  the  ditch 
of  naturalism  and  reaches  another,  if  not  more 
delectable,  territory.  This  was  in  189 1.  A  new 
manifesto  must  be  made  —  the  Goncourts  had 
printed  a  bookful.  Symbolism,  not  naturalism, 
is  now  the  shibboleth.     Huysmans  declares  that: 

It  is  essential  to  preserve  the  veracity  of  the  docu- 
ment, the  precision  of  detail,  the  fibrous  and  nervous 
language  of  Realism,  but  it  is  equally  essential  to  be- 
come the  well-digger  of  the  soul,  and  not  to  attempt 
to  explain  what  is  mysterious  by  mental  maladies. 
...  It  is  essential,  in  a  word,  to  follow  the  great 
road  so  deeply  dug  out  by  Zola,  but  it  is  also  neces- 
201 


EGOISTS 

sary  to  trace  a  parallel  pathway  in  the  air,  another 
road  by  which  we  may  reach  the  Beyond,  to  achieve 
thus  a  Spiritual  naturalism. 

And  by  a  curious,  a  bizarre  route  Durtal,  the  ever- 
lasting Durtal,  sought  to  achieve  spiritually  — 
a  spirituality  a  rebourSy  for  it  was  by  devil-worship 
and  the  study  of  Gilles  de  Rais  of  ill-fame,  that 
he  reached  his  goal.  We  also  study  church  bells, 
incubiy  satanism,  demons,  witches,  sacrileges  of 
a  raffine  sort;  indeed,  an  enormous  amount  of 
occult  lumber  is  dumped  into  the  book,  which  is 
indigestible  on  that  account.  Diabolic  lore  a  la 
Jules  Dubois  and  other  modern  magi  is  profuse. 
That  wicked  lady,  who  is  far  from  credible, 
Madame  Chantelouve,  flits  through  various 
chapters.  Her  final  disappearance,  one  hopes 
*' below" — like  the  devils  in  the  pantomime  — 
is  received  by  Durtal  and  the  reader  with  a  sigh  of 
relief.  She  is  quite  the  vilest  character  in  French 
fiction,  and,  as  Stendhal  would  say,  her  only  ex- 
cuse is  that  she  never  existed.  The  Black  Mass 
is  painted  by  an  artist  adroit  in  the  manipulation 
of  the  sombre  and  magnificent. 

La-Bas  proved  a  prophetic  weather-vane. 
En  Route  in  1895  did  not  astonish  those  who  had 
been  studying  the  spiritual  fluctuations  of  Huys- 
mans.  Behold  the  miracle!  He  is  a  believing 
Christian.  Wisely  the  antecedent  causes  were 
tacitly  avoided.  "I  believe,"  said  Durtal,  simply. 
Of  superior  interest  is  his  struggle  up  the  ladder 
to  perfection.  This  painful  feat  is  slowly  ac- 
202 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

complished  in  La  Cathedrale  (1898),  L'Oblat 
(1903),  and  Lourdes  (1906).  And  it  must  be 
confessed  that  the  more  pious  grew  Huysmans 
the  less  artist  he  —  as  might  have  been  expected. 
What  is  his  art  to  a  man  who  is  concerned  not 
with  the  things  of  this  world  ?  He  never  lost  his 
acerbity,  or  his  faculty  for  the  phrase  magical, 
though  his  sense  of  proportion  gradually  vanished. 
Luckily,  he  is  not  saccharine  like  the  majority  of 
writers  on  religious  topics.  Ferdinand  Brunetiere 
complained  that  Flaubert  was  unbearably  erudite 
in  his  three  short  stories  —  echoing  what  Sainte- 
Beuve  had  said  of  Salammbo  years  before. 
What  must  he  have  thought  of  that  astonishing 
Cathedral,  with  its  chapters  on  the  symbolism  of 
architecture,  sculpture,  gems,  flowers  (Sir  Thomas 
Browne  and  his  quincunxes  are  fairly  beaten 
from  the  field),  vestments,  sacred  vessels  of  the 
altar,  and  a  multitude  of  mysterious  things, 
hieroglyphics,  and  dark  liturgical  riddles  ?  There 
are  ravishing  pages,  though  none  so  solemn  and 
moving  as  the  description  of  the  De  projundis  and 
Dies  tree  in  En  Route. 

It  may  prove  profitable  for  the  student  after 
reading  La  Cathedrale  to  take  up  Walter  Pater's 
unfinished  story,  Gaston  De  Latour,  and  read 
the  description  therein  of  the  Chartres  Cathedral. 
There  are  pages  of  exquisitely  felt  prose,  but 
Huysmans  sees  more  and  tells  what  he  sees  in  less 
musical  though  more  lapidary  phrases. 

For  anyone  except  the  trailer  after  strange 
souls  The  Oblate  is  an  affliction.  Madame 
203 


EGOISTS 

Bavoil,  with  her  notre  ami,  is  a  chattering  nui- 
sance, withal  a  worthy  creature.  Durtal  is  always 
in  the  dumps.  He  speaks  much  of  interior  peace, 
but  he  gives  the  impression  of  a  man  sitting  pain- 
fully amidst  spiritual  brambles.  Perhaps  he  felt 
that  for  him  after  his  Golgotha  are  the  sweet- 
singing  flames  of  Purgatory.  We  are  not  sorry 
when  he  returns  to  Paris.  As  for  the  book  on 
Lourdes,  it  is  like  an  open  wound.  A  whiff  from 
the  operating-room  of  a  hospital  comes  to  you. 
We  are  edified  by  the  childlike  faith  with  which 
Huysmans  accepts  the  report  of  cures  that  would 
stagger  the  most  perfervid  Christian  Scientist. 
His  Saint-Lydwine  is  hard  reading,  written  by 
a  man  whose  mysticism  was  a  matter  of  rigid 
definition,  a  thing  to  be  weighed  and  felt  and 
verbally  proved.  Fleming-like,  he  is  less  melodist 
than  harmonist  —  and  such  acrid  harmonies,  poly- 
phonic variations,  and  fuguelike  flights  to  the 
other  side  of  good  and  evil. 

George  Moore  was  the  first  English  critic  to 
recognise  Huysmans.  He  wrote  that;  **a  page 
of  Huysmans  is  as  a  dose  of  opium,  a  glass  of  ex- 
quisite and  powerful  liquor."  Frankly,  it  was 
his  conversion  that  focussed  upon  Huysmans  so 
much  attention.  No  one  may  remain  isolated 
in  his  century.  He  has  never  been  a  favourite 
with  the  larger  Parisian  public;  rather,  a  curi- 
osity, a  spiritual  ogre  turned  saint.  And  the 
saintship  has  been  hotly  disputed.  Abb6  Mug- 
nier  and  Dom  A.  du  Bourg,  the  prior  of  Sainte- 
Marie,  since  his  death,  have  written  eloquently 
204 


JORIS-KARL  HUYSMANS 

about  his  conversion,  his  life  as  an  oblate,  and 
his  edifying  death.  Huysmans  refused  anaes- 
thetics because  he  wished  to  suffer  for  his  life  of 
sin,  above  all  suffer  for  his  early  writings.  Need 
it  be  added  that,  like  Tolstoy,  he  repudiated  ab- 
solutely his  first  books?  Huysmans  Intime  is 
the  title  of  the  recollections  of  both  Dom  du 
Bourg  and  Henry  Ceard.  His  literary  executors 
destroyed  many  manuscripts.  He  left  his  money 
principally  to  charities. 

Huysmans  was  not  a  man  possessing  what  are 
so  vaguely  denominated  "general  ideas."  He 
was  never  interested  in  the  chess-play  of  meta- 
physics, pohtics,  or  science.  He  was  a  specialist, 
one  who  had  ransacked  libraries  for  curious  de- 
tails, despoiled  perfumers'  catalogues  for  their 
odourous  vocables,  pored  over  technical  diction- 
aries for  odd-coloured  words,  and  studied  cook- 
books for  savoury  terms.  His  gamut  of  sensations 
began  at  the  violet  ray.  He  was  a  perverse  aristo- 
crat who  descended  to  the  gutter  there  to  analyse 
the  various  stratifications  of  filth;  when  he  re- 
turned to  his  ivory  cell,  he  had  discovered,  not 
humanity,  but  an  anodyne,  the  love  of  God. 
Thenceforth,  he  was  interested  in  one  thing  — 
the  saving  of  the  soul  of  Joris-Karl  Huysmans, 
and  being  a  marvellous  verbal  artist,  his  recital 
of  the  event  starded  us,  fascinated  us.  Renan 
once  wrote  of  Amiel:  *'He  speaks  of  sin,  of  sal- 
vation, of  redemption  and  conversion,  as  if  these 
things  were  realities."  Let  us  rather  imitate 
Sainte-Beuve,  who  said:  ''You  may  not  cease 
205 


EGOISTS 

to  be  a  sceptic  after  reading  Pascal,  but  you  must 
cease  to  treat  believers  with  contempt."  And 
this  injunction  is  not  difficult  to  obey  in  the  case 
of  Huysmans,  for  whom  the  things  derided  by 
Renan  were  the  profoundest  realities  of  his 
troubled  life. 


206 


vr 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  AN  EGOIST 

MAURICE  BARRES 

Once  upon  a  time  a  youth,  slim,  dark,  and 
delicate,  lived  in  a  tower.  This  tower  was  com- 
posed of  ivory  —  the  youth  sat  within  its  walls, 
tapestried  by  most  subtle  art,  and  studied  his  soul. 
As  in  a  mirror,  a  fantastic  mirror  of  opal  and  gold, 
he  searched  his  soul  and  noted  its  faintest  music, 
its  strangest  modulations,  its  transmutation  of 
joy  into  melancholy;  he  saw  its  grace  and  its 
corruption.  These  matters  he  registered  in  his 
"little  mirrors  of  sincerity."  And  he  was  happy 
in  an  ivory  tower  and  far  away  from  the  world, 
with  its  rumours  of  dulness,  feeble  crimes,  and 
flat  triumphs.  After  some  years  the  young  man 
wearied  of  the  mirror,  with  his  spotted  soul  cruelly 
pictured  therein;  wearied  of  the  tower  of  ivory 
and  its  alien  solitudes;  so  he  opened  its  carved 
doors  and  went  into  the  woods,  where  he  found  a 
deep  pool  of  water.  It  was  very  small,  very  clear, 
and  reflected  his  face,  reflected  on  its  quivering 
surface  his  unstable  soul.  But  soon  other  images 
of  the  world  appeared  above  the  pool:  men's 
faces  and  women's,  and  the  shapes  of  earth  and 
207 


EGOISTS 

sky.  Then  Narcissus,  who  was  young,  whose 
soul  was  sensitive,  forgot  the  ivory  tower  and  the 
magic  pool,  and  merged  his  own  soul  into  the 
soul  of  his  people. 

Maurice  Barr^s  is  the  name  of  the  youth,  and 
he  is  now  a  member  of  the  Academie  Franjaise. 
His  evolution  from  the  Ivory  tower  of  Egoism 
to  the  broad  meadows  of  life  is  not  an  insoluble 
enigma;  his  books  and  his  active  career  offer  many 
revelations  of  a  fascinating,  though  often  baffling, 
personahty.  His  passionate  curiosity  in  all  that 
concerns  the  moral  nature  of  his  fellow  man 
lends  to  his  work  its  own  touch  of  universality; 
otherwise  it  would  not  be  untrue  to  say  that  the 
one  Barres  passion  is  love  of  his  native  land. 
"France'*  is  engraved  on  his  heart;  France  and 
not  the  name  of  a  woman.  This  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  grave  shortcoming  by  the  sex. 


Paul  Bourget  has  said  of  him:  "Among  the 
young  people  who  have  entered  literature  since 
1880  Maurice  Barres  is  certainly  the  most  cele- 
brated. .  .  .  One  must  see  other  than  a  decadent 
or  a  dilettante  in  this  analyst  ...  the  most 
original  who  has  appeared  since  Baudelaire." 
Bourget  said  much  more  about  the  young  writer, 
then  in  his  twenties,  who  in  1887  startled  Paris 
with  a  curious,  morbid,  ironical,  witty  book,  a 
production  neither  fiction  nor  fact.  This  book 
was  called  Sous  I'CEil  des  Barbares.  It  made  a 
208 


MAURICE  BARRES 

sensation.  He  was  born  on  the  22nd  of  September, 
1862,  at  Charmes-sur-Moselle  (Vosges),  and  re- 
ceived a  classical  education  at  the  Nancy  (old 
capital  of  Lorraine)  Lyceum.  Of  good  family 
—  among  his  ancestors  he  could  boast  some  mili- 
tary men  —  he  early  absorbed  a  love  for  his  native 
province,  a  love  that  later  was  to  become  a  spe- 
cies of  soil-worship.  His  health  not  strong  at 
any  time,  and  nervous  of  temperament,  he  never- 
theless moved  on  Paris,  for  the  inevitable  siege  of 
which  all  romantic  readers  of  Balzac  dream  dur- 
ing their  school-days.  "A  nous  deuxT^  muttered 
Rastignac,  shaking  his  fist  at  the  city  spread  be- 
low him.  A  nous  deux!  exclaim  countless  young- 
sters ever  since.  Maurice,  however,  was  not 
that  sort  of  Romantic.  He  meant  to  conquer 
Paris,  but  in  a  unique  way;  he  detested  melo- 
drama. He  removed  to  the  capital  in  1882.  His 
first  literary  efforts  had  appeared  in  the  Journal 
de  la  Meurthe  et  des  Vosges;  he  could  see  as  a 
boy  the  Vosges  Mountains;  and  Alsace,  not  far 
away,  was  in  the  clutches  of  the  hated  enemy.  In 
Paris  he  wrote  for  several  minor  reviews,  met  dis- 
tinguished men  like  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Roden- 
bach,  Valade,  RoUinat;  and  his  Parisian  debut 
was  in  La  Jeune  France,  with  a  short  story  en- 
titled Le  Chemin  de  I'Institut  (April,  1882). 
Ernest  Gaubert,  who  has  given  us  these  details, 
says  that,  despite  Leconte  de  Lisle' s  hearty  sup- 
port, Mme.  Adam  refused  an  essay  of  Barres  as 
unworthy  of  the  Nouvelle  Revue.  In  1884  ap- 
peared a  mad  little  review,  Les  Taches  d^Encre,  ir- 
209 


EGOISTS 

regular  in  publication.  Despite  its  literary  qual- 
ity, the  young  editor  displayed  some  knowledge 
of  the  tactics  of  ''new "  journalism.  When  Morin 
was  assassinated  by  Mme.  Clovis  Hugues,  sand- 
wich men  paraded  the  boulevards  carrying  on 
their  boards  this  inscription:  "Morin  reads  no 
longer  Ze^  T aches  d'EncreP'  Perseverance  such 
as  this  should  have  been  rewarded;  but  little 
Ink-spots  quickly  disappeared.  Barrbs  founded 
a  new  review  in  1886,  Les  Chroniques,  in  com- 
pany with  some  brilliant  men.  Jules  Clardtie 
about  this  time  remarked,  ''Make  a  note  of  the 
name  of  Maurice  Barres.  I  prophesy  that  it  will 
become  famous."  Barres  had  discovered  that 
Rastignac's  pugnacious  methods  were  obsolete  in 
the  battle  with  Paris,  though  there  was  no  folly  he 
would  be  incapable  of  committing  if  he  only  could 
attract  attention  —  even  to  walking  the  boule- 
vards in  the  guise  of  primeval  man.  Far  removed 
as  his  exquisite  art  now  is  from  this  blustering 
desire  for  publicity,  this  threat,  uttered  in  jest  or 
not,  is  significant.  Maurice  Barres  has  since 
stripped  his  soul  bare  for  the  world's  ire  or  edi- 
fication. 

Wonder-children  do  not  always  pursue  their 
natural  vocation.  Pascal  was  miraculously  en- 
dowed as  a  mathematician;  he  ended  a  master 
of  French  prose,  a  hallucinated,  wretched  man. 
Franz  Liszt  was  a  prodigy,  but  aspired  to  the 
glory  of  Beethoven.  Raphael  was  a  painting 
prodigy,  and  luckily  died  so  young  that  he  had  not 
time  to  change  his  profession.  Swinburne  wrote 
210 


MAURICE  BARRES 

faultless  verse  as  a  youth.  He  is  a  prosateur  to- 
day. Maurice  Barres  was  born  a  metaphysician; 
he  has  the  metaphysical  faculty  as  some  men 
a  fiddle  hand.  He  might  say  with  Prosper 
Merimee,  "Metaphysic  pleases  me  because  it 
is  never-ending."  But  not  as  Kant,  Condillac, 
or  William  James  —  to  name  men  of  widely  dis- 
parate systems  —  did  the  precocious  thinker  plan 
objectively.  The  proper  study  of  Maurice  Barres 
was  Maurice  Barres,  and  he  vivisected  his  Ego 
as  calmly  as  a  surgeon  trepanning  a  living  skull. 
He  boldly  proclaimed  the  culte  du  moij  proclaimed 
his  disdain  for  the  barbarians  who  impinged 
upon  his  /.  To  study  and  note  the  fleeting  shapes 
of  his  soul  —  in  his  case  a  protean  psyche  —  was 
the  one  thing  worth  doing  in  a  life  of  mediocrity. 
And  this  new  variation  of  the  eternal  hatred  for 
the  bourgeois  contained  no  menaces  levelled  at 
any  class,  no  groans  of  disgust  a  la  Huysmans. 
Imperturbable,  with  an  icy  indifference,  Barres 
pursued  his  fastidious  way.  What  we  hate  we 
fight,  what  we  despise  we  avoid.  Barres  merely 
despised  the  other  Egos  around  him,  and  entering 
his  ivory  tower  he  bolted  the  door;  but  on  reach- 
ing the  roof  did  not  fail  to  sound  his  horn  an- 
nouncing to  an  eager  world  that  the  miracle  had 
come  to  pass  —  Maurice  Barres  was  discovered 
by  Maurice  Barres. 

Egoism  as  a  religion  is  hardly  a  new  thing. 
It  began  with  the  first  sentient  male  human.  It 
has  since  preserved  the  species,  discovered  the 
** inferiority"  of  women,  made  civilisation,  and 

211 


EGOISTS 

founded  the  fine  arts.  Any  attempt  to  displace 
the  Ego  in  the  social  system  has  only  resulted  in 
inverting  the  social  pyramid.  Love  our  neighbour 
as  ourself  is  trouble-breeding;  but  we  must  first 
love  ourself  as  a  precaution  that  our  neighbour 
will  not  suffer  both  in  body  and  in  mind.  The 
interrogation  posed  on  the  horizon  of  our  con- 
sciousness, regarding  the  perfectibility  of  man- 
kind, is  best  answered  by  a  definition  of  socialism 
as  that  religion  which  proves  all  men  to  be  equally 
stupid.  Do  not  let  us  confound  the  ideas  of 
progress  and  perfectibility.  Since  man  first  real- 
ised himself  as  man,  first  said,  I  am  I,  there  has 
been  no  progress.  No  art  has  progressed. 
Science  is  a  perpetual  rediscovery.  And  what 
modern  thinker  has  taught  anything  new? 

Life  is  a  circle.  We  are  imprisoned,  in  the 
cage  of  our  personality.  Each  human  creates  his 
own  picture  of  the  world,  re-creates  it  each  day. 
These  are  the  commonplaces  of  metaphysics; 
Schopenhauer  has  presented  some  of  them  to  us 
in  tempting  garb. 

Compare  the  definitions  of  Man  made  by 
Pascal  and  Cabanis.  Man,  said  Pascal,  is  but 
a  reed,  the  feeblest  of  created  things;  yet  a  reed 
which  thinks.  Man,  declared  the  materialistic 
Cabanis,  is  a  digestive  tube  —  a  statement  that 
provoked  the  melodious  indignation  of  Lacor- 
daire.  What  am  I  ?  asks  Barres ;  je  suis  un  instant 
d^une  chose  immortelle.  And  this  instant  of  an 
immortal  thing  has  buried  within  it  something 
eternal  of  which  the  individual  has  only  the  usu- 

212 


MAURICE  BARRES 

fruct.  (Goncourt  wrote,  ''What  is  life?  The 
usufruct  of  an  aggregation  of  molecules.")  Be- 
fore him  Senancour  in  Obermann  —  the  reveries 
of  a  siek,  hermetic  soul  —  studied  his  malady, 
but  offered  no  prophylactic.  Amiel  was  so 
lymphatic  of  will  that  he  doubted  his  own  doubts, 
doubted  all  but  his  dreams.  He,  too,  had  fed  at 
Hegel's  ideologic  banquet,  where  the  verbal  viands 
snared  the  souls  of  guests.  But  Barres  was 
too  sprightly  a  spirit  to  remain  a  mystagogue. 
Diverse  and  contradictory  as  are  his  several  souls, 
he  did  not  utterly  succumb  to  the  spirit  of  analysis. 
"WTiether  he  was  poison-proof  or  not  to  the  venom 
that  slew  the  peace  of  the  unhappy  Amiel  (that 
bonze  of  mysticism),  the  young  Lorrainer  never 
lacked  elasticity  or  spontaneity,  never  ceased  to 
react  after  his  protracted  plunges  into  the  dark 
pools  of  his  subliminal  self.  And  his  volitional 
powers  were  not  paralysed.  Possessing  a  sensi- 
bility as  delicate  and  vibrating  as  Benjamin  Con- 
stant, he  has  had  the  courage  to  study  its  fevers, 
its  disorders,  its  subtleties.  He  knew  that  there 
were  many  young  men  like  him,  not  only  in 
France,  but  throughout  the  world,  highly  organ- 
ised, with  less  bone  and  sinew  than  nerves  — 
exposed  nerves;  egoistic  souls,  weak  of  will. 
We  are  sick,  this  generation  of  young  men,  ex- 
claimed Barres;  sick  from  the  lying  assurances 
of  science,  sick  from  the  false  promises  of  poli- 
ticians. There  must  be  a  remedy.  One  among 
us  must  immolate  himself,  study  the  malady,  seek 
its  cure.  I,  Maurice  Barres,  shall  be  the  mirror 
213 


EGOISTS 

reflecting  the  fleeting  changes  of  my  environment, 
social  and  psychical.  I  repudiate  the  transcen- 
dental indifference  of  Renan;  I  will  weigh  my 
sensations  as  in  a  scale;  I  shall  not  fear  to  proclaim 
the  result.  Amiel,  a  Protestant  Hamlet  (as  Bour- 
get  so  finely  says),  believes  that  every  landscape 
is  a  state  of  soul.  My  soul  is  full  of  landscapes. 
Therein  all  may  enter  and  find  their  true  selves. 

All  this,  and  much  more,  Barres  sang  in  his 
fluid,  swift,  and  supple  prose,  without  a  vestige 
of  the  dogmatic.  He  did  not  write  either  to 
prove  or  to  convince,  only  to  describe  his  interior 
life.  He  did  not  believe,  neither  did  he  despair. 
There  is  a  spiritual  malice  in  his  egoism  that  re- 
moves it  far  from  the  windy  cosmos  of  Walt 
Whitman  or  the  vitriolic  vanity  of  D'Annunzio. 
In  his  fugue-like  flights  down  the  corridor  of  his 
metaphysics,  he  never  neglects  to  drop  some 
poetic  rose,  some  precious  pearl  of  sentiment. 
His  little  book,  true  spiritual  memoirs,  aroused 
both  wrath  and  laughter.  The  wits  set  to  work. 
He  was  called  a  dandy  of  psychology,  nicknamed 
Mile.  Renan,  pronounced  a  psychical  harlequin, 
a  masquerader  of  the  emotions;  he  was  told  that, 
like  Chateaubriand,  he  wore  his  heart  in  a  sling. 
Anatole  France,  while  recognising  the  eloquent 
art  of  this  young  man,  spoke  of  the  "perverse 
idealist"  which  is  Maurice  Barres.  His  philoso- 
phy was  pronounced  a  perverted  pyrrhonism, 
the  quintessence  of  self-worship.  A  Vita  Nuova 
of  egoism  had  been  born. 

But  the  dandy  did  not  falter.  He  has  said  that 
214 


MAURICE  BARRES 

one  never  conquers  the  intellectual  suffrages  of 
those  who  precede  us  in  life;  he  made  his  appeal 
to  young  France.  And  what  was  the  balm  in 
Gilead  offered  by  this  new  doctor  of  metaphysics  ? 
None  but  a  Frenchman  at  the  end  of  the  last  cen- 
tury could  have  conceived  the  Barresian  plan  of 
soul-saving.  In  Baudelaire,  Barbey  d'Aurevilly, 
and  Villiers  de  I'lsle  Adam,  the  union  of  Roman 
Catholic  mysticism  and  blasphemy  has  proved  to 
many  a  stumbling-stone.  These  poets  were  be- 
lievers, yet  Manicheans;  they  worshipped  at 
two  shrines;  evil  was  their  greater  good.  Barres 
plucked  several  leaves  from  their  breviaries. 
He  proposed  to  school  his  soul  by  a  rigid  adherence 
to  the  Spiritual  Exercises  of  Saint  Ignatius  Loyola. 
With  the  mechanism  of  this  Catholic  moralist  he 
would  train  his  Ego,  cure  it  of  its  spiritual  dry- 
ness —  that  malady  so  feared  by  St.  Theresa  — 
and  arouse  it  from  its  apathy.  He  would  deliver 
us  from  a  Renan-ridden  school. 

This  scholastic  fervour  urged  Barres  to  rein- 
state man  in  the  centre  of  the  universe,  a  position 
from  which  he  had  been  routed  by  science.  It 
was  a  pious,  mediaeval  idea.  He  did  not,  how- 
ever, assert  the  bankruptcy  of  science,  but  the 
bankruptcy  of  pessimism.  His  book  is  meta- 
physical autobiography,  ^  Gallic  transposition  of 
Goethe's  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung.  We  may  now 
see  that  his  concentrated  egoism  had  definite 
aims  and  was  not  the  conceit  of  a  callow  Romantic. 

Barres  imbibed  from  the  Parnassian  poetic 
group  his  artistic  remoteness.  His  ivory  tower 
215 


EGOISTS 

is  a  borrowed  phrase  made  by  Sainte-Beuve  about 
De  Vigny.  But  his  mercurial  soul  could  not  be 
imprisoned  long  by  frigid  theories  of  impeccable 
art  —  of  art  for  art's  sake.  My  soul!  that  alone 
is  worth  studying,  cried  Maurice.  John  Henry 
Newman  said  the  same  in  a  different  and  more 
modest  dialectic.  The  voice  of  the  French 
youth  is  shriller,  it  is  sometimes  in  falsetto;  yet 
there  is  no  denying  its  fundamental  sincerity  of 
pitch.  And  he  has  the  trick  of  light  verbal  fence 
beloved  of  his  race.  He  is  the  comedian  among 
moralists.  His  is  neither  the  frozen  eclecticism 
of  Victor  Cousin,  nor  the  rigid  determinism  of 
Taine.  Yet  he  is  a  partial  descendant  of  the 
Renan  he  flouts,  and  of  Taine  —  above  all,  of 
Stendhal  and  Voltaire.  In  his  early  days  if  one 
had  christened  him  Mile.  Stendhal,  there  would 
have  been  less  to  retract.  Plus  a  delicious  style, 
he  is  a  masked,  slightly  feminine  variation  of  the 
great  mystifier  who  wrote  La  Chartreuse  de 
Parme,  leaving  out  the  Chartreuse.  At  times  the 
preoccupation  of  Barres  with  the  moral  law  ap- 
proaches the  borderland  of  the  abnormal.  Like 
Jules  Laforgue,  his  intelligence  and  his  sensibility 
are  closely  wedded.  He  is  a  sentimental  ironist 
with  a  taste  for  self-mockery,  a  Heine-like  humour. 
He  had  a  sense  of  humpur,  even  when  he  wore 
the  panache  of  General  Boulanger,  and  opposed 
the  Dreyfus  proceedings.  It  may  rescue  from  the 
critical  executioner  who  follows  in  the  footsteps 
of  all  thinkers,  many  of  his  pages. 

A  dilettante,  an  amateur  —  yes!    But  so  was 
216 


MAURICE  BARRES 

Goethe  in  his  Olympus,  so  Stendhal  in  his  Cos- 
mopolis.  He  elected  at  first  to  view  the  spectacle 
of  life,  to  study  it  from  afar,  and  by  the  tempo  of 
his  own  sensibility.  Not  the  tonic  egoism  of 
Thoreau  this;  it  has  served  its  turn  nevertheless 
in  France.  Afferent,  centripetal,  and  other  for- 
bidding terms,  have  been  bestowed  upon  his  sys- 
tem; while  for  the  majority  this  word  egoism 
has  a  meaning  that  implies  our  most  selfish  in- 
stincts. If,  however,  interposes  Bourget,  you 
consider  the  word  as  a  formula,  then  the  angle 
of  view  is  altered;  if  Barres  had  said  in  one  jet, 
*' Nothing  is  more  precious  for  a  man  than  to 
guard  intact  his  convictions,  his  passions,  his  ideal, 
his  individuality,"  those  who  misjudged  this 
courageous  apostle  of  egoism,  this  fervent  prober 
of  the  human  soul,  might  have  modified  their 
opinions  —  and  would  probably  have  passed  him 
by.  It  was  the  enigmatic  message,  the  strained 
symbolism,  of  which  Barres  delivered  himself, 
that  puzzled  both  critics  and  public.  Robert 
Schumann  once  propounded  a  question  con- 
cerning the  Chopin  Scherzo:  "How  is  gravity  to 
clothe  itself  if  jest  goes  about  in  dark  veils?" 
Now  Barres,  who  is  far  from  being  a  spiritual 
blagueur,  suggests  this  puzzle  of  Schumann.  His 
employment,  without  a  nuance  of  mockery,  of 
the  devotional  machinery  so  marvellously  devised 
by  that  captain  of  souls,  Ignatius  Loyola,  was 
rather  disquieting,  notwithstanding  its  very  prac- 
tical application  to  the  daily  needs  of  the  spirit. 
Ernest  Hello,  transported  by  such  a  spectacle, 
217 


EGOISTS 

may  not  have  been  far  astray  when  he  wrote  of 
the  nineteenth  century  as  "having  desire  without 
light,  curiosity  without  wisdom,  seeking  God  by 
strange  ways,  ways  traced  by  the  hands  of  men; 
offering  rash  incense  upon  the  high  places  to  an 
unknown  God,  who  is  the  God  of  darkness." 
Ernest  Renan  was  evidently  aimed  at,  but  the 
bolt  easily  wings  that  metaphysical  bird  of  gay 
plumage,  Maurice  Barr^s. 

II 

He  has  published  over  a  dozen  volumes  and 
numerous  brochures,  political  and  "psycho- 
therapic,"  many  addresses,  and  one  comedy, 
Une  Joum^e  Parlementaire.  He  calls  his  books 
metaphysical  fiction,  the  adventures  of  a  con- 
templative young  man's  mind.  PauJ  Bourget 
is  the  psychologist  pure  and  complex;  Barr^s 
has  —  rather,  had  —  such  a  contempt  for  action 
on  the  "earthly  plane,"  that  at  the  head  of  each 
chapter  of  his  "idealogies"  he  prefixed  a  resume, 
a  concordance  of  the  events  that  were  supposed 
to  take  place,  leaving  us  free  to  savour  the  prose, 
enjoy  the  fine-spun  formal  texture,  and  marvel 
at  the  contrapuntal  involutions  of  the  hero's 
intellect.  Naturally  a  reader,  hungry  for  facts, 
must  perish  of  famine  in  this  rarefied  aesthetic 
desert,  the  background  of  which  is  occasionally 
diversified  by  a  sensuality  that  may  be  dainty, 
yet  is  disturbing  because  of  its  disinterested  por- 
trayment.  The  Eternal  Feminine  is  not  unsung 
218 


MAURICE  BARRES 

in  the  Barres  novels.  Woman  for  his  imagina- 
tion is  a  creature  exquisitely  fashioned,  hardly  an 
odalisque,  nor  yet  the  symbol  of  depravity  we 
encounter  in  Huysmans.  She  is  a  "phantom  of 
delight";  but  that  she  has  a  soul  we  beg  to  doubt. 
Barres  almost  endowed  her  with  one  in  the  case 
of  his  Berenice;  and  Berenice  died  very  young. 
A  young  man,  with  various  names,  traverses  these 
pages.  Like  the  Durtal,  or  Des  Esseintes,  or 
Folantin,  of  Huysmans,  who  is  always  Huys- 
mans, the  hero  of  Barres  is  always  Barres.  In 
the  first  of  the  trilogy  —  of  which  A  Free  Man 
and  The  Garden  of  Berenice  are  the  other  two 
—  we  find  Phihppe  escaping  through  seclusion 
and  revery  the  barbarians,  his  adversaries.  The 
Adversary  —  portentous  title  for  the  stranger 
who  grazes  our  sensitive  epidermis  —  is  the 
being  who  impedes  or  misleads  a  spirit  in  search 
of  itself.  If  he  deflects  us  from  our  destiny,  he 
is  the  enemy.  It  may  be  well  to  recall  at  this 
juncture  Stendhal,  who  avowed  that  our  first  ene- 
mies are  our  parents,  an  idea  many  an  insurgent 
boy  has  asserted  when  his  father  was  not  present. 
Seek  peace  and  happiness  with  the  conviction 
that  they  are  never  to  be  found;  felicity  must  be 
in  the  experiment,  not  in  the  result.  Be  ardent 
and  sceptical.  Here  Philippe  touches  hands 
with  the  lulling  Cyrenaicism  of  Walter  Pater. 
And  Barres  might  have  sat  for  one  of  Pater's 
imaginary  portraits.  But  it  is  too  pretty  to  last, 
such  a  dream  as  this,  in  a  world  wherein  work 
and  sorrow  rule.  He  is  not  an  ascetic,  Philippe. 
219 


EGOISTS 

He  eats  rare  beefsteaks,  smokes  black  Havanas, 
clothes  himself  in  easy-fitting  garments,  and 
analyses  with  cordial  sincerity  his  multicoloured 
soul.  (And  oh!  the  colours  of  it;  oh!  its  fluctu- 
ating forms!)  The  young  person  invades  his 
privacy  —  a  solitary  in  Paris  is  an  incredible 
concept.  Together  they  make  journeys  "con- 
ducted by  the  sun."  She  is  dreamlike  until  we 
read,  *'Cependant  elle  le  suivait  de  lom,  delicate 
et  de  hanches  merveilleuses " — which  delicious 
and  dislocated  phrase  is  admired  by  lovers  of 
Goncourt  syntax,  but  must  be  shocking  to  the  old- 
fashioned  who  prefer  the  classic  line  and  balance 
of  Bossuet. 

Nothing  happens.  Everything  happens.  Philippe 
makes  the  stations  of  the  cross  of  earthly  disil- 
lusionment. He  weighs  love,  he  weighs  literature 
—  ''all  these  books  are  but  pigeon-holes  in  which 
I  classify  my  ideas  concerning  myself,  their  titles 
serve  only  as  the  labels  of  the  different  portions 
of  my  appetite."  Irony  is  his  ivory  tower,  his 
refuge  from  the  banalities  of  his  contemporaries. 
Henceforth  he  will  enjoy  his  Ego.  It  sounds  at 
moments  like  Bunthome  transposed  to  a  more 
intense  tonality. 

But  even  beefsteaks,  cigars,  wine,  and  phil- 
osophy pall.  He  craves  a  mind  that  will  echo  his, 
craves  a  mental  duo,  in  which  the  clash  of  char- 
acter and  opposition  of  temperaments  will  evoke 
pleasing  cerebral  music.  In  this  dissatisfaction 
with  his  solitude  we  may  detect  the  first  rift  in 
the  lute  of  his  egoism.  He  finds  an  old  friend, 
220 


MAURICE  BARRES 

Simon  by  name,  and  after  some  preliminary  senti- 
mental philandering  at  the  seashore,  in  the  com- 
pany of  two  young  ladies,  the  pair  agree  to  lead 
a  monastic  life.  To  Lorraine  they  retire  and  draft 
a  code  of  diurnal  obligations.  ''We  are  never  so 
happy  as  when  in  exaltation,"  and  ''The  pleasure 
of  exaltation  is  greatly  enhanced  by  the  analysis 
of  it."  Their  souls  are  fortified  and  engineered 
by  the  stern  practices  of  Loyola.  The  woman 
idea  occasionally  penetrates  to  their  cells.  It 
distracts  them  —  "woman,  who  has  always  pos- 
sessed the  annoying  art  of  making  imbeciles 
loquacious."  Notwithstanding  these  wraiths  of 
feminine  fancy,  Philippe  finds  himself  almost 
cheerful.  His  despondent  moods  have  vanished. 
He  quarrels,  of  course,  with  Simon,  who  is  dry,  an 
esprit  jorL 

The  Intercessors  now  appear,  the  intellectual 
saints  who  act  as  intermediaries  between  im- 
pressionable, bruised  natures  and  the  Infinite. 
They  are  the  near  neighbours  of  God,  for  they  are 
the  men  who  have  experienced  an  unusual  num- 
ber of  sensations.  Philippe  admits  that  his  tem- 
perament oscillates  between  languor  and  ecstasy. 
Benjamin  Constant  and  Sainte-Beuve  are  the 
two  "Saints"  of  Sensibility  who  aid  the  youths 
in  their  self-analysis;  rather  a  startling  devolu- 
tion from  the  Imitation  of  Christ  and  Ignatius 
Loyola.  Tiring,  finally,  of  this  sterile  analysis, 
and  discovering  that  the  neurasthenic  Simon  is 
not  a  companion-soul,  Philippe,  very  illogically 
yet  very  naturally,  resolves  that  he  must  bathe 

221 


EGOISTS 

himself  in  new  sensations,  and  proceeds  to  Venice. 
We  accompany  him  wiUingly,  for  this  poet  who 
handles  prose  as  Chopin  the  pianoforte,  tells  us  of 
his  soul  in  Venice,  and  we  are  soothed  when  he 
speaks  of  the  art  of  John  Bellini,  of  Titian,  Vero- 
nese, above  all  of  Tiepolo,  '*who  was  too  much  a 
sceptic  to  be  bitter.  .  .  .  His  conceptions  have 
that  lassitude  which  follows  pleasure,  a  lassitude 
preferred  by  epicureans  to  pleasure  itself."  Grace- 
ful, melancholy  Tiepolo,  This  Venetian  episode 
is  rare  reading. 

The  last  of  the  trilogy  is  The  Garden  of 
Berenice.  It  is  the  best  of  the  three  in  human 
interest,  and  its  melancholy-sweet  landscapes 
exhale  a  charm  that  is  nearly  new  in  French  lit- 
erature; something  analogous  may  be  found  in 
Slavic  music,  or  in  the  Intimiste  school  of  painting. 
Several  of  these  landscapes  are  redolent  of  Wat- 
teau:  tender,  doleful,  sensuous,  their  twilights 
filled  with  vague  figures,  languidly  joying  in  the 
mood  of  the  moment.  The  impressionism  which 
permeates  this  book  is  a  veritable  lustration  for 
those  weary  of  commonplace  modern  fiction. 
Not  since  has  Barres  excelled  this  idyl  of  the  little 
Berenice  and  her  slowly  awakening  consciousness 
to  beauty,  aroused  by  an  old,  half-forgotten 
museum  in  meridional  France.  At  Aries,  en- 
compassed by  the  memory  of  a  dead  man,  she 
loves  her  donkey,  her  symbolic  ducks,  and  Phil- 
ippe, who  divines  her  adolescent  sorrow,  her  yearn- 
ing spirit,  her  unfulfilled  dreams.  Her  garden 
upon   the  immemorial  and   paludian   plains  of 

222 


MAURICE  BARRES 

Aries  is  threaded  by  silver  waters,  illuminated 
by  copper  sunsets,  their  tones  reverberating  from 
her  robes.  Something  of  Maeterlinck's  stam- 
mering, girlish,  questioning  Melisande  is  in 
Berenice.  Maeterlinckian,  too,  is  the  statement 
that  "For  an  accomplished  spirit  there  is  but 
one  dialogue  —  that  between  our  two  Egos, 
the  momentary  Ego  we  are,  and  the  ideal  Ego 
toward  which  we  strive."  Berenice  would  marry 
Philippe.  We  hold  our  breath,  hoping  that  his 
tyrant  Ego  may  relax,  and  that,  off  guard,  he 
may  snatch  with  fearful  joy  the  chance  to  gain 
this  childlike  creature.  Alas!  there  is  a  certain 
M.  Martin,  who  is  Philippe's  political  adversary 
—  Philippe  is  a  candidate  for  the  legislature;  he 
is  become  practical;  in  the  heat  of  his  philosophic 
egoism  he  finds  that  if  a  generous  negation  is 
good  waiting  ground,  wealth  and  the  participa- 
tion in  political  affairs  is  a  better  one.  M. 
Martin  covets  the  hand  of  Berenice.  He  repels 
her  because  he  is  an  engineer,  a  man  of  positive, 
practical  spirit,  who  would  drain  the  marshes 
in  Berenice's  garden  of  their  beautiful  miasmas, 
and  build  healthy  houses  for  happy  people.  To 
Philippe  he  is  the  "adversary"  who  despises  the 
contemplative  life.  "He  had  a  habit  of  saying, 
'  Do  you  take  me  for  a  dreamer  ? '  as  one  should 
say,  *Do  you  take  me  for  an  idiot?'"  Philippe, 
nevertheless,  more  solicitous  of  his  Ego  than  of 
his  affections,  advises  Berenice  to  marry  M. 
Martin.  This  she  does,  and  dies  like  a  flower 
in  a  cellar.  She  is  a  lovely  memory  for  our  young 
223 


EGOISTS 

idealist,  who  in  voluptuous  accents  rhapsodises 
about  her  as  did  Sterne  over  his  dead  donkey. 
Sensibility,  all  this,  to  the  very  ultima  Thule  of 
egoism.  Then,  Philippe  obtains  the  concession 
of  a  suburban  hippodrome.  Poor  Berenice! 
Pauvre  Petite  —  Secousse  I  The  name  of  this 
book  was  to  have  been  Qualis  artijex  pereo! 
And  there  is  a  fitting  Neronic  tang  to  its  cruel 
and  sentimental  episodes  that  would  have  justi- 
fied the  title.  But  for  Barres,  it  has  a  Goethian 
quality;  *'all  is  true,  nothing  exact." 

In  1892  was  published  The  Enemy  of  Law,  a 
book  of  violent  anarchical  impulse  and  lyric  dis- 
order. It  is  still  Philippe,  though  under  another 
name,  Andre,  who  approves  of  a  bomb  launched 
by  the  hand  of  an  anarchist,  and  because  of  the 
printed  expression  of  his  sympathy  he  is  sent  to 
prison  for  a  few  months.  A  Free  Man,  he  en- 
dures his  punishment  philosophically,  winning 
the  friendship  of  a  young  Frenchwoman,  an 
exaltee,  and  also  of  a  little  Russian  princess,  a 
silhouette  of  Marie  Bashkir tseff,  and  an  unmis- 
takable blood-relative  of  Stendhal's  Lamiel. 
After  his  liberation  Andre  makes  sentimental  pil- 
grimages with  one  or  the  other,  finally  with  both 
of  his  friends,  to  Germany  and  elsewhere.  A 
shaggy  dog,  Velu,  figures  largely  in  these  pages, 
and  we  are  treated  to  some  disquisitions  on  canine 
psychology.  Nor  are  the  sketches  of  Saint-Simon, 
Fourier,  Karl  Marx,  Ferdinand  Lassalle,  and 
Ludwig  of  Bavaria,  the  Wagnerian  idealist,  par- 
ticularly novel.  They  but  reveal  the  nascent 
224 


MAURICE  BARRES 

social  sympathies  of  Barres,  who  was  at  the  law- 
despising  period  of  his  development.  His  little 
princess  has  a  touch  of  Berenice,  coupled  with 
a  Calmuck  disregard  of  the  convenances;  she  loves 
the  ''warm  smell  of  stables"  and  does  not  fear 
worldly  criticism  of  her  conduct;  the  trio  van- 
ish in  a  too  Gallic,  too  rose-coloured  perspective. 
A  volume  of  protest,  The  Enemy  of  Law  served 
its  turn,  though  here  the  phrase  —  clear,  alert, 
suave  —  of  his  earlier  books  is  transformed  to  a 
style  charged  with  flame  and  acid.  The  moral 
appears  to  be  dangerous,  as  well  as  diverting  — 
develop  your  instincts  to  the  uttermost,  give  satis- 
faction to  your  sensibility;  then  must  you  attain 
the  perfection  of  your  Ego,  and  therefore  will 
not  attenuate  the  purity  of  your  race.  The 
Russian  princess,  we  are  assured,  carried  with 
her  the  ideas  of  antique  morality. 

In  the  second  trilogy  —  Du  Sang,  de  la 
Volupte,  et  de  la  Mort;  Amori  et  Dolori  Sacrum; 
and  Les  Amities  Franjaises  —  we  begin  an 
itinerary  which  embraces  parts  of  Italy,  Spain, 
Germany,  France,  particularly  Lorraine.  Barrbs 
must  be  ranked  among  those  travellers  of  acute 
vision  and  aesthetic  culture  who  in  their  wander- 
ings disengage  the  soul  of  a  city,  of  a  country. 
France,  from  Count  de  Caylus  and  the  Abb^ 
Barth^lemy  (Voyage  du  Jeune  Anacharsis)  to 
Stendhal,  Taine,  and  Bourget,  has  given  birth 
to  many  distinguished  examples.  The  first  of 
the  new  group.  Blood,  Pleasure,  and  Death  — 
a  sensational  title  for  a  work  so  rich  and  consoling 
225 


EGOISTS 

in  substance  —  is  a  collection  of  essays  and  tales. 
The  same  young  man  describes  his  aesthetic  and 
moral  impressions  before  the  masterpieces  of 
Angelo  and  Vinci,  or  the  tombs,  cathedrals,  and 
palaces  of  Italy  and  Spain.  Cordova  is  visited, 
the  gardens  of  Lombardy,  Ravenna,  Parma  — 
Stendhal's  beloved  city  —  Siena,  Pisa;  there  are 
love  episodes  in  diaphanous  keys.  Barrbs,  ever 
magnanimous  in  his  critical  judgments,  pays 
tribute  to  the  memory  of  his  dead  friends,  Jules 
Tellier  and  Marie  Bashkirtseff.  He  understood 
her  soul,  though  afterward  cooled  when  he  dis- 
covered the  reality  of  the  Bashkirtseff  legend. 
(He  speaks  of  the  house  in  which  she  died  as  6  Rue 
de  Prony;  Marie  died  at  30  Rue  Ampere.)  In 
the  succeeding  volume,  consecrated  to  love  and 
sorrow,  the  soul  of  Venice,  the  soul  of  a  dead 
city,  is  woven  with  souvenirs  of  Goethe,  Byron, 
Chateaubriand,  Musset,  George  Sand,  Taine, 
Leopold  Robert  the  painter-suicide,  Theophile 
Gautier,  and  Richard  Wagner.  The  magic  of 
these  prose-dreams  is  not  that  of  an  artist  merely 
revelling  in  description ;  Pierre  Loti,  for  instance, 
writes  with  no  philosophy  but  that  of  the  disen- 
chanted; he  is  a  more  luscious  Senancour; 
D'Annunzio  has  made  of  Venice  a  golden  monu- 
ment to  his  gigantic  pride  as  poet.  Not  so 
Barr^s.  The  image  of  death  and  decay,  the  rec- 
ollections of  the  imperial  and  mighty  past  aroused 
by  his  pen  are  as  so  many  chords  in  his  egoistic 
philosophy:  Venice  guarded  its  Ego  from  the 
barbarians;  from  the  dead  we  learn  the  secret  of 
226 


MAURICE  BARRES 

life.  The  note  of  revolt  which  sounded  so  drastic- 
ally in  The  Enemy  of  Law  is  absent  here;  in  that 
story  Barres,  mindful  of  Auguste  Comte  and 
Ibsen,  asserted  that  the  dead  poisoned  the  living. 
The  motive  of  reverence  for  the  soil,  for  the  past, 
the  motive  of  traditionalism,  is  beginning  to  be 
overheard.  In  French  Friendships,  he  takes 
his  little  son  Philippe  to  Joan  of  Arc's  country 
and  enforces  the  lesson  of  patriotism.  In  his 
Le  Voyage  de  Sparte,  the  same  spirit  is  present. 
He  is  the  man  from  Lorraine  at  Corinth,  Eleusis, 
or  Athens,  humble  and  solicitous  for  the  soul  of 
his  race,  eager  to  extract  a  moral  benefit  from 
the  past.  He  studies  the  Antigone  of  Sophocles, 
the  Helen  of  Goethe.  He  also  praises  his  master, 
the  classical  scholar,  Louis  Menard.  Barrbs  has, 
in  a  period  when  France  seems  bent  on  burning 
its  historical  ships,  destroying  precious  relics  of 
its  past,  blown  the  trumpet  of  alarm;  not  the 
destructive  blast  of  Nietzsche,  but  one  that  calls 
"Spare  our  dead!"  Little  wonder  Bourget  pro- 
nounced him  the  most  efficacious  servitor,  at  the 
present  hour,  of  France  the  eternal.  Force  and 
spiritual  fecundity  Barres  demands  of  himself; 
force  and  spiritual  fecundity  he  demands  from 
France.  And,  like  the  vague  insistent  thrum- 
ming of  the  tympani,  sl  ground  bass  in  some 
symphonic  poem,  the  idea  of  nationalism  is 
gradually  disclosed  as  we  decipher  these  palimp- 
sests of  egoism. 


227 


EGOISTS 


III 


The  axt  of  Barres  till  this  juncture  had  been  of 
a  smoky  enchantment,  many-hued,  of  shifting 
shapes,  often  tenuous,  sometimes  opaque,  yet 
ever  graceful,  ever  fascinating.  Whether  he  was 
a  great  spiritual  force  or  only  an  amazing  pro- 
tean acrobat,  coquetting  with  the  Zeitgeist^  his 
admirers  and  enemies  had  not  agreed  upon. 
He  had  further  clouded  public  opinion  by  be- 
coming a  Boulangist  deputy  from  Nancy,  and  his 
apparition  in  the  Chamber  must  have  been  as 
bizarre  as  would  have  been  Shelley's  in  Parlia- 
ment. Barres  but  followed  the  illustrious  lead 
of  Hugo,  Lamartine,  Lamennais.  His  friends 
were  moved  to  astonishment.  The  hater  of  the 
law,  the  defender  in  the  press  of  Chambige,  the 
Algerian  homicide,  this  writer  of  ''precious"  lit- 
erature, among  the  political  opportunists!  Yet 
he  sat  as  a  deputy  from  1889  to  1893,  and  proved 
himself  a  resourceful  debater;  in  the  chemistry 
of  his  personality  patriotism  had  been  at  last  pre- 
cipitated. 

His  second  trilogy  of  books  was  his  most  ar- 
tistic gift  to  French  literature.  But  with  the 
advent,  in  1897,  of  Les  D^racines  (The  Uprooted) 
a  sharp  change  in  style  may  be  noted.  It  is  the 
sociological  novel  in  all  its  thorny  efflorescence. 
Diction  is  no  longer  in  the  foreground.  Van- 
ished the  velvety  rhetoric,  the  musical  phrase, 
the  nervous  prose  of  many  facets.  Sharp  in 
contour  and  siccant,  every  paragraph  is  packed 
228 


MAURICE  BARRES 

with  ideas.  The  Uprooted  is  formidable  read- 
ing, but  we  at  least  touch  the  rough  edges  of  re- 
ality. Men  and  women  show  familiar  gestures; 
the  prizes  run  for  are  human;  we  are  in  a  dense 
atmosphere  of  intrigue,  political  and  personal; 
Flaubert's  Frederic  Moreau,  the  young  man  of 
confused  ideas  and  feeble  volition,  once  more 
appears  as  a  cork  in  the  whirlpool  of  modern 
Paris.  The  iconoclast  that  is  in  the  heart  of 
this  poet  is  rampant.  He  smashes  institutions, 
though  his  criticism  is  often  constructive.  He 
strives  to  expand  the  national  soul,  strives  to  com- 
bat cynicism,  and  he  urges  decentralisation  as 
the  sole  remedy  for  the  canker  that  he  believes 
is  blighting  France.  Bourget  holds  that  ''So- 
ciety is  the  functioning  of  a  federation  of  organ- 
isms of  which  the  individual  is  the  cell";  that 
functioning,  says  Barres,  is  ill  served  by  the 
violent  uprooting  of  the  human  organism  from 
its  earth.  A  man  best  develops  in  his  native 
province.  His  deracination  begins  with  the 
education  that  sends  him  to  Paris,  there  to  lose 
his  originality.  The  individual  can  flourish  only 
in  the  land  where  the  mysterious  forces  of  heredity 
operate,  make  richer  his  Ego,  and  create  soHd- 
arity  —  that  necromantic  word  which,  in  the 
hands  of  social  preachers,  has  become  a  glit- 
tering and  illuding  talisman.  A  tree  does  not 
grow  upward  unless  its  roots  plunge  deeply  into 
the  soil.  A  wise  administrator  attaches  the  ani- 
mal to  the  pasture  that  suits  it.  (But  Barres 
himself  still  lives  in  Paris.) 
229 


EGOISTS 

This  nationalism  of  Barres  is  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  the  perfidious  slogan  of  the  poli- 
ticians; it  is  a  national  symbol  for  many  youth 
of  his  land.  Nor  is  Barres  affiliated  with  some 
extreme  modes  of  socialism  —  socialism,  that  day- 
dream of  a  retired  green-grocer  who  sports  a  culti- 
vated taste  for  dominoes  and  penny  philanthropy. 
To  those  who  demand  progress,  he  asks.  Progress- 
ing toward  what  ?  Rather  let  us  face  the  setting 
sun.  Do  not  repudiate  the  past.  Hold  to  our 
dead.  They  realise  for  us  the  continuity  of 
which  we  are  the  ephemeral  expression.  The 
cult  of  the  "I"  is  truly  the  cult  of  the  dead. 
Egoism  must  not  be  construed  as  the  average 
selfishness  of  humanity;  the  higher  egoism  is  the 
art  —  Barres  artist,  always  —  of  canalising  one's 
Ego  for  the  happiness  of  others.  Out  of  the 
Barres  nationalism  has  grown  a  mortuary  phil- 
osophy; we  see  him  rather  too  fond  of  culling  the 
flowers  in  the  cemetery  as  he  takes  his  evening 
stroll.  When  a  young  man  he  was  obsessed  by 
the  vision  of  death.  His  logic  is  sometimes  auda- 
ciously romantic;  he  paints  ideas  in  a  dangerously 
seductive  style;  and  he  is  sometimes  carried  away 
by  the  electric  energy  which  agitates  his  not  too 
robust  physique.  This  cult  of  the  dead,  while  not 
morbid,  smacks  nevertheless  of  the  Chinese. 
Our  past  need  not  be  in  a  graveyard,  and  one 
agrees  with  Jean  Dolent  that  man  is  surely  matter, 
but  that  his  soul  is  his  own  work. 

Latterly  the  patriotism  of  Barres  is  beginning 
to  assume  an  unpleasant  tinge.  In  his  azure, 
230 


MAURICE  BARRES 

chauvinisme  is  the  ugliest  cloud.  He  loves  the 
fatal  word  "revenge."  In  the  Service  of  Germany 
presents  a  pitiable  picture  of  a  young  Alsatian 
forced  to  military  ser\dce  in  the  German  army. 
It  is  not  pleasing,  and  the  rage  of  Barres  will 
be  voted  laudable  until  we  recall  the  stories  by 
Frenchmen  of  the  horrors  of  French  military  life. 
He  upholds  France  for  the  French.  It  is  a  noble 
idea,  but  it  leads  to  narrowness  and  fanatical  out- 
breaks. His  influence  was  great  from  1888  to 
1893  among  the  young  men.  It  abated,  to  be 
renewed  in  1896  and  1897.  It  reached  its  apogee 
a  few  years  ago.  The  Rousseau-like  cry,  "Back 
to  the  soil!"  made  of  Barres  an  idol  in  several 
camps.  His  election  to  the  Academy,  filling  the 
vacancy  caused  by  the  death  of  the  poet  De 
Heredia,  was  the  consecrating  seal  of  a  genius 
who  has  the  gift  of  projecting  his  sympathies  in 
many  different  directions,  only  to  retrieve  as  by 
miraculous  tentacles  the  richest  moral  and 
aesthetic  nourishment.  We  should  not  forget  to 
add,  that  by  the  numerous  early  Barresians,  the 
Academician  is  now  looked  upon  as  a  backslider 
from  the  cause  of  philosophic  anarchy. 

The  determinism  of  Taine  stems  in  Germany 
and  his  theory  of  environment  has  been  effectively 
utilised  by  Barres.  In  The  Uprooted,  the  argu- 
ment is  driven  home  by  the  story  of  seven  young 
Lorrainers  who  descend  upon  Paris  to  capture  it. 
Their  Professor  Bouteiller  (said  to  be  a  portrait 
of  Barres's  old  master  Burdeau  at  Nancy)  has 
educated  them  as  if  "they  might  some  day  be 
231 


EGOISTS 

called  upon  to  do  without  a  mother-country." 
Paris  is  a  vast  maw  which  swallows  them.  They 
are  disorganised  by  transplantation.  (What  young 
American  would  be,  we  wonder?)  Some  drift 
into  anarchy,  one  to  the  scaffold  because  of  a 
murder;  all  are  arrivistes;  and  the  centre  figure, 
Sturel,  is  a  failure  because  he  cannot  reconcile 
himself  to  new,  harsh  conditions.  They  blame 
their  professor.  He  diverted  the  sap  of  their 
nationalism  into  strange  channels.  A  few  "ar- 
rive," though  not  in  every  instance  by  laudable 
methods.  One  is  a  scholar.  The  account  of 
his  interview  with  Taine  and  Taine's  conversa- 
tion with  him  is  another  evidence  of  the  intellectual 
mimicry  latent  in  Barres.  He  had  astonished  us 
earlier  by  his  recrudescence  of  Kenan's  very 
fashion  of  speech  and  ideas;  hterally  a  feat  of 
literary  prestidigitation.  There  are  love,  po- 
litical intrigue,  and  a  dramatic  assassination  — 
the  general  conception  of  which  recalls  to  us  the 
fact  that  Barres  once  sat  at  the  knees  of  Bourget, 
and  had  read  that  master's  novel,  Le  Disciple. 
A  striking  episode  is  that  of  the  meeting  of  the 
seven  friends  at  the  tomb  of  Napoleon,  there  to 
meditate  upon  his  grandeur  and  to  pledge  them- 
selves to  follow  his  illustrious  example.  "Pro- 
fessor of  Energy"  he  is  denominated.  A  Professor 
of  Spiritual  Energy  is  certainly  Maurice  Barres. 
In  another  scene  Taine  demonstrates  the  theory 
of  nationalism  by  the  parable  of  a  certain  plane 
tree  in  the  Square  of  the  Invalides.  For  the 
average  lover  of  French  fiction  The  Uprooted 
232 


MAURICE  BARRES 

must  prove  trying.  It  is,  with  its  two  com- 
panions in  this  trilogy  of  The  Novel  of  National 
Energy,  a  social  document,  rather  than  a  ro- 
mance. It  embodies  so  clearly  a  whole  cross-sec- 
tion of  earnest  French  youths'  moral  life,  that  — 
with  L'Appel  au  Soldat,  and  Leurs  Figures,  its 
sequels  —  it  may  be  consulted  in  the  future  for  a 
veridic  account  of  the  decade  it  describes.  One 
seems  to  lean  from  a  window  and  watch  the  agi- 
tation of  the  populace  which  swarmed  about 
General  Boulanger;  or  to  peep  through  keyholes 
and  see  the  end  of  that  unfortunate  victim  of 
treachery  and  an  ill-disciplined  temperament. 
Barres  later  reviles  the  friends  of  Boulanger  who 
deserted  him,  by  his  delineation  of  the  Panama 
scandal.  Yet  it  is  all  as  dry  as  a  parliamentary 
blue-book.  After  finishing  these  three  novels,  the 
impression  created  is  that  the  flaw  in  the  careers 
of  four  or  five  of  the  seven  young  men  from 
Lorraine  was  not  due  to  their  uprooting,  but  to 
their  lack  of  moral  backbone. 

Paris  is  no  more  difficult  a  social  medium  to 
navigate  in  than  New  York;  the  French  capital 
has  been  the  battlefield  of  all  French  genius; 
but  neither  in  New  York  nor  in  Paris  can  a 
young  man  face  the  conflict  so  loaded  down  with 
the  burden  of  general  ideas  and  with  so  scant  a 
moral  outfit  as  possessed  by  these  same  young  men. 
The  Lorraine  band — is  it  a  possible  case?  No 
doubt."  Nevertheless,  if  its  members  had  remained 
at  Nancy  they  might  have  been  shipwrecked  for 
the  same  reason.  Why  does  not  M.  Barres 
233 


EGOISTS 

show  his  cards?  The  Kingdom  on  the  table! 
cries  Hilda  Wangel  to  her  Masterbuilder.  Love 
of  the  natal  soil  does  not  make  a  complete  man; 
some  of  the  greatest  patriots  have  been  the  great- 
est scoundrels.  M.  Bourget  sums  up  the  situa- 
tion more  lucidly  than  M.  Barres,  who  is  in  such 
a  hurry  to  mould  citizens  that  he  omits  an  essen- 
tial quality  from  his  programme  —  God  (or 
character,  moral  force,  if  you  prefer  other  terms). 
Now,  when  a  rationalistic  philosopher  considers 
God  as  an  intellectual  abstraction,  he  is  not  il- 
logical. Scepticism  is  his  stock  in  trade.  But 
can  Maurice  Barres  elude  the  issue?  Can  he 
handle  the  tools  of  such  pious  workmen  as  Loyola, 
De  Sales,  and  Thomas  a  Kempis,  for  the  building 
of  his  soul,  and  calmly  overlook  the  inspiration  of 
those  masons  of  men?  It  is  one  of  the  defects 
>of  dilettanteism  that  it  furnishes  a  point  d'appui 
for  the  liberated  spirit  to  see-saw  between  free- 
will and  determinism,  between  the  Lord  of  Hosts 
and  the  Lucifer  of  Negation.  Paul  Bourget  feels 
this  spiritual  dissonance.  Has  he  not  said  that 
the  day  may  come  when  Barres  may  repeat  the 
^  phrase  of  Michelet :  Je  ne  me  peux  passer  de  Dieu  I 
Has  Maurice  Barres  already  plodded  the  same 
penitential  route  without  indulging  in  an  elliptical 
flight  to  a  new  artificial  paradise  ? 

If  his  moral  evolution,  so  insistently  claimed 
by  his  disciples,  has  been  of  a  zigzag  nature,  if 
lacuncB  abound  in  his  system  and  paradoxical 
vues  d' ensemble  often  distract,  yet  logical  evolu- 
tion there  has  been  —  from  the  maddest,  ro- 
234 


MAURICE  BARRES 

mantic  individualism  to  a  well-defined  solidarity 
—  and  without  attenuation  of  the  dignity  and 
utility  of  the  Individual  in  the  scheme  of  collectiv- 
ism. The  Individual  is  the  Salt  of  the  State. 
The  Individual  leavens  the  mass  politic.  Num- 
bers will  never  supplant  the  value,  psychic  or 
economic,  of  the  Individual.  Emerson  and  Mat- 
thew Arnold  said  all  this  before  Barres.  Incom- 
parable artist  as  is  Maurice  Barres,  we  still  must 
demand  of  him:  "In  Vishnu-land  what  Avatar!" 


235 


VII 

PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

I 

THE  WILL  TO  SUFFER 

Coleridge  quotes  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  as 
declaring  that  "the  greatest  man  is  he  who  forms 
the  taste  of  a  nation;  the  next  greatest  is  he  who 
corrupts  it."  It  is  an  elastic  epigram  and  not  un- 
like the  rule  which  is  poor  because  it  won't  work 
both  ways.  All  master  reformers,  heretics,  and 
rebels  were  at  first  great  corrupters.  It  is  a  prime 
necessity  in  their  propaganda.  Aristophanes  and 
Arius,  Mohammed  and  Napoleon,  Montaigne 
and  Rabelais,  Paul  and  Augustine,  Luther  and 
Calvin,  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  Darwin  and  New- 
man, Liszt  and  Wagner,  Kant  and  Schopenhauer 
—  here  are  a  few  names  of  men  who  under- 
mined the  current  beliefs  and  practices  of  their 
times,  whether  for  good  or  evil.  Rousseau  has 
been  accused  of  being  the  greatest  corrupter 
in  history;  yet  to  him  we  may  owe  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States.  Pascal,  in  prose  of 
unequalled  limpidity,  denounced  the  Jesuits  as 
corrupting  youth.  Nevertheless,  Dr.  Georg 
236 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

Brandes,  an  "intellectual"  and  a  philosophic 
anarch,  once  wrote  to  Nietzsche:  "I,  too,  love 
Pascal.  But  even  as  a  young  man  I  was  on  the 
side  of  the  Jesuits  against  Pascal.  Wise  men,  it 
was  they  who  were  right;  he  did  not  understand 
them;  but  they  understood  him  and  .  .  .  they 
published  his  Provincial  Letters  with  notes  them- 
selves. The  best  edition  is  that  of  the  Jesuits." 
Were  not  Titian,  Rubens,  and  Rembrandt  the 
three  unspeakable  devils  of  painting  for  Blake? 
Loosely  speaking,  then,  it  doesn't  much  matter 
whether  one  considers  a  great  man  as  a  regenerator 
or  a  corrupter.  Napoleon  was  called  the  latter 
by  Taine  after  he  had  been  saluted  as  demigod 
by  his  idolatrous  contemporaries.  Nor  does  the 
case  of  Nietzsche  differ  much  from  his  philo- 
sophic forerunners.  He  scolded  Schopenhauer, 
though  borrowing  his  dialectic  tools,  as  he  later 
mocked  at  the  one  sincere  friendship  of  his 
lonely  life,  Richard  Wagner's.  We  know  the 
most  objective  philosophies  are  tinged  by  the 
individual  temperaments  of  their  makers,  and 
perhaps  the  chief  characteristic  of  all  philoso- 
phers is  their  unphilosophic  contempt  for  their 
fellow- thinkers.  Nietzsche  displayed  this  trait; 
so  did  Richard  Wagner  —  who  was  in  a  lesser 
fashion  an  amateur  philosopher,  his  system 
adorned  by  plumes  borrowed  from  Feuerbach, 
Schelling,  and  Schopenhauer.  Arthur  Schopen- 
hauer was  endowed  with  a  more  powerful  intellect 
than  either  Wagner  or  Nietzsche.  He  "corrupted" 
them  both.  He  was  materialist  enough  to  echo 
237 


EGOISTS 

the  epigram  attributed  to  Fontenelle:  To  be 
happy  a  man  must  have  a  good  stomach  and  a 
wicked  heart. 

Friedrich  Nietzsche  was  more  poet  than  original 
thinker.  Merely  to  say  Nay!  to  all  existing  in- 
stitutions is  not  to  give  birth  to  a  mighty  idea, 
though  the  gesture  is  brave.  He  substituted  for 
Schopenhauer's  "Will  to  Live"  —  (an  ingenious 
variation  of  Kant's  "Thing  in  Itself")  the  "Will  to 
Power";  which  phrase  is  mere  verbal  juggling. 
The  late  Eduard  von  Hartmann  built  his  house  of 
philosophy  in  the  fog  of  the  Unconscious ;  Nietzsche, 
despising  Darwin  as  a  dull  grubber,  returned  un- 
knowingly to  the  very  land  of  metaphysics  he 
thought  he  had  fled  forever.  He  was  always 
the  theologian  —  toujours  seminariste,  as  they 
said  of  Renan.  Theology  was  in  his  blood.  It 
stiffened  his  bones.  Abusing  Christianity,  par- 
ticularly Protestant  Christianity,  he  was  him- 
self an  exponent  of  a  theological  odium  of  the 
virulent  sort,  as  may  be  seen  in  his  thunder- 
ing polemics.  He  held  a  brief  for  the  other 
side  of  good  and  evil;  but  a  man  can't  so 
easily  empty  his  veins  of  the  theologic  blood  of 
his  forebears.  It  was  his  Nessus  shirt  and  ended 
by  consuming  him.  He  had  the  romantic  cult 
of  great  men,  yet  sneered  at  Carlyle  for  his  Titan- 
ism.  He  believed  in  human  perfectibility.  He 
borrowed  his  Superman  partly  from  the  classic 
pantheon,  partly  from  the  hierarchy  of  Christian 
saints  — or  perhaps  from  the  very  Cross  he  vituper- 
ated. The  only  Christian,  he  was  fond  of  say- 
238 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

ing,  died  on  the  Cross.  The  only  Nietzschian, 
one  might  reply,  passed  away  when  crumbled  the 
brilliant  brain  of  Nietzsche.  Saturated  with  the 
culture  of  Goethe,  his  Superman  was  sent  balloon- 
ing aloft  by  the  poetic  afflatus  of  Nietzsche. 

He  was  an  apparition  possible  only  in  modern 
and  rationalistic  Protestant  Germany.  Like  a  voice 
from  the  Middle  Ages  he  has  stirred  the  profound 
phlegm  and  spiritual  indifference  of  his  fellow 
countrymen.  But  he  has  in  him  more  of  Savo- 
narola than  Luther  —  Luther,  who  was  for  him 
the  apotheosis  of  all  that  is  hateful  in  the  German 
character:  the  self-satisfied  philistinism,  sensu- 
ality, beer  and  tobacco,  unresponsiveness  to  all 
the  finer  issues  of  existence,  pious  tactlessness  and 
harsh  dogmatism. 

His  truth  is  enclosed  in  a  transcendental 
vacuum.  Whether  he  had  Galton's  science  of 
Eugenics  in  his  mind  when  he  modelled  his  Zara- 
thustra  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.  His  re- 
valuation of  moral  values  has  not  shaken  morality 
to  its  centre.  He  challenged  superficial  conven- 
tional morality,  but  the  ultimate  pillars  of  faith 
still  stand.  He  reminds  us  of  William  Blake  when 
he  writes:  ''The  path  to  one's  heaven  ever  leads 
through  the  voluptuousness  of  one's  own  hell." 
And  his  psychical  resemblance  to  Pascal  is  stri- 
king. Bothmen  were  physically  debilitated;  their 
nervous  systems,  overwhelmed  by  the  burdens 
they  imposed  upon  them,  made  their  days  and 
nights  a  continuous  agony.  The  Nietzschian 
philosophy  may  be  negligible,  but  the  psychologi- 
239 


EGOISTS 

cal  aspects  of  this  singularly  versatile,  fascinating, 
and  contradictory  nature  are  not.  His  "Will  to 
Power'*  in  his  own  case  resolves  itself  into  the 
will  to  suffer.  Compared  to  his,  Schopenhauer's 
pessimism  is  the  good-natured  grumbling  of  a 
healthy,  witty  man,  with  a  tremendous  vital  tem- 
perament. Nietzsche  was  delicate  from  youth. 
His  experiences  in  the  Franco-Prussian  war 
harmed  him.  Headache,  eye  trouble,  a  weak 
stomach,  coupled  with  his  abuse  of  intellectual 
work,  and,  toward  the  last,  indulgence  in  nar- 
cotics for  insomnia,  all  coloured  his  philosophy. 
The  personal  bias  was  unescapable,  and  this 
bias  favoured  sickness,  not  health.  Hence  his 
frantic  apotheosis  of  health,  the  dance  and  laugh- 
ter, and  his  admiration  for  Bizet's  Carmen. 
Hence  his  constant  employment  of  joyful  image- 
ry, of  bold  defiance  to  the  sober  workaday  world. 
His  famous  injunction:  '^Be  hard!"  was  meant 
for  his  own  unhappy  soul,  ever  nearing,  like 
Pascal's,  the  abyss  of  black  melancholy. 

While  we  believe  that  too  much  stress  has  been 
laid  upon  the  pathologic  side  of  Pascal's  and 
Nietzsche's  characters,  there  is  no  evading  the 
fact  that  both  seemed  tinged  with  what  Kurt 
Eisner  calls  psychopathia  spiritualis.  The  refer- 
ences to  suffering  in  Nietzsche's  books  are  sig- 
nificant. There  is  a  vibrating  accent  of  personal 
sorrow  on  every  page.  He  lived  in  an  inferno, 
mental  and  physical.  We  are  given  to  praising 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson  for  his  cheerfulness  in 
the  dire  straits  of  his  illness.  He  was  a  mere 
240 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

amateur  of  misery,  a  professional  invalid,  in 
comparison  with  Nietzsche.  And  how  cruel 
was  the  German  poet  to  himself.  He  tied 
his  soul  to  a  stake  and  recorded  the  poignant 
sensations  of  his  spiritual  auto-da-fe.  At  the 
close  of  his  sane  days  we  find  him  taking  a 
dolorous  pride  in  his  capacity  for  suffering.  "It 
is  great  affliction  only  —  that  long,  slow  affliction 
in  which  we  are  burned'  as  it  were  with  green  wood, 
which  takes  time  —  that  compels  us  philosophers 
to  descend  into  our  ultimate  depth  and  divest 
ourselves  of  all  trust,  all  good  nature,  glossing, 
gentleness.  ...  I  doubt  whether  such  affliction 
improves  us;  but  I  know  that  it  deepens  us.  .  .  . 
Oh,  how  repugnant  to  one  henceforth  is  gratifica- 
tion, coarse,  dull,  drab-coloured  gratification,  as 
usually  understood  by  those  who  enjoy  life!  .  .  . 
Profound  suffering  makes  noble;  it  separates. 
.  .  .  There  are  free,  insolent  minds  that  would 
fain  conceal  and  deny  that  at  the  bottom  they 
are  disjointed,  incurable  souls  —  it  is  the  case 
with  Hamlet."  Nietzsche  has  the  morbidly  in- 
trospective Hamlet  temper,  and  Pascal  has  been 
called  the  Christian  Hamlet. 

We  read  in  Overbeck's  recollections  that 
Nietzsche  manifested  deep  interest  in  the  person- 
ality of  Pascal.  Both  hated  hypocrisy.  But  the 
German  thinker  saw  in  the  Frenchman  of  genius 
only  a  Christian  who  hugged  his  chains,  one 
who  for  his  faith  suffered  "a  continuous  suicide  of 
reason."  (Has  not  Nietzsche  himself  also  said 
hard  things  about  Reason?)  "One  is  punished 
241 


EGOISTS 

best  by  one's  virtues"  ...  or,  "He  who  fights 
with  monsters,  let  him  be  careful  lest  he  thereby 
become  a  monster.  And  if  thou  gaze  long  into 
an  abyss,  the  abyss  will  also  gaze  into  thee."  This 
last  is  unquestionably  a  reminiscence  of  Pascal. 
He  could  not  endure  with  equanimity  Pascal's 
sacrifizio  delP  intelletto,  not  realizing  that  the 
Frenchman  felt  beneath  his  feet  the  solid  globe 
of  faith.  He  discerned  the  Puritan  in  Pascal, 
though  failing  to  recognise  the  Puritan  in  himself. 
Despite  his  praise  of  the  Dionysian  element  in 
art  and  life,  a  puritan  was  buried  in  the  nerves  of 
Nietzsche.  He  never  could  tolerate  the  common 
bourgeois  joys.  Wine,  Woman,  Song,  and  their 
poets,  were  his  detestations.  Yet  he  hated  Puritan- 
ism in  Protestant  Christianity.  ''The  dangerous 
thrill  of  repentance  spasms,  the  vivisection  of]con- 
science,"  he  conterans;  "even  in  every  desire  for 
knowledge  there  is  a  drop  of  cruelty."  He  wrote 
to  Brandes:  "Physically,  too,  I  lived  for  years  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  death.  This  was  my  great 
piece  of  good  fortune;  I  forgot  myself.  I  out- 
lived myself  —  a  shedding  of  the  skin."  Pascal 
also  knew  the  sting  of  the  flesh  and  brain.  From 
the  time  he  had  an  escape  from  sudden  death,  he 
was  conscious  of  an  abyss  at  his  side.  "Men  of 
genius,"  he  wrote,  "have  their  heads  higher  but 
their  feet  lower  than  the  rest  of  us."  With  Nietz- 
sche there  was  a  darker  nuance  of  pain;  he  speaks 
somewhere  of  "the  philtre  of  the  great  Circe  of 
mingled  pleasure  and  cruelty."  His  soul  was  a 
mysterious  palimpsest.  The  heart  has  its  reasons, 
242 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

cried  Pascal;  of  Nietzsche's  heart  the  last  word 
has  not  been  written. 

His  criticism  of  Pascal  was  not  clement.  He 
said:  "In  Goethe  the  superabundance  becomes 
creative,  in  Flaubert  the  hatred;  Flaubert,  a  new 
edition  of  Pascal,  but  as  an  artist  with  instinctive 
judgment  at  bottom.  ...  He  tortured  himself 
when  he  composed,  quite  as  Pascal  tortured  him- 
self when  he  thought."  Yes,  but  Nietzsche  was 
as  fierce  a  hater  as  Pascal  or  Flaubert.  He  set 
up  for  Christianity  a  straw  adversary  and  pro- 
ceeded to  demolish  it.  He  forgot  that,  as  Fran- 
cis Thompson  has  it:  ''It  is  the  severed  head  that 
makes  the  Seraph."  Nietzsche  would  not  look 
higher  than  the  mud  around  the  pedestal.  He, 
poor  sufferer,  was  not  genuinely  impersonal.  His 
tragedy  was  his  sick  soul  and  body.  "If  a  man 
cannot  sing  as  he  carries  his  cross,  he  had  better 
drop  it,"  advises  Havelock  Ellis.  Nietzsche 
bore  a  terrible  cross  —  like  the  men  staggering 
with  their  chimeras  in  Baudelaire's  poem  —  but 
he  did  not  bear  it  with  equanimity.  We  must 
not  be  deceived  by  his  desperate  gayety.  As 
a  married  man  he  would  never  have  enjoyed, 
as  did  John  Stuart  Mill,  spiritual  henpeckery. 
He  was  afraid  of  life,  this  dazzling  Zarathustra, 
who  went  on  Icarus-wings  close  to  the  sun.  He 
could  speak  of  women  thus:  "We  think  woman 
deep  —  why  ?  Because  we  never  find  any  foun- 
dation in  her.  Woman  is  not  even  shallow." 
Or,  "Woman  would  like  to  believe  that  love  can 
do  all  —  it  is  a  superstition  peculiar  to  herself. 
243 


EGOISTS 

Alas!  he  who  knows  the  heart  finds  out  how 
poor,  helpless,  pretentious,  and  liable  to  error  even 
the  best,  the  deepest  love  is  —  how  it  rather 
destroys  than  saves." 

Der  Dichter  spricht!  Also  the  bachelor.  Once 
a  Hilda  of  the  younger  generation,  Lou  Salom^  by 
name,  came  knocking  at  the  door  of  the  poet's 
heart.  It  was  in  vain.  The  wings  of  a  great 
happiness  touched  his  brow  as  it  passed.  No 
wonder  he  wrote:  *'The  desert  grows;  woe  to 
him  who  hides  deserts";  *' Woman  unlearns  the 
fear  of  man";  "Thou  goest  to  women!  Re- 
member thy  whip."  (Always  this  resounding 
motive  of  cruelty.)  "  Thy  soul  will  be  dead  even 
sooner  than  thy  body";  "Once  spirit  became 
God;  then  it  became  man;  and  now  it  is  becom- 
ing mob";  "And  many  a  one  who  went  into  the 
desert  and  suffered  thirst  with  the  camels,  merely 
did  not  care  to  sit  around  the  cistern  with  dirty 
camel-drivers."    Here  is  the  aristocratic  radical. 

It  is  weakness,  admitted  Goethe,  not  to  possess 
the  capacity  for  noble  indignation;  but  Nietzsche 
was  obsessed  by  his  indignations.  His  voice, 
that  golden  poet's  voice,  becomes  too  often  shrill, 
cracked,  and  falsetto.  Voltaire  has  remarked 
that  the  first  man  who  compared  a  woman  to  a 
rose  was  a  poet,  the  second  a  fool.  In  his  atti- 
tude toward  Woman,  Nietzsche  was  neither  fool 
nor  poet;  but  he  never  called  her  a  rose.  Nor 
was  he  a  c)mic;  he  saw  too  clearly  for  that,  and 
he  had  suffered.  Suffering,  however,  should  have 
been  a  bond  with  women.  Despite  his  cruel 
244 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

utterances  he  enjoyed  several  ideal  friendships 
with  cultivated  women.  ''There  is  no  happy  life 
for  woman  —  the  advantage  that  the  world  offers 
her  is  her  choice  in  self-sacrifice,"  wrote  Mr. 
Howells.  Gossip  has  whispered  that  he  was 
hopelessly  in  love  with  Cosima  Wagner.  A 
charming  theme  for  a*  psychological  novel.  So 
was  Von  Biilow,  once  —  until  he  married  her;  so, 
Anton  Rubinstein.  Both  abused  Wagner's  music ; 
Von  Billow  after  he  became  an  advocate  of 
Brahms;  Rubinstein  always.  Nietzsche,  just 
before  1876,  experienced  the  pangs  of  a  Wagnerian 
reactionary.  A  pretty  commentary  this  upon 
masculine  mental  superiority  if  one  woman  (even 
such  a  remarkable  creature  as  Cosima)  could  up- 
set the  stanchest  convictions  of  these  three  men. 
And  convictions,  asserted  Nietzsche,  are  prisons. 
He  contrived  to  escape  from  many  intellectual 
prisons.  Cosima  had  proved  the  one  inflexible 
jailer. 

Merciless  to  himself,  he  did  not  spare  others. 
Of  Altruism,  with  its  fundamental  contradic- 
tions, he  wrote: 

A  being  capable  of  purely  altruistic  actions  alone 
is  more  fabulous  than  the  Phoenix.  Never  has  a  man 
done  anything  solely  for  others,  and  without  any 
personal  motive;  how  could  the  Ego  act  without  Ego  ? 
.  .  .  Suppose  a  man  wished  to  do  and  to  will  every- 
thing for  others,  nothing  for  himself,  the  latter  would 
be  impossible,  for  the  very  good  reason  that  he  must 
do  very  much  for  himself,  in  order  to  do  anything  at 
ail  for  others.  Moreover,  it  presupposes  that  the 
245 


EGOISTS 

other  is  egoist  enough  constantly  to  accept  these  sacri- 
fices made  for  him;  so  that  the  men  of  love  and  self- 
sacrifice  have  an  interest  in  the  continued  existence  of 
loveless  egoists  who  are  incapable  of  self-sacrifice. 
In  order  to  subsist,  the  highest  morality  must  positively 
enforce  the  existence  of  immorality. — (Menschliches, 
I,  137-8). 

"Nietzsche's  criticism  on  this  point,"  remarks 
Professor  Seth  Pattison,  ''must  be  accepted  as 
conclusive.  Every  theory  which  attempts  to 
divorce  the  ethical  end  from  the  personality  of 
the  moral  agent  must  necessarily  fall  into  this 
vicious  circle;  in  a  sense,  the  moral  centre  and 
the  moral  motive  must  always  ultimately  be  self, 
the  satisfaction  of  the  self,  the  perfection  of  the 
self.  The  altruistic  virtues,  and  self-sacrifice  in 
general,  can  only  enter  into  the  moral  ideal  so 
far  as  they  minister  to  the  realisation  of  what 
is  recognised  to  be  the  highest  type  of  manhood,  the 
self  which  finds  its  own  in  all  men's  good.  Apart 
from  this,  self-sacrifice,  self-mortification  for  its 
own  sake,  would  be  a  mere  negation,  and,  as 
such,  of  no  moral  value  whatever." 

Hasn't  this  the  familiar  ring  of  Max  Stimer 
and  his  doctrine  of  the  Ego  ? 

Nietzsche  with  Pascal  would  have  assented 
that  "illness  is  the  natural  state  of  the  true 
Christian."  There  was  in  both  thinkers  a  tend- 
ency toward  self-laceration  of  the  conscience. 
"II  faut  s'abetir,"  wrote  Pascal;  and  Nietzsche's 
pride  vanished  in  the  hot  fire  of  suffering.  The 
Pascal  injunction  to  stupefy  ourselves  was  not 
246 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

to  imitate  the  beasts  of  the  field,  but  was  a  counsel 
of  humility.  Montaigne  in  his  essay  on  Raymond 
de  Sebonde  wrote  before  Pascal  concerning  the 
danger  of  overwrought  sensibility;  (II  nous  faut 
abestir  pour  nous  assagir,  is  the  original  old 
French).  It  would  have  been  wise  for  Nietzsche 
to  follow  Pascal's  advice.  "We  live  alone, 
we  die  alone,"  sorrowfully  wrote  the  greatest 
religious  force  of  the  past  century,  Cardinal 
Newman  (a  transposition  of  Pascal's  "Nous 
mourrons  seuls").  Nietzsche  was  the  loneliest 
of  poets.  He  lived  on  the  heights  and  paid  the 
penalty,  like  other  exalted  searchers  after  the 
vanished  vase  of  the  ideal. 

II 

NIETZSCHE'S  APOSTASY 

Although  Macaulay  called  Horace  Walpole 
a  "wretched  fribble,"  that  gossip  knew  a  trick  or 
two  in  fancy  fencing.  "Oh,"  he  wrote,  "I  am 
sick  of  visions  and  systems  that  shove  one  another 
aside  and  come  again  like  figures- in  a  moving 
picture."  This  was  the  outburst  of  a  man  called 
insincere  and  fickle,  but  frank  in  this  instance. 
Issuing  from  the  mouth  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche 
this  cry  of  the  entertaining,  shallow  Walpole 
would  have  been  curiously  apposite.  The  un- 
happy German  poet  and  philosopher  suffered 
during  his  intellectual  life  from  the  "moving 
pictures"  of  other  men's  visions  and  systems, 
247 


EGOISTS 

and  when  he  finally  escaped  them  all  and  evoked 
his  own  dream-world  his  brain  became  over- 
clouded and  he  passed  away  "trailing  clouds 
of  glory."  It  is  an  imperative  necessity  for  cer- 
tain natures  to  change  their  opinions,  to  slough, 
as  sloughs  a  snake  its  skin,  their  master  ideas. 
Renan  went  still  further  when  he  asserted  that 
all  essayists  contradict  themselves  sometime 
during  their  life. 

With  Nietzsche  the  apparent  contradictions 
of  his  Wagner-worship  and  Wagner-hatred  may 
be  explained  if  we  closely  examine  the  concepts  of 
his  first  work  of  importance,  The  Birth  of  Trag- 
edy. It  was  a  misfortune  that  his  bitterest  book, 
The  Wagner  Case,  should  have  been  first  trans- 
lated into  English,  for  Wagner  is  our  music-maker 
now,  and  the  rude  assaults  of  Nietzsche  fall  upon 
deaf  ears;  while  those  who  had  read  the  earlier 
essay,  Richard  Wagner  in  Ba)n-euth,  were  both 
puzzled  and  outraged.  Certainly  the  man  who 
could  thus  flout  what  he  once  adored  must  have 
been  mad.  This  was  the  popular  verdict,  a  facile 
and  unjust  verdict.  What  Nietzsche  first  postul- 
ated as  to  the  nature  of  music  he  returned  to  at 
the  close  of  his  life;  the  mighty  personality  of 
Richard  Wagner  had  deflected  the  stream  of  his 
thought  for  a  few  years.  But  as  early  as  1872 
doubts  began  to  trouble  his  sensitive  conscience 
—  this  was  before  his  pamphlet  Richard  Wagner 
in  Bayreuth  —  and  his  notebooks  of  that  period 
were  sown  with  question-marks.  In  the  interest- 
ing correspondence  with  Dr.  Georg  Brandes,  who 
248 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

literally  revealed  to  Europe  the  genius  of  Nietzsche, 
we  find  this  significant  passage: 

I  was  the  first  to  distil  a  sort  of  unity  out  of  the  two 
[Schopenhauer  and  Wagner].  .  .  .  All  the  Wagnerians 
are  disciples  of  Schopenhauer.  Things  were  different 
when  I  was  young.  Then  it  was  the  last  of  the  He- 
gehans  who  clung  to  Wagner,  and  "Wagner  and 
Hegel"  was  still  the  cry  in  the  '50s. 

Nietzsche  might  have  added  the  name  of  the 
philosopher  Feuerbach.  Wagner's  English  apolo- 
gist, Ashton  Ellis,  repudiates  the  common  belief 
that  Wagner  refashioned  the  latter  part  of  the 
Ring  so  as  to  introduce  in  it  his  newly  acquired 
Schopenhauerian  ideas.  Wagner  was  always  a 
pessimist,  declares  Mr.  Ellis;  Schopenhauer 
but  confirmed  him  in  his  theories.  Wagner,  like 
Nietzsche,  was  too  often  a  weathercock.  A 
second-rate  poet  and  philosopher,  he  stands 
chiefly  for  his  magnificent  music.  Nietzsche  or 
any  other  polemiker  cannot  change  the  map  of 
music  by  fulminating  against  Wagner.  Time 
may  prove  his  true  foe  —  the  devouring  years  that 
always  show  such  hostility  to  music  of  the  the- 
atre, music  that  is  not  pure  music. 

The  spirit  of  the  letter  to  Brandes  quoted  above 
may  be  found  in  Nietzsche  Contra  Wagner  (The 
Case  of  Wagner,  page  72).    Nietzsche  wrote: 

I  similarly  interpreted  Wagner's  music  in  my  own 
way  as  the  expression  of  a  Dionysian  powerfulness  of 
249 


EGOISTS 

soul.  ...  It  is  obvious  what  I  misunderstood,  it  is 
obvious  in  like  manner  what  I  bestowed  upon  Wagner 
and  Schopenhauer  —  myself. 

He  read  his  own  enthusiasms,  his  Hellenic 
ideals,  into  the  least  Greek  among  composers. 
Wagner  himself  was  at  first  pleased,  also  not  a 
little  nonplussed  by  the  idolatry  of  Nietzsche. 
Remember  that  this  young  philologist  was  a 
musician  as  well  as  a  brilliant  scholar. 

Following  Schopenhauer  in  his  main  conten- 
tion that  music  is  a  presentative,  not  a  repre- 
sentative art;  the  noumenon,  not  the  phenomenon 
—  as  are,  for  instance,  painting  and  sculpture  — 
Nietzsche  held  that  the  unity  of  music  is  unde- 
niable. There  is  no  dualism,  such  as  instru- 
mental music  and  vocal  music.  Sung  music  is 
only  music  presented  by  a  sonorous  vocal  organ; 
the  words  are  negligible.  A  poem  may  be  a 
starting-point  for  the  composer,  yet  in  poetry 
there  is  not  the  potentiality  of  tone  (this  does  not 
naturally  refer  to  the  literary  tone-quality  of 
music).  From  a  non-musical  thing  music  can- 
not be  evolved.  There  is  only  absolute  music. 
Its  beginning  is  absolute.  All  other  is  a  masquer- 
ading. The  dramatic  singer  is  a  monstrosity  — 
the  actual  words  of  Nietzsche.  Opera  is  a  de- 
based genre.  We  almost  expect  the  author  to 
deny,  as  denied  Hanslick,  music  any  content 
whatsoever.  But  this  he  does  not.  He  is  too 
much  the  Romantic.  For  him  the  poem  of  Tristan 
was  but  the  ''vapour"  of  the  music. 
250 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

Music  is  the  archetype  of  the  arts.  It  is  the 
essence  of  Greek  tragedy  and  therefore  pessi- 
mistic. Tragedy  is  pessimism.  The  two  faces 
of  the  Greek  art  he  calls  the  Apollonian  and  the 
Dionysian  impulses.  One  is  the  Classic,  the 
other  the  Romantic;  calm  beauty  as  opposed 
to  bacchantic  ecstasy.  Wagner,  Nietzsche  identi- 
fied with  the  Dionysian  element,  and  he  was  not 
far  wrong;  but  Greek?  The  passionate  welter 
of  this  new  music  stirred  Nietzsche's  excitable 
young  nerves.  He  was,  like  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries, swept  away  in  the  boiling  flood  of 
the  Wagnerian  sea.  It  appeared  to  him,  the 
profound  Greek  scholar,  as  a  recrudescence  of 
Dionysian  joy.  Instead,  it  was  the  topmost  crest 
of  the  dying  waves  of  Romanticism.  Nietzsche 
later  realised  this  fact.     To  Brandes  he  wrote: 

Your  German  romanticism  has  made  me  reflect 
how  the  whole  movement  only  attained  its  goal  in 
music  (Schumann,  Mendelssohn,  Weber,  Wagner, 
Brahms);  in  literature  it  stopped  short  with  a  huge 
promise  —  the  French  were  more  fortunate.  I  am 
afraid  I  am  too  much  of  a  musician  not  to  be  a  Ro- 
manticist. Without  music  life  would  be  a  mistake. 
.  .  .  With  regard  to  the  effect  of  Tristan  I  could  tell 
you  strange  things.  A  good  dose  of  mental  torture 
strikes  me  as  an  excellent  tonic  before  a  meal  of 
Wagner. 

Nietzsche  loved  Wagner  the  man  more  than 
Wagner  the  musician.  The  news  of  Wagner's 
death  in  1883  was  a  terrible  blow  for  him.    He 

251 


EGOISTS 

wrote  Frau  Wagner  a  letter  of  condolence,  which 
was  answered  from  Bayreuth  by  her  daughter 
Daniela  von  Bulow.  (See  the  newly  published 
Overbeck  Letters.) 

Nothing  could  be  more  unfair  than  to  ascribe 
to  Nietzsche  petty  motives  in  his  breaking  off 
with  Wagner.  There  were  minor  differences, 
but  it  was  Parsifal  and  its  drift  toward  Rome, 
that  shocked  the  former  disciple.  What  he  wrote 
of  Wagner  and  Wagnerism  may  be  interpreted 
according  to  one's  own  views,  but  the  Parsifal 
criticism  is  sound.  That  parody  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  ceremonial  and  ideas,  and  the  glorifica- 
tion of  its  psychopathic  hero,  with  the  consequent 
degradation  of  the  idea  of  womanhood,  Nietzsche 
saw  and  denounced.  "I  despise  everyone  who 
does  not  regard  Parsifal  as  an  outrage  on  morals," 
he  cried.  To-day  his  denunciations  are  recognised 
by  wise  folk  as  wisdom.  He  first  heard  Carmen  in 
Genoa,  November  27,  1881.  To  his  exacerbated 
nerves  its  rich  southern  melodies  were  soothing. 
He  overpraised  the  opera  —  which  is  a  sparkling 
compound  of  Gounod  and  Spanish  gypsy  airs;  an 
olla  podrida  as  regards  style.  He  knew  that  this 
was  bonbon  music  compared  with  Wagner.  And 
the  confession  was  wrung  from  his  lips:  "We 
must  first  be  Wagnerians."  Thus,  as  he  es- 
caped from  Schopenhauer's  pessimism,  he  plucked 
from  his  heart  his  affection  for  Wagner.  He 
had  become  Zarathustra.  He  painted  Wagner 
as  an  "ideal  monster,"  but  the  severing  of  the 
friendship  cost  Nietzsche  his  happiness.  An 
252 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

extraordinary  mountain-mania  attacked  him  on 
the  heights  of  the  upper  Engadine.  All  that  he 
had  once  admired  he  now  hated.  He  had  a 
positive  genius  for  hatred,  even  more  so  than 
Huysmans;  both  writers  were  bilious  melan- 
cholies, and  both  were  alike  in  the  display  of 
heavy-handed  irony.  With  Nietzsche's  "ears 
for  quarter  tones"  —  as  he  told  Brandes  —  it 
would  have  been  far  better  for  him  to  remain 
with  Peter  Gast  in  Italy,  while  the  latter  was 
writing  that  long-contemplated  study  on  Chopin. 
Nietzsche  loved  the  music  of  the  Pole  who  had 
introduced  into  the  heavy  monochrome  of  Ger- 
man harmonies  an  exotic  and  chromatic  gamut 
of  colours. 

If  Wagner  erred  in  his  belief  that  it  was  the 
drama  not  the  music  which  ruled  in  his  own  com- 
positions (for  his  talk  about  the  welding  of  the 
different  arts  is  an  aesthetic  nightmare),  why 
should  not  Nietzsche  have  made  a  mistake  in 
ascribing  to  Wagner  his  own  exalted  ideals? 
Wagner's  music  is  the  Wagner  music  drama. 
That  is  a  commonplace  of  criticism  —  though 
not  at  Bayreuth.  Nietzsche  taught  the  supremacy 
of  tone  in  his  early  book.  He  detested  so-called 
musical  realism.  These  two  men  became  friends 
through  a  series  of  mutual  misunderstandings. 
When  Nietzsche  discovered  that  music  and  phil- 
osophy had  naught  in  common  —  and  he  had 
hoped  that  Wagner's  would  prove  the  solvent  — 
he  cooled  off  in  his  faith.  It  was  less  an  apostasy 
than  we  believe.  Despite  his  eloquent  affirma- 
253 


EGOISTS 

tion  of  Wagnerism,  Nietzsche  was  never  in  his 
innermost  soul  a  Wagnerian.  Nor  yet  was  he 
insincere.  This  may  seem  paradoxical.  He  had 
felt  the  "pull"  of  Wagner's  genius,  and,  as  in 
the  case  of  his  Schopenhauer  worship,  he  tempo- 
rarily lost  his  critical  bearings.  This  accounts  for 
his  bitterness  when  he  found  the  feet  of  his  idol  to 
be  clay.  He  was  lashing  his  own  bare  soul  in 
each  scarifying  phrase  he  applied  to  Wagner. 
He  saw  the  free  young  Siegfried  become  the  old 
Siegfried  in  the  manacles  of  determinism  and 
pessimism;  then  followed  Parsifal  and  Wagner's 
apostasy  —  Nietzsche  believed  Wagner  was  going 
back  to  Christianity.  There  is  more  consistency 
in  the  case  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche  than  has  been 
acknowledged  by  the  Wagnerians.  He,  the 
philosopher  of  decadence  and  romanticism,  could 
have  said  to  Wagner  as  Baudelaire  to  Manet: 
"You  are  only  the  first  in  the  decrepitude  of 
your  art." 

If  Nietzsche  considered  the  poem  a  vaporous 
background  for  the  passionate  musical  mosaic  of 
Tristan  and  Isolde,  what  would  he  have  thought 
if  he  could  have  heard  the  tonal  interpretation  of 
his  Also  Sprach  Zarathustra,  as  conceived  by  the 
mathematical  and  emotional  brain  of  Richard 
Strauss  ?  I  recall  the  eagerness  with  which  I  asked 
an  impossible  question  of  Frau  Foerster-Nietzsche 
when  at  the  Nietzsche- Archive,  Weimar,  in  1904: 
Is  this  tone-poem  by  Richard  Strauss  truly  Nietz- 
schean  ?  Her  tact  did  not  succeed  in  quite  veiling  a 
hint  of  dubiety,  though  the  noble  sister  of  the  dead 
254 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

philosopher  was  too  tender-hearted  to  suggest  a 
formal  criticism  of  the  composer's  imposing  sound- 
palace.  It  is  not,  however,  difficult  to  imagine 
Nietzsche,  alive,  glaring  in  dismay  and  with  ''  em- 
bellished indignation"  as  he  hears  the  dance  theme 
in  Zarathustra.  Nor  would  he  be  less  surprised 
if  he  had  suddenly  forced  upon  his  consciousness 
a  performance  of  Claude  Debussy's  mooning, 
mystic,  triste  Pelleas  et  M^lisande,  with  its  in- 
vertebrate charm,  its  innocuous  sensuousness, 
its  absence  of  thematic  material,  its  perverse 
harmonies,  its  lack  of  rhythmic  variety,  and  its 
faded  sweetness,  like  that  evoked  by  musty, 
quaint  tapestry  in  languid  motion.  (Debussy 
might  have  delved  deeper  into  churchly  modes 
and  for  novelty's  sake  even  employed  pneumes 
to  lend  his  score  a  still  more  venerable  aspect. 
Certainly  his  tonalities  are  on  the  other  side  of 
diatonic  and  chromatic.  Why  not  call  them 
pneumatic  scales?)  Surely  Nietzsche  could  not 
have  refrained  from  exclaiming:  Ah!  the  pathos  of 
distance!  Ah!  what  musical  sins  thou  must  take 
upon  thee,  Richard  Wagner !  Strauss  and  Debussy 
are  the  legitimate  fruits  of  thy  evil  tree  of  music! 
Miserably  happy  poet,  like  one  of  those  Oriental 
wonder-workers  dancing  in  ecstasy  on  white-hot 
sword-blades,  the  tears  all  the  while  streaming 
down  his  cheeks  as  he  proclaims  his  new  gospel 
of  joy:  "//  faut  mediterraniser  la  musiquey 
Alas!  the  pathos  of  Nietzsche's  reality.  Reality 
for  this  self- tortured  Hamlet-soul  was  a  spiritual 
crucifixion  and  a  spiritual  tragedy. 
255 


EGOISTS 

III 

ANTICHRIST? 

The  penalty  of  misrepresentation  and  misinter- 
pretation seems  to  be  attached  to  every  new  idea 
that  comes  to  birth  through  the  utterances  of 
genius.  At  first  with  Wagner  it  was  the  "noise- 
making  Wagner"  —  whereas  he  is  a  master  of 
plangent  harmonies.  Ibsen,  we  were  told,  couldn't 
write  a  play.  His  dramatic  technique  is  nearly 
faultless;  in  reality,  with  its  unities  there  is  a  sus- 
picion of  the  academic  in  it  and  a  perilous  ap- 
proach to  the  Chinese  ivory  mechanism  of  Scribe. 
And  paint,  Paris  asserted,  the  late  Edouard 
Manet  could  not.  It  was  precisely  his  almost 
miraculous  manipulation  of  paint  that  sets  this 
artist  apart  from  his  fellows.  The  same  tactless 
rating  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche  has  prevailed  in  the 
general  critical  and  popular  imagination.  Nietz- 
sche has  become  the  bugaboo  of  timid  folk.  He 
has  been  denounced  as  the  Antichrist;  yet  he  has 
been  the  subject  of  a  discriminating  study  in  such 
a  conservative  magazine  as  the  Catholic  World. 
Thanks  to  the  conception  of  some  writers,  Nietz- 
sche and  the  Nietzschians  are  gigantic  brutes,  a 
combination  of  Genghis  Khan  and  Bismarck, 
terrifying  apparitions  wearing  mustachios  like 
yataghans,  eyes  rolling  in  frenzy,  with  a  philosophy 
that  ranged  from  pitch-and-toss  to  manslaughter, 
and  with  a  consuming  atheism  as  a  side  attraction. 
256 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

Need  we  protest  that  this  is  Nietzsche  misread, 
Nietzsche  butchered  to  make  a  stupid  novelist's 
holiday. 

Ideas  to  be  vitally  effective  must,  like  scenery, 
be  run  on  during  the  exact  act  of  the  contempo- 
rary drama.  The  aristocratic  individualism  of 
Nietzsche  came  at  a  happy  moment  when  the 
stage  was  bare  yet  encumbered  with  the  ddbris 
of  socialistic  theories  left  over  from  the  storm 
that  first  swept  all  Europe  in  1848.  It  was  neces- 
sary that  the  pendulum  should  swing  in  another 
direction.  The  small  voice  of  Max  Stimer  — 
who,  as  the  French  would  say,  imitated  Nietzsche 
in  advance  —  was  swallowed  in  the  universal 
gabble  of  sentimental  humanitarianism  preached 
from  pulpits  and  barricades.  Nietzsche's  ap- 
pearance marked  one  of  those  precise  psychologi- 
cal moments  when  the  rehabilitation  of  an  old 
idea  in  a  new  garment  of  glittering  rhetoric  would 
resemble  a  new  dispensation.  For  over  a  decade 
now  the  fame  and  writings  of  the  Saxon-bom 
philosopher  have  traversed  the  intellectual  life  of 
the  Continent.  He  was  translated  into  a  dozen 
languages,  he  was  expounded,  schools  sprang  up 
and  his  disciples  fought  furious  battles  in  his 
name.  His  doctrines,  because  of  their  dynamic 
revolutionary  quality,  were  impudently  annexed 
by  men  whose  principles  would  have  been  ab- 
horrent to  the  unfortunate  thinker.  Nietzsche, 
who  his  life  long  had  attacked  socialism  in  its 
myriad  shapes,  was  captured  by  the  socialists. 
However,  the  regression  of  the  wave  of  admira- 
257 


EGOISTS 

tion  has  begun  not  only  in  Germany  but  in  France, 
once  his  greatest  stronghold.  The  real  Nietzsche, 
undimmed  by  violent  partisanship  and  equally  vio- 
lent antagonism,  has  emerged.  No  longer  is  he  a 
bogey  man,  not  a  creature  of  blood  and  iron,  not 
a  constructive  or  an  academic  philosopher,  but 
simply  a  brilliant  and  suggestive  thinker  who,  be- 
cause of  the  nature  of  his  genius,  could  never 
have  erected  an  elaborate  philosophic  system,  and 
a  writer  not  quite  as  dangerous  to  established  re- 
ligion and  morals  as  some  critics  would  have  us 
believe.  He  most  prided  himself  on  his  common 
sense,  on  his  "realism,"  as  contradistinguished 
from  the  cobweb-spinning  idealisms  of  his  philo- 
sophic predecessors. 

Early  in  1908  a  book  was  published  at  Jena 
entitled  Franz  Overbeck  and  Friedrich  Nietzsche, 
by  Carl  Albrecht  Bernouilli.  In  it  at  great  length 
and  with  clearness  was  described  the  friendship  of 
Overbeck  —  a  well-known  church  historian  and 
culture-novelist,  born  at  St.  Petersburg  of  Ger- 
man and  English  parents  —  and  Nietzsche  during 
their  Basel  period.  Interesting  is  the  story  of 
his  relations  with  Richard  Wagner  and  Jacob 
Burckhardt,  the  historian  of  the  Renaissance. 
As  a  youth  Nietzsche  had  won  the  praises  of  both 
Rietschl  and  Burckhardt  for  his  essay  on  Theog- 
nis.  This  was  before  1869,  in  which  year  at  the 
age  of  twenty-six  he  took  his  doctor's  degree  and 
accepted  the  chair  of  classical  philology  at  Basel. 
His  friend  Overbeck  noted  his  dangerously  rapid 
intellectual  development  and  does  not  fail  to  re- 
258 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

cord,  what  has  never  been  acknowledged  by  the 
dyed-in-the-wool Nietzschians,  that  the  "Master" 
had  read  and  inwardly  digested  Max  Stirner's 
anarchistic  work,  The  Ego  and  His  Own.  Not 
only  is  this  long-denied  fact  set  forth,  but  Over- 
beck,  in  a  careful  analysis,  reaches  the  positive 
conclusion  that,  notwithstanding  his  profound 
erudition,  his  richly  endowed  nature,  Friedrich 
Nietzsche  is  not  one  of  the  world's  great  men; 
that  in  his  mad  endeavour  to  carve  himself  into 
the  semblance  of  his  own  Superman  he  wrecked 
brain  and  body. 

The  sad  irony  of  this  book  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  sister  of  Nietzsche,  Frau  Foerster-Nietzsche, 
who  nursed  the  poet-philosopher  from  the  time 
of  his  breakdown  in  1888  till  his  death  in  1900; 
who  for  twenty  years  has  by  pen  and  personally 
made  such  a  successful  propaganda  for  his  ideas, 
was  in  at  least  three  letters  —  for  the  first  time 
published  by  Bernouilli  —  insulted  grievously 
by  her  brother.  This  posthumous  hatred  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  acrid  prose  of  Nietzsche  is  terribly 
disenchanting.  He  calls  her  a  meddlesome  woman 
without  a  particle  of  understanding  of  his  ideals. 
He  declares  that  she  martyred  him,  made  him 
ridiculous,  and  in  the  last  letter  he  wrote  her, 
dated  December,  1886,  he  wonders  at  the  enigma 
of  fate  that  made  two  persons  of  such  different 
temperaments  blood-relatives.  Bernouilli,  the 
editor  of  these  Overbeck  letters,  adds  insult  to 
injury  by  calling  the  unselfish,  noble-minded 
sister  and  biographer  of  her  brother  a  tyrannical 
259         ^ 


EGOISTS 

and  not  very  intellectual  person,  who  often 
wounded  her  brother  with  her  advice  and  criti- 
cism. 

Peter  Gast  doubts  the  authenticity  of  these  let- 
ters, for,  as  he  truthfully  points  out,  the  love  of 
Nietzsche  for  his  sister,  as  evidenced  by  an  ample 
correspondence,  was  great.  We  recall  the  touch- 
ing exclamation  of  the  sick  philosopher  when  once 
at  his  sister's  house  in  Weimar  he  saw  her  weeping: 
"Don't  cry,  little  sister,  we  are  all  so  happy  now." 
That  "now"  had  a  sinister  significance,  for  the 
brilliant  thinker  was  quite  helpless  and  incapable 
of  reading  through  the  page  of  a  book,  though  he 
was  never  the  lunatic  pictured  by  some  of  his 
opponents.  A  deep  melancholy  had  settled  upon 
his  soul  and  he  died  without  enjoying  the  light 
of  a  returned  reason.  It  has  not  occurred  to 
German  critics  that  these  letters  even  if  genuine 
are  the  product  of  a  diseased  imagination.  Nietz- 
sche became  a  very  suspicious  man  after  his  break 
with  Wagner.  He  suffered  from  the  mania  of 
persecution.  He  hated  mankind  and  fled  to  the 
heights  of  Sils-Maria  to  escape  what  Poe  aptly 
described  as  the  "tyranny  of  the  human  face." 

The  first  thing  that  occurs  to  one  after  reading 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil  is  that  Nietzsche  is  more 
French  than  German.  It  is  well  known  that  his 
favourites  were  the  pensee  writers,  Pascal,  La 
Bruy^re,  La  Rochefoucauld,  Fontenelle,  Cham- 
fort,  Vauvenargues.  A  peripatetic  because  of 
chronic  ill  health  —  he  had  the  nerves  of  a  Shelley 
and  the  stomach  of  a  Carlyle  —  his  ideas  were 
260 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

jotted  down  during  his  long  walks  in  the  Enga- 
dine.  Naturally  they  assumed  the  form  of  aphor- 
isms, epigrams,  jeux  d^esfrit.  With  his  increasing 
illness  came  the  inability  to  write  more  than  a  few 
pages  of  connected  thoughts.  His  best  period  was 
between  the  years  1877  and  1882.  He  had  at- 
tacked Schopenhauer;  he  wished  to  be  free  to  go 
up  to  the  "heights"  unimpeded  by  the  baggage 
of  other  men's  ideas.  It  was  with  disquietude 
that  his  friends  witnessed  the  growing  self-exalta- 
tion that  may  be  noted  in  the  rhapsodical  Zara- 
thustra. 

He  felt  the  ground  sinking  under  him  —  his 
pride  of  intellect  Luciferian  in  intensity  —  and 
his  latter  works  were  a  desperate  challenge  to 
his  darkening  brain  and  the  world  that  refused 
to  recognize  his  value. 

Nietzsche  had  the  true  ascetic's  temperament. 
He  lived  the  life  of  a  strenuous  saint,  and  his 
Beyond  Good  and  Evil  might  land  us  in  a  barren 
desert,  where  austerity  would  rule  our  daily  con- 
duct. To  become  a  Superman  one  must  re- 
nounce the  world.  It  was  the  easy-going,  down- 
at-the-heel  morality  of  the  world,  its  carrying 
water  on  both  shoulders,  that  stirred  the  wrath  of 
this  earnest  man  of  blameless  life  and  provoked 
from  him  so  much  brilliant  and  fascinating  prose. 
He  wrote  a  swift,  golden  German.  He  was  a 
stylist.  The  great  culture  hero  of  his  day,  nour- 
ished on  Latin  and  Greek,  he  waged  war  against 
the  moral  ideas  of  his  generation  and  ruined  his 
intellect  in  the  unequal  conflict.  He  turned  on 
261 


EGOISTS 

himself  and  rended  his  soul  into  shreds  radier 
than  join  in  the  affirmations  of  recognised  faith. 
Yet  what  eloquent,  touching  pages  he  has  de- 
voted to  the  founder  of  the  Christian  religion. 
His  last  signature  in  the  letter  to  Brandes  reveals 
the  preoccupation  of  his  memory  with  the  religion 
he  despised.  Nietzsche  made  the  great  renunci- 
ation of  inherited  faith  and  committed  spiritual 
suicide.  Libraries  are  filled  with  the  works  of 
his  commentators,  eager  to  make  of  him  what 
he  was  not.  He  has  been  shamelessly  exploited. 
He  has  been  called  the  forerunner  of  Pragmatism. 
He  was  a  poet,  an  artist,  who  saw  life  as  a  gor- 
geously spun  dream,  not  as  a  dreary  phalanstery. 
He  belonged  rather  to  Goethe  and  Faust  than  to 
Schopenhauer  or  the  positivists.  Hellenism  was 
his  first  and  last  love. 

The  correspondence  between  Nietzsche  and 
his  famulus,  the  musician  Peter  Gast  —  whose 
real  name  is  Heinrich  Koselitz  —  from  1876  to 
1889,  appeared  last  autumn  and  comprises  278 
letters.  Another  Nietzsche  a;ppears — gentle,  suf- 
ering,  as  usual  still  hopeful.  He  loves  Italy; 
at  the  end,  Turin  is  his  favourite  city.  There  is 
little  except  in  the  final  communication  to  show 
a  mind  cracking  asunder.  No  doubt  this  cor- 
respondence was  given  to  the  world  as  an  offset 
to  the  Overbeck-Bernouilli  letters. 

Leslie  Stephen  declared  that  no  one. ever  wrote 

a  dull  autobiography,  and  risking  a  bull,  added, 

"The  very  dulness  would  be  interesting."     Yet 

one   is  not   afraid   to   maintain    that   Friedrich 

262 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

Nietzsche's  autobiography  is  rather  a  disappoint- 
ment; possibly  because  too  much  was  expected. 
It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Nietzsche,  when 
at  Wagner's  villa  Triebschen,  near  Lucerne,  read 
and  corrected  Wagner's  autobiography,  which  is 
yet  to  see  the  light  of  publication.  He  seems  to 
have  violated  certain  confidences,  for  he  was  the 
first — that  is,  in  latter  years — to  revive  the  story  of 
Wagner's  blood  relationship  to  his  stepfather, 
Ludwig  Geyer.  In  Leipsic  this  was  a  thrice-told 
tale.  Moreover,  he  warned  us  to  be  suspicious  of 
great  men's  autobiographies  and  then  wrote  one 
himself,  wrote  it  in  three  weeks,  beginning  October 
15,  1888,  the  forty-fourth  anniversary  of  his  birth, 
and  ending  with  difficulty  November  4.  It  rings 
sincere,  and  was  composed  at  white  heat,  but  un- 
happily for  this  present  curious  generation  of 
Nietzsche  readers  it  tells  very  little  that  is  new. 

Notwithstanding  Nietzsche's  wish  that  the  book 
should  not  exceed  in  price  over  a  mark  and  a  half, 
a  limited  edition  de  luxe  has  been  put  forth  with 
the  acquiescence  of  the  Nietzsche  archive,  Weimar, 
and  at  a  high  price.  This  edition  is  limited  to 
1,250  copies.  It  is  clearly  printed,  but  the  deco- 
rative element  is  rather  bizarre.  Henry  Van  de- 
Velde  of  the  Weimar  Art  School  is  the  designer  of 
the  title  and  ornaments.  Raoul  Richter,  professor 
at  the  Leipsic  University,  has  written  a  few  appre- 
ciative w^ords  at  the  close. 

Nietzsche  was  at  Turin,  November,  1888. 
There  he  wrote  the  following  to  Professor  Georg 
Brandes,  the  celebrated  Copenhagen  critic:  "I 
.     263 


EGOISTS 

have  now  revealed  myself  with  a  cynicism  that 
will  become  historical.  The  book  is  called  Ecce 
Homo  and  is  against  everything  Christian.  .  .  . 
I  am  after  all  the  first  psychologist  of  Christianity, 
and  Hke  the  old  artillerist  I  am,  I  can  bring  for- 
ward cannon  of  which  no  opponent  of  Christianity 
has  even  suspected  the  existence.  ...  I  lay  down 
my  oath  that  in  two  years  we  shall  have  the  whole 
earth  in  convulsions.  I  am  a  fatality.  Guess  who 
it  is  that  comes  off  worst  in  Ecce  Homo?  The 
Germans!  I  have  said  awful  things  to  them." 
This  was  the  "golden  autumn"  of  his  Hfe,  as  he 
confessed  to  his  sister  Elizabeth.  In  a  little  over 
four  weeks  from  the  date  of  the  letter  to  Brandes 
Nietzsche  went  mad,  after  a  stroke  of  apoplexy  in 
Turin.  The  collapse  must  have  taken  place  be- 
tween January  i  and  3,  1889.  Brandes  received 
a  card  signed  *'The  Crucified  One";  Overbeck, 
his  old  friend  at  Basel,  was  also  agitated  by  a  few 
hnes  in  which  Nietzsche  proclaimed  himself  the 
King  of  Kings;  while  to  Cosima  Wagner  at  Bay- 
reuth  was  sent  a  communication  which  read, 
"Ariadne,  I  love  you!  Dionysos."  Like  Tolstoy, 
Nietzsche  suffered  from  theomania  and  prophecy 
madness. 

These  details  are  not  in  the  autobiography  but 
may  be  found  in  Dr.  Miigge's  excellent  study  just 
published,  Nietzsche,  His  Life  and  Work.  Over- 
beck  started  for  Turin  and  there  found  his  poor  old 
companion  giving  away  his  money,  dancing,  sing- 
ing, declaiming  verse,  and  playing  snatches  of 
crazy  music  on  the  pianoforte.  He  was  taken  back 
264 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

to  Basel  and  was  gentle  on  the  trip  except  that  in 
the  Saint-Gothard  tunnel  he  sang  a  poem  of  his, 
"An  der  Briicke,"  which  appears  in  the  autobiog- 
raphy. His  mother  brought  him  from  Switzerland 
to  Naumburg;  thence  to  Dr.  Binswanger's  estab- 
lishment at  Jena.  Later  he  lived  in  his  sister's 
home  at  Upper  Weimar,  and  from  the  balcony, 
where  he  spent  his  days,  he  could  see  a  beautiful 
landscape.  He  was  melancholy  rather  than  mad, 
never  violent — this  his  sister  has  personally  assured 
me — and  occasionally  surprised  those  about  him 
by  flashes  of  memory;  but  full  consciousness  was 
not  to  be  again  enjoyed  by  him.  Overwork,  chloral, 
and  despair  at  the  "conspiracy  of  silence"  caused 
his  brain  to  crumble.  He  had  attained  his  "  Great 
Noon,"  Zarathustra's  Noon,  during  the  closing 
days  of  1888.  In  August,  1900,  came  the  eutha- 
nasia for  which  he  had  longed. 

There  is  internal  evidence  that  the  autobiog- 
raphy was  written  under  exalted  nervous  condi- 
tions. The  aura  of  insanity  hovers  about  its  pages. 
Yet  Nietzsche  has  seldom  said  so  many  briUiant, 
ironical,  and  savage  things.  He  melts  over  mem- 
ories of  Wagner,  the  one  friendship  of  a  life 
crowded  with  friends  and  cursed  by  solitude.  He 
sets  out  to  smash  Christianity,  but  he  expressed 
the  hope  that  the  book  would  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  intellectual  elite.  He  divides  his 
theme  into  the  following  heads:  Why  I  Am  So 
Clever:  Why  I  Am  So  Sage:  Why  I  Write  Such 
Good  Books :  Why  I  Am  a  Fatality.  (You  recall 
here  the  letter  to  Brandes.)  He  ranges  from  the 
265 


EGOISTS 

abuse  of  bad  German  cookery  to  Kantian  met- 
aphysics. He  calls  Ibsen  the  typical  old  maid 
and  denounces  him  as  the  creator  of  the  ''Eman- 
cipated Woman."  Yes,  he  does  insult  Germany 
and  the  Germans,  but  no  worse  than  in  earlier 
books;  and  certainly  not  so  effectively  as  did 
Goethe,  Heine,  and  Schopenhauer.  In  calling 
the  Germans  the  ''Chinese  of  Europe"  he  but 
repeated  the  words  of  Goncourt  in  Charles  De- 
mailly.  He  speaks  of  Liszt  as  one  "who  sur- 
passes all  musicians  by  the  noble  accents  of  his 
orchestration"  (vague  phrase);  and  depreciates 
Schumann's  "Manfred."  He,  Nietzsche,  had 
composed  a  counter  overture  which  Von  Biilow 
declared  extraordinary.  True,  Von  Biilow  did 
call  it  something  of  the  sort,  with  the  advice  to 
throw  it  into  the  dust-bin  as  being  an  insult  to 
good  music.  He  analyses  his  recent  readings  of 
Baudelaire — whose  diary  touched  him  deeply — of 
Stendhal,  Bourget,  Maupassant,  Anatole  France, 
and  others.  Best  of  all,  he  minutely  analyses 
the  mental  processes  of  his  books  from  The 
Birth  of  Tragedy  to  The  Wagner  Case.  He 
declares  Zarathustra  a  dithyramb  of  solitude  and 
purity,  and  proudly  boasts  that  the  Superman 
builds  his  nest  in  the  trees  of  the  future. 

What  a  master  of  invective !  He  often  descends 
to  the  street  in  his  tongue-lashing,  as,  for  instance, 
when  he  groups  "shopkeepers,  Christians,  cows, 
women.  Englishmen,  and  other  democrats."  Wo- 
man is  always  the  enemy.  The  only  way  to  tame 
her  is  to  make  her  a  mother.  As  for  female  suf- 
266 


PHASES  OF  NIETZSCHE 

frage,  he  sets  it  down  to  psychological  disorders. 
He  is  a  nuance,  and  is  the  first  German  to  under- 
stand women!  Alas!  And  not  the  last  man  who 
will  repeat  this  speech  surely  hailing  from  the 
Stone  Age.  He  seems  rather  proud  of  his  double 
personahty,  and  hints  at  a  third.  Oddly  enough, 
Nietzsche  asked  that  his  Ecce  Homo  (the  title 
proves  his  constant  preoccupation  with  Chris- 
tianity) be  translated  into  French  by  Strindberg, 
the  Swedish  poet  and  the  first  dramatist  to  incor- 
porate into  his  plays  the  Nietzschian  philosophy,  or 
what  he  conceived  to  be  such.  (Daniel  Lesueur  has 
written  of  the  various  adaptations  for  gorillas  of  a 
teaching  that  really  demands  from  man  the  ut- 
most that  is  in  him.)  Nietzsche  was  a  hater  of 
Christianity;  above  all  of  Christian  morals,  but 
he  was  a  brave  and  honest  fighter.  He  raged  at 
George  Eliot,  Herbert  Spencer,  and  Carlyle  for 
their  half-heartedness.  To  give  up  the  belief  in 
Christ  and  His  mission  meant  for  Nietzsche  to 
drop  the  moral  system,  to  transvalue  old  moral 
values.  This,  he  truthfully  asserted,  George  Eliot 
and  Spencer  had  not  the  courage  to  do.  He  did  not 
skulk  behind  such  masks  as  the  Higher  Criticism, 
Modernism,  or  quacksalver  Christian  socialism. 
Compromise  was  abhorrent  to  him.  His  Super- 
man, with  its  echoes  of  Wagner's  Siegfried,  Ibsen's 
Brand,  Stendhal's  wicked  heroes,  the  Renaissance 
Borgias,  the  second  Faust  of  Goethe,  and  not  a 
little  of  Hamlet,  is  a  monster  of  perfection  that  may 
some  day  become  a  demigod  for  a  new  religion — • 
and  no  worse  than  contemporary  mud-gods  manu- 
267 


EGOISTS 

factured  daily.  Nietzsche's  particular  virtue,  even 
for  the  orthodox,  is  that  though  he  assails  their 
faith  he  also  puts  to  rout  with  the  fiery  blasts  of 
his  rhetoric  all  the  belly-gods,  the  false-culture 
gods,  the  gods  who  "heal,''  and  other  "ghosts" — 
as  Max  Stirner  calls  them.  But  to  every  genera- 
tion its  truths  (or  lies). 

A  recently  published  anecdote  of  Ibsen  quotes 
a  statement  of  his  apropos  of  Brand.  "The  whole 
drama  is  only  meant  as  irony.  For  the  man  who 
wants  all  or  nothing  is  certainly  crazy."  Well, 
Friedrich  Nietzsche  was  such  a  man.  No  half- 
way parleyings.  Fight  the  Bogey.  Don't  go 
around.  He  went  more  serenely  than  did  Brand 
to  his  ice  cathedral  on  the  heights.  His  prayer 
uttered  years  before  came  true:  "Give  me,  ye 
gods,  give  me  madness!  Madness  to  make  me 
beheve  at  last  in  myself." 

Nietzsche  is  the  most  dynamically  emotional 
writer  of  his  times.  He  sums  up  an  epoch.  He 
is  the  expiring  voice  of  the  old  nineteenth-century 
romanticism  in  philosophy.  His  message  to  un- 
born generations  we  may  easily  leave  to  those 
unborn,  and  enjoy  the  wit,  the  profound  criticisms 
of  life,  the  bewildering  gamut  of  his  ideas;  above 
all,  pity  the  tragic  blotting  out  of  such  a  vivid 
intellectual  life. 


268 


VIII 

MYSTICS 

I 

ERNEST  HELLO 

It  occurred  in  the  beautiful  gardens  of  the 
Paris  exposition  during  that  summer  of  1867 
when  Glory  and  France  were  synonymous  ex- 
pressions. To  the  music,  cynical  and  volup- 
tuous, of  Offenbach  and  Strauss  the  world  enjoyed 
itself,  applauding  equally  Renan's  latest  book 
and  Theresa's  vulgarity;  amused  by  Ponson  de 
Terrail's  fatuous  indecencies  and  speaking  of 
Proudhon  in  the  same  breath.  Bismarck  and 
his  Prussians  seemed  far  away.  Babel  or  Pom- 
peii? The  tower  of  the  Second  Empire  reached 
to  the  clouds;  below,  the  people  danced  on  the 
edge  of  the  crater.  A  time  for  prophets  and  their 
lamentations.  Jeremiah  walked  in  the  gardens. 
He  was  a  terrible  man,  with  sombre  fatidical 
gaze,  eyes  in  which  were  the  smothered  fires  of 
hatred.  His  thin  hair  waved  in  the  wind.  He 
said  to  his  friends:  "I  come  from  the  Tuileries 
Palace;  it  is  not  yet  consumed;  the  Barbarians 
delay  their  coming.  What  is  Attila  doing?" 
He  passed.  "A  madman!"  exclaimed  a  com- 
269 


EGOISTS 

panion  to  Henri  Lasserre.  "Not  in  the  least," 
replied  that  writer.  "He  is  Ernest  Hello." 
After  reading  this  episode  as  related  by  Hello's 
friend  and  editor,  the  disquieting  figure  is  evoked 
of  that  son  of  Hanan,  who  prowled  through  the 
streets  of  the  holy  city  in  the  year  a.d.  62  cry- 
ing aloud:  "Woe,  woe  upon  Jerusalem!"  The 
prophecy  of  Hello  was  realized  in  a  few  years. 
Attila  came  and  Attila  went,  and  after  his  de- 
parture the  polemical  writer,  who  could  be  both 
a  spouting  volcano  and  a  subtle  doctor  of  the- 
ology, wrote  his  masterpiece,  L'Homme,  a  re- 
markable book,  a  seed-bearing  book. 

Why  is  there  so  little  known  of  Ernest  Hello? 
He  was  born  1828,  died  1885,  and  was  a  volumi- 
nous author,  who  wrote  much  for  the  Univers  and 
other  periodicals  and  passed  away  as  he  had  lived, 
fighting  in  harness  for  the  truths  of  his  religion. 
Possibly  the  less  sensitive  texture  of  Louis  Veu- 
illot's  mind  and  character  threw  the  talents  of 
Hello  into  shadow;  perhaps  his  avowed  hatred  of 
mediocrity,  his  Old  Testament  power  of  vitupera- 
tion, and  his  apocalyptic  style  militated  against 
his  acceptance  by  the  majority  of  Roman  Catholic 
readers.  Notwithstanding  his  gifts  as  a  writer 
and  thinker,  Hello  was  never  popular,  and  it  is 
only  a  few  years  ago  that  his  works  began  to  be 
republished.  Let  us  hasten  to  add  that  they  are 
rich  in  suggestion  for  lovers  of  apologetic  or 
hortatory  literature. 

It  was  Huysmans  and  Remy  de  Gourmont 
who  sent  me  to  the  amazing  Hello.  In  A  Rebours 
270 


MYSTICS 

Huysmans  discusses  him  with  Ldon  Bloy,  Bar- 
bey  d'Aurevilly,  and  Ozanam.  "Hello  is  a  cun- 
ning engineer  of  the  soul,  a  skilful  watchmaker 
of  the  brain,  delighting  to  examine  the  mechan- 
ism of  a  passion  and  to  explain  the  play  of  a 
wheelwork."  United  to  his  power  of  analysis 
there  is  the  fanaticism  of  a  Biblical  prophet  and 
the  tortured  ingenuity  of  a  master  of  style.  A 
little  John  of  Patmos,  one  who,  complex  and 
precious,  is  a  sort  of  epileptic  mystic — vindictive, 
proud,  a  despiser  of  the  commonplace.  All  these 
things  was  Hello  to  Huysmans,  who  did  not  seem 
to  relish  him  very  much.  De  Gourmont  described 
him  as  one  who  believed  with  genius.  A  believ- 
ing genius  he  was,  Ernest  Hello,  and  his  genius, 
his  dynamic  faith — apart  from  any  consideration 
of  his  qualities  as  a  prose  artist  or  his  extraor- 
dinary powers  of  analysis.  Without  his  faith, 
which  was,  one  is  tempted  to  add,  his  thematic 
material,  he  might  have  been  a  huge  force  vainly 
flapping  his  wings  in  the  void,  or,  as  Lasserre 
puts  it,  he  was  impatient  with  God  because  of  His 
infinite  patience.  He  longed  to  see  Him  strike 
dumb  ■  the  enemies  of  His  revealed  word.  He 
lived  in  a  continuous  thunder-storm  of  the  spirit. 
He  was  a  mystic,  yet  a  warrior  on  the  fighting 
line  of  the  church  militant. 

Joachim  of  Flora  has  written :  "The  true  ascetic 
counts  nothing  his  own  save  his  harp."  Hello, 
less  subjective  than  Newman,  less  lyric  though  a 
"son  of  thunder,"  counted  but  the  harp  of  his 
faith.  All  else  he  cast  away.  And  this  faith 
271 


EGOISTS 

was  published  to  the  heathen  with  the  hot  rhet- 
oric of  a  propagandist.  The  nations  must  be 
aroused  from  their  slumber.  He  whirls  his 
readers  off  their  feet  by  the  torrential  flow  of 
his  argument.  He  never  winds  calmly  into  his 
subject,  but  smites  vehemently  the  opening  bars 
of  his  hardy  discourse.  He  writes  pure,  un- 
troubled prose  at  times,  the  line,  if  agitated,  un- 
broken, the  balance  of  sound  and  sense  perfect. 
But  too  often  he  employs  a  staccato,  declamatory, 
tropical,  inflated  style  which  recalls  Victor  Hugo 
at  his  worst;  the  short  sentence;  the  single  para- 
graph; the  vicious  abuse  of  antithesis;  if  it  were 
not  for  the  subject-matter  whole  pages  might  mas- 
querade as  the  explosive  mannerisms  of  Hugo. 
"Christianity  is  naturally  impossible.  However, 
it  exists.  Therefore  it  is  supernatural!"  This 
is  Hello  logic.  Or,  speaking  of  St.  Joseph  of 
Cupertino:  "If  he  had  not  existed,  no  one  could 
have  invented  him,"  which  is  a  very  witty  in- 
version of  Voltaire's  celebrated  mot.  God-intoxi- 
cated as  were  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  or  Pere 
Ratisbonne,  Hello  was  not;  when  absent  from 
the  tripod  of  vaticination  he  was  a  meek,  loving 
man;  then  the  walls  of  his  Turris  eburnea  echoed 
the  inevitable:  Ora  pro  nobis!  Even  when  the 
soul  seems  empty,  it  may,  like  a  hollow  shell, 
murmur  of  eternity.  Hello's  faith  was  in  the 
fourth  spiritual  dimension.  It  demanded  the 
affirmation  of  his  virile  intellect  and  the  concur- 
rence of  his  overarching  emotional  temperament. 
In  the  black-and-white  sketch  by  Vallotton  he 
272 


MYSTICS 

resembles  both  Remenyi,  the  Hungarian  vioh'n 
virtuoso,  and  Louise  Michel,  the  anarchist.  The 
brow  is  vast,  the  expression  exalted,  the  mouth 
belligerent,  disputatious,  and  the  chin  slightly 
receding.  One  would  say  a  man  of  violent  pas- 
sions, in  equilibrium  unsteady,  a  skirter  of  abysses, 
a  good  hater  —  did  he  not  once  propose  a  History 
of  Hatred  ?  Yet  how  submissive  he  was  to  papal 
decrees;  many  of  his  books  contain  instead  of  a 
preface  his  act  of  submission  to  Catholic  dogma. 
More  so  than  Huysmans  was  he  a  mediaeval  man. 
For  him  modern  science  did  not  exist.  The 
Angelic  Doctor  will  outlive  Darwin,  he  cried,  and 
the  powers  and  principalities  of  darkness  are  as 
active  in  these  days  as  in  the  age  when  the  saints 
of  the  desert  warred  with  the  demons  of 
doubt  and  concupiscence.  "To  wring  from 
man's  tongue  the  denial  of  his  existence  is  proof 
of  Satan's  greatest  power,"  was  a  sentiment  of 
Pere  Ravignan  to  which  Hello  would  have  heartily 
subscribed.  He  detested  Kenan  —  Renan,  voila 
Vennemi!  Jeremy  Taylor's  vision  of  hell  as  an 
abode  crowded  with  a  million  dead  dogs  would 
not  be  too  severe  a  punishment  for  that  silken 
sophist,  whose  writings  are  the  veriest  flotsam  and 
jetsam  of  a  disordered  spiritual  life.  Hello  has 
written  eloquent  pages  about  Hugo,  whose  poetry 
he  admired,  whose  ideas  he  combated.  Napoleon 
was  a  genius,  but  a  foe  of  God. 

Shakespeare   for   him   vacillated  between  ob- 
scenity and  melancholy;  Hamlet  was  a  character 
hardly  sounded  by  Hello;  doubt  was  a  psycho- 
273 


EGOISTS 

logical  impossibility  to  one  of  his  faith.  He  was 
convinced  that  the  John  of  the  Apocalyptic  books 
was  not  John  the  Presbyter,  nor  any  one  of  the 
five  Johns  of  the  Johannic  writings,  but  John  the 
Apostle.  He  has  often  the  colour  of  Bossuet's 
moral  indignation.  A  master  of  theological 
odium,  his  favourite  denunciation  was  *'Horma, 
Anathema,  Anatheme,  Amen!"  His  favourite 
symbol  of  confusion  is  Babel  —  Paris.  He  loved, 
among  many  saints,  Denys  the  Areopagite;  he 
extolled  the  study  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas.  To 
the  unhappy  Abbe  de  Lamenais's  Paroles  d'un 
Croyant  (1834),  he  opposed  his  own  Paroles  de 
Dieu.  He  could  have,  phrase  for  phrase,  book 
for  book,  retorted  with  tenfold  interest  to  Nietz- 
sche's vilification  of  Christianity.  Society  will 
again  become  a  theocracy,  else  pay  the  penalty 
in  anarchy.  One  moment  beating  his  breast,  he 
cries  aloud:  ^^Maranatha!  Maranatha!  Our  Lord 
is  at  hand!"  The  next  we  find  him  with  the  icy 
contemptuousness  of  a  mystic  quoting  from  the 
Admirable  Ruysbroeck  (a  thirteenth-century 
mystic  whom  he  had  translated,  whose  writings 
influenced  Huysmans,  and  at  one  period  of  his 
development,  Maurice  Maeterlinck)  these  brave 
words:  ''Needs  must  I  rejoice  beyond  the  age, 
though  the  world  has  horror  of  my  joy,  and  its 
grossness  cannot  understand  what  I  say."  Not- 
withstanding this  aloofness,  there  are  some  who 
after  reading  Ernest  Hello's  Man  may  agree  with 
Havelock  Ellis:  "Hello  is  the  real  psychologist 
of  the  century,  not  Stendhal." 
274 


MYSTICS 

It  is  indeed  a  work  of  penetrating  criticism 
and  dairvoyance,  this  study  of  man,  of  life.  Read 
his  analysis  of  the  Miser  and  you  will  recall 
Plautus  or  Moliere.  He  has  something  of  Saint- 
Simon's  power  in  presenting  a  finished  portrait 
and  La  Bruyere's  cameo  concision.  He  is  re- 
actionary in  all  that  concerns  modern  aesthetics 
or  the  natural  sciences.  There  is  but  one  science, 
the  knowledge  of  God.  Avoiding  the  devious 
webs  of  metaphysics,  he  sets  before  us  his  ideas 
with  a  crystal  clarity.  Despite  its  religious  bias, 
L'Homme  may  be  recommended  as  a  book  for 
mundane  minds.  Nor  is  Le  Siecle  to  be  missed. 
Those  views  of  the  world,  of  men  and  women, 
are  written  by  a  shrewd  observer  and  a  profound 
thinker.  Philosophic  et  Atheisme  is  just  what 
its  title  foretells  —  a  battering-ram  of  dialectic. 
The  scholastic  learning  of  Hello  is  enormous. 
He  had  at  his  beck  the  Bible,  the  patristic  writers, 
the  schoolmen,  and  all  the  moderns  from  De 
Maistre  to  Father  Faber.  He  execrated  Modern- 
ism. Physionomies  de  Saintes,  Angelo  de  Foligno, 
and  half  a  dozen  other  volumes  prove  how  versed 
he  was  in  Holy  Writ.  ''The  Scriptures  are  an 
abysm,"  he  declared.  He  wrote  short  stories, 
Contes  extraordinaires,  which  display  excellent 
workmanship,  no  little  fantasy,  yet  are  rather 
slow  reading.  In  literature  Hello  was  a  belated 
romantic,  a  Don  Quixote  of  the  ideal  who  charged 
ferociously   the   windmills   of   indifference. 

In  1 88 1  he  was  a  collaborator  with  an  American 
religious  publication  called  Propagateur  Catho- 
'   275 


EGOISTS 

lique  (I  give  the  French  title  because  I  do  not 
know  whether  it  was  published  here  or  in  Cali- 
ada).  His  contributions  were  incorporated  later 
in  his  Words  of  God.  I  confess  to  knowing  little 
of  Hello  but  his  works,  the  Life  by  Lasserre  being 
out  of  print.  Impressive  as  is  his  genius,  it  is 
often  repellent,  because  love  of  his  fellow-man  is 
not  a  dominant  part  of  it.  The  central  flame 
burns  brightly,  fiercely;  the  tiny  taper  of  charity 
is  often  missing.  With  his  beloved  Ruysbroeck 
(Rusbrock,  he  names  him)  he  seems  to  be  mutter- 
ing too  often  a  disdainful  adieu  to  his  gross  and 
ignorant  brethren  as  if  abandoning  them  to  their 
lies  and  ruin.  However,  his  translation  of  this 
same  Ruysbroeck  is  a  genuine  accession  to  con- 
templative literature.  And  perhaps,  if  one  too 
hastily  criticises  the  almost  elemental  faith  of  Hello 
and  its  rude  assaults  of  the  portals  of  pride,  lux- 
ury, and  worldliness,  perhaps  the  old  wisdom  may 
cruelly  rebound  upon  his  detractors:  ''Dixit  in- 
sipiens  in  corde  sua:  Non  est  Deus." 


276 


MYSTICS 

II 

"MAD,  NAKED  BLAKE" 

I 

Perhaps  the  best  criticism  ever  uttered  offhand 
about  the  art  of  William  Blake  was  Rodin's,  who, 
when  shown  some  facsimiles  of  Blake's  drawings 
by  brilliant  Arthur  Symons  with  the  explanation 
that  Blake  "  used  literally  to  see  those  figures,  they 
are  not  mere  inventions,"  replied:  "Yes.  He  saw 
them  once;  he  should  have  seen  them  three  or  four 
times."  And  this  acute  summing  up  of  Blake's 
gravest  defect  is  further  strengthened  by  a  remark 
made  by  one  of  his  most  sympathetic  commen- 
tators, Laurence  Binyon.  Blake  once  said:  "The 
lavish  praise  I  have  received  from  all  quarters  for 
invention  and  drawing  has  generally  been  accom- 
panied by  this :  '  He  can  conceive,  but  he  cannot 
execute.'  This  absurd  assertion  has  done  and 
may  still  do  me  the  greatest  mischief."  Now 
comments  Mr.  Binyon:  "In  spite  of  the  artist's 
protest  this  continues  to  be  the  current  criticism 
on  Blake's  work;  and  yet  the  truth  lies  rather  on 
the  other  side.  It  is  not  so  much  in  his  execution 
as  in  the  failure  to  mature  his  conceptions  that 
his  defect  is  to  be  found."  Again :  "His  tempera- 
ment unfitted  him  for  success  in  carrying  his  work 
further;  his  want  was  not  lack  of  skill,  but  lack 
of  patience."  If  this  sounds  paradoxical  we  find 
277 


EGOISTS 

Symons  admitting  that  Rodin  had  hit  the  nail  on 
the  head.  "There,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  funda- 
mental truth  about  the  art  of  Blake;  it  is  a 
record  of  vision  which  has  not  been  thoroughly 
mastered  even  as  vision." 

Notwithstanding  the  neglect  to  which  Blake 
was  subjected  during  his  lifetime  and  the  mis- 
understanding ever  since  his  death  of  his  extraor- 
dinary and  imaginative  designs,  poetry,  and 
vaticinations,  it  is  disquieting  to  see  how  books 
about  Blake  are  beginning  to  pile  up.  He  may 
even  prove  as  popular  as  Ibsen.  A  certain  form 
of  genius  serves  as  a  starting-point  for  critical 
performances.  Blake  is  the  most  admirable  ex- 
ample, though  Whitman  and  Browning  are  in 
the  same  class.  Called  cryptic  by  their  own, 
they  are  too  well  understood  by  a  later  genera- 
tion. Wagner  once  swam  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  elect;  and  he  was  understood.  Baudelaire 
understood  him,  so  Liszt.  Wagner  to-day  is  the 
property  of  the  man  in  the  street,  who  whistles 
him,  and  Ibsen  is  already  painfully  yielding  up 
his  precious  secrets  to  relentless  "expounding" 
torturers.  As  for  Maeterlinck,  he  is  become  a 
mere  byword  in  literary  clubs,  where  they  discuss 
his  Bee  in  company  with  the  latest  Shaw  epigram. 
"Even  caviare,  it  seems,  may  become  a  little 
flyblown,"  exclaims  Mr.  Dowden.  Everything  is 
being  explained.  Oh,  happy  age!  Who  once 
wrote:  "A  hundred  fanatics  are  found  to  a  theo- 
logical or  metaphysical  statement,  but  not  one  for 
a  geometric  problem"  ? 

278 


MYSTICS 

Yet  we  may  be  too  rash.  Blake's  prophetic 
books  are  still  cloudy  nightmares,  for  all  but  the 
elect,  and  not  Swinburne,  Gilchrist,  Tatham, 
Richard  Garnett,  Ellis,  Binyon,  Yeats,  Symons, 
Graham  Robertson,  Alfred  Story,  Maclagan 
and  Russell,  Elizabeth  Luther  Gary  and  the 
others  —  for  there  are  others  and  there  will  be 
others  —  can  wring  from  these  fragments  more 
than  an  occasional  meaning  or  music.  But  in 
ten  years  he  may  be  the  pontiff  of  a  new  dispensa- 
tion. Symons  has  been  wise  in  the  handling 
of  his  material.  After  a  general  and  compre- 
hensive study  of  Blake  he  brings  forward  some 
new  records  from  contemporary  sources  —  ex- 
tracts from  the  diary,  letters  and  reminiscences  of 
Henry  Crabb  Robinson;  from  A  Father's  Memoir 
of  His  Child,  by  Benjamin  Heath  Malkin;  from 
Lady  Charlotte  Bury's  Diary  (1820);  Blake's 
horoscope,  obituary  notice,  extract  from  Varley's 
Zodiacal  Physiognomy  (1828);  a  biographical 
sketch  of  Blake  by  J.  T.  Smith  (1828),  and  Allan 
Cunningham's  life  of  Blake  (1830).  In  a  word, 
for  those  who  cannot  spare  the  time  to  investi- 
gate the  various  and  sundry  Blakian  exegetics, 
Symons's  book  is  the  best  because  most  condensed. 
It  is  the  Blake  question  summed  up  by  a  supple 
hand  and  a  sympathetic  spirit.  It  is  inscribed 
to  Auguste  Rodin  in  the  following  happy  and  sig- 
nificant phrase:  ''To  Auguste  Rodin,  whose 
work  is  the  marriage  of  heaven  and  hell." 


279 


EGOISTS 


II 


William  Blake  must  have  been  the  happiest 
man  that  ever  lived;  not  the  doubtful  happiness  of 
a  fool's  paradise,  but  a  sharply  defined  ecstasy 
that  was  his  companion  from  his  earliest  years 
to  his  very  death-bed;  that  bed  on  which  he  passed 
away  "singing  of  the  things  he  saw  in  heaven," 
to  the  tune  of  his  own  improvised  strange  music. 
He  seems  to  have  been  the  solitary  man  in  art 
history  who  really  fulfilled  Walter  Pater's  test 
of  success  in  life:  "To  burn  always  with  this  hard 
gemlike  flame,  to  maintain  this  ecstasy."  Blake 
easily  maintained  it.  His  face  shone  with  it. 
Withal  he  was  outwardly  sane  in  matters  of  mun- 
dane conduct,  sensitive  and  quick  to  resent  any 
personal  affront,  and  by  no  means  one  of  those 
awful  prophets  going  about  proclaiming  their  self- 
imposed  mission.  An  amiable  man,  quick  to 
fly  into  and  out  of  a  passion,  a  gentleman  ex- 
quisite in  manners,  he  impressed  those  who  met 
him  as  an  unqualified  genius.  Charles  Lamb 
has  told  us  of  him;  so  have  others.  I  possess  an 
engraving  of  his  head  after  Linnell's  miniature, 
and  while  his  Irish  paternity  has  never  been  thor- 
oughly established  —  Yeats  calls  him  an  Irish- 
man —  there  can  be  little  doubt  of  his  Celtic 
origin.  His  is  the  head  of  a  poet,  a  patriot,  a 
priest.  The  brow  is  lofty  and  wide,  the  hair 
fiamelike  in  its  upcurling.  The  eyes  are  marvel- 
lous —  true  windows  of  a  soul  vividly  aware  of 
280 


MYSTICS 

its  pricelessness;  the  mystic  eye  and  the  eye  of 
the  prophet  about  to  thunder  upon  the  perverse 
heads  of  his  times.  The  full  lips  and  massive 
chin  make  up  the  ensemble  of  a  singularly  noble, 
inspired,  and  well-balanced  head.  Symmetry  is 
its  keynote.  A  God-kindled  face.  One  looks 
in  vain  for  any  indication  of  the  madman  —  Blake 
was  called  mad  during  his  lifetime,  and  ever  since 
he  has  been  considered  mad  by  the  world.  Yet 
he  was  never  mad  as  were  John  Martin  and  Wiertz 
the  Belgian,  or  as  often  seems  Odilon  Redon,  who 
has  been  called  —  heaven  knows  why!  —  the 
"  French  Blake."  The  poet  Cowper  said  to  Blake : 
"Oh,  that  I  were  insane  always.  .  .  .  Can  you 
not  make  me  truly  insane  ?  .  .  .  You  retain  health 
and  yet  are  as  mad  as  any  of  us  —  over  us  all  — 
mad  as  a  refuge  from  unbelief  —  from  Bacon, 
Newton,  and  Locke."  The  arid  atheism  of  his 
century  was  doubtless  a  contributory  cause  to  the 
exasperation  of  Blake's  nerves.  He  believed 
himself  a  Christian  despite  his  heterodox  sayings, 
and  his  belief  is  literal  and  profound.  A  true 
Citizen  of  Eternity,  as  Yeats  named  him,  and  with 
all  his  lack  of  academic  training,  what  a  giant  he 
was  among  the  Fuselis,  Bartolozzis,  Stothards, 
Schiavonettis,  and  the  other  successful  medioc- 
rities. 

His  life  was  spent  in  ignoble  surroundings,  an 
almost  anonymous  life,  though  a  happy  one  be- 
cause of  its  illuminating  purpose  and  flashes  of 
golden  fire.  Blake  was  bom  in  London  (1757) 
and  died  in  London  (1827).  He  was  the  son  of 
281 


EGOISTS 

a  hosier,  whose  real  name  was  not  O'Neill,  as 
some  have  maintained.  The  boy,  at  the  age  of 
fourteen,  was  apprenticed  to  Ryland  the  engraver, 
but  the  sight  of  his  master's  face  caused  him  to 
shudder  and  he  refused  to  work  under  him,  giving 
as  a  reason  that  Ryland  would  be  hanged  some 
day.  And  so  he  was,  for  counterfeiting.  The 
abnormally  sensitive  little  chap  then  went  to  the 
engraver  Basire,  with  whom  he  remained  a  year. 
His  precocity  was  noteworthy.  In  1773  he  put 
forth  as  a  pretended  copy  of  Michaelangelo  a 
design  which  he  called  Joseph  of  Arimathea 
Among  the  Rocks  of  Albion.  At  that  early  age 
he  had  already  begun  to  mix  up  Biblical  charac- 
ters and  events  with  the  life  about  him.  The  Bible 
saturated  his  imagination;  it  was  not  a  dead  record 
for  him,  but  a  living,  growing  organism  that  over- 
lapped the  spiritual  England  of  his  day.  The 
grotesqueness  of  his  titles,  the  mingling  of  the 
familiar  with  the  exotic  —  the  sublime  and  the 
absurd  are  seldom  asunder  in  Blake  —  sacred 
with  secular,  were  the  results  of  his  acquaintance 
with  the  Scriptures  at  a  period  when  other  boys 
were  rolling  hoops  or  flying  kites.  Blake  could 
never  have  been  a  boy,  in  the  ordinary  sense;  yet 
he  was  to  the  last  day  of  his  life  a  child  in  the 
naivete  of  his  vision.  "I  am  ever  the  new-born 
child,"  he  might  have  said,  as  did  Goethe  to 
Herder.  At  the  age  of  four  he  said  God  put  his 
face  in  the  window,  and  he  ran  screaming  to  his 
parents  to  bear  witness  to  the  happening.  He 
had  seen  a  tree  bright  with  angels  at  Peckham 
282 


MYSTICS 

Rye,  and  his  life  long  he  held  converse  with  the 
spirits  of  Moses,  Homer,  Socrates,  Dante,  Shake- 
speare, and  Milton.  He  adored  Michaelangelo, 
and  Albrecht  Diirer  and  Swedenborg  completed 
the  conquest  —  perhaps  the  unsettlement  —  of  his 
intellect.  He  hated  Titian,  Rubens,  and  Rem- 
brandt. They  were  sensualists,  they  did  not 
in  their  art  lay  the  emphasis  upon  drawing,  and  as 
we' shall  see  presently,  drawing  was  the  chief  factor 
for  Blake,  colour  being  a  humble  handmaiden. 

In  1782  Blake  married  for  love  Catharine 
Boucher,  or  Boutcher,  of  whom  Mr.  Swinburne 
has  said  that  she  "deserves  remembrance  as 
about  the  most  perfect  wife  on  record."  She 
was  uneducated,  but  learned  to  read  and  write, 
and  later  proved  an  inestimable  helpmate  for  the 
struggling  and  unpractical  Blake.  She  bound 
his  books  and  coloured  some  of  his  illustrations. 
She  bore  long  poverty  uncomplainingly,  one  is 
tempted  to  say  with  enthusiasm.  Once  only  she 
faltered.  Blake  had  his  own  notions  about  cer- 
tain Old  Testament  customs,  and  he,  it  is  said 
on  the  authority  of  a  gossip,  had  proposed  to  add 
another  wife  to  the  poor  little  household.  Mrs. 
Blake  wept  and  the  matter  was  dropped.  Other 
gossip  avers  that  the  Adamite  in  Blake  mani- 
fested itself  in  a  not  infrequent  desire  to  cast  aside 
garments  and  to  sit  in  paradisiacal  innocence. 
Whether  these  stories  were  the  invention  of  ma- 
licious associates  or  were  true,  one  thing  is  cer- 
tain: Blake  was  capable  of  anything  for  which 
he  could  find  a  Biblical  precedent.  In  the  matter 
283 


EGOISTS 

of  the  unconventional  he  was  the  Urvater  of  Eng- 
lish rebels.  Shelley,  Byron,  Swinburne  were  timid 
amateurs  compared  to  this  man,  who  with  a  terrific 
energy  translated  his  thoughts  into  art.  He  was 
not  the  idle  dreamer  of  an  empty  day  nor  a  moon- 
ing mystic.  His  energy  was  electric.  It  sounds 
a  clarion  note  in  his  verse  and  prose,  it  reveals 
itself  in  the  fiery  swirlings  of  his  line,  a  line  swift 
and  personal.  He  has  been  named  by  some  one 
a  heretic  in  the  Church  of  Swedenborg;  but  like 
a  latter-day  rebel  —  Nietzsche,  who  renounced 
Schopenhauer  —  Blake  soon  renounced  Sweden- 
borg. But  Michelangelo  remained  a  deity  for 
him,  and  in  his  designs  the  influence  of  Angelo 
is  paramount. 

Blake  might  be  called  an  English  Primitive. 
He  stems  from  the  Florentines,  but  a  la  gauche. 
The  bar  sinister  on  his  artistic  coat  of  arms  is  the 
lack  of  fundamental  training.  He  had  a  Gothic 
imagination,  but  his  dreams  lack  architectonics. 
Goethe,  too,  had  dreams,  and  we  are  the  richer 
by  Faust.  And  no  doubt  there  are  in  his  works 
phrases  that  Nietzsche  has  seemed  to  repeat. 
It  is  the  fashion  just  now  to  trace  every  idea 
of  Nietzsche  to  some  one  else.  The  truth 
is  that  the  language  of  rebellion  through  the 
ages  is  the  same.  The  mere  gesture  of  revolt,  as 
typified  in  the  uplifted  threatening  arm  of  a  Cain, 
a  Prometheus,  a  Julian  the  Apostate,  is  no  more 
conventional  than  the  phraseology  of  the  heretic. 
How  many  of  them  have  written  "inspired" 
bibles,  from  Mahomet  to  Zarathustra.  Blake,  his 
284 


MYSTICS 

tumultuous  imagination  afire  —  remember  that  the 
artist  doubled  the  poet  in  his  amazing  and  versa- 
tile soul  —  poured  forth  for  years  his  "sacred" 
books,  his  prophecies,  his  denouncements  of  his 
fellow-man.  It  was  all  sincere  righteous  indig- 
nation; but  the  method  of  his  speech  is  obscure; 
the  Mormon  books  of  revelation  are  miracles  of 
clarity  in  comparison.  Let  us  leave  these  sin- 
gular prophecies  of  Blake  to  the  mystics.  One 
thing  is  sure  —  he  has  affected  many  poets  and 
thinkers.  There  are  things  in  The  Marriage  of 
Heaven  and  Hell  that  Shaw  might  have  said  had 
not  Blake  forestalled  him.  Such  is  the  cruelty  of 
genius. 

Symons  makes  apt  comparison  between  Blake 
and  Nietzsche:  "There  is  nothing  in  good  and 
evil,  the  virtues  and  vices  .  .  .  vices  in  the  natural 
world  are  the  highest  sublimities  in  the  spiritual 
world."  This  might  have  appeared  over  Nietz- 
sche's signature  in  Beyond  Good  and  Evil.  And 
the  following  in  his  marginalia  to  Reynolds  —  Sir 
Joshua  always  professed  a  high  regard  for  the 
genius  of  Blake.  "The  Enquiry  in  England  is 
not  whether  a  man  has  Talents  and  Genius,  but 
whether  he  is  Passive  and  Polite  and  a  Virtuous 
Ass."  The  vocabulary  of  rebellion  is  the  same. 
Still  more  bitter  is  his  speech  about  holiness: 
"The  fool  shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  let  him  be  ever  so  pious."  Blake  glori- 
fied passion,  which  for  him  was  the  highest  form 
of  human  energy.  His  tragic  scrolls,  emotional 
arabesques,  are  testimony  to  his  high  and  subtle 
285 


• 


EGOISTS 

temperament.  The  intellect  he  worshipped.  Of 
pride  we  cannot  have  too  much!  As  a  lyric  poet 
it  is  too  late  in  the  day  to  reiterate  that  he  is  a 
peer  in  the  "holy  church  of  English  literature." 
The  Songs  of  Innocence  and  Songs  of  Experience 
have  given  him  a  place  in  the  anthologies  and 
made  him  known  to  readers  who  have  never  heard 
of  him  as  a  pictorial  genius.  "Tiger,  tiger,  burn- 
ing bright,  In  the  forests  of  the  night,"  is  recited 
by  sweet  school-misses  and  pondered  for  its  phil- 
osophy by  their  masters.  And  has  Keats  ever 
fashioned  a  lovelier  image  than:  "Let  thy  west 
wind  sleep  on  the  lake;  spread  silence  with  thy 
glimmering  eyes  and  wash  the  dusk  with  silver"  ? 
Whatever  he  may  not  be,  William  Blake  is  a  great 
singer. 

Ill 

William  Butler  Yeats  in  his  Ideas  of  Good  and 
Evil  has  said  some  notable  things  about  Blake. 
He  calls  him  a  realist  of -the  imagination  and  first 
pointed  out  the  analogy  between  Blake  and 
Nietzsche.  "When  one  reads  Blake  it  is  as 
though  the  spray  of  an  inexhaustible  fountain 
of  beauty  was  blown  into  our  faces."  And  "he 
was  a  symbolist  who  had  to  invent  his  symbols." 
Well,  what  great  artist  does  not?  Wagner  did; 
also  Ibsen  and  Maeterlinck.  Blake  was  much 
troubled  over  the  imagination.  It  was  the  "  spirit" 
for  him  in  this  "vegetable  universe,"  the  Holy 
Ghost.  All  art  that  sets  forth  with  any  fulness 
the  outward  vesture  of  things  is  prompted  by  the 
286 


MYSTICS 

"  rotten  rags  of  memory."  That  is  why  he  loathed 
Rubens,  why  he  seemingly  slurs  the  forms  of  men 
and  things  in  his  eagerness  to  portray  the  essen- 
tial. Needless  to  add,  the  essential  for  him  was 
the  soul.  He  believed  in  goa,ding  the  imagination 
to  vision  —  though  not  with  opium  —  and  we 
are  led  through  a  dream-world  of  his  own  fashion- 
ing, one  in  which  his  creatures  bear  litde  corre- 
spondence to  earthly  types.  His  illustrations  to 
the  Book  of  Job,  to  Dante,  to  Young's  Night 
Thoughts  bear  witness  to  the  intensity  of  his  vision, 
though  flesh  and  blood  halts  betimes  in  follow- 
ing these  vast  decorative  whirls  of  flame  bearing 
myriad  souls  in  blasts  that  traverse  the  very  firma- 
ment. The  "divine  awkwardness"  of  his  Adam 
and  Eve  and  the  "Ancient  of  Days"  recall  some- 
thing that  might  be  a  marionette  and  yet  an  angelic 
being.  To  Blake  they  were  angels;  of  that  there 
can  be  no  doubt;  but  we  of  less  fervent  imagina- 
tion may  ask  as  did  Hotspur  of  Glendower,  who 
had  boasted  that  he  could  "call  spirits  from  the 
vasty  deep."  "Why,  so  can  I,  or  so  can  any  man. 
But  will  they  come  when  you  do  call  for  them?" 
quoth  the  gallant  Percy.  We  are,  the  majority 
of  us,  as  unimaginative  as  Hotspur.  Blake  sum- 
moned his  spirits;  to  him  they  appeared;  to 
quote  his  own  magnificent  utterance,  "The  stars 
threw  down  their  spears,  and  watered  heaven  with 
their  tears";  but  we,  alas!  see  neither  stars  nor 
spears  nor  tears,  only  eccentric  draughtsmanship 
and  bizarre  designs.  Yet,  after  Blake,  Dora's 
Dante  illustrations  are  commonplace;  even  Botti- 
287 


EGOISTS 

celli's  seem  ornamental.  Such  is  the  genius  of  the 
Englishman  that  on  the  thither  side  of  his 
shadowy  conceptions  there  shine  intermittently 
pictures  of  a  No  Man's  Land,  testifying  to  a  burn- 
ing fantasy  hampered  by  human  tools.  He  sug- 
gests the  supernatural.  "How  do  you  know," 
he  asks,  "but  every  bird  that  cuts  the  airy  way  is 
an  immense  world  of  delight  closed  by  your  senses 
five?"  Of  him  Ruskin  has  said:  "In  express- 
ing conditions  of  glaring  and  flickering  light  Blake 
is  greater  than  Rembrandt."  With  Dante  he 
went  to  the  nethermost  hell.  His  warring  at- 
tributes tease  and  attract  us.  For  the  more 
human  side  we  commend  Blake's  seventeen 
wood  engravings  to  Thornton's  Virgil.  They  are 
not  so  rich  as  Bewick's,  but  we  must  remember 
that  it  was  Blake's  first  essay  with  knife  and  box- 
wood —  he  was  really  a  practised  copper  engraver 
—  and  the  effects  he  produced  are  wonderful. 
What  could  be  more  powerful  in  such  a  tiny  space 
than  the  moon  eclipse  and  the  black  forest  illus- 
trating the  lines,  "  Or  when  the  moon,  by  wizard 
charm'd,  foreshows  Bloodstained  in  foul  eclipse, 
impending  woes!"  And  the  dim  sunsets,  the 
low,  friendly  sky  in  the  other  plates! 

Blake's  gospel  of  art  may  be  given  in  his  own 
words:  "The  great  and  golden  rule  of  art,  as  of 
life,  is  this:  that  the  more  distinct,  sharp  and  wiry 
the  boundary  line  the  more  perfect  the  work  of 
art;  and  the  less  keen  and  sharp,  the  greater  is 
the  evidence  of  weak  imitation,  plagiarism  and 
bungling."  He  abominated  the  nacreous  flesh 
288 


MYSTICS 

tones  of  Titian,  Correggio,  or  Rubens.  Reflected 
lights  are  sinful.  The  silhouette  betrays  the  soul 
of  the  master.  Swinburne  in  several  eloquent 
pages  has  instituted  a  comparison  between  Walt 
Whitman  and  William  Blake.  (In  the  first  edi- 
tion of  "William  Blake:  A  Critical  Essay,"  1868.) 
Both  men  were  radicals.  ''The  words  of  either 
strike  deep  and  run  wide  and  soar  high."  What 
would  have  happened  to  Blake  if  he  had  gone  to 
Italy  and  studied  the  works  of  the  masters  —  for 
he  was  truly  ignorant  of  an  entire  hemisphere  of 
art?  Turner  has  made  us  see  his  dreams  of  a 
gorgeous  world;  Blake,  as  through  a  scarce 
opened  door,  gives  us  a  breathless  glimpse  of  a 
supernal  territory,  whether  heaven  or  hell,  or 
both,  we  dare  not  aver.  Italy  might  have  calmed 
him,  tamed  him,  banished  his  arrogance  —  as  it 
did  Goethe's.  Suppose  that  Walt  Whitman  had 
written  poems  instead  of  magical  and  haunting 
headlines.  And  if  Browning  had  made  clear  the 
devious  ways  of  Sordello  —  what  then?  "What 
porridge  had  John  Keats?"  We  should  have 
missed  the  sharp  savour  of  the  real  Blake,  the  real 
Whitman,  the  real  Browning.  And  what  a  num- 
ber of  interesting  critical  books  would  have  re- 
mained unwritten.  "  Oh,  never  star  was  lost  here 
but  it  arose  afar."  What  Coleridge  wrote  of  his 
son  Hartley  might  serve  for  Blake:  "Exquisitely 
wild,  an  utter  visionary,  like  the  moon  among  thin 
clouds,  he  moves  in  a  circle  of  his  own  making. 
He  alone  is  a  light  of  his  own.  Of  all  human 
beings  I  never  saw  one  so  utterly  naked  of  self." 
289 


EGOISTS 

Naked  of  self!    William  Blake,  unselfish  egoist, 
stands  before  us  in  three  words. 

Ill 
FRANCIS   POICTEVIN 

There  is  a  memorable  passage  in  A  Rebours, 
the  transcription  of  which,  by  Mr.  George  Moore, 
may  be  helpful  in  understanding  the  work  of  that 
rare  literary  artist,  Francis  Poictevin.  "  The  poem 
in  prose,"  wrote  Huysmans,  "handled  by  an 
alchemist  of  genius,  should  contain  the  quin- 
tessence, the  entire  strength  of  the  novel,  the  long 
analysis  and  the  superfluous  description  of  which 
it  suppresses  ...  the  adjective  placed  in  such 
an  ingenious  and  definite  way  that  it  could  not 
be  legally  dispossessed  of  its  place,  that  the 
reader  would  dream  for  whole  weeks  together 
over  its  meaning,  at  once  precise  and  multiple; 
affirm  the  present,  reconstruct  the  past,  divine 
the  future  of  the  souls  revealed  by  the  light  of  the 
unique  epithet.  The  novel  thus  understood,  thus 
condensed  into  one  or  two  pages,  would  be  a  com- 
munion of  thought  between  a  magical  writer  and 
an  ideal  reader,  a  spiritual  collaboration  by  con- 
sent between  ten  superior  persons  scattered 
through  the  universe,  a  delectation  ofifered  to  the 
most  refined  and  accessible  only  to  them." 

This  aristocratic  theory  of  art  was  long  ago 
propounded  by  Poe  in  regard  to  the  short  poem. 
Huysmans  transposed  the  idea  to  the  key  of  fiction 
290 


MYSTICS 

while  describing  the  essential  prose  of  Mallarmd; 
but  some  years  before  the  author  of  A  Rebours 
wrote  his  ideal  book  on  decadence  a  modest 
young  Frenchman  had  put  into  practice  the  de- 
lightfully impracticable  theories  of  the  prose 
poem.  This  writer  was  Francis  Poictevin  (bom 
at  Paris,  1854).  Many  there  were,  beginning 
with  Edgar  Poe  and  Louis  Bertrand,  who  had 
essayed  the  form,  at  its  best  extremely  difficult, 
at  its  worst  too  tempting  to  facile  conquests: 
Baudelaire,  Huysmans  in  his  Le  Drageoir  aux 
Epices;  Daudet,  De  Banville,  Villiers  de  LTsle 
Adam,  Maurice  de  Guerin,  and  how  many  others ! 
During  the  decade  of  the  eighties  the  world  of 
literature  seemed  to  be  fabricating  poems  in  prose. 
Pale  youths  upon  whose  brows  descended  aure- 
oles at  twilight,  sought  fame  in  this  ivory  minia- 
ture carving  addressed  to  the  "ten  superior  per- 
sons" very  much  scattered  over  the  globe.  But 
like  most  peptonic  products,  the  brain  as  does 
the  stomach,  finally  refuses  to  accept  as  nourish- 
ment artificial  concoctions  too  heavily  flavoured 
with  midnight  oil.  The  world,  which  is  gross, 
prefers  its  literature  by  the  gross,  and  though  it 
has  been  said  that  all  the  great  exterior  novels 
have  been  written,  the  majority  of  readers  con- 
tinue to  read  long-winded  stories  dealing  with 
manners  and,  of  course,  the  eternal  conquest  of 
an  uninteresting  female  by  a  mediocre  male. 
Aiming  at  instantaneity  of  pictorial  and  musical 
effect  —  as  a  picture  become  lyrical  —  the  poets 
who  fashioned  their  prose  into  artistic  rhythms 
291 


EGOISTS 

and  colours  and  tones  ended  by  exhausting  the 
patience  of  a  public  rapidly  losing  its  faculty  of 
attention. 

Possibly  these  things  may  account  for  the  neg- 
lect of  a  writer  and  thinker  of  such  delicacy  and 
originality  as  Poictevin,  but  he  was  always  caviare 
even  to  the  consumers  of  literary  caviar.  But 
he  had  a  small  audience  in  Paris,  and  after  his 
first  book  appeared  —  one  hesitates  to  call  it  a 
novel  —  Daudet  saluted  it  with  the  praise  that 
Sainte-Beuve  —  the  Sainte-Beuve  of  Volupte  and 
Port-Royal  —  would  have  been  delighted  with  La 
Robe  du  Moine.  Here  is  a  list  of  Poictevin's 
works  and  the  years  of  their  publication  until 
1894.  Please  note  their  significant  and  extraor- 
dinary names:  La  Robe  du  Moine,  1882; 
Ludine,  1883;  Songes,  1884;  Petitan,  1885; 
Seuls,  1886;  Pay  sages  et  Nouveaux  Songes,  1888; 
Derniers  Songes,  1888;  Double,  1889;  Presque, 
1891;  Heures,  1892;  Tout  Bas,i893;  Ombres,  1894. 

A  collective  title  for  them  might  be  Nuances; 
Poictevin  searches  the  last  nuance  of  sensations 
and  ideas.  He  is  a  remote  pupil  of  Gon- 
court,  and  superior  to  his  master  in  his  power 
of  recording  the  impalpable.  (Compare  any 
of  his  books  with  the  Madame  Gervaisais  of 
Goncourt;  the  latter  is  mysticism  very  much  in 
the  concrete.)  At  the  same  time  he  recalls  Amiel, 
Maurice  de  Gudrin,  Walter  Pater,  and  Coventry 
Patmore.  A  mystical  pantheist  in  his  worship 
of  nature,  he  is  a  mystic  in  his  adoration  of  God. 
This  intensity  of  vision  in  the  case  of  Poictevin 
292 


MYSTICS 

did  not  lead  to  the  depravities,  exquisite  and 
morose,  of  Baudelaire,  Huysmans,  and  the  bril- 
liant outrageous  Barbey  d'Aurevilly.  With  his 
soul  of  ermine  Poictevin  is  characterised  by 
De  Gourmont  as  the  inventor  of  the  mysticism 
of  style.  Once  he  saluted  Edmond  de  Gon- 
court  as  the  Velasquez  of  the  French  language, 
and  that  master,  not  to  be  outdone  in  politeness, 
told  Poictevin  that  his  prose  could  boast  its 
"victories  over  the  invisible."  If  by  this  Gon- 
court  meant  making  the  invisible  visible,  render- 
ing in  prose  of  crepuscular  subtlety  moods  recon- 
dite, then  it  was  not  an  exaggerated  compliment. 
In  such  spiritual  performances  Poictevin  re- 
sembles Lafcadio  Hearn  in  his  airiest  gossamer- 
webbed  phrases.  A  true,  not  a  professional 
symbolist,  the  French  prosateur  sounds  Debussy 
twilight  harmonies.  His  speech  at  times  glistens 
with  the  hues  of  a  dragon-fly  zigzagging  in  the 
sunshine.  In  the  tenuous  exaltation  of  his 
thought  he  evokes  the  ineffable  deity,  circled  by 
faint  glory.  To  compass  his  picture  he  does 
not  hesitate  to  break  the  classic  mould  of  French 
syntax  while  using  all  manners  of  strange-fangled 
vocables  to  attain  effects  that  remind  one  of  the 
clear-obscure  of  Rembrandt.  Indeed,  a  mystic 
style  is  his,  beside  which  most  writers  seem  heavy- 
handed  and  obvious. 

Original  in  his  form,  in  the  bizarre  architecture 

of  his  paragraphs,  pages,  chapters,  he  abolishes 

the    old    endings,    cadences,    chapter    headings. 

Nor,  except  at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  does 

293 


EGOISTS 

he  portray  a  definite  hero  or  heroine.  Even  names 
are  avoided.  ''He"  or  "she"  suffices  to  indicate 
the  sex.  Action  there  is  little.  Story  he  has 
none  to  tell;  by  contrast  Henry  James  is  epical. 
Exteriority  does  not  interest  Poictevin,  who  is 
nevertheless  a  landscape  painter;  intimate  and 
charming.  His  young  man  and  young  woman 
visit  Mentone,  the  Pyrenees,  Brittany,  along  the 
Rhine  —  a  favourite  resort  —  Holland,  Luchon, 
Montreux,  and  Switzerland,  generally.  His  pal- 
ette is  marvellously  complicated.  We  should  call 
him  an  impressionist  but  that  the  phrase  is  be- 
come banal.  Poictevin  deals  in  subtle  grays. 
He  often  writes  gris-iris.  His  portraits  swim  in 
a  mysterious  atmosphere  as  do  Eugene  Carriere's. 
His  fluid,  undulating  prose  records  landscapes  in 
the  manner  of  Theocritus. 

The  tiny  repercussions  of  the  spirit  that  is  re- 
acted upon  by  life  are  Whistlerian  notations  in 
the  gamut  of  this  artist's  instrument.  Evocation, 
not  description;  evocation,  not  narration;  al- 
ways evocation,  yet  there  is  a  harmonious  en- 
semble; he  returns  to  his  theme  after  capriciously 
circling  about  it  as  does  a  Hungarian  gypsy  when 
improvising  upon  the  heart-strings  of  his  auditors. 
Verlaine  once  addressed  a  poem  to  Poictevin  the 
first  line  of  which  runs:  "Toujours  mecontent  de 
son  oeuvre."  Maurice  Barres  evidently  had  read 
Seuls  before  he  wrote  Le  Jardin  de  Berenice 
(1891).  The  young  woman  in  Poictevin's  tale 
has  the  same  feverish  languors;  her  male  com- 
panion, though  not  the  egoist  of  Barrbs,  is  a  very 
294 


MYSTICS 

modern  person,  slightly  consumptive;  one  of 
whom  it  may  be  asked,  in  the  words  of  Poictevin : 
"Is  there  anything  sadder  under  the  sun  than  a 
soul  incapable  of  sadness?"  In  their  room  hang 
portraits  of  Baudelaire  and  the  Cure  d'Ars.  Odder 
still  is  the  monk,  P.  Martin.  Martin  is  the  name 
of  the  "adversary"  in  The  Garden  of  Berenice. 
And  the  episode  of  the  dog's  death!  Huysmans, 
too,  must  have  admired  Poictevin's  descriptions 
of  the  Griinewald  Christ  at  Colmar,  and  of  the 
portrait  of  the  Young  Florentine  in  the  Stadel 
Museum  at  Frankfort.  It  would  be  instructive 
to  compare  the  differing  opinions  of  the  two  critics 
concerning  this  last-named  picture. 

A  mirror,  Poictevin's  soul  reflects  the  moods  of 
landscapes.  Without  dogmatism  he  could  say 
with  St.  Anselm  that  he  would  rather  go  to  hell 
sinless  than  be  in  heaven  smudged  by  a  single 
transgression.  To  his  tender  temperament  even 
the  reading  of  Pascal  brought  shadows  of  doubt. 
A  persistent  dreamer,  the  world  for  him  is  but  the 
garment  investing  God.  Flowers,  stars,  the  wind 
that  weeps  in  little  corners,  the  placid  bosom  of 
lonely  lakes,  far-away  mountains  and  their  mystic 
silhouettes,  the  Rhine  and  its  many  curvings, 
the  clamour  of  cities  and  the  joy  of  the  green  grass, 
are  his  themes.  Life  with  its  frantic  gestures  is 
quite  inutile.  Let  it  be  avoided.  You  turn  after 
reading  Poictevin  to  the  Minoration  of  Emile 
Hennequin:  "Let  all  that  is  be  no  more.  Let 
glances  fade  and  the  vivacity  of  gestures  fall. 
Let  us  be  humble,  soft,  and  slow.  Let  us  love 
295 


EGOISTS 

without  passion,  and  let  us  exchange  weary 
caresses."  Or  hear  the  tragic  cry  of  Ephraim 
Mikhael:  "Ah!  to  see  behind  me  no  longer,  on  the 
lake  of  Eternity,  the  implacable  wake  of  Time." 

"Poictevin's  men  and  women,"  once  wrote 
Aline  Gorren  in  a  memorable  study  of  French 
symbolism,  **are  subordinate  to  these  wider 
curves  of  wave  and  sky;  they  come  and  go,  emerg- 
ing from  their  setting  briefly  and  fading  into  it 
again;  they  have  no  personality  apart  from  it; 
and  amid  the  world  symbols  of  the  heavens  in 
marshalled  movements  and  the  thousand  reeded 
winds,  they  in  their  human  symbols  are  allowed 
to  seem,  as  they  are,  proportionately  small.  They 
are  possessed  as  are  clouds,  waters,  trees,  but  no 
more  than  clouds,  waters,  trees,  of  a  baffling  sig- 
nificance, forever  a  riddle  to  itself.  They  have 
bowed  attitudes;  the  weight  of  the  mystery  they 
carry  on  their  shoulders." 

The  humanity  that  secretly  evaporates  when 
the  prose  poet  notes  the  attrition  of  two  souls  is 
shed  upon  his  landscapes  with  their  sonorous 
silences.  A  picture  of  the  life  contemplative,  of 
the  adventures  of  timorous  gentle  souls  in  search 
of  spiritual  adventures,  set  before  us  in  a  style  of 
sublimated  preciosity  by  an  orchestra  of  sensations 
that  has  been  condensed  to  the  string  quartet, 
the  dreams  of  Francis  Poictevin  —  does  he  not 
speak  of  the  human  forehead  as  a  dream  dome? 
—  are  not  the  least  consoling  of  his  century.  He 
is  the  white-robed  acolyte  among  mystics  of  mod- 
em literature. 

296 


MYSTICS 

IV 

THE   ROAD   TO   DAMASCUS 

Religious  conversion  and  its  psychology  have 
furnished  the  world's  library  with  many  volumes. 
Perfectly  understood  in  the  ages  of  faith,  the  sub- 
ject is  for  modern  thinkers  susceptible  of  realistic 
explanation.     Only  we  pave  the  way  now  by  a  psy- 
chological course  instead  of  the  ancient  doctrine 
of  Grace  Abounding.     Nor  do  we  confound  the 
irresistible  desire  of  certain  temperaments  to  spiH 
their  innermost  thoughts,  with  what  is  called  con- 
version.    There   was   Rousseau,   who   confessed 
things  that  the  world  would  be  better  without 
having  heard.     He  was  not  converted.     Tolstoy, 
believing  that  primitive  Christianity  is  almost  lost 
to  his  fellow  beings,  preaches  what  he  thinks  is 
the  real  faith.     Yet  he  was  converted.     He  had 
been,  he  said,  a  terrible  transgressor.     The  grace 
of  God  gave  sight  to  his  sin-saturated  eyeballs. 
Is  there  the  slightest  analogy  between  his  case 
and   that  of  Cardinal  Newman?     John  Henry 
Newman  had  led  a  spotless  life  before  he  left  the 
Anglican  fold.     Nevertheless  he  was  a  convert. 
And  Saint  Augustine,  the  pattern  of  all  self-con- 
fessors, the  classic  case,  may  be  compared  to  John 
Bunyan   or   to   Saint   Paul!    Professor  William 
James,  who  with  his  admirable  impartiality  has 
scrutinized  the  psychological  topsy-turvy  we  name 
conversion,  has  not  missed  the  commonplace  fact 
297 


EGOISTS 

that  every  man  as  to  details  varies,  but  at  base  the 
psychical  machinery  is  controlled  by  the  same 
motor  impulses.     A  chacun  son  infini. 

Some  natures  reveal  a  mania  for  confession. 
Dostoievsky's  men  and  women  continually  tell 
what  they  have  thought,  what  crimes  they  have 
committed.  It  was  an  epileptic  obsession  with 
this  unhappy  Russian  writer.  Paul  Verlaine 
sang  blithely  of  his  ghastly  life,  and  Baudelaire 
did  not  spare  himself.  So  it  would  seem  that  the 
inability  of  certain  natures  to  keep  their  most 
precious  secrets  is  also  the  keynote  of  religious 
confessions.  But  let  us  not  muddle  this  with  the 
sincerity  or  insincerity  of  the  change.  Leslie 
Stephen  has  said  that  it  did  not  matter  much 
whether  Pascal  was  sincere,  and  instanced  the 
Pascal  wager  (le  pari  de  Pascal)  as  evidence  of  the 
great  thinker's  casuistry.  It  is  better  to  believe 
and  be  on  the  safe  side  than  be  damned  if  you  do 
not  believe;  for  if  there  is  no  hereafter  your  be- 
lieving that  there  is  will  not  matter  one  way  or  the 
other.  This  is  the  substance  of  Pascal's  wager, 
and  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  ardent  upholder 
of  Jansenism  and  the  opponent  of  the  Jesuits 
proved  himself  an  excellent  pupil  of  the  latter 
when  he  framed  his  famous  proposition. 

Among  the  converts  who  have  become  almost 
notorious  in  France  during  the  last  two  decades 
are  Ferdinand  Bruneti^re,  Francois  Coppee,  Paul 
Verlaine,  and  Joris-Karl  Huysmans.  But  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  if  the  quartette  trod  the  Road 
to  Damascus  they  were  all  returning  to  their  early 
298 


MYSTICS 

City  of  Faith.  They  had  been  baptized  Roman 
Catholics.  All  four  had  strayed.  And  widely 
different  reasons  brought  them  back  to  their  mother 
Church.  We  need  not  dwell  now  on  the  case  of 
Villiers  de  ITsle  Adam,  as  his  was  a  deathbed  re- 
pentance; nor  with  Paul  Bourget,  a  Catholic 
born  and  on  the  side  of  his  faith  since  the  publi- 
cation of  Cosmopolis.  As  for  Maurice  Barrbs, 
he  may  be  a  Mohammedan  for  all  we  care.  He 
will  always  stand,  spiritually,  on  his  head. 

The  stir  in  literary  and  religious  circles  over 
Huysmans's  trilogy,  En  Route,  La  Cathedrale, 
and  L'Oblat,  must  have  influenced  the  succeed- 
ing generation  of  French  writers.  Of  a  sudden 
sad  young  rakes  who  spouted  verse  in  the  aesthetic 
taverns  of  the  Left  Bank  fell  to  writing  religious 
verse.  Mary  Queen  of  Heaven  became  their 
shibboleth.  They  invented  new  sins  so  that  they 
might  repent  in  a  novel  fashion.  They  lacked 
the  delicious  lyric  gift  of  Verlaine  and  the  tremen- 
dous enfolding  moral  earnestness  of  Huysmans 
to  make  themselves  believed.  One,  however, 
has  emerged  from  the  rest,  and  his  book,  Du 
Diable  k  Dieu  (From  the  Devil  to  God),  has 
crossed  the  twenty-five  thousand  mark;  perhaps 
it  is  further  by  this  time.  The  author  is  an  au- 
thentic poet,  Adolphe  Rette.  For  his  confessions 
the  lately  deceased  Francois  Coppde  wrote  a  dig- 
nified and  sympathetic  preface.  Rett^'s  place 
in  contemporary  poetry  is  high.  Since  Verlaine 
we  hardly  dare  to  think  of  another  poet  of  such 
charm,  verve,  originality.  An  anarchist  with 
299 


EGOISTS 

Sebastien  Faure  and  Jean  Grave,  a  Socialist  of 
all  brands,  a  lighted  lyric  torch  among  the  insur- 
rectionists, a  symbolist,  a  writer  of  "free  verse" 
(which  is  hedged  in  by  more  rules,  though  un- 
formulated and  unwritten,  than  the  stifTest  aca- 
demic production  of  Boileau),  Adolphe  Rette  led 
the  life  of  an  individualist  poet;  precisely  the 
sort  of  life  at  which  pulpit-pounders  could  point 
and  cry:  "There,  there  is  your  aesthetic  poet, 
your  man  of  feeling,  of  finer  feelings  than  his 
neighbours!  Behold  to  what  base  uses  he  has  put 
this  gift!  See  him  wallowing  with  the  swine!" 
And,  practically,  these  words  Rette  has  employed 
in  speaking  of  himself.  He  insulted  religion  in 
the  boulevard  journals;  he  hailed  with  joy  the 
separation  of  Church  and  State.  He  wrote  not 
too  decent  novels,  though  his  verse  is  feathered 
with  the  purest  pinions.  He  treated  his  wife 
badly,  neglecting  her  for  the  inevitable  Other 
Woman.  (What  a  banal  example  this  is,  after 
all.)  He  once,  so  he  tells  us  to  his  horror,  mal- 
treated the  poor  woman  because  of  her  piety. 
Typical,  you  will  say.  Then  why  confess  it  in 
several  hundred  pages  of  rhythmic  prose,  why 
rehearse  for  gaping,  indifferent  Paris  the  thread- 
bare, sordid  tale?  Paris,  too,  so  cynical  on  the 
subject  of  conversions,  and  also  very  suspicious 
of  such  a  spiritual  houleversement  as  Rette's !  "  No, 
it  won't  do,  Huysmans  is  to  blame,"  exclaimed 
many. 

Yet  this  conversion  —  literally  one,  for  he  was 
educated    in   a   Protestant   college  —  is   sincere. 
300 


MYSTICS 

He  means  every  word  he  says;  and  if  he  is  copious- 
ly rhetorical,  set  it  all  down  to  the  literary  temper- 
ament. He  wrote  not  only  with  the  approval  of 
his  spiritual  counsellor,  but  also  for  the  same 
reason  as  Saint  Augustine  or  Bunyan.  Newman's 
confession  was  an  Apologia,  an  answer  to  Kings- 
ley's  challenge.  With  Huysmans,  he  is  such  a 
consummate  artist  that  we  could  imagine  him 
plotting  ahead  his  cycle  of  novels  (if  novels  they 
are) ;  from  La-Bas  to  Lourdes  the  spiritual  modu- 
lation is  harmonious.  Now,  M.  Rette  (he  was 
born  in  1863  in  Paris  of  an  Ardennaise  family), 
while  he  has  sung  in  his  melodious  voice  many  al- 
luring songs,  while  he  has  shown  the  impressions 
wrought  upon  his  spirit  by  Walt  Whitman  and 
Richard  Wagner,  there  is  little  in  the  rich  extrava- 
gance of  his  love  for  nature  or  the  occasional 
Vergil  ian  silver  calm  of  his  verse  —  he  can  sound 
more  than  one  chord  on  his  poetic  keyboard  — 
to  prepare  us  for  the  great  plunge  into  the  healing 
waters  of  faith.  A  pagan  nature  shows  in  his 
early  work,  apart  from  the  hatred  and  contempt 
he  later  displayed  toward  religion.  How  did 
it  all  come  about  ?  He  has  related  it  in  this  book, 
and  we  are  free  to  confess  that,  though  we  must 
not  challenge  the  author's  sincerity,  his  manner 
is  far  from  reassuring.  He  is  of  the  brood  of 
Baudelaire. 

Huysmans  frankly  gave  up  the  riddle  in  his  own 

case.     Atavism  may  have  had  its  way;    he  had 

relatives  who  were  in  convents;  a  pessimism  that 

drove  him  from  the  world  also  contributed  its 

301 


EGOISTS 

share  in  the  change.  Personally  Huysmans  pre- 
fers to  set  it  down  to  the  mercy  and  grace  of  God 
—  which  is  the  simplest  definition  after  all. 
When  we  are  through  with  these  self-accusing 
men;  when  professional  psychology  is  tired  of 
inventing  new  terminologies,  then  let  us  do  as 
did  Huysmans  —  go  back  to  the  profoundest  of 
all  the  psychologists,  the  pioneers  of  the  moderns. 
Saint  Theresa  —  what  actual,  virile  magnifi- 
cence is  in  her  Castle  of  the  Soul  —  Saint  John  of 
the  Cross,  and  Ruysbroeck.  They  are  mystics 
possessing  a  fierce  faith;  and  without  faith  a 
mystic  is  like  a  moon  without  the  sun.  Adolphe 
Rette  knows  the  great  Spanish  mystics  and  quotes 
them  almost  as  liberally  as  Huysmans.  But  with 
a  difference.  He  has  read  Huysmans  too  closely; 
books  breed  books,  ideas  and  moods  beget  moods 
and  ideas.  We  are  quite  safe  in  saying  that  if 
En  Route  had  not  been  written,  Rette's  Du  Diable 
k  Dieu  could  not  have  appeared  in  its  present 
shape.  The  similarity  is  both  external  and  in- 
ternal. John  of  the  Cross  had  his  Night  Obscure, 
so  has  M.  Rette;  Huysmans,  however,  showed 
him  the  way.  Rette  holds  an  obstinate  dialogue 
with  the  Devil  (who  is  a  capitalized  creature). 
Consult  the  wonderful  fifth  chapter  in  En  Route. 
Naturally  there  must  be  a  certain  resemblance  in 
these  spiritual  adventures  when  the  Evil  One 
captures  the  outposts  of  the  soul  and  makes  sud- 
den savage  dashes  into  its  depths.  Rette's  style 
is  not  in  the  least  like  Huysmans's.  It  is  more 
fluent,  swifter,  and  more  staccato.  You  skim  his 
302 


MYSTICS 

pages;  in  Huysmans  you  recognise  the  distilled 
remorse;  you  move  as  in  a  penitential  procession, 
the  rhythms  grave,  the  eyes  dazzled  by  the  vision 
divine,  the  voice  lowly  chanting.  Not  so  Rett^, 
who  glibly  discourses  on  sacred  territory,  who  is 
terribly  at  ease  in  Zion. 

Almost  gayly  he  recounts  his  misdeeds.  He 
pelts  his  former  associates  with  hard  names.  He 
pities  Anatole  France  for  his  socialistic  affinities. 
All  that  formerly  attracted  him  is  anathema. 
Even  the  mysterious  lady  with  the  dark  eyes  is 
castigated.  She  is  not  a  truth-teller.  She  does 
not  now  understand  the  protean  soul  of  her  poet. 
Retro  me  Sathanas!  It  is  very  exhilarating.  The 
Gallic  soul  in  its  most  resilient  humour  is  on  view. 
See  it  rebound !  Watch  it  ascend  on  high,  buoyed 
by  delicious  phrases,  asking  sweet  pardon;  then 
it  falls  to  earth  abusing  its  satanic  adversary  with 
sinister  energy.  At  times  we  overhear  the  honeyed 
accents,  the  silky  tones  of  Renan.  It  is  he,  not 
Rette,  who  exclaims:  Mais  quelles  douces  larmes! 
Ah !  Renan  —  also  a  cork  soul !  The  Imitation 
is  much  dwelt  upon  —  the  influence  of  Huysmans 
has  been  incalculable  in  this.  And  we  forgive 
M.  Rette  his  theatricalism  for  the  lovely  French 
paraphrase  he  has  made  of  Salve  Regina.  But 
on  the  whole  we  prefer  En  Route.  The  starting- 
point  of  Rette' s  change  was  reading  some  verse 
in  the  Purgatory  of  the  Divine  Comedy.  A  lit- 
erary conversion?  Possibly,  yet  none  the  less 
complete.  All  roads  lead  to  Rome,  and  the  Road 
to  Damascus  may  be  achieved  from  many  devious 
303 


EGOISTS 

side  paths.  But  in  writing  with  such  engaging 
frankness  the  memoirs  of  his  soul  we  wish  that 
Rettd  had  more  carefully  followed  the  closing 
sentence  of  his  brilliant  little  book:  Non  nobis j 
Domine,  non  nobis,  sed  nomini  tuo  da  gloriam! 

V 

FROM  AN  IVORY   TOWER 

"Their  ihipatience,"  was  the  answer  once  given 
by  Cardinal  Newman  to  the  question,  What  is 
the  chief  fault  of  heresiarchs?  In  this  category 
Walter  Pater  never  could  have  been  included, 
for  his  life  was  a  long  patience.  As  Newman 
sought  patiently  for  the  evidences  of  faith,  so 
Pater  sought  for  beauty,  that  beauty  of  thought 
and  expression,  of  which  his  work  is  a  supreme 
exemplar  in  modern  English  literature.  Flau- 
bert, a  man  of  genius  with  whom  he  was  in  sympa- 
thy, toiled  no  harder  for  the  perfect  utterance  of 
his  ideas  than  did  this  retiring  Oxford  man  of 
letters.  And,  like  his  happy  account  of  Raphael's 
growth,  Pater  was  himself  a  "genius  by  accumu- 
lation; the  transformation  of  meek  scholarship 
into  genius." 

Walter  Pater's  intimate  life  was  once  almost 
legendary.  We  heard  more  of  him  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  than  yesterday.  This  does  not  mean 
that  his  vogue  has  declined;  on  the  contrary,  he 
is  a  force  at  the  present  such  as  he  never  was  either 
at  Oxford  or  London.  But  of  the  living  man, 
304 


MYSTICS 

notwithstanding  his  shyness,  stray  notes  crept  into 
print.  He  wrote  occasional  reviews.  He  had 
disciples.  He  had  adversaries  who  deplored  his 
• —  admittedly  remote  —  immoral  influence  upon 
impressionable,  "slim,  gilt  souls";  he  had  critics 
who  detected  the  truffle  of  evil  in  savouring  his 
exotic  style.  When  he  died,  in  1894,  the  air  was 
cleared  by  his  devoted  friends,  Edmund  Gosse, 
Lionel  Johnson,  William  Sharp,  Arthur  Symons, 
and  some  of  his  Oxford  associates.  Dr.  Bussell 
and  Mr.  Shadwell.  It  was  proved  without  a 
possibility  of  doubt  that  the  popular  conception 
of  the  man  was  far  from  the  reality;  that  the  real 
Pater  was  a  plain  liver  and  an  austere  thinker; 
that  he  was  not  the  impassive  Mandarin  of  litera- 
ture pictured  by  some;  that  the  hedonism,  epi- 
cureanism, cyrenaicism  of  which  he  had  been 
vaguely  accused  had  been  a  confounding  of  intel- 
lectual substances,  a  slipshod  method  of  thought 
he  abhorred;  that  his  entire  career  had  been  spent 
in  the  pursuit  of  an  aesthetic  and  moral  perfection 
and  its  embodiment  in  prose  of  a  rarely  individual 
and  haunting  music.  Recall  his  half-petulant, 
half- ironical  exclamation  of  disgust  to  Mr.  Gosse: 
"I  wish  they  wouldn't  call  me  a  'hedonist';  it 
produces  such  a  bad  effect  on  the  minds  of  people 
who  don't  know  Greek."  He  would  have  been 
quite  in  accord  with  Paul  Bourget's  dictum  that 
"  there  is  no  such  thing  as  health,  or  the  contrary, 
in  the  world  of  the  soul";  Bourget,  who,  lectur- 
ing later  at  Oxford,  pronounced  Walter  Pater 
"un  parfait  prosateur." 
305 


EGOISTS 

Despite  the  attempt  to  chain  him  to  the  chari- 
ots of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood,  Pater,  like 
Chopin,  during  the  Romantic  turmoil,  stood  aloof 
from  the  heat  and  dust  of  its  battles.  He  was  at 
first  deeply  influenced  by  Goethe  and  Ruskin, 
and  was  a  friend  of  Swinburne's;  he  wrote  of  the 
Morris  poetry;  but  his  was  not  the  polemical  cast 
of  mind.  The  love  of  spiritual  combat,  the  holy 
zeal  of  John  Henry  Newman,  of  Keble,  of  Hurrell 
Froude,  were  not  in  his  bones.  And  so  his  schol- 
ar's life,  the  measured  existence  of  a  recluse,  was 
uneventful;  but  measured  by  the  results,  what  a 
vivid,  intense,  life  it  was.  There  is,  however, 
very  little  to  tell  of  Walter  Pater.  His  was  the 
interior  life.  In  his  books  is  his  life  —  hasn't 
some  one  said  that  all  great  literature  is  auto- 
biographical ? 

There  are  articles  by  the  late  William  Sharp 
and  by  George  Moore.  The  former  in  Some 
Personal  Recollections  of  Walter  Pater,  written 
in  1894,  gave  a  vivid  picture  of  the  man,  though 
it  remained  for  Mr.  Moore  to  discover  his  ugly 
face  and  some  peculiar  minor  characteristics. 
Sharp  met  Pater  in  1880  at  the  house  of  George 
T.  Robinson,  in  Gower  Street,  that  delightful 
meeting-place  of  gifted  people.  Miss  A.  Mary  F. 
Robinson,  now  Mme.  Duclaux,  was  the  tutelary 
genius.  She  introduced  Sharp  to  Pater.  The 
blind  poet,  Philip  Bourke  Marston,  was  of  the 
party.  Pater  at  that  time  was  a  man  of  medium 
height,  stooping  slightly,  heavily  built,  with  a 
Dutch  or  Flemish  cast  of  features,  a  pale  com- 
306 


MYSTICS 

plexion,  a  heavy  moustache  —  "a  possible  Bis- 
marck, a  Bismarck  who  had  become  a  dreamer," 
adds  the  keen  observer.  A  friendship  was  struck 
up  between  the  pair.  Pater  came  out  of  his  shell, 
talked  wittily,  paradoxically,  and  later  at  Oxford 
showed  his  youthful  admirer  the  poetic  side  of 
his  singularly  complex  nature.  There  are  conver- 
sations recorded  and  letters  printed  which  would 
have  added  to  the  value  of  Mr.  Benson's  memoir. 
Mr.  Moore's  recollections  are  slighter,  though 
extremely  engaging.  Above  all,  with  his  trained 
eye  of  a  painter,  he  sketches  for  us  another  view 
of  Pater,  one  not  quite  so  attractive.  Mr.  Moore 
saw  a  very  ugly  man —  "it  was  like  looking  at  a 
leaden  man,  an  uncouth  figure,  badly  moulded, 
moulded  out  of  lead,  a  large,  uncouth  head,  the 
head  of  a  clergyman,  ...  a  large,  overarching 
skull,  and  small  eyes;  they  always  seemed  afraid 
of  you,  and  they  shifted  quickly.  There  seemed 
to  be  a  want  of  candour  in  Pater's  face,  ...  an 
abnormal  fear  of  his  listener  and  himself.  There 
was  little  hair  on  the  great  skull,  and  his  skull 
and  his  eyes  reminded  me  a  little  of  the  French 
poet  Verlaine,  a  sort  of  domesticated  Verlaine, 
a  Protestant  Verlaine."  His  eyes  were  green- 
gray,  and  in  middle  life  he  wore  a  brilliant  apple- 
green  tie  and  the  inevitable  top-hat  and  frock 
coat  of  an  urban  Englishman.  In  one  of  his 
early  essays  Max  Beerbohm  thus  describes  Pater: 
"a  small,  thick,  rock-faced  man,  whose  top-hat 
and  gloves  of  bright  dog  skin  struck  one  of 
the  many  discords  in  that  little  city  of  learning 
307 


EGOISTS 

and  laughter.  The  serried  bristles  of  his  mus- 
tachio  made  for  him  a  false-military  air."  Pater 
is  said  to  have  come  of  Dutch  stock.  Mr.  Ben- 
son declares  that  it  has  not  been  proved.  He  had 
the  amiable  fancy  that  he  may  have  had  in  his 
veins  some  of  the  blood  of  Jean  Baptiste  Pater, 
the  painter.  His  father  was  born  in  New  York. 
He  went  to  England,  and  near  London  in  1839 
Walter  Horatio,  his  second  son,  was  bom.  To 
The  Child  in  the  House  and  Emerald  Uthwart, 
both  "imaginary  portraits,"  we  may  go  for  the 
early  life  of  Pater,  as  Marius  is  the  idealized 
record  of  his  young  manhood.  When  a  child  he 
was  fond  of  playing  Bishop,  and  the  bent  of  his 
mind  was  churchly,  further  fostered  by  his  so- 
journ at  Canterbury.  He  matriculated  at  Oxford 
in  1858  as  a  commoner  of  Queen's  College,  where 
he  was  graduated  after  being  coached  by  Jowett, 
who  said  to  his  pupil,  "I  think  you  have  a  mind 
that  will  come  to  great  eminence."  Years  after- 
ward the  Master  of  Balliol  seems  to  have  changed 
his  opinion,  possibly  urged  thereto  by  the  parody 
of  Pater  as  Mr.  Rose  by  Mr.  Mallock  in  The  New 
Republic.  Jowett  spoke  of  Pater  as  "the  demor- 
alizing moralizer,"  while  Mr.  Freeman  could  see 
naught  in  him  but  "the  mere  conjurer  of  words 
and  phrases."  Others  have  denounced  his  "  pulpy 
magnificence  of  style,"  and  Max  Beerbohm  de- 
clared that  Pater  wrote  English  as  if  it  were  a 
dead  language;  possibly  an  Irish  echo  of  Pater's 
own  assertion  that  English  should  be  written  as  a 
learned  language. 

308 


MYSTICS 

He  became  a  Fellow  of  Brasenose,  and  Oxford 
—  with  the  exception  of  a  few  years  spent  in 
London,  and  his  regular  annual  summer  visits 
to  Italy,  France,  and  Germany,  where  he  took 
long  walks  and  studied  the  churches  and  art 
galleries  —  became  his  home.  Contradictory  leg- 
ends still  float  in  the  air  regarding  his  absorbed 
demeanour,  his  extreme  sociability,  his  compan- 
ionable humour,  his  chilly  manner,  his  charming 
home,  his  barely  furnished  room,  with  the  bowl  of 
dried  rose  leaves;  his  sympathies,  antipathies, 
nervousness,  and  baldness,  and,  like  Baudelaire, 
of  his  love  of  cats,  and  a  host  of  mutually  exclusive 
qualities.  Mr.  Zangwill  relates  that  he  told  Pater 
he  had  discovered  a  pun  in  one  of  his  essays. 
Thereat,  great  embarrassment  on  Pater's  part. 
Symons,  who  knew  him  intimately,  tells  of  his 
reading  the  dictionary — that  **  pianoforte  of 
writers,"  as  Mr.  Walter  Raleigh  cleverly  names  it 
— for  the  opposite  reason  that  Gautier  did,  i.e.y 
that  he  might  learn  what  words  to  avoid.  An- 
other time  Symons  asked  him  the  meaning  of  a 
terrible  sentence,  Ruskinian  in  length  and  invo- 
lution. Pater  carefully  scanned  the  page,  and 
after  a  few  minutes  said  with  a  sigh  of  relief: 
"Ah,  I  see  the  printer  has  omitted  a  dash."  Yet, 
with  all  this  meticulous  precision.  Pater  was  a 
man  with  an  individual  style,  and  not  a  mere 
stylist.  What  he  said  was  of  more  importance 
than  the  saying  of  it. 

The  portraits  of  Pater  are,  so  his  friends  de- 
clare,  unlike  him.    He  had   irregular  features, 
309 


EGOISTS 

and  his  jaw  was  prognathic;  but  there  was  great 
variety  of  expression,  and  the  eyes,  set  deeply  in 
the  head,  glowed  with  a  jewelled  fire  when  he  was 
deeply  aroused.  In  Mr.  Greenslet's  wholly  ad- 
mirable appreciation,  there  is  a  portrait  executed 
by  the  unfortunate  Simeon  Solomon,  and  dated 
1872.  There  is  in  Mosher's  edition  of  the  Guard- 
ian Essays  a  copy  of  Will  Rothenstein's  study,  a 
characteristic  piece  of  work,  though  Mr.  Benson 
says  it  is  not  considered  a  resemblance.  And 
I  have  a  picture,  a  half-tone,  from  some  maga- 
zine, the  original  evidently  photographic,  that 
shows  a  Pater  much  more  powerful  in  expres- 
sion than  the  others,  and  without  a  hint  of  the 
ambiguous  that  lurks  in  Rothenstein's  drawing 
and  Moore's  pen  portrait.  Pater  never  married. 
Like  Newman,  he  had  a  talent  for  friendship.  As 
with  Newman,  Keble,  that  beautiful  soul,  made  a 
deep  impression  on  him,  and,  again  like  Newman, 
to  use  his  own  words,  he  went  his  way  ''like  one 
on  a  secret  errand." 

And  the  Pater  style!  Matthew  Arnold  on  a 
certain  occasion  advised  Frederic  Harrison  to 
*'flee  Carlylese  as  the  very  devil,"  and  doubtless 
would  have  given  the  same  advice  regarding 
Paterese.  Pater  is  a  dangerous  guide  for  students. 
This  theme  of  style,  so  admirably  vivified  in  Mr. 
Walter  Raleigh's  monograph,  was  worn  threadbare 
during  the  days  when  Pater  was  slowly  producing 
one  book  every  few  years  —  he  wrote  five  in  twenty 
years,  at  the  rate  of  an  essay  or  two  a  year,  thus 
matching  Flaubert  in  his  tormented  production. 
310 


MYSTICS 

The  principal  accusation  brought  against  the  Pater 
method  of  work  and  the  Pater  style  is  that  it  is 
lacking  in  spontaneity,  in  a  familiar  phrase,  *'it 
is  not  natural."  But  a  ''natural"  style,  so  called, 
appears  not  more  than  a  half  dozen  times  in  its 
full  flowering  during  the  course  of  a  century.  The 
French  write  all  but  faultless  prose.  To  match 
Flaubert,  Renan,  or  Anatole  France,  we  must  go 
to  Ruskin,  Pater,  and  Newman.  When  we  say: 
"Let  us  write  simple,  straightforward  English," 
we  are  setting  a  standard  that  has  been  reached 
of  late  years  only  by  Thackeray,  Newman,  and 
few  besides.  There  are  as  many  victims  of  the 
"natural  English"  formula  as  there  are  of  the 
artificial  formula  of  a  Pater  or  a  Stevenson.  The 
former  write  careless,  flabby,  colourless,  undis- 
tinguished, lean,  commercial  English,  and  pass 
unnoticed  in  the  vast  whirlpool  of  universal 
mediocrity,  where  the  cliche  is  king  of  the  para- 
graph. The  others,  victims  to  a  misguided  ideal 
of  "fine  writing,"  are  more  easily  detected. 

Now,  properly  speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  "natural"  style.  Even  Newman  confesses 
to  laborious  days,  though  he  wrote  with  the  idea 
uppermost,  and  with  no  thought  of  the  style. 
Renan,  perfect  master,  disliked  the  idea  of  teach- 
ing "style"  —  as  if  it  could  be  taught!  — yet  he 
worked  over  his  manuscripts.  We  all  know  the 
Flaubert  case.  With  Pater  one  must  not  rush 
to  the  conclusion  that  because  he  produced  slowly 
and  with  infinite  pains,  he  was  all  artificiality. 
Prose  for  him  was  a  fine  art.  He  would  no  more 
3" 


EGOISTS 

have  used  a  phrase  coined  by  another  man  than 
he  would  have  worn  his  hat.  He  embroidered 
upon  the  canvas  of  his  ideas  the  grave  and  lovely 
phrases  we  envy  and  admire.  Prose  —  "cette 
ancienne  et  tr^s  jalouse  chose,"  as  it  was  called 
by  Stdphane  Mallarm6  —  was  for  Pater  at  once 
a  pattern  and  a  cadence,  a  picture  and  a  song. 
Never  suggesting  hybrid  "poetic-prose,"  the  great 
stillness  of  his  style  —  atmospheric,  languorous, 
sounding  sweet  undertones  —  is  always  in  the 
rhythm  of  prose.  Speed  is  absent;  the  tempo  is 
usually  lenten;  brilliance  is  not  pursued;  but  there 
is  a  hieratic,  almost  episcopal,  pomp  and  power. 
The  sentences  uncoil  their  many-coloured  lengths; 
there  are  echoes,  repercussions,  tonal  imagery, 
and  melodic  evocation ;  there  is  clause  within  clause 
that  occasionally  confuses;  for  compensation  we 
are  given  newly  orchestrated  harmonies,  as 
mordant,  as  salient,  and  as  strange  as  some  chords 
in  the  music  of  Chopin,  Debussy  and  Richard 
Strauss.  Sane  it  always  is  —  simple  seldom. 
And,  as  Symons  observes:  "Under  the  soft 
and  musical  phrases  an  inexorable  logic  hides 
itself,  sometimes  only  too  well.  Link  is  added 
silently  but  faultlessly  to  link;  the  argument 
marches,  carrying  you  with  it,  while  you  fancy 
you  are  only  listening  to  the  music  with  which 
it  keeps  step."  It  is  very  personal,  and  while  it 
does  not  make  melody  for  every  ear,  it  is  exquisitely 
adapted  to  the  idea  it  clothes.  Read  aloud  Rus- 
kin  and  then  apply  the  same  vocal  test  —  Flau- 
bert's procedure  —  to  Pater,  and  the  magnificence 
312 


MYSTICS 

of  the  older  man  will  conquer  your  ear  by  storm; 
but  Pater,  like  Newman,  will  make  it  captive  in 
a  persuasive  snare  more  delicately  varied,  more 
subtle,  and  with  modulations  more  enchanting. 
Never  oratorical,  in  eloquence  slightly  muffled, 
his  last  manner  hinted  that  he  had  sought  for 
newer  combinations.  Of  his  prose  we  may  say, 
employing  his  own  words  concerning  another 
theme:  ''It  is  a  beauty  wrought  from  within,  .  .  . 
the  deposit,  little  cell  by  cell,  of  strange  thoughts 
and  fantastic  reveries  and  exquisite  passions." 

The  prose  of  Jeremy  Taylor  is  more  im- 
passioned, Browne's  richer,  there  are  deeper  organ 
tones  in  De  Quincey's,  Ruskin's  excels  in  effects, 
rhythmic  and  sonorous;  but  the  prose  of  Pater  is 
subtler,  more  sinuous,  more  felicitous,  and  in  its 
essence  consummately  intense.  Morbid  it  some- 
times is,  and  its  rich  polyphony  palls  if  you  are 
not  in  the  mood;  and  in  greater  measure  than  the 
prose  of  the  other  masters,  for  the  world  is  older 
and  Pater  was  weary  of  life.  But  a  suggestion 
of  morbidity  may  be  found  in  the  writings  of  every 
great  writer  from  Plato  to  Dante,  from  Shake- 
speare to  Goethe;  it  is  the  faint  spice  of  mortality 
that  lends  a  stimulating  if  sharp  perfume  to  all 
literatures.  Beautiful  art  has  been  challenged 
as  corrupting.  There  may  be  a  grain  of  truth  in 
the  charge.  But  man  cannot  live  by  wisdom 
alone,  so  art  was  invented  to  console,  disquiet, 
and  arouse  him.  Whenever  a  poet  appears  he 
is  straightway  accused  of  tampering  with  the 
moral  code;   it  is  mediocrity's  mode  of  adjusting 

3^3 


EGOISTS 

violent  mental  disproportions.  But  persecution 
never  harmed  a  genuine  talent,  and  the  accusa- 
tions against  the  art  of  Pater  only  provoked  from 
him  such  beautiful  books  as  Imaginary  Portraits, 
Marius  the  Epicurean,  and  Plato  and  Platonism. 
Therefore  let  us  be  grateful  to  the  memory  of  his 
enemies. 

There  is  another  Pater,  a  Pater  far  removed 
from  the  one  who  wove  such  silken  and  coloured 
phrases.  If  he  sometimes  recalls  Keats  in  the 
rich  texture  of  his  prose,  he  can  also  suggest  the 
aridity  of  Herbert  Spencer.  There  are  early  essays 
of  his  that  are  as  cold,  as  logically  adamant,  and  as 
tortuous  as  sentences  from  the  Synthetic  Philoso- 
phy. Pater  was  a  metaphysician  before  he  be- 
came an  artist.  Luckily  for  us,  his  tendency  to 
bald  theorising  was  subdued  by  the  broad  human- 
ism of  his  temperament.  There  are  not  many 
*' purple  patches"  in  his  prose,  "purple"  in  the 
De  Quincey  or  Ruskin  manner;  no  "fringes  of 
the  north  star"  style,  to  use  South's  mocking  ex- 
pression. He  never  wrote  in  sheer  display. 
For  the  boorish  rhetoric  and  apish  attitudes  of 
much  modem  drama  he  betrayed  no  sympathy. 
His  critical  range  is  catholic.  Consider  his  essays 
on  Lamb,  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  Winckelmann, 
setting  aside  those  finely  wrought  masterpieces, 
the  studies  of  Da  Vinci,  Giorgione,  and  Botticelli. 
As  Mr.  Benson  puts  it,  Pater  was  not  a  modern 
scientific  or  archaeological  critic,  but  the  fact  that 
Morelli  has  proved  the  Concert  of  Giorgione  not  to 
be  by  that  master^  or  that  Vinci  is  not  all  Pater 
314 


MYSTICS 

says  he  is,  does  not  vitiate  the  essential  values  of 
his  criticism. 

Like  Maurice  Barr^s,  Pater  was  an  egoist  of 
the  higher  type;  he  seldom  left  the  twilight  of 
his  tour  d'ivoire;  yet  his  work  is  human  and  con- 
crete to  the  core.  Nothing  interested  him  so  much 
as  the  human  quality  in  art.  This  he  ever  sought 
to  disengage.  Pater  was  a  deeply  religious  nature 
aufond,  perhaps  addicted  a  trifle  to  moral  preci- 
osity, and,  as  Mr.  Greenslet  says,  a  lyrical  pan- 
theist. His  essay  on  Pascal,  without  plumbing 
the  ethical  depths  as  does  Leslie  Stephen's  study 
of  the  same  thinker,  gives  us  a  fair  measure  of 
his  own  religious  feelings.  A  pagan  with  Ana- 
tole  France  in  his  worship  of  Greek  art  and  liter- 
ature, his  profounder  Northern  temperament, 
a  Spartan  temperament,  strove  for  spiritual  things, 
for  the  vision  of  things  behind  the  veil.  The 
Paters  had  been  Roman  Catholic  for  many  gen- 
erations; his  father  was  not,  and  he  was  raised 
in  the  Church  of  England.  But  the  ritual  of  the 
older  Church  was  for  him  a  source  of  delight  and 
consolation.  Mr.  Benson  deserves  unstinted  praise 
for  his  denunciation  of  the  pseudo-Paterians,  the 
self-styled  disciples,  who,  totally  misinterpreting 
Pater's  pure  philosophy  of  life,  translated  the 
more  ephemeral  phases  of  his  cyrenaicism  into 
the  grosser  terms  of  a  gaudy  aesthetic.  These 
defections  pained  the  thinker,  whose  study  of 
Plato  had  extorted  praise  from  Jowett.  He 
even  withdrew  the  much-admired  conclusion  of 
The  Renaissance  because  of  the  wilful  miscon- 
315 


EGOISTS 

structions  put  upon  it.  He  never  achieved  the 
ataraxia  of  his  beloved  master.  And  Oxford 
was  grudging  of  her  favour  to  him  long  after  the 
world  had  acclaimed  his  genius.  Sensitive  he 
was,  though  Mr.  Gosse  denies  the  stories  of  his 
suffering  from  harsh  criticism;  but  there  were 
some  forms  of  criticism  that  he  could  not  over- 
look. Books  like  his  Plato  and  Marius  the  Epicur- 
ean were  adequate  answers  to  detractors.  Some- 
what cloistered  in  his  attitude  toward  the  normal 
world  of  work;  too  much  the  artist  for  art's  sake, 
he  may  never  trouble  the  greater  currents  of  litera- 
ture; but  he  will  always  be  a  writer  for  writers, 
the  critic  whose  vision  pierces  the  shell  of  ap- 
pearances, the  composer  of  a  polyphonic  prose- 
music  that  recalls  the  performance  of  harmonious 
adagio  within  the  sonorous  spaces  of  a  Gothic 
cathedral,  through  the  windows  of  which  filters 
alien  daylight.  It  was  a  favourite  contention  of 
his  that  all  the  arts  constantly  aspire  toward  the 
condition  of  music.  This  idea  is  the  keynote  of 
his  poetic  scheme,  the  keynote  of  Walter  Pater, 
mystic  and  musician,  who,  like  his  own  Marius, 
carried  his  life  long  "in  his  bosom  across  a 
crowded  public  place  —  his  own  soul." 


3i<5 


IX 
IBSEN 


Henrik  Ibsen  was  the  best-hated  artist  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  reason  is  simple:  He 
was,  himself,  the  arch-hater  of  his  age.  Yet, 
granting  this,  the  Norwegian  dramatist  aroused 
in  his  contemporaries  a  wrath  that  would  have 
been  remarkable  even  if  emanating  from  the 
fiery  pit  of  politics;  in  the  comparatively  serene 
field  of  aesthetics  such  overwhelming  attacks  from 
the  critics  of  nearly  every  European  nation  testi- 
fied to  the  singular  power  displayed  by  this  poet. 
Richard  Wagner  was  not  so  abused;  the  theatre 
of  his  early  operations  was  confined  to  Germany, 
the  Tannhauser  fiasco  in  Paris  a  unique  excep- 
tion. Wagner,  too,  did  everything  that  was 
possible  to  provoke  antagonism.  He  scored  his 
critics  in  speech  and  pamphlet.  He  gave  back 
as  hard  names  as  he  received.  Ibsen  never 
answered,  either  in  print  or  by  the  mouth  of 
friends,  the  outrageous  allegations  brought  against 
him.  Indeed,  his  disciples  often  darkened  the 
issue  by  their  unsolicited,  uncritical  championship. 
317 


EGOISTS 

In  Edouard  Manet,  the  revolutionary  Parisian 
painter  and  head  of  the  so-called  impressionist 
movement  —  himself  not  altogether  deserving 
the  appellation  —  we  have  an  analogous  case  to 
Wagner's.  Ridicule,  calumny,  vituperation,  pur- 
sued him  for  many  years.  But  Paris  was  the 
principal  scene  of  his  struggles;  Paris  mocked 
him,  not  all  Europe.  Even  the  indignation 
aroused  by  Nietzsche  was  a  comparatively  local 
affair.  -Wagner  is  the  only  man  who  approaches 
Ibsen  in  the  massiveness  of  his  martyrdom.  Yet 
Wagner  had  consolations  for  his  opponents.  His 
music-drama,  so  rich  in  colour  and  rhythmic 
beauty,  his  romantic  themes,  his  appeal  to  the 
eye,  his  friendship  with  Ludwig  of  Bavaria,  at 
times  placated  his  fiercest  detractors.  Manet 
painted  one  or  two  successes  for  the  official  Salon; 
Nietzsche's  brilliant  style  and  faculty  for  coin- 
ing poetic  images  were  acclaimed,  his  philosophy 
declared  detestable.  Yes,  fine  phrases  may  make 
fine  psychologues.  Robert  Browning  never  felt 
the  heavy  hand  of  public  opinion  as  did  Ibsen. 
We  must  go  back  to  the  days  of  Byron  and  Shel- 
ley for  an  example  of  such  uncontrollable  and 
unanimous  condemnation.  But,  again,  Ibsen 
tops  them  all  as  victim  of  storms  that  blew  from 
every  quarter:  Norway  to  Austria,  England  to 
Italy,  Russia  to  America.  There  were  no  miti- 
gating circumstances  in  his  lese-majeste  against 
popular  taste.  No  musical  rhyme,  scenic  splen- 
dour, or  rhythmic  prose,  acted  as  an  emotional 
buffer  between  him  and  his  audiences.     His  social 

318 


IBSEN 

dramas  were  condemned  as  the  sordid,  heartless 
productions  of  a  mediocre  poet,  who  wittingly 
debased  our  moral  currency.  And  as  they  did 
not  offer  as  bribes  the  amatory  intrigue,  the  witty 
dialogue,  the  sensual  arabesques  of  the  French 
stage,  or  the  stilted  rhetoric  and  heroic  postures 
of  the  German,  they  were  assailed  from  every 
critical  watch-tower  in  Europe.  Ibsen  was  a 
stranger,  Ibsen  was  disdainfully  silent,  there- 
fore Ibsen  must  be  annihilated.  Possibly  if  he 
had,  like  Wagner,  explained  his  dramas,  we 
should  have  had  confusion  thrice  confounded. 

The  day  after  his  death  the  entire  civilised 
world  wrote  of  him  as  the  great  man  he  was:  great 
man,  great  artist,  great  moralist.  And  A  Doll's 
House  only  saw  the  light  in  1879  —  so  potent 
a  creator  of  critical  perspective  is  Death.  There 
were,  naturally,  many  dissonant  opinions  in  this 
symphony  of  praise.  Yet  how  different  it  all 
read  from  the  opinions  of  a  decade  ago.  Ad- 
verse criticism,  especially  in  America,  was  vitiated 
by  the  fact  that  Ibsen  the  dramatist  was  hardly 
known  here.  Ibsen  was  eagerly  read,  but  sel- 
dom played;  and  rarely  played  as  he  should  be. 
He  is  first  the  dramatist.  His  are  not  closet 
dramas  to  be  leisurely  digested  by  lamp-light; 
conceived  for  the  theatre,  actuality  their  key-note, 
his  characters  are  pale  abstractions  on  the  printed 
page  —  not  to  mention  the  inevitable  distortions 
to  be  found  in  the  closest  translation.  We  are 
all  eager  to  tell  what  we  think  of  him.  But  do 
we  know  him  ?  Do  we  know  him  as  do  the  play- 
319 


EGOISTS 

goers  of  Berlin,  or  St.  Petersburg,  Copenhagen, 
Vienna,  or  Munich  ?  And  do  we  realise  his  tech- 
nical prowess?  In  almost  every  city  of  Europe 
Ibsen  is  in  the  regular  repertory.  He  is  given 
at  intervals  with  Shakespeare,  Schiller,  Dumas, 
Maeterlinck,  Hauptmann,  Grillparzer,  Hervieu, 
Sudermann,  and  with  the  younger  dramatists. 
That  is  the  true  test.  Not  the  isolated  divinity 
of  a  handful  of  worshippers,  with  an  esoteric  mes- 
sage, his  plays  are  interpreted  by  skilled  actors 
and  not  for  the  untrained  if  enthusiastic  amateur. 
There  is  no  longer  Ibsenism  on  the  Continent; 
Ibsen  is  recognised  as  the  greatest  dramatist  since 
Racine  and  Moliere.  Cults  claim  him  no  more, 
and  therefore  the  critical  point  of  view  at  the 
time  of  his  death  had  entirely  shifted.  His  works 
are  played  in  every  European  language  and  have 
been  translated  into  the  Japanese. 

The  mixed  blood  in  the  veins  of  Ibsen  may  ac- 
count for  his  temperament;  he  was  more  Danish 
than  Norwegian,  and  there  were  German  and 
Scotch  strains  in  his  ancestry.  Such  obscure 
forces  of  heredity  doubtless  played  a  role  in  his 
career.  Norwegian  in  his  love  of  freedom,  Da- 
nish in  his  artistic  bent,  his  philosophic  cast  of 
mind  was  wholly  Teutonic.  Add  to  these  a  pos- 
sible theologic  prepossession  derived  from  the 
Scotch,  a  dramatic  technique  in  which  Scribe  and 
Sophocles  are  not  absent,  and  we  have  to  deal 
with  a  disquieting  problem.  Ibsen  was  a  mystery 
to  his  friends  and  foes.  Hence  the  avidity  with 
which  he  is  claimed  by  idealists,  realists,  socialists, 
320 


IBSEN 

anarchists,  symbolists,  by  evangelical  folk,  and 
by  agnostics.  There  were  in  him  many  contra- 
dictory elements.  Denounced  as  a  pessimist,  all 
his  great  plays  have,  notwithstanding,  an  unmis- 
takable message  of  hope,  from  Brand  to  When 
We  Dead  Awake.  An  idealist  he  is,  but  one  who 
has  realised  the  futility  of  dreams;  like  all  world- 
satirists,  he  castigates  to  purify.  His  realism  is 
largely  a  matter  of  surfaces,  and  if  we  care  to  look 
we  may  find  the  symbol  lodged  in  the  most  prosaic 
of  his  pieces.  His  anarchy  consists  in  a  firm  ad- 
herence to  the  doctrine  of  individualism;  Emer- 
son and  Thoreau  are  of  his  spiritual  kin.  In 
both  there  is  the  contempt  for  mob-rule,  mob- 
opinion;  for  both  the  minority  is  the  true  rational 
unit;  and  with  both  there  is  a  certain  aloofness 
from  mankind.  Yet  we  do  not  denounce  Em- 
erson or  Thoreau  as  enemies  of  the  people.  To 
be  candid,  Ibsen's  belief  in  the  rights  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  rather  naive  and  antiquated,  belonging 
as  it  does  to  the  tempestuous  period  of  '48.  Max 
Stirner  was  far  in  advance  of  the  playwright  in 
his  political  and  menacing  egoism;  while  Nietz- 
sche, who  loathed  democracy,  makes  Ibsen's 
aristocracy  timid  by  comparison. 

Ibsen  can  hardly  be  called  a  philosophic 
anarch,  for  the  body  of  doctrine,  either  political 
or  moral,  deducible  from  his  plays  is  so  perplex- 
ing by  reason  of  its  continual  affirmation  and  ne- 
gation, so  blurred  by  the  kaleidoscopic  clash  of 
character,  that  one  can  only  fuse  these  mutually 
exclusive  qualities  by  realising  him  as  a  dramatist 
321 


EGOISTS 

who  has  created  a  microcosmic  world;  in  a  word, 
we  must  look  upon  the  man  as  a  creator  of  dra- 
matic character  not  as  a  theorist.  And  his  char- 
acters have  all  the  logical  illogicality  of  life. 

Several  traits  emerge  from  this  welter  of  cross- 
purposes  and  action.  Individualism  is  a  lead- 
ing motive  from  the  first  to  the  last  play;  a  strong 
sense  of  moral  responsibility  —  an  oppressive 
sense,  one  is  tempted  to  add  —  is  blended 
with  a  curious  flavour  of  Calvinism,  in  which 
are  traces  of  predestination.  A  more  singular 
equipment  for  a  modern  dramatist  is  barely 
conceivable.  Soon  we  discover  that  Ibsen  is 
playing  with  the  antique  dramatic  counters 
under  another  name.  Free-will  and  determinism 
—  what  are  these  but  the  very  breath  of  classic 
tragedy!  In  one  of  his  rare  moments  of  expan- 
sion he  said:  "Many  things  and  much  upon 
which  my  later  work  has  turned  —  the  contra- 
diction between  endowment  and  desire,  between 
capacity  and  will,  at  once  the  entire  tragedy 
and  comedy  of  mankind  —  may  here  be  dim- 
ly discerned."  Moral  responsibility  evaded  is 
a  favourite  theme  of  his.  No  Furies  of  the  Greek 
drama  pursued  their  victims  with  such  relent- 
less vengeance  as  pursues  the  unhappy  wretches 
of  Ibsen.  In  Ghosts,  the  old  scriptural  wisdom 
concerning  the  sins  of  parents  is  vividly  ex- 
pounded, though  the  heredity  doctrine  is  sadly 
overworked.  As  in  other  plays  of  his,  there  were 
false  meanings  read  into  the  interpretation;  the 
realism  of  Ghosts  is  negligible;  the  symbol  looms 
322 


IBSEN 

large  in  every  scene.  Search  Ibsen  throughout 
and  it  will  be  found  that  his  subject-matter  is 
fundamentally  the  same  as  that  of  all  great 
masters  of  tragedy.  It  is  his  novel  manner  of 
presentation,  his  transposition  of  themes  hitherto 
treated  epically,  to  the  narrow,  unheroic  scale  of 
middle-class  family  life  that  blinded  critics  to  his 
true  significance.  This  tuning  down  of  the  heroic, 
this  reversal  of  the  old  aesthetic  order  extorted  bitter 
remonstrances.  If  we  kill  the  ideal  in  art  and 
life,  what  have  we  left?  was  the  cry.  But  Ibsen 
attacks  false  as  well  as  true  ideals  and  does  not 
always  desert  us  after  stripping  us  of  our  self- 
respect.  A  poet  of  doubt  he  is,  who  seldom  at- 
tempts a  solution;  but  he  is  also  a  puritan  —  a 
positivist  puritan  —  and  his  scourgings  are  an 
equivalent  for  that  katharsis,  in  the  absence  of 
which  Aristotle  denied  the  title  of  tragedy. 

Consider,  then,  how  Ibsen  was  misunderstood. 
Setting  aside  the  historical  and  poetic  works,  we 
are  confronted  in  the  social  plays  by  the  average 
man  and  woman  of  every-day  life.  They  live, 
as  a  rule,  in  mediocre  circumstances;  they  are 
harried  by  the  necessities  of  quotidian  existence. 
Has  this  undistinguished  bourgeoisie  the  poten- 
tialities of  romance,  of  tragedy,  of  beauty? 
Wait,  says  Ibsen,  and  you  will  see  your  own  soul, 
the  souls  of  the  man  and  woman  who  jostle  you 
in  the  street,  the  same  soul  in  palace  or  hovel,  that 
orchestra  of  cerebral  sensations,  the  human  soul. 
And  it  is  the  truth  he  speaks.  We  follow  with 
growing  uneasiness  his  exposition  of  a  soul.  The 
323 


EGOISTS 

spectacle  is  not  pleasing.  In  his  own  magical 
but  charmless  way  the  souls  of  his  people  are 
turned  inside  out  during  an  evening.  No  mono- 
logues, no  long  speeches,  no  familiar  machinery 
of  the  drama,  are  employed.  But  the  miracle  is 
there.  You  face  yourself.  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
public  and  critic  alike  waged  war  against  this 
showman  of  souls,  this  new  psychologist  of  the 
unflattering,  this  past  master  of  disillusionment? 
For  centuries  poets,  tragic  and  comic,  satiric 
and  lyric,  have  been  exalting,  teasing,  mocking, 
and  lulling  mankind.  When  Aristophanes  flayed 
his  victims  he  sang  a  merry  tune;  Shakespeare, 
with  Olympian  amiability,  portrayed  saint  and 
sinner  alike  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  divine 
music.  But  Ibsen  does  not  cajole,  amuse,  or 
bribe  with  either  just  or  specious  illusions.  He  is 
determined  to  tell  the  truth  of  our  microcosmic 
baseness.  The  truth  is  his  shibboleth.  And 
when  enounced  its  sound  is  not  unlike  the  chant- 
ing of  a  Nox  Irae.  He  lifted  the  ugly  to  heroic 
heights;  the  ignoble  he  analysed  with  the  cold 
ardour  of  a  moral  biologist  —  the  ignoble,  that 
*' sublime  of  the  lower  slopes,"  as  Flaubert  has  it. 
This  psychological  method  was  another  rock 
of  offence.  Why  transform  the  playhouse  into 
a  school  of  metaphysics  ?.  But  Ibsen  is  not  a  meta- 
physician and  his  characters  are  never  abstrac- 
tions; instead,  they  are  very  lively  humans.  They 
offend  those  who  believe  the  theatre  to  be  a  place 
of  sentimentality  or  clowning;  these  same  Ibsen 
men  and  women  offend  the  lovers  of  Shakespeare 
324 


IBSEN 

and  the  classics.  We  know  they  are  real,  yet  we 
dislike  them  as  we  dislike  animals  trained  to  imi- 
tate humanity  too  closely.  The  simian  gestures 
cause  a  feeling  of  repulsion  in  both  cases;  surely 
we  are  not  of  such  stock!  And  we  move  away. 
So  do  we  sometimes  turn  from  the  Ibsen  stage 
when  human  souls  are  made  to  go  through  a 
series  of  sorrowful  evolutions  by  their  stern  trainer. 
To  what  purpose  such  revelations?  Is  it  art? 
Is  not  our  ideal  of  a  nobler  humanity  shaken  ? 

Ibsen's  report  of  the  human  soul  as  he  sees  it 
is  his  right,  the  immemorial  right  of  priest, 
prophet,  or  artist.  All  our  life  is  a  huge  lie  if  this 
right  be  denied;  from  the  Preacher  to  Schopen- 
hauer, from  ^Eschylus  to  Moli^re,  the  man  who 
reveals,  in  parable  or  as  in  a  mirror,  the  soul  of 
his  fellow-being  is  a  man  who  is  a  benefactor  of 
his  kind,  if  he  be  not  a  cynical  spirit  that  de- 
nies. Ibsen  is  a  satirist  of  a  superior  degree; 
he  has  the  gift  of  creating  a  Weltspiegel  in  which 
we  see  the  shape  of  our  souls.  He  is  never  the 
cynic,  though  he  has  portrayed  the  cynic  in  his 
plays.  He  has  too  much  moral  earnestness  to 
view  the  world  merely  as  a  vile  jest.  That  he  is 
an  artist  is  acknowledged.  And  for  the  ideals 
dear  to  us  which  he  so  savagely  attacks,  he  so 
clears  the  air  about  some  old  familiar,  mist- 
haunted  ideal  of  duty,  that  we  wonder  if  we  have 
hitherto  mistaken  its  meaning. 

From  being  denounced  as  a  corrupter  of  youth, 
an  anarch  of  letters,  a  debaser  of  current  moral 
coin,  we  have  learned  to  view  him  as  a  force  ma- 
■  325 


EGOISTS 

king  for  righteousness,  as  a  master  of  his  craft, 
and  as  a  creator  of  a  large  gallery  of  remarkably 
vivid  human  characters.  We  know  now  that 
many  modern  dramatists  have  carried  their  pails 
to  this  vast  northern  lake  and  from  its  pine- 
hemmed  and  sombre  waters  have  secretly  drawn 
sparkling  inspiration. 

The  truth  is  that  Ibsen  can  be  no  longer  de- 
nied —  we  exclude  the  wilfully  blind  —  by  critic 
or  public.  He  is  too  big  a  man  to  be  locked  up 
in  a  library  as  if  he  were  full  of  vague  forbidden 
wickedness.  When  competently  interpreted  he 
is  never  offensive;  the  scenes  to  which  the  crit- 
ics refer  as  smacking  of  sex  are  mildness  itself 
compared  to  the  doings  of  Sardou's  lascivious 
marionettes.  In  the  theatrical  sense  his  are  not 
sex  plays,  as  are  those  of  Dumas  the  younger. 
He  discusses  woman  as  a  social  as  well  as  a 
psychical  problem.  Any  picture  of  love  is  toler- 
ated so  it  be  frankly  sentimental;  but  let  Ibsen 
mention  the  word  sex  and  there  is  a  call  to  arms 
by  the  moral  policemen  of  the  drama.  Thus, 
by  some  critical  hocus-pocus  the  world  was  led 
for  years  to  believe  that  this  lofty  thinker,  moral- 
ist, and  satirist  concealed  an  immoral  teacher. 
It  is  an  old  trick  of  the  enemy  to  place  upon  an 
author's  shoulders  the  doings  and  sayings  of  his 
mimic  people.  Ibsen  was  fathered  with  all  the 
sins  of  his  characters.  Instead  of  being  studied 
from  life,  they  were,  so  many  averred,  the  result 
of  a  morbid  brain,  the  brain  of  a  pessimist  and  a 
hater  of  his  kind. 

326 


IBSEN 

We  have  seen  that  Ibsen  oflfended  by  his  disre- 
gard of  academic  dramatic  attitudes.  His  per- 
sonages are  ordinary,  yet  like  Browning's  mean- 
est soul  they  have  a  human  side  to  show  us.  The 
inherent  stuff  of  his  plays  is  tragic;  but  the  hero 
and  heroine  do  not  stamp,  stalk,  or  spout  blank 
verse;  it  is  the  tragedy  of  life  without  the  sop  of 
sentiment  usually  administered  by  second-rate 
poets.  Missing  the  colour  and  decoration,  the 
pretty  music,  and  the  eternal  simper  of  the  sen- 
sual, we  naturally  turn  our  back  on  such  a  writer. 
If  he  knows  souls,  he  certainly  does  not  under- 
stand the  box-office.  This  for  the  negative  side. 
On  the  positive,  the  apparent  baldness  of  the 
narrative,  the  ugliness  of  his  men  and  women, 
their  utterance  of  ideas  foreign  to  cramped,  con- 
vention-ridden lives,  mortify  us  immeasurably. 
The  tale  always  ends  badly  or  sadly.  And 
when  one  of  his  characters  begins  to  talk  about 
the  *'joy  of  life,"  it  is  the  gloom  of  life  that  is 
evoked.  The  women  —  and  here  is  the  shock 
to  our  masculine  vanity  —  the  women  assert 
themselves  too  much,  telling  men  that  they  are 
not  what  they  believe  themselves  to  be.  Lastly, 
the  form  of  the  Ibsen  play  is  compact  with  ideas 
and  emotion.  We  usually  don't  go  to  the  theatre 
to  think  or  to  feel.  With  Ibsen  we  must  think, 
and  think  closely;  we  must  feel  —  worse  still, 
be  thrilled  to  our  marrow  by  the  spectacle  of  our 
own  spiritual  skeletons.  No  marvellous  music 
is  there  to  heal  the  wounded  nerves  as  in  Tristan 
and  Isolde;  no  prophylactic  for  the  merciless 
327 


EGOISTS 

acid  of  the  dissector.  We  either  breathe  a  rarefied 
atmosphere  in  his  Brand  and  in  When  We  Dead 
Awake,  or  else,  in  the  social  drama,  the  air  is  so 
dense  with  the  intensity  of  the  closely  wrought 
moods  that  we  gasp  as  if  in  the  chamber  of  a 
diving-bell.     Human,  all  too  human! 

Protean  in  his  mental  and  spiritual  activities, 
a  hater  of  shams  —  religious,  political,  and 
social  shams  —  more  symbolist  than  realist,  in 
assent  with  Goethe  that  no  material  is  unfit  for 
poetic  treatment,  the  substance  of  Ibsen^s  moral- 
ity consists  in  his  declaration  that  men  to  be  free 
must  first  free  themselves.  Once,  in  addressing 
a  group  of  Norwegian  workmen,  he  told  them 
that  man  must  ennoble  himself,  he  must  will  him- 
self free;  *'to  will  is  to  have  to  will,"  as  he  says 
in  Emperor  and  Galilean.  Yet  in  Peer  Gynt 
he  declares  *'to  be  oneself  is  to  slay  oneself." 
Surely  all  this  is  not  very  radical.  He  wrote  to 
Georg  Brandes,  that  the  State  was  the  foe  of  the 
individual;  therefore  the  State  must  go.  But  the 
revolution  must  be  one  of  the  spirit.  Ibsen  ever 
despised  socialism,  and  after  his  mortification 
over  the  fiasco  of  the  Paris  Commune  he  had 
never  a  good  word  for  that  vain  legend :  Liberty, 
Equality,  Fraternity.  Brandes  relates  that  while 
Ibsen  wished  —  in  one  of  his  poems  —  to  place  a 
torpedo  under  the  social  ark,  there  was  also  a 
time  when  he  longed  to  use  the  knout  on  the 
willing  slaves  of  a  despised  social  system. 

Perhaps  the  main  cause  of  Ibsen's  offending 
is  his  irony.  The  world  forgives  much,  irony 
328 


IBSEN 

never,  for  irony  is  the  ivory  tower  of  the  intellec- 
tual, the  last  refuge  of  the  original.  It  is  not  the 
intellectual  irony  of  Meredith,  nor  the  playful 
irony  of  Anatole  France,  but  a  veiled  corrosive 
irony  that  causes  you  to  tread  suspiciously  every 
yard  of  his  dramatic  domain.  The  "second  in- 
tention," the  secondary  dialogue,  spoken  of  by 
Maeterlinck,  in  the  Ibsen  plays  is  very  discon- 
certing to  those  who  prefer  their  drama  free  from 
enigma.  Otherwise  his  dialogue  is  a  model  for 
future  dramatists.  It  is  clarity  itself  and,  closely 
woven,  it  has  the  characteristic  accents  of  nature. 
Read,  we  feel  its  gripping  logic;  spoken  by  an 
actor,  it  tingles  with  vitality. 

For  the  student  there  is  a  fascination  in  the  co- 
hesiveness  of  these  dramas.  Ibsen's  mind  was  like 
a  lens;  it  focussed  the  refracted,  scattered,  and 
broken  lights  of  opinions  and  theories  of  his  day 
upon  the  contracted  space  of  his  stage.  In  a 
fluid  state  the  ideas  that  crystallised  in  his  prose 
series  are  to  be  found  in  his  earliest  work;  there 
is  a  remorseless  fastening  of  link  to  link  in  the 
march-like  movement  of  his  plays.  Their  au- 
thor seems  to  delight  in  battering  down  in  Ghosts 
what  he  had  preached  in  A  Doll's  House;  The 
Enemy  of  the  People  exalted  the  individual  man, 
though  Ghosts  taught  that  a  certain  kind  of  per- 
sonal liberty  is  deadly;  The  Wild  Duck,  which 
follows,  is  another  puzzle,  for  in  it  the  misguided 
idealist  is  pilloried  for  destroying  homes  by  his 
truth-telling,  dangerous  tongue;  Rosmersholm 
follows  with  its  portrayal  of  lonely  souls;  and 
329 


EGOISTS 

the  danger  of  filling  old  botdes  with  the  fer- 
menting wines  of  new  ideas  is  set  forth;  in  The 
Lady  from  the  Sea  free-will,  the  will  to  love,  is 
lauded,  though  Rebekka  West  and  Rosmersholm 
perished  because  of  their  exercise  of  this  same 
will;  Hedda  Gabler  shows  the  converse  of  EUida 
Wangel's  "  will  to  power."  Hedda  is  a  creature 
wholly  alive  and  shocking.  Ibsen  stuns  us  again, 
for  if  it  is  healthy  to  be  individual  and  to  lead 
your  own  life,  in  neurasthenic  Hedda's  case  it 
leads  to  a  catastrophe  which  wrecks  a  household. 
This  game  of  contradiction  is  continued  in 
The  Master-Builder,  a  most  potent  exposition 
of  human  motives.  Solness  is  sick-brained 
because  of  his  loveless  egoism.  Hilda  Wangel, 
the  "younger  generation,"  a  Hedda  Gabler  h 
'  rehours,  that  he  so  feared  would  come  knocking 
at  his  door,  awakens  in  him  his  dead  dreams, 
arouses  his  slumbering  self;  curiously  enough,  if 
the  ordinary  standards  of  success  be  adduced,  he 
goes  to  his  destruction  when  he  again  climbs  the 
dizzy  spire.  In  John  Gabriel  Borkman  the  alle- 
gory is  clearer.  Sacrificing  love  to  a  base  am- 
bition, to  "commercialism,"  Borkman  at  the  close 
of  his  great  and  miserable  life  discovers  that  he 
has  committed  the  one  unpardonable  offence:  he 
has  slain  the  love-life  in  the  woman  he  loved, 
and  for  the  sake  of  gold.  So  he  is  a  failure,  and, 
like  Peer  Gynt,  he  is  ready  for  the  Button- 
Moulder  with  his  refuse-heap,  who  lies  in  wait 
for  all  cowardly  and  incomplete  souls.  The 
Epilogue  returns  to  the  mountains,  the  Ibsen 
330 


IBSEN 

symbol  of  freedom,  and  there  we  learn  for  the 
last  time  that  love  is  greater  than  art,  that  love  is 
life.     And  the  dead  of  life  awake. 

The  immorality  of  these  plays  is  so  well  con- 
cealed that  only  abnormal  moralists  detect 
it.  It  may  be  admitted  that  Ibsen,  like  Shake- 
speare, manifests  a  preference  for  the  man  who 
fails.  What  is  new  is  the  art  with  which  this  idea 
is  developed.  The  Ibsen  play  begins  where  other 
plays  end.  The  form  is  the  "amplified  catastro- 
phe" of  Sophocles.  After  marriage  the  curtain 
is  rung  up  on  the  true  drama  of  life,  therefore 
marriage  is  a  theme  which  constantly  preoccupies 
this  modern  poet.  He  regards  it  from  all  sides,  ask- 
ing whether  "  by  self-surrender,  self-realisation  may 
be  achieved."  His  speech  delivered  once  before  a 
ladies'  club  at  Christiania  proves  that  he  is  not 
a  champion  of  latter-day  woman's  rights.  "  The 
women  will  solve  the  question  of  mankind,  but 
they  must  do  so  as  mothers."  Yet  Nora  Helmer, 
when  she  slammed  the  door  of  her  doll's  home, 
caused  an  echo  in  the  heart  of  every  intelligent 
woman  in  Christendom.  It  is  not  necessary  now 
to  ask  whether  a  woman  would,  or  should,  de- 
sert her  children;  Nora's  departure  was  only  the 
symbol  of  her  liberty,  the  gesture  of  a  newly 
awakened  individuality.  Ibsen  did  not  preach 
—  as  innocent  persons  of  both  sexes  and  all  anti- 
Ibsenites  believe  —  that  woman  should  throw  over- 
board her  duties;  this  is  an  absurd  construction. 
As  well  argue  that  the  example  of  Othello  must 
set  jealous  husbands  smothering  their  wives.  A 
.331 


EGOISTS 

Doll's  House  enacted  has  caused  no  more  evil 
than  Othello.  It  was  the  plea  for  woman  as  a 
human  being,  neither  more  nor  less  than  man, 
which  the  dramatist  made.  Our  withers  must 
have  been  well  wrung,  for  it  aroused  a  whirlwind 
of  wrath,  and  henceforth  the  house-key  became 
the  symbol  of  feminine  supremacy.  Yet  in  his 
lovely  drama  of  pity  and  resignation,  Little  Eyolf, 
the  tenderest  from  his  pen,  the  poet  set  up  a  coun- 
ter-figure to  Nora,  demonstrating  the  duties  parents 
owe  their  children. 

Without  exaggeration,  he  may  be  said  to  have 
discovered  for  the  stage  the  modern  woman.  No 
longer  the  sleek  cat  of  the  drawing-room,  or  the 
bayadere  of  luxury,  or  the  wild  outlaw  of  society, 
the  "emancipated"  Ibsen  woman  is  the  sensible 
woman,  the  womanly  woman,  bearing  a  not  re- 
mote resemblance  to  the  old-fashioned  woman, 
who  calmly  accepts  her  share  of  the  burdens  and 
responsibilities  of  life,  single  or  wedded,  though 
she  insists  on  her  rights  as  a  human  being,  and 
without  a  touch  of  the  heroic  or  the  supra-senti- 
mental. Ibsen  should  not  be  held  responsible 
for  the  caricatures  of  womanhood  evolved  by  his 
disciples.  When  a  woman  evades  her  responsi- 
bilities, when  she  is  frivolous  or  evil,  an  exponent 
of  the  "life-lie"  in  matrimony,  then  Ibsen  grimly 
paints  her  portrait,  and  we  denounce  him  as  cyn- 
ical for  telling  the  truth.  And  truth  is  seldom  a 
welcome  guest.  But  he  knows  that  a  fiddle  can 
be  mended  and  a  bell  not;  and  in  placing  his 
surgeon-like  finger  on  the  sorest  spot  of  our  social 
2>^^ 


IBSEN 

life,  he  sounds  this  bell,  and  when  it  rings  cracked 
he  coldly  announces  the  fact.  But  his  attitude 
toward  marriage  is  not  without  its  mystery.  In 
Love's  Comedy  his  hero  and  heroine  part,  fear- 
ing the  inevitable  shipwreck  in  the  union  of  two 
poetic  hearts  without  the  necessary  means  of  a 
prosaic  subsistence.  In  the  later  plays,  marriage 
for  gain,  for  home,  for  anything  but  love,  brings 
upon  its  victims  the  severest  consequences;  John 
Gabriel  Borkman,  Hedda,  Dora,  Mrs.  Alving, 
Allmers,  Rubek,  are  examples.  The  idea  of 
man's  cruelty  to  man  or  woman,  or  woman's 
cruelty  to  woman  or  man,  lashes  him  into  a  fury. 
Then  he  becomes  Ibsen  the  Berserker. 

Therefore  let  us  beware  the  pitfalls  dug  by  some 
Ibsen  exegetists;  the  genius  of  the  dramatist  is 
too  vast  and  versatile  to  be  pinned  down  to  a 
single  formula.  If  you  believe  that  he  is  dangerous 
to  young  people,  let  it  be  admitted  —  but  so  are 
Thackeray,  Balzac,  and  Hugo.  So  is  any  strong 
thinker.  Ibsen  is  a  powerful  dissolvent  for  an 
imagination  clogged  by  theories  of  life,  low  ideals, 
and  the  facile  materialism  that  exalts  the  letter 
but  slays  the  spirit.  He  is  a  foe  to  compromise, 
a  hater  of  the  half-way,  the  roundabout,  the  weak- 
willed,  above  all,  a  hater  of  the  truckling  politician 
—  he  is  a  very  Torquemada  to  politicians.  At 
the  best  there  is  ethical  grandeur  in  his  concep- 
tions, and  if  the  moral  stress  is  unduly  felt,  if  he 
tears  asunder  the  veil  of  our  beloved  illusions  and 
shows  us  as  we  are,  it  is  because  of  his  righteous 
indignation  against  the  platitudinous  hypocrisy 
333 


EGOISTS 

of  modern  life.  His  unvarying  code  is:  "So  to 
conduct  one's  life  as  to  realise  oneself."  Withal 
an  artist,  not  the  evangelist  of  a  new  gospel,  not 
the  social  reformer,  not  the  exponent  of  science 
in  the  drama.  These  titles  have  been  thrust 
upon  him  by  his  overheated  admirers.  He  never 
posed  as  a  prophet.  He  is  poet,  psychologist, 
skald,  dramatist,  not  always  a  soothsayer.  The 
artist  in  him  preserved  him  from  the  fate  of  the 
didactic  Tolstoy.  With  the  Russian  he  shares  the 
faculty  of  emptying  souls.  Ibsen,  who  vaguely 
recalls  Stendhal  in  his  clear-eyed  vision  and  dry 
irony,  is  without  a  trace  of  the  Frenchman's  cyni- 
cism or  dilettantism.  Like  all  dramatists  of  the 
first  rank,  the  Norwegian  has  in  him  much  of  the 
seer,  yet  he  always  avoided  the  pontifical  tone;  he 
may  be  a  sphinx,  but  he  never  plays  the  oracle. 
His  categorical  imperative,  however,  "All  or  noth- 
ing," does  not  bekr  the  strain  of  experience.  Life 
is  simpler,  is  not  to  be  lived  at  such  an  intolerable 
tension.  The  very  illusions  he  seeks  to  destroy 
would  be  supplanted  by  others.  Man  exists  be- 
cause of  his  illusions.  Without  the  "life-lie"  he 
would  perish  in  the  mire.  His  illusions  are  his 
heritage  from  aeons  of  ancestors.  The  classic  view 
considered  man  as  the  centre  of  the  universe; 
that  position  has  been  ruthlessly  altered  by  sci- 
ence —  we  are  now  only  tiny  points  of  conscious- 
ness in  unthinkable  space.  Isolated  then,  true 
children  of  our  inconsiderable  planet,  we  have  in 
us  traces  of  our  predecessors.  True,  one  may  be 
disheartened  by  the  pictures  of  unheroic  mean- 
334 


IBSEN 

ness  and  petty  corruption,  the  ill-disguised  in- 
stincts of  ape  and  tiger,  in  the  prose  plays,  even 
to  the  extent  of  calling  them  —  as  did  M.  Mel- 
chior  de  Vogue,  Flaubert's  Bouvard  et  P^cuchet 
—  a  grotesque  Iliad  of  Nihilism.  But  we  need 
not  despair.  If  Ibsen  seemed  to  say  for  a  period, 
"  Evil,  be  thou  my  good,"  his  final  words  in  the  Epi- 
logue are  those  of  pity  and  peace:  Pax  vobiscum! 


II 


This  old  man  with  the  head  and  hair  of  an 
electrified  Schopenhauer  and  the  torso  of  a  giant, 
his  temperament  coinciding  with  his  curt,  im- 
perious name,  left  behind  him  twenty-six  plays, 
one  or  more  in  manuscript.  A  volume  of  very 
subjective  poems  concludes  this  long  list;  among 
the  dramas  are  at  least  three  of  heroic  proportion 
and  length.  Ibsen  was  born  at  Skien,  Norway, 
1828.  His  forebears  were  Danish,  German,  Scotch, 
and  Norwegian.  His  father,  a  man  of  means, 
failed  in  business,  and  at  the  age  of  eight  the  little 
Henrik  had  to  face  poverty.  His  schooling  was 
of  the  slightest.  He  was  not  much  of  a  classical 
scholar  and  soon  he  was  apprenticed  to  an  apothe- 
cary at  Grimstad,  the  very  name  of  which  evokes 
a  vision  of  gloominess.  He  did  not  prove  a  suc- 
cess as  a  druggist,  as  he  spent  his  spare  time  read- 
ing and  caricaturing  his  neighbours.  His  verse- 
making  was  desultory,  his  accustomed  mien  an 
unhappy  combination  of  Hamlet  and  Byron;  his 
misanthropy  at  this  period  recalls  that  of  the 
335 


EGOISTS 

young  Schopenhauer.  His  favourite  reading  was 
poetry  and  history,  and  he  had  a  predilection  for 
sketching  and  conjuring  tricks.  It  might  be 
pointed  out  that  here  in  the  raw  were  the  aptitudes 
of  a  future  dramatist:  poetry,  pictures,  illusion. 
In  the  year  1850  Ibsen  published  his  first  drama, 
derived  from  poring  over  Sallust  and  Cicero. 
It  was  a  creditable  effort  of  youth,  and  to  the 
discerning  it  promised  well  for  his  literary  future. 
He  was  gifted,  without  doubt,  and  from  the  first 
he  sounded  the  tocsin  of  revolt.  Pessimistic  and 
rebellious  his  poems  were;  he  had  tasted  misery, 
his  home  was  an  unhappy  one  —  there  was  little 
love  in  it  for  him  —  and  his  earliest  memories  were 
clustered  about  the  town  jail,  the  hospital,  and 
the  lunatic  asylum.  These  images  were  no  doubt 
the  cause  of  his  bitter  and  desperate  frame  of 
mind;  grinding  poverty,  the  poverty  of  a  third- 
rate  provincial  town  in  Norway,  was  the  climax 
of  his  misery.  And  then,  too,  the  scenery,  rugged 
and  noble,  and  the  climate,  depressing  for  months, 
all  had  their  effect  upon  his  sensitive  imagination. 
From  the  start,  certain  conceptions  of  woman 
took  root  in  his  mind  and  reappear  in  nearly  all 
his  dramas.  Catalina's  wife,  Aurelia,  and  the 
vestal  Furia,  who  are  reincarnated  in  the  Dagny 
and  Hjordis  of  his  Vikings,  reappear  in  A  Doll's 
House,  Hedda  Gabler,  and  at  the  last  in  When  We 
Dead  Awake.  One  is  the  eternal  womanly,  the 
others  the  destructive  feminine  principle,  woman 
the  conqueror.  As  Catalina  is  a  rebel  against 
circumstances,  so  are  Maja  and  the  sculptor  in 
336 


IBSEN 

the  Epilogue  of  1899.  There  is  almost  a  half  cen- 
tury of  uninterrupted  composition  during  which 
this  group  of  men  and  women  disport  themselves. 
Brand,  a  poetic  rather  than  an  acting  drama,  is 
no  exception;  Brand  and  the  Sheriff,  Agnes  and 
Gerda.  These  types  are  cunningly  varied,  their 
traits  so  concealed  as  to  be  recognised  only  after 
careful  study.  But  the  characteristics  of  each 
are  alike.  The  monotony  of  this  procedure  is 
redeemed  by  the  unity  of  conception — Ibsen  is 
the  reflective  poet,  the  poet  who  conceives  the 
idea  and  then  clothes  it,  therein  differing  from 
Shakespeare  and  Goethe,  to  whom  form  and  idea 
are  simultaneously  bom. 

In  March,  1850,  he  went  to  Christiania  and 
entered  Heltberg's  school  as  a  preparation  for  the 
university.  His  studies  were  brief.  He  became 
involved  in  a  boyish  revolutionary  outburst  —  in 
company  with  his  life-long  friend,  the  good- 
hearted  Bjornstjerne  Bjornson,  who  helped  him 
many  times  —  and  while  nothing  serious  occurred, 
it  caused  the  young  man  to  effervesce  with  literary 
plans  and  the  new  ideas  of  his  times.  The  War- 
rior's Tomb,  his  second  play,  was  accepted  and 
actually  performed  at  the  Christiania  theatre. 
The  author  gave  up  his  university  dreams  and 
began  to  earn  a  rude  living  by  his  pen.  He  em- 
barked in  newspaper  enterprises  which  failed. 
An  extremist  politically,  he  soon  made  a  crop  of 
enemies,  the  wisest  crop  a  strong  character  can 
raise;  but  he  often  worked  on  an  empty  stomach 
in  consequence.    The  metal  of  the  man  showed 

337 


EGOISTS 

from  the  first:  endure  defeat,  but  no  compro- 
mise! He  went  to  Bergen  in  1851  and  was  ap- 
pointed theatre  poet  at  a  small  salary;  this  com- 
prised a  travelling  stipend.  Ibsen  saw  the  Copen- 
hagen and  Dresden  theatres  with  excellent  results. 
His  eyes  were  opened  to  the  possibilities  of  his 
craft,  and  on  his  return  he  proved  a  zealous 
stage  manager.  He  composed,  in  1853,  St.  John's 
Night,  which  was  played  at  his  theatre,  and  in 
1857  Fru  Inger  of  Oestratt  was  written.  It  is 
old-fashioned  in  form,  but  singularly  life-like  in 
characterization  and  fruitful  in  situations.  The 
story  is  semi-historical.  In  the  Lady  Inger  we 
see  a  foreshadowing  of  his  strong,  vengeful 
women.  Olaf  Liljekrans  need  not  detain  us. 
The  Vikings  (1858)  is  a  sterling  specimen  of 
drama,  in  which  legend  and  history  are  artfully 
blended.  The  Feast  of  Solhaug  (1857)  was  very 
successful  in  its  treatment  of  the  saga,  and  is  com- 
paratively cheerful. 

Ibsen  left  Bergen  to  take  the  position  of  director 
at  the  Norwegian  Theatre,  Christiania.  He  re- 
mained there  until  1862,  staging  all  manner  of 
plays,  from  Shakespeare  to  Scribe.  The  value 
of  these  years  was  incalculable  in  his  technical  de- 
velopment. A  poet  born  and  by  self-discipline 
developed,  he  was  now  master  of  a  difficult  art, 
an  art  that  later  he  never  lost,  even  when,  weary 
of  the  conventional  comedy  of  manners,  he  sought 
to  spiritualize  the  form  and  give  us  the  psychology 
of  commonplace  souls.  It  may  be  noted  that, 
despite  the  violinist  Ole  Bull's  generous  support, 
338 


IBSEN 

the  new  theatre  endured  only  five  years.  More 
than  passing  stress  should  be  laid  upon  this  forma- 
tive period.  His  experience  of  these  silent  years 
was  bitter,  but  rich  in  spiritual  recompense. 
After  some  difficulty  in  securing  a  paltry  pension 
from  his  government,  Ibsen  was  enabled  to  leave 
Norway,  which  had  become  a  charnel-house  to 
him  since  the  Danish  war  with  Germany,  and  with 
his  young  wife  he  went  to  Rome.  Thenceforth 
his  was  a  gypsy  career.  He  lived  in  Rome,  in 
Dresden,  in  Munich,  and  again  in  Rome.  He 
spent  his  summers  in  the  Austrian  Tyrol,  at  Sor- 
rento, and  occasionally  in  his  own  land.  His 
was  a  self-imposed  exile,  and  he  did  not  return  to 
Christiania  to  reside  permanently  until  an  old,  but 
famous  man.  Silent,  unsociable,  a  man  of  harsh 
moods,  he  was  to  those  who  knew  him  an  upright 
character,  an  ideal  husband  and  father.  His 
married  life  had  no  history,  a  sure  sign  of  happi- 
ness, for  he  was  well  mated.  Yet  one  feels  that,  de- 
spite his  wealth,  his  renown,  existence  was  for 
him  a  via  dolorosa.  Ever  the  solitary  dreamer, 
he  wrote  a  play  about  every  two  or  three  years, 
and  from  the  very  beginning  of  his  exile  the  effect  in 
Norway  was  like  unto  the  explosion  of  a  bomb- 
shell. Not  wasting  time  in  answering  his  critics, 
it  was  nevertheless  remarked  that  each  new  piece 
was  a  veiled  reply  to  slanderous  criticism. 
Ghosts  was  absolutely  intended  as  an  answer  to 
the  attacks  upon  A  Doll's  House;  here  is  what 
Nora  would  have  become  if  she  had  been  a  dutiful 
wife,  declares  Ibsen,  in  effect;  and  we  see  Mrs. 
339 


EGOISTS 

Alving  in  her  motherly  agonies.  The  counter- 
blast to  the  criticism  of  Ghosts  was  An  Enemy 
of  the  People;  Dr.  Stockman  is  easily  detected 
as  a  partial  portrait  of  Ibsen. 

Georg  Brandes,  to  whom  the  poet  owes  many 
ideas  as  well  as  sound  criticism,  said  that  early  in  his 
life  a  lyric  Pegasus  had  been  killed  under  Ibsen 
This  striking  hint  of  his  sacrifice  is  supplemented 
by  a  letter  in  which  he  compared  the  education 
of  a  poet  to  that  of  a  dancing  bear.  The  bear  is 
tied  in  a  brewer's  vat  and  a  slow  fire  is  built  under 
the  vat;  the  wretched  animal  is  then  forced  to 
dance.  Life  forces  the  poet  to  dance  by  means 
quite  as  painful;  he  dances  and  the  tears  roll 
down  his  cheeks  all  the  while.  Ibsen  forsook 
poetry  for  prose  and  —  the  dividing  line  never  to 
be  recrossed  is  clearly  indicated  between  Emperor 
and  Galilean  and  The  Pillars  of  Society  —  he 
bestowed  upon  his  country  three  specimens  of 
his  poetic  genius.  As  Italy  fructified  the  genius 
of  Goethe,  so  it  touched  as  with  a  glowing  coal 
the  lips  of  the  young  Northman.  Brand,  a  noble 
epic,  startled  and  horrified  Norway.  In  Rome 
Ibsen  regained  his  equilibrium.  He  saw  his  coun- 
try and  countrymen  more  sanely,  more  steadily, 
though  there  is  a  terrible  fund  of  bitterness  in  this 
dramatic  poem.  The  local  politics  of  Christi- 
ania  no  longer  irritated  him,  and  in  the  hot,  beau- 
tiful South  he  dreamed  of  the  North,  of  his  be- 
loved fiords  and  mountains,  of  ice  and  avalanche, 
of  troll  and  saga.  Luckily  for  those  who  have  not 
mastered  Norwegian,  C.  H.  Herford's  transla- 
340 


IBSEN 

tion  of  Brand  exists,  and,  while  the  translator  de- 
plores his  sins  of  omission,  it  is  a  work  —  as  are 
the  English  versions  of  the  prose  plays  by  William 
Archer  —  that  gives  one  an  excellent  idea  of  the 
original.  In  Brand  (1866)  Ibsen  is  at  his  furthest 
extremity  from  compromise.  This  clergyman 
sacrifices  his  mother,  his  wife,  his  child,  his  own 
life,  to  a  frosty  ideal:  "All  or  nothing."  He  is 
implacable  in  his  ire  against  worldliness,  in  his 
contempt  of  churchmen  that  believe  in  half-way 
measures.  He  perishes  on  the  heights  as  a  voice 
proclaims,  **He  is  the  God  of  Love."  Greatly 
imaginative,  charged  with  spiritual  spleen  and 
wisdom,  Brand  at  once  placed  Ibsen  among  the 
mighty. 

He  followed  it  with  a  new  Odyssey  of  his  soul, 
the  amazing  Peer  Gynt  (1867),  in  which  his  hu- 
mour, hitherto  a  latent  quality,  his  fantasy,  bold 
invention,  and  the  poetic  evocation  of  the  faithful, 
exquisite  Solveig,  are  further  testimony  to  his 
breadth  of  resource.  Peer  Gynt  is  all  that  Brand 
was  not:  whimsical,  worldly,  fantastic,  weak- 
willed,  not  so  vicious  as  perverse;  he  is  very  sel- 
fish, one  who  was  to  himself  sufiicient,  therefore 
a  failure.  The  will,  if  it  frees,  may  also  kill.  It 
killed  the  soul  of  Peer.  There  are  pages  of  un- 
flagging humour,  poetry,  and  observation;  scene 
dissolves  into  scene;  Peer  travels  over  half  the 
earth,  is  rich,  is  successful,  is  poor;  and  at  the 
end  meets  the  Button-Moulder,  that  ironical 
shadow  who  tells  him  what  he  has  become.  We 
hear  the  Boyg,  the  spirit  of  compromise,  with  its 
341 


EGOISTS 

huge,  deadly,  coiling  lengths,  gruffly  bid  Pee^  to 
"go  around."  Facts  of  life  are  to  be  slunk  about, 
never  to  be  faced.  Peer  comes  to  harbour  in  the 
arms  of  his  deserted  Solveig.  The  resounding 
sarcasm,  the  ferociousness  of  the  attack  on  all 
the  idols  of  the  national  cavern,  raised  a  storm  in 
Norway  that  did  not  abate  for  years.  Ibsen  was 
again  a  target  for  the  bolts  of  critical  and  public 
hatred.     Peer  Gynt  is  the  Scandinavian  Faust. 

Having  purged  his  soul  of  this  perilous  stuff, 
the  poet,  in  1873,  finished  his  double  drama 
Emperor  and  Galilean,  not  a  success  dramatically, 
but  a  strong,  interesting  work  for  the  library, 
though  it  saw  the  footlights  at  Berlin,  Leipsic, 
and  Christiania.  The  apostate  Emperor  Julian 
is  the  protagonist.  We  discern  Ibsen  the  mystic 
philosopher  longing  for  his  Third  Kingdom. 

After  a  silence  of  four  years  The  Pillars  of 
Society  appeared.  Like  its  predecessor  in  the 
same  genre,  The  Young  Men's  League,  it  is  a 
prose  drama,  a  study  of  manners,  and  a  scathing 
arraignment  of  civic  dishonesty.  All  the  rancour 
of  its  author  against  the  bourgeois  hypocrisy  of  his 
countrymen  comes  to  the  surface;  as  in  The 
Young  Men's  League  the  vacillating  nature  of  the 
shallow  politician  is  laid  bare.  It  seems  a  trifle 
banal  now,  though  the  canvas  is  large,  the  figures 
animated.  One  recalls  Augier  without  his  Gallic 
espritj  rather  than  the  later  Ibsen.  A  Doll's 
House  was  once  a  household  word,  as  was  Ghosts 
(1881).  There  is  no  need  now  to  retell  the  story 
of  either  play.  Ghosts,  in  particular,  has  an  an- 
342 


IBSEN 

tique  quality,  the  denouement  leaves  us  shivering. 
It  may  be  set  down  as  the  strongest  play  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  also  the  most  harrowing. 
Its  intensity  borders  on  the  hallucinatory.  We 
involuntarily  recall  the  last  act  of  Tristan  and 
Isolde  or  the  final  movement  of  Tschaikowsky's 
Pathetic  symphony.  It  is  the  shrill  discord  be- 
tween the  mediocre  creatures  involved  and  the 
ghastly  punishment  meted  out  to  the  innocent  that 
agitates  and  depresses  us.  Here  are  human  souls 
illuminated  as  if  by  a  lightning  flash;  we  long  for 
the  anticipated  thunder.  It  does  not  sound. 
The  drama  ends  in  silence  —  one  of  those  pauses 
(Ibsen  employs  the  pause  as  does  a  musical  com- 
poser) which  leaves  the  spectator  unstrung.  The 
helpless  sense  of  hovering  about  the  edge  of  a 
bottomless  gulf  is  engendered  by  this  play.  No 
man  could  have  written  it  but  Ibsen,  and  we  hope 
that  no  man  will  ever  attempt  a  parallel  perform- 
ance, for  such  art  modulates  across  the  borderland 
of  the  pathologic. 

The  Wild  Duck  (1884)  followed  An  Enemy  of 
the  People  (1882).  It  is  the  most  puzzling  of 
the  prose  dramas  except  The  Master-Builder, 
for  in  it  Ibsen  deliberately  mocks  himself  and  his 
ideals.  It  is,  nevertheless,  a  profoundly  human 
and  moving  work.  Gina  Ekdal,  the  wholesome, 
sensible  wife  of  Ekdal,  the  charlatan  photographer 
—  di  revenant  of  Peer  Gynt  —  has  been  called  a 
feminine  Sancho  Panza.  Gregers  Werle,  the 
meddlesome  truth-teller;  Relling  —  a  sardonic 
incarnation  of  the  author  —  who  believes  in  feed- 
343 


EGOISTS 

ing  humanity  on  the  * 'life-lie "  to  maintain  its 
courage;  the  tiny  Hedwig,  sweetest  and  freshest 
of  Ibsen's  girls  —  these  form  a  memorable  en- 
semble. And  how  the  piece  plays!  Humour  and 
pathos  alternate,  while  the  symbol  is  not  so  re- 
mote that  an  average  audience  need  miss  its 
meaning.  The  end  is  cruel.  Ibsen  is  often 
cruel,  with  the  passionless  indifiference  of  the 
serene  Buddha.  But  he  is  ever  logical.  Nora 
must  leave  her  husband's  house  —  a  "happy 
ending"  would  be  ridiculous  —  and  Hedwig  must 
be  sacrificed  instead  of  the  wild  duck,  or  her  fool 
of  a  father.  There  is  a  battalion  of  minor  char- 
acters in  the  Ibsen  plays  who  recall  Dickens  by 
their  grotesque,  sympathetic  physiognomies.  To 
deny  this  dramatist  humour  is  to  miss  a  third  of 
his  qualities.  His  is  not  the  ventripotent  humour 
of  Rabelais  or  Cervantes;  it  seldom  leaves  us 
without  the  feeling  that  the  poet  is  slyly  laughing 
at  us,  not  with  us,  though  in  the  early  comedies 
there  are  many  broad  and  telling  strokes. 

Rosmersholm  (1886)  is  a  study  of  two  tempera- 
ments. Rebekka  West  is  another  malevolent 
portrait  in  his  gallery  of  dangerous  and  antipa- 
thetic women.  She  ruins  Rosmersholm,  ruins 
herself,  because  she  does  not  discover  this  true 
self  until  too  late.  The  play  illustrates  the  ex- 
traordinary technique  of  the  master.  It  seems 
to  have  been  written  backward;  until  the  third  act 
we  are  not  aware  that  the  peaceful  home  of  the 
Rosmersholms  is  the  battle-field  of  a  malignant 
soul.  The  Ladv  from  the  Sea  ^1888)  illustrates 
344 


IBSEN 

the  thesis  that  love  must  be  free.  The  allegory  is 
rather  strained  and  in  performance  the  play  lacks 
poetic  glamour.  Hedda  Gabler  (1890)  is  a 
masterpiece.  A  more  selfish,  vicious,  cold  nature 
than  Hedda' s  never  stepped  from  the  page  of  a 
Russian  novel  —  Becky  Sharp  and  Madame 
Marneffe  are  lovable  persons  in  comparison. 
She  is  not  in  the  slightest  degree  like  the  stage 
"adventuress,"  but  is  a  magnificent  example  of 
egoism  magnificently  delineated  and  is  the  true 
sister  in  fiction  of  Jijlien  Sorel.  That  she  is  dra- 
matically worth  the  while  Is"  beside  the  question. 
Her  ending  by  a  pistol  shot  is  justice  itself;  alive 
she  fascinates  as  does  some  exotic  reptile.  She 
is  representative  of  her  species,  the  loveless 
woman,  the  petty  hater,  a  Lady  Macbeth  re- 
versed. Ibsen  has  studied  her  with  the  same 
care  and  curiosity  he  bestowed  upon  the  homely 
Gina  Ekdal. 

His  Master-Builder  (1892)  is  the  beginning 
of  the  last  cycle.  A  true  interior  drama,  we  enter 
here  into  the  region  of  the  symbolical.  With 
Ibsen  the  symbol  is  always  an  image,  never  an  ab- 
straction, a  state  of  sensibility,  not  a  formula,  and 
the  student  may  winnow  many  examples  from 
The  Pretenders  (1864),  with  its  "kingship"  idea, 
to  the  Epilogue.  Solness  stands  on  the  heights 
only  to  perish,  but  in  the  full  possession  of  his 
soul.  Hilda  Wangel  is  one  of  the  most  perplex- 
ing characters  to  realise  in  the  modem  theatre. 
She,  with  her  cruelty  and  loveliness  of  perfect 
youth,  is  the  work  of  a  sorcerer  who  holds  us  spell- 

345 


EGOISTS 

bound  while  the  souls  he  has  created  by  his  black 
art  slowly  betray  themselves.  It  may  be  said 
that  all  this  is  not  the  art  of  the  normal  theatre. 
Very  true.  It  more  nearly  resembles  a  dramatic 
confessional  with  a  hidden  auditory  bewitched 
into  listening  to  secrets  never  suspected  of  the 
humanity  that  hedges  us  about  in  street  or  home. 
Ibsen  is  clairvoyant.  He  takes  the  most  familiar 
material  and  holds  it  in  the  light  of  his  imagina- 
tion; straightway  we  see  a  new  world,  a  northern 
dance  of  death,  like  the  ferocious  pictures  of  his 
fellow-countryman,  the  painter  Edvard  Munch. 

Little  Eyolf  (1894)  is  fairly  plain  reading,  with 
some  fine  overtones  of  suffering  and  self-abnega- 
tion. Its  lesson  is  wholly  satisfying.  John 
Gabriel  Borkman  (1896),  written  at  an  age  when 
most  poets  show  declining  power,  is  another 
monument  to  the  vigour  and  genius  of  Ibsen. 
The  story  winds  about  the  shattered  career  of 
a  financier.  There  is  a  secondary  plot,  in  which 
the  parental  curses  come  home  to  roost  —  the 
son,  carefully  reared  to  wipe  away  the  stain  from 
his  father's  name,  prefers  Paris  and  a  rollicking 
life.  The  desolation  under  this  roof-tree  is  al- 
most epical:  two  sisters  in  deadly  antagonism,  a 
blasted  man,  the  old  wolf,  whose  footfalls  in  the 
chamber  above  become  absolutely  sinister  as 
the  play  progresses,  are  made  to  face  the  hard 
logic  of  their  misspent  lives.  The  doctrine  of 
compensation  has  never  had  such  an  exponent  as 
Ibsen. 

In  the  last  of  his  published  plays,  When  We 
346 


IBSEN 

Dead  Awake  (1899),  ^^  ^^^  earlier  and  familiar 
themes  developed  at  moments  with  contrapuntal 
mastery.  Rubek,  the  sculptor,  has  aroused  a* 
love  that  he  never  dared  to  face.  He  married  the 
wrong  woman.  His  early  dream,  the  inspiration 
of  his  master  work,  he  has  lost.  His  art  withers. 
And  when  he  meets  his  Irene,  her  mind  is  full  of 
wandering  ghosts.  To  the  heights,  to  the  same 
peaks  that  Brand  climbed,  they  both  must  mount, 
and  there  they  are  destroyed,  as  was  Brand,  by 
an  avalanche.  Eros  is  the  triumphant  god  of  the 
aged  magician. 


Ill 


It  must  be  apparent  to  those  who  have  not 
read  or  seen  the  Ibsen  plays  that,  despite  this 
huddled  and  foreshortened  account,  they  are  in 
essence  quite  different  from  what  has  been  re- 
ported of  them.  Idealistic,  symbolistic,  moral, 
and  ennobling,  the  Ibsen  drama  was  so  vilified 
by  malice  and  ignorance  that  its  very  name  was 
a  portent  of  evil.  Mad  or  wicked  Ibsen  is  not. 
His  scheme  of  life  and  morals  is  often  oblique 
and  paradoxical,  his  interpretation  of  truths  so 
elliptical  that  we  are  confused.  But  he  is  es- 
sentially sound.  He  believes  in  the  moral  con- 
tinuity of  the  imiverse.  His  astounding  energy  is 
a  moral  energy.  Salvation  by  good  works  is  his 
burden.  The  chief  thing  is  to  be  strong  ia  your 
faith.  He  despises  the  weak,  not  the  strong  sin- 
ner. His  Supermen  are  the  bankrupts  of  ro- 
347 


EGOISTS 

mantic  heroism.  His  strong  man  is  frequently 
wrong-headed;  but  the  weakling  works  the  real 
mischief.  Never  admit  you  are  beaten.  Begin 
at  the  bottom  twenty  times,  and  when  the  top  is 
achieved  die,  or  else  look  for  loftier  peaks  to 
climb.  Ibsen  exalts  strength.  His ''ice-church" 
is  chilly;  the  lungs  drink  in  with  difficulty  the 
buffeting  breezes  on  his  heights;  yet  how  bra- 
cing, how  inspiring,  is  this  austere  place  of  wor- 
ship. Bad  as  is  mankind,  Ibsen,  who  was  ever 
in  advance  of  his  contemporaries,  believed  in  its 
possibility  for  betterment.  Here  the  optimist 
speaks.  Brand's  spiritual  pride  is  his  downfall; 
nevertheless,  Ibsen,  an  aristocratic  thinker,  be- 
lieves that  of  pride  one  cannot  have  too  much. 
He  recognised  the  selfish  and  hollow  foundation 
of  all  "humanitarian"  movements.  He  is  a 
sign-post  for  the  twentieth  century  when  the 
aristocratic  of  spirit  must  enter  into  combat  with 
the  herd  instinct  of  a  depressing  socialism.  His 
influence  has  been  tremendous.  His  plays  teem 
with  the  general  ideas  of  his  century.  His  chief 
value  lies  in  the  beauty  of  his  art;  his  is  the  rare 
case  of  the  master-singer  rounding  a  long  life  with 
his  master  works.  He  brought  to  the  theatre  new 
ideas;  he  changed  forever  the  dramatic  map  of 
Europe;  he  originated  a  new  method  of  surpri- 
sing life,  capturing  it  and  forcing  it  to  give  up  a 
moiety  of  its  mystery  for  the  uses  of  a  difficult  and 
recondite  art.  He  fashioned  character  anew.  And 
he  pushed  resolutely  into  the  mist  that  surrounded 
the  human  soul,  his  Diogenes  lantern  glimmering, 
348 


IBSEN 

his  brave,  lonely  heart  undaunted  by  the  silence 
and  the  solitude.  His  message  ?  Who  shall  say  ? 
He  asks  questions,  and,  patterning  after  nature, 
he  seldom  answers  them.  When  his  ideas  sicken 
and  die  —  he  asserted  that  the  greatest  truth 
outlives  its  usefulness  in  time,  and  it  may  not  be 
denied  that  his  drama  is  a  dissolvent;  already 
the  early  plays  are  in  historical  twilight  and  the 
woman  question  of  his  day  is  for  us  something 
quite  different  —  his  art  will  endure.  Henrik 
Ibsen  was  a  man  of  heroic  fortitude.  His  plays 
are  a  bold  and  stimulating  spectacle  for  the  spirit. 
Should  we  ask  more  of  a  dramatic  poet  ? 


349 


MAX  STIRNER 


In  1888  John  Henry  Mackay,  the  Scottish- 
German  poet,  while  at  the  British  Museum  read- 
ing Lange's  History  of  Materialism,  encountered 
the  name  of  Max  Stirner  and  a  brief  criticism  of 
his  forgotten  book,  Der  Einzige  und  sein  Eigen- 
thum  (The  Only  One  and  His  Property;  in  French 
translated  L' Unique  et  sa  Propriete,  and  in  the 
first  English  translation  more  aptly  and  euphoni- 
ously entitled  The  Ego  and  His  Own).  His  curi- 
osity excited,  Mackay,  who  is  an  anarchist,  pro- 
cured after  some  difficulty  a  copy  of  the  work, 
and  so  greatly  was  he  stirred  that  for  ten  years 
he  gave  himself  up  to  the  study  of  Stirner  and 
his  teachings,  and  after  incredible  painstaking 
published  in  1898  the  story  of  his  life.  (Max 
Stirner:  Sein  Leben  und  sein  Werk:  John  Henry 
Mackay.)  To  Mackay's  labours  we  owe  all  we 
know  of  a  man  who  was  as  absolutely  swallowed 
up  by  the  years  as  if  he  had  never  existed.  But 
some  advanced  spirits  had  read  Stirner's  book, 
the  most  revolutionary  ever  written,  and  had  felt 
350 


MAX  STIRNER 

its  influence.  Let  us  name  two:  Henrik  Ibsen 
and  Frederick  Nietzsche.  Though  the  name  of 
Stirner  is  not  quoted  by  Nietzsche,  he  neverthe- 
less recommended  Stirner  to  a  favourite  pupil  of 
his,  Professor  Baumgartner  at  Basel  University. 
This  was  in  1874. 

One  hot  August  afternoon  in  the  year  1896  at 
Bayreuth,  I  was  standing  in  the  Marktplatz  when 
a  member  of  the  Wagner  Theatre  pointed  out  to 
me  a  house  opposite,  at  the  corner  of  the  Maxi- 
milianstrasse,  and  said:  "Do  you  see  that  house 
with  the  double  gables?  A  man  was  bom  there 
whose  name  will  be  green  when  Jean  Paul  and 
Richard  Wagner  are  forgotten."  It  was  too  large 
a  draught  upon  my  credulity,  so  I  asked  the  name. 
''Max  Stirner,"  he  replied.  "The  crazy  Hegel- 
ian," I  retorted.  "You  have  read  him,  then?" 
"No;  but  you  haven't  read  Nordau."  It  was 
true.  All  lire  and  flame  at  that  time  for  Nietzsche, 
I  did  not  realise  that  the  poet  and  rhapsodist  had 
forerunners.  My  friend  sniffed  at  Nietzsche's 
name;  Nietzsche  for  him  was  an  aristocrat,  not 
an  Individualist  —  in  reality,  a  lyric  expounder 
of  Bismarck's  gospel  of  blood  and  iron.  Wag- 
ner's adversary  would,  with  Renan,  place  man- 
kind under  the  yoke  of  a  more  exacting  tyranny 
than  Socialism,  the  tyranny  of  Culture,  of  the 
Superman.  Ibsen,  who  had  studied  both  Kier- 
kegaard and  Stirner  —  witness  Brand  and  Peer 
Gynt  —  Ibsen  was  much  nearer  to  the  champion 
of  the  Ego  than  Nietzsche.  Yet  it  is  the  dithy- 
rambic  author  of  Zarathustra  who  is  responsible, 
351 


EGOISTS 

with  Mackay,  for  the  recrudescence  of  Stirner's 
teachings. 

Nietzsche  is  the  poet  of  the  doctrine,  Stirner  its 
prophet,  or,  if  you  will,  its  philosopher.  Later 
I  secured  the  book,  which  had  been  reprinted  in 
the  cheap  edition  of  Reclam  (1882).  It  seemed 
colourless,  or  rather  gray,  set  against  the  glory 
and  gorgeous  rhetoric  of  Nietzsche.  I  could  not 
see  then  what  I  saw  a  decade  later  —  that  Nietz- 
sche had  used  Stirner  as  a  springboard,  as  a  point 
of  departure,  and  that  the  Individual  had  vastly 
different  meanings  to  those  diverse  temperaments. 
But  Stirner  displayed  the  courage  of  an  explorer 
in  search  of  the  north  pole  of  the  Ego. 

The  man  whose  theories  would  make  a  tabula 
rasa  of  civilisation,  was  born  at  Bayreuth,  Oc- 
tober 25,  1806,  and  died  at  Berlin  June  25,  1856. 
His  right  name  was  Johann  Caspar  Schmidt, 
Max  Stirner  being  a  nickname  bestowed  upon 
him  by  his  lively  comrades  in  Berlin  because  of 
his  very  high  and  massive  forehead.  His  father 
was  a  maker  of  wind  instruments,  who  died  six 
months  after  his  son's  birth.  His  mother  re- 
married, and  his  stepfather  proved  a  kind  pro- 
tector. Nothing  of  external  importance  occurred 
in  the  life  of  Max  Stirner  that  might  place  him 
apart  from  his  fellow-students.  He  was  very 
industrious  over  his  books  at  Bayreuth,  and  when 
he  became  a  student  at  the  Berlin  Univ^sity  he 
attended  the  lectures  regularly,  preparing  him- 
self for  a  teacher's  profession.  He  mastered  the 
classics,  modern  philosophy,  and  modem  lan- 
352 


MAX  STIRNER 

guages.  But  he  did  not  win  a  doctor's  degree; 
just  before  examinations  his  mother  became  ill 
with  a  mental  malady  (a  fact  his  critics  have  noted) 
and  the  son  dutifully  gave  up  everything  so  as  to 
be  near  her.  After  her  death  he  married  a  girl 
who  died  within  a  short  time.  Later,  in  1843,  his 
second  wife  was  Marie  Dahnhardt,  a  very  "ad- 
vanced" young  woman,  who  came  from  Schwe- 
rin  to  Berlin  to  lead  a  "free"  life.  She  met 
Stirner  in  the  Hippel  circle,  at  a  Weinstube  in 
the  Friedrichstrasse,  where  radical  young  think- 
ers gathered:  Bruno  Bauer,  Feuerbach,  Karl 
Marx,  Moses  Hess,  Jordan,  Julius  Faucher,  and 
other  stormy  insurgents.  She  had,  it  is  said, 
about  10,000  thalers.  She  was  married  with  the 
ring  wrenched  from  a  witness's  purse  —  her 
bridegroom  had  forgotten  to  provide  one.  He 
was  not  a  practical  man;  if  he  had  been  he  would 
hardly  have  written  The  Ego  and  His  Own. 

It  was  finished  between  the  years  1843  ^^^  1845; 
the  latter  date  it  was  published.  It  created  a  stir, 
though  the  censor  did  not  seriously  interfere  with 
it;  its  attacks  on  the  prevailing  government  were 
veiled.  In  Germany  rebellion  on  the  psychic  plane 
expresses  itself  in  metaphysics;  in  Poland  and 
Russia  music  is  the  safer  medium.  Feuerbach, 
Hess,  and  Szeliga  answered  Stimer's  terrible  ar- 
raignment of  society,  but  men's  thoughts  were 
interested  elsewhere,  and  with  the  revolt  of  1848 
Stirner  was  quite  effaced.  He  had  taught  for 
five  years  in  a  fashionable  school  for  young  ladies; 
he  had  written  for  several  periodicals,  and  trans- 
353 


EGOISTS 

lated  extracts  from  the  works  of  Say  and  Adam 
Smith. 

After  his  book  appeared,  his  relations  with  his 
wife  became  uneasy.  Late  in  1846  or  early  in 
1847  she  left  him  and  went  to  London,  where  she 
supported  herself  by  writing;  later  she  inherited 
a  small  sum  from  a  sister,  visited  Australia,  mar- 
ried a  labourer  there,  and  became  a  washerwoman. 
In  1897  Mackay  wrote  to  her  in  London,  asking 
her  for  some  facts  in  the  life  of  her  husband. 
She  replied  tartly  that  she  was  not  willing  to  re- 
vive her  past;  that  her  husband  had  been  too 
much  of  an  egotist  to  keep  friends,  and  was 
"very  sly."  This  was  all  he  could  extort  from 
the  woman,  who  evidently  had  never  understood 
her  husband  and  execrated  his  memory,  probably 
because  her  little  fortune  was  swallowed  up  by 
their  mutual  improvidence.  Another  appeal  only 
elicited  the  answer  that  *'  Mary  Smith  is  preparing 
for  death"  —  she  had  become  a  Roman  Catholic. 
It  is  the  irony  of  things  in  general  that  his  book 
is  dedicated  to  "My  Sweetheart,  Marie  Dahn- 
hardt." 

Stimer,  after  being  deserted,  led  a  precarious 
existence.  The  old  jolly  crowd  at  Hippel's  sel- 
dom saw  him.  He  was  in  prison  twice  for  debt 
—  free  Prussia  —  and  often  lacked  bread.  He, 
the  exponent  of  Egoism,  of  philosophic  anarchy, 
starved  because  of  his  pride.  He  was  in  all  mat- 
ters save  his  theories  a  moderate  man,  eating  and 
drinking  temperately,  living  frugally.  Unas- 
suming in  manners,  he  could  hold  his  own  in  de- 
354 


MAX  STIRNER 

bate  —  and  Hippel's  appears  to  have  been  a  rude 
debating  society  —  yet  one  who  avoided  life  rather 
than  mastered  it.  He  was  of  medium  height, 
ruddy,  and  his  eyes  deep-blue.  His  hands  were 
white,  slender,  "aristocratic,"  writes  Mackay. 
Certainly  not  the  figure  of  a  stalwart  shatterer  of 
conventions,  not  the  ideal  iconoclast;  above  all, 
without  a  touch  of  the  melodrama  of  communistic 
anarchy,  with  its  black  flags,  its  propaganda  by 
force,  its  idolatry  of  assassinations,  bomb-throw- 
ing, killing  of  fat,  harmless  policemen,  and  its 
sentimental  gabble  about  Fraternity.  Stirner  hated 
the  word  Equality;  he  knew  it  was  a  lie,  knew  that 
all  men  are  born  unequal,  as  no  two  grains  of 
sand  on  earth  ever  are  or  ever  will  be  alike.  He 
was  a  solitary.  And  thus  he  died  at  the  age  of 
fifty.  A  few  of  his  former  companions  heard  of 
his  neglected  condition  and  buried  him.  Nearly 
a  half  century  later  Mackay,  with  the  co-operation 
of  Hans  von  Biilow,  affixed  a  commemorative  tab- 
let on  the  house  where  he  last  lived,  Phillipstrasse 
19,  Berlin,  and  alone  Mackay  placed  a  slab  to 
mark  his  grave  in  the  Sophienkirchhof. 

It  is  to  the  poet  of  the  Letzte  Erkentniss,  with 
its  stirring  line,  "Doch  bin  ich  mein,"  that  I  owe 
the  above  scanty  details  of  the  most  thorough- 
going Nihilist  who  ever  penned  his  disbelief  in 
religion,  humanity,  society,  the  family.  He  rejects 
them  all.  We  have  no  genuine  portrait  of  this  in- 
surrectionist —  he  preferred  personal  insurrec- 
tion to  general  revolution;  the  latter,  he  asserted, 
brought  in  its  train  either  Socialism  or  a  tyrant  — 
355 


EGOISTS 

except  a  sketch  hastily  made  by  Friedrich  Engels, 
the  revolutionist,  for  Mackay.  It  is  not  reas- 
suring. Stirner  looks  like  an  old-fashioned  Ger- 
man and  timid  pedagogue,  high  coat-collar,  spec- 
tacles, clean-shaven  face,  and  all.  This  valiant 
enemy  of  the  State,  of  socialism,  was,  perhaps, 
only  brave  on  paper.  But  his  icy,  relentless,  epi- 
grammatic style  is  in  the  end  more  gripping  than 
the  spectacular,  volcanic,  whirling  utterances  of 
Nietzsche.  Nietzsche  lives  in  an  ivory  tower 
and  is  an  aristocrat.  Into  Stirner' s  land  all  are 
welcome.  That  is,  if  men  have  the  will  to  rebel, 
and  if  they  despise  the  sentimentality  of  mob 
rule.  The  Ego  and  His  Own  is  the  most  drastic 
criticism  of  socialism  thus  far  presented. 


II 


For  those  who  love  to  think  of  the  visible  uni- 
verse as  a  cosy  comer  of  God's  footstool,  there  is 
something  bleak  and  terrifying  in  the  isolated  posi- 
tion of  man  since  science  has  postulated  him  as 
an  infinitesimal  bubble  on  an  unimportant  planet. 
The  soul  shrinks  as  our  conception  of  outer  space 
widens.  Thomas  Hardy  describes  the  sensation 
as  "ghastly."  There  is  said  to  be  no  purpose, 
no  design  in  all  the  gleaming  phantasmagoria  re- 
vealed by  the  astronomer's  glass;  while  on  our 
globe  we  are  a  brother  to  lizards,  bacteria  furnish 
our  motor  force,  and  our  brain  is  but  a  subtly 
fashioned  mirror,  composed  of  neuronic  filaments, 
a  sort  of  "darkroom"  in  which  is  somehow  pictured 
356 


MAX  STIRNER 

the  life  without.  Well,  we  admit,  for  the  sake  of 
the  argument,  that  we  banish  God  from  the  firma- 
ment, substituting  a  superior  mechanism;  we 
admit  our  descent  from  star-dust  and  apes,  we 
know  that  we  have  no  free  will,  because  man,  like 
the  unicellular  organisms,  "gives  to  every  stimu- 
lus without  an  inevitable  response."  That,  of 
course,  settles  all  moral  obligations.  But  we 
had  hoped,  we  of  the  old  sentimental  brigade, 
that  all  things  being  thus  adjusted  we  could  live 
with  our  fellow  man  in  (comparative)  peace, 
cheating  him  only  in  a  legitimate  business  way, 
and  loving  our  neighbour  better  than  ourselves 
(in  public).  Ibsen  had  jostled  our  self-satisfac- 
tion sadly,  but  some  obliging  critic  had  discov- 
ered his  formula  —  a  pessimistic  decadent  —  and 
with  bare  verbal  bones  we  worried  the  old  white- 
haired  mastiff  of  Norway.  Only  a  decadent! 
It  is  an  easy  word  to  speak  and  it  means  nothing. 
With  Nietzsche  the  case  was  simpler.  We  couldn't 
read  him  because  he  was  a  madman;  but  he  at 
least  was  an  aristocrat  who  held  the  bourgeois  in 
contempt,  and  he  also  held  a  brief  for  culture. 
Ah!  when  we  are  young  we  are  altruists;  as 
Thackeray  says,  "Youths  go  to  balls;  men  go  to 
dinners." 

But  along  comes  this  dreadful  Stimer,  who 
cries  out:  Hypocrites  all  of  you.  You  are  not 
altruists,  but  selfish  persons,  who,  self-illuded, 
believe  yourselves  to  be  disinterested.  Be  Ego- 
ists. Confess  the  truth  in  the  secrecy  of  your 
mean,  little  souls.  We  are  all  Egotists.  Be 
357 


EGOISTS 

Egoists.  There  is  no  truth  but  my  truth.  No 
world  but  my  world.  I  am  I.  And  then  Stimer 
waves  away  God,  State,  society,  the  family,  morals, 
mankind,  leaving  only  the  ''hateful"  Ego.  The 
cosmos  is  frosty  and  inhuman,  and  old  Mother 
Earth  no  longer  offers  us  her  bosom  as  a  reclining- 
place.  Stirner  has  so  decreed  it.  We  are  sus- 
pended between  heaven  and  earth,  like  Ma- 
homet's coffin,  hermetically  sealed  in  Self.  In- 
stead of  "smiting  the  chord  of  self,"  we  must 
reorchestrate  the  chord  that  it  may  give  out  richer 
music.  (Perhaps  the  Higher  Egoism  which  often 
leads  to  low  selfishness.) 

Nevertheless,  there  is  an  honesty  in  the  words 
of  Max  Stirner.  We  are  weary  of  the  crying  in 
the  market-place,  "Lo!  Christ  is  risen,"  only 
to  find  an  old  nostrum  tricked  out  in  socialistic 
phrases;  and  fine  phrases  make  fine  feathers  for 
these  gentlemen  who  offer  the  millennium  in 
one  hand  and  perfect  peace  in  the  other.  Stirner 
is  the  frankest  thinker  of  his  century.  He  does 
not  soften  his  propositions,  harsh  ones  for  most 
of  us,  with  promises,  but  pursues  his  thought  with 
ferocious  logic  to  its  covert.  There  is  no  such 
hybrid  with  him  as  Christian  Socialism,  no 
dodging  issues.  He  is  a  Teutonic  Childe  Roland 
who  to  the  dark  tower  comes,  but  instead  of  blow- 
ing his  horn  —  as  Nietzsche  did  —  he  blows  up 
the  tower  itself.  Such  an  iconoclast  has  never  be- 
fore put  pen  to  paper.  He  is  so  sincere  in  his 
scorn  of  all  we  hold  dear  that  he  is  refreshing. 
Nietzsche's  flashing  epigrammatic  blade  often 
3S8 


MAX  STIRNER 

snaps  after  it  is  fleshed ;  the  grim,  cruel  Stimer,  after 
he  makes  a  jab  at  his  opponent,  twists  the  steel  in 
the  wound.  Having  no  mercy  for  himself,  he 
has  no  mercy  for  others.  He  is  never  a  hypocrite. 
He  erects  no  altars  to  known  or  unknown  gods. 
Humanity,  he  says,  has  become  the  Moloch  to- 
day to  which  everything  is  sacrificed.  Humanity 
—  that  is,  the  State,  perhaps,  even  the  socialistic 
state  (the  most  terrible  yoke  of  all  for  the  indi- 
vidual soul).  This  assumed  love  of  humanity, 
this  sacrifice  of  our  own  personality,  are  the 
blights  of  modern  life.  The  Ego  has  too  long 
been  suppressed  by  ideas,  sacred  ideas  of  religion, 
state,  family,  law,  morals.  The  conceptual  ques- 
tion, ''What  is  Man?'*  must  be  changed  to  "Who 
is  Man?"  I  am  the  owner  of  my  might,  and  I 
am  so  when  I  know  myself  as  unique. 

Stirner  is  not  a  communist  —  so  long  con- 
founded with  anarchs  —  he  does  not  believe  in 
force.  That. element  came  into  the  world  with 
the  advent  of  Bakounine  and  Russian  nihilism. 
Stirner  would  replace  society  by  groups;  property 
would  be  held,  money  would  be  a  circulating 
medium;  the  present  compulsory  system  would 
be  voluntary  instead  of  involuntary.  Unlike  his 
great  contemporary,  Joseph  Proudhon,  Stimer 
is  not  a  constructive  philosopher.  Indeed,  he  is 
no  philosopher.  A  moralist  (or  immoralist),  an 
Ethikefy  his  book  is  a  defence  of  Egoism,  of  the 
submerged  rights  of  the  Ego,  and  in  these  piping 
times  of  peace  and  fraternal  humbug,  when  every 
nation,  every  man  embraces  his  neighbour  pre- 
359 


EGOISTS 

paratory  to  disembowelling  him  in  commerce  or 
war,  Max  Stirner's  words  are  like  a  trumpet-blast- 
And  many  Jericho-built  walls  go  down  before 
these  ringing  tones.  His  doctrine  is  the  Fourth 
Dimension  of  ethics.  That  his  book  will  be  more 
dangerous  than  a  million  bombs,  if  misappre- 
hended, is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  read. 
Its  author  can  no  more  be  held  responsible  for  its 
misreading  than  the  orthodox  faiths  for  their 
backsliders.  Nietzsche  has  been  wofully  mis- 
understood; Nietzsche,  the  despiser  of  mob  rule, 
has  been  acclaimed  a  very  Attila  —  instead  of 
which  he  is  a  culture-philosopher,  one  who  in- 
sists that  reform  must  be  first  spiritual.  Indi- 
vidualism for  him  means  only  an  end  to  culture. 
Stirner  is  not  a  metaphysician;  he  is  too  much 
realist.  He  is  really  a  topsy-turvy  Hegelian,  a 
political  pyrrhonist.  His  Ego  is  his  Categorical 
Imperative.  And  if  the  Individual  loses  his  value, 
what  is  his  raison  d'etre  for  existence?  What 
shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gains  the  whole  world 
but  loses  his  own  Ego?  Make  your  value  felt, 
cries  Stirner..  The  minority  may  occasionally  err, 
but  the  majority  is  always  in  the  wrong.  Egoism 
must  not  be  misinterpreted  as  petty  selfishness  or  as 
an  excuse  to  do  wrong.  Life  will  be  ennobled  and 
sweeter  if  we  respect  ourselves.  "There  is  no 
sinner  and  no  sinful  egoism.  ...  Do  not  call 
men  sinful;  and  they  are  not."  Freedom  is  not 
a  goal.  ''Free  —  from  what?  Oh!  what  is 
there  that  cannot  be  shaken  off?  The  yoke  of 
serfdom,  of  sovereignty,  of  aristocracy  and  princes, 
360 


MAX  STIRNER 

the  dominion  of  the  desires  and  passions;  yes, 
even  the  dominion  of  one's  own  will,  of  self-will, 
for  the  completest  self-denial  is  nothing  but  free- 
dom —  freedom,  to  wit,  from  self-determination, 
from  one's  own  self."  This  has  an  ascetic  tang, 
and  indicates  that  to  compass  our  complete  Ego 
the  road  travelled  will  be  as  thorny  as  any  saint's 
of  old.  Where  does  Woman  come  into  this 
scheme?  There  is  no  Woman,  only  a  human 
Ego.  Humanity  is  a  convenient  fiction  to  harry 
the  individualist.  So,  society,  family  are  the 
clamps  that  compress  the  soul  of  woman.  If 
woman  is  to  be  free  she  must  first  be  an  individual, 
an  Ego.  In  America,  to  talk  of  female  suffrage 
is  to  propound  the  paradox  of  the  masters  at- 
tacking their  slaves;  yet  female  suffrage  might 
prove  a  good  thing  —  it  might  demonstrate  the 
reductio  ad  ahsurdum  of  the  administration  of  the 
present  ballot  system. 

Our  wail  over  our  neighbour's  soul  is  simply 
the  wail  of  a  busybody.  Mind  your  own  busi- 
ness! is  the  pregnant  device  of  the  new  Egoism. 
Puritanism  is  not  morality,  but  a  psychic  disorder. 

Stimer,  in  his  way,  teaches  that  the  Kingdom 
of  God  is  within  you.  That  man  will  ever  be 
sufficiently  perfected  to  become  his  own  master 
is  a  dreamer's  dream.  Yet  let  us  dream  it.  At 
least  by  that  road  we  make  for  righteousness. 
But  let  us  drop  all  cant  about  brotherly  love  and 
self-sacrifice.  Let  us  love  ourselves  (respect  our 
Ego),  that  we  may  learn  to  respect  our  brother; 
self-sacrifice  means  doing  something  that  we  be- 
361 


EGOISTS 

lieve  to  be  good  for  our  souls,  therefore  egotism 
— the  higher  egotism,  withal  egotism.  As  for 
going  to  the  people  —  the  Russian  phrase  —  let 
the  people  forget  themselves  as  a  collective  body, 
tribe,  or  group,  and  each  man  and  woman  develop 
his  or  her  Ego.  In  Russia  ''going  to  the  people" 
may  have  been  sincere  —  in  America  it  is  a  trick 
to  catch,  not  souls,  but  votes. 

"The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  it  will  be 
impossible  for  any  proud,  free,  independent 
spirit  to  call  himself  a  socialist,  since  he  would  be 
classed  with  those  wretched  toadies  and  worship- 
pers of  success  who  even  now  lie  on  their  knees 
before  every  workingman  and  lick  his  hands  simply 
because  he  is  a  workingman." 

John  Henry  Mackay  spoke  these  words  in  a 
book  of  his.  Did  not  Campanella,  in  an  unfor- 
gettable sonnet,  sing,  "The  people  is  a  beast  of 
muddy  brain  that  knows  not  its  own  strength. 
.  .  .  With  its  own  hands  it  ties  and  gags  itself"? 


Ill 


The  Ego  and  His  Own  is  divided  into  two 
parts:  first.  The  Man;  second,  I.  Its  motto 
should  be,  "I  find  no  sweeter  fat  than  sticks  to 
my  own  bones."  But  Walt  Whitman's  pro- 
nouncement had  not  been  made,  and  Stirner  was 
forced  to  fall  back  on  Goethe  —  Goethe,  the 
grand  Immoralist  of  his  epoch,  wise  and  wicked 
Goethe,  from  whom  flows  all  that  is  modem.  "I 
place  my  all  on  Nothing"  ("Ich  hab'  Mein  Sach' 
362 


MAX  STIRNER 

auf  Nichts  gestellt,"  in  the  joyous  poem  Vani- 
tas!  Vanitatum  Vanitas!)  is  Stimer's  keynote  to 
his  Egoistic  symphony.  The  hateful  I,  as  Pascal 
called  it,  caused  Zola,  a  solid  egotist  himself,  to  assert 
that  the  English  were  the  most  egotistic  of  races 
because  their  I  in  their  tongue  was  but  a  single 
letter,  while  the  French  employed  two,  and  not 
capitalised  unless  beginning  a  sentence.  Stirner 
must  have  admired  the  English,  as  his  I  was  the 
sole  counter  in  his  philosophy.  His  Ego  and  not 
the  family  is  the  unit  of  the  social  life.  In  an- 
tique times,  when  men  were  really  the  young, 
not  the  ancient,  it  was  a  world  of  reality.  Men 
enjoyed  the  material.  With  Christianity  came 
the  rule  of  the  spirit;  ideas  were  become  sacred, 
with  the  concepts  of  God,  Goodness,  Sin,  Sal- 
vation. After  Rousseau  and  the  French  Revo- 
lution humanity  was  enthroned,  and  the  State 
became  our  oppressor.  Our  first  enemies  are 
our  parents,  our  educators.  It  follows,  then, 
that  the  only  criterion  of  life  is  my  Ego.  With- 
out my  Ego  I  could  not  apprehend  existence. 
Altruism  is  a  pretty  disguise  for  egotism.  No 
one  is  or  can  be  disinterested.  He  gives  up  one 
thing  for  another  because  the  other  seems  better, 
nobler  to  him.  Egotism!  The  ascetic  renounces 
the  pleasures  of  life  because  in  his  eyes  renuncia- 
tion is  nobler  than  enjoyment.  Egotism  again! 
"You  are  to  benefit  yourself,  and  you  are  not  to 
seek  your  benefit,"  cries  Stirner.  Explain  the 
paradox!  The  one  sure  thing  of  life  is  the  Ego. 
Therefore,  "I  am  not  you,  but  I'll  use  you  if  you 


EGOISTS 

are  agreeable  to  me."  Not  to  God,  not  to  man, 
must  be  given  the  glory.  "I'll  keep  the  glory 
myself."  What  is  Humanity  but  an  abstraction? 
I  am  Humanity.  Therefore  the  State  is  a  monster 
that  devours  its  children.  It  must  not  dictate  to 
me.  "The  State  and  I  are  enemies."  The 
State  is  a  spook.  A  spook,  too,  is  freedom. 
What  is  freedom?  Who  is  free?  The  world 
belongs  to  all,  but  all  are  /.  I  alone  am  individ- 
ual proprietor. 

Property  is  conditioned  by  might.  What  I 
have  is  mine.  "Whoever  knows  how  to  take,  to 
defend,  the  thing,  to  him  belongs  property." 
Stirner  would  have  held  that  property  was  not 
only  nine  but  ten  points  of  the  law.  This  is 
Pragmatism  with  a  vengeance.  He  repudiates 
all  laws;  repudiates  competition,  for  persons  are 
not  the  subject  of  competition,  but  "things"  are; 
therefore  if  you  are  without  "things"  how  can  you 
compete?  Persons  are  free,  not  "things."  The 
world,  therefore,  is  not  "free."  Socialism  is  but 
a  further  screwing  up  of  the  State  machine  to 
limit  the  individual.  Socialism  is  a  new  god,  a 
new  abstraction  to  tyrannise  over  the  Ego.  And 
remember  that  Stirner  is  not  speaking  of  the 
metaphysical  Ego  of  Hegel,  Fichte,  Schelling, 
but  of  your  I,  my  I,  the  political,  the  social  I,  the 
economic  I  of  every  man  and  woman.  Stirner 
spun  no  metaphysical  cobwebs.  He  reared  no 
lofty  cloud  palaces.  He  did  not  bring  from  Asia 
its  pessimism,  as  did  Schopenhauer;  nor  deny 
reality,  as  did  Berkeley.  He  was  a  foe  to  general 
364 


MAX  STIRNER 

ideas.  He  was  an  implacable  realist.  Yet  while 
he  denies  the  existence  of  an  Absolute,  of  a  Deity, 
State,  Categorical  Imperative,  he  nevertheless 
had  not  shaken  himself  free  from  Hegelianism 
(he  is  Extreme  Left  as  a  Hegelian),  for  he  erected 
his  I  as  an  Absolute,  though  only  dealing  with 
it  in  its  relations  to  society.  Now,  nature  abhors 
an  absolute.  Everything  is  relative.  So  we 
shall  see  presently  that  with  Stimer,  too,  his  I 
is  not  so  independent  as  he  imagines. 

He  says  "crimes  spring  from  fixed  ideas."  The 
Church,  State,  the  Family,  Morals,  are  fixed  ideas. 
"Atheists  are  pious  people."  They  reject  one 
fiction  only  to  cling  to  many  old  ones.  Liberty  for 
the  people  is  not  my  liberty.  Socrates  was  a  fool 
in  that  he  conceded  to  the  Athenians  the  right  to 
condemn  him.  Proudhon  said  (rather,  Brisson 
before  him),  "Property  is  theft."  Theft  from 
whom?  From  society?  But  society  is  not  the 
sole  proprietor.  Pauperism  is  the  valuelessness 
of  Me.  The  State  and  pauperism  are  the  same. 
Communism,  Socialism  abolish  private  property 
and  push  us  back  into  Collectivism.  The  indi- 
vidual is  enslaved  by  the  machinery  of  the  State 
or  by  socialism.  Your  Ego  is  not  free  if  you  al- 
low your  vices  or  virtues  to  enslave  it.  The  in- 
tellect has  too  long  ruled,  says  Stimer;  it  is  the  will 
(not  Schopenhauer's  Will  to  Live,  or  Nietzsche's 
Will  to  Power,  but  the  sum  of  our  activity  ex- 
pressed by  an  act  of  volition;  old-fashioned  will, 
in  a  word)  to  exercise  itself  to  the  utmost.  Noth- 
ing compulsory,  all  voluntary.  Do  what  you  will. 
365 


EGOISTS 

Fay  ce  que  vouldras,  as  Rabelais  has  it  in  his  Abbey 
of  Thd^me.  Not  "Know  thyself,"  but  get  the 
value  out  of  yourself.  Make  your  value  felt. 
The  poor  are  to  blame  for  the  rich.  Our  art  to- 
day is  the  only  art  possible,  and  therefore  real 
at  the  time.  We  are  at  every  moment  all  we  can 
be.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  sin.  It  is  an  in- 
vention to  keep  imprisoned  the  will  of  our  Ego. 
And  as  mankind  is  forced  to  believe  theoretically 
in  the  evil  of  sin,  yet  commit  it  in  its  daily  life, 
hypocrisy  and  crime  are  engendered.  If  the  con- 
cept of  sin  had  never  been  used  as  a  club  over  the 
weak-minded,  there  would  be  no  sinners  —  i.e., 
wicked  people.  The  individual  is  himself  the 
world's  history.  The  world  is  my  picture.  There 
is  no  other  Ego  but  mine.  Louis  XIV.  said, 
^^UEtat,  c*est  moV^',  I  say,  "T  Univers,  c'est  moiy 
John  Stuart  Mill  wrote  in  his  famous  essay  on 
liberty  that  "  Society  has  now  got  the  better  of  the 
individual." 

Rousseau  is  to  blame  for  the  "Social  Contract" 
and  the  "Equality"  nonsense  that  has  poisoned 
more  than  one  nation's  political  ideas.  The 
minority  is  always  in  the  right,  declared  Ibsen, 
as  opposed  to  Comte's  "Submission  is  the  base 
of  perfection."  "Liberty  means  responsibility. 
That  is  why  most  men  dread  it"  (Bernard  Shaw). 
"Nature  does  not  seem  to  have  made  man  for 
independence"  (Vauvenargues).  "What  can 
give  a  man  liberty?  Will,  his  own  will,  and  it 
gives  power,  which  is  better  than  liberty"  (Tur- 
genev).  To  have  the  will  to  be  responsible  for 
366 


MAX  STIRNER 

one's  self,  advises  Nietzsche.  "I  am  what  I  am" 
(Brand).  "To  thyself  be  sufficient"  (Peer 
Gynt).  Both  men  failed,  for  their  freedom  kills. 
To  thine  own  self  be  true.  God  is  within  you. 
Best  of  all  is  Lord  Acton's  dictum  that  *' Liberty 
is  not  a  means  to  a  higher  political  end.  It  is 
of  itself  the  highest  political  end."  To  will  is 
to  have  to  will  (Ibsen).  My  truth  is  the  truth 
(Stirner).  Mortal  has  made  the  immortal,  says 
the  Rig  Veda:  Nothing  is  greater  than  I  (Bha 
gavat  Gita).  I  am  that  I  am  (the  Avesta,  also 
Exodus).  Taine  wrote,  "Nature  is  in  reality  a 
tapestry  of  which  we  see  the  reverse  side.  This 
is  why  we  try  to  turn  it."  Hierarchy,  oligarchy, 
both  forms  submerge  the  Ego.  J.  S.  Mill 
demanded:  "How  can  great  minds  be  produced 
in  a  country  where  the  test  of  a  great  mind  is  agree- 
ing in  the  opinions  of  small  minds?"  Bakou- 
nine  in  his  fragmentary  essay  on  God  and  the 
State  feared  the  domination  of  science  quite  as 
much  as  an  autocracy.  "Politics  is  the  madness 
of  the  many  for  the  gain  of  the  few,"  Pope  asserted. 
Read  Spinoza,  The  Citizen  and  the  State  (Tracta- 
tus  Theologico-Politicus).  Or  Oscar  Wilde's 
epigram:  "Charity  creates  a  multitude  of  sins." 
"I  am  not  poor  enough  to  give  alms,"  says  Nietz- 
sche. But  Max  Beerbohm  has  wittily  said  —  and 
his  words  contain  as  much  wisdom  as  wit  —  that 
"If  he  would  have  his  ideas  realised,  the  Socialist 
must  first  kill  the  Snob." 

Science  tells  us  that  our  /  is  really  a  We;  a 
colony  of  cells,  an  orchestra  of  inherited  instincts. 
367 


EGOISTS 

We  have  not  even  free  will,  or  at  least  only  in 
a  limited  sense.  We  are  an  instrument  played 
upon  by  our  heredity  and  our  environment.  The 
cell,  then,  is  the  unit,  not  the  Ego.  Very  well, 
Stirner  would  exclaim  (if  he  had  lived  after  Darwin 
and  1859),  the  cell  is  my  cell,  not  yours!  Away 
with  other  cells!  But  such  an  autonomous  gospel 
is  surely  a  phantasm.  Stirner  saw  a  ghost.  He, 
too,  in  his  proud  Individualism  was  an  aristocrat. 
No  man  may  separate  himself  from  the  tradition 
of  his  race  unless  to  incur  the  penalty  of  a  sterile 
isolation.  The  solitary  is  the  abnormal  man. 
Man  is  gregarious.  Man  is  a  political  animal. 
Even  Stirner  recognises  that  man  is  not  man 
without  society. 

In  practice  he  would  not  have  agreed  with 
Havelock  Ellis  that  *'all  the  art  of  living  lies  in 
the  fine  mingling  of  letting  go  and  holding  on." 
Stirner,  sentimental,  henpecked,  myopic  Berlin 
professor,  was  too  actively  engaged  in  wholesale 
criticism  —  that  is,  destruction  of  society,  with 
all  its  props  and  standards,  its  hidden  selfishness 
and  heartlessness  —  to  bother  with  theories  of 
reconstruction.  His  disciples  have  remedied  the 
omission.  In  the  United  States,  for  example, 
Benjamin  R.  Tucker,  a  follower  of  Josiah  War- 
ren, teaches  a  practical  and  philosophical  form 
of  Individualism.  He  is  an  Anarch  who  believes 
in  passive  resistance.  Stirner  speaks,  though 
vaguely,  of  a  Union  of  Egoists,  a  Verein,  where  all 
would  rule  all,  where  man,  through  self-mastery, 
would  be  his  own  master.  ("In  those  days  there 
368 


MAX  STIRNER 

was  no  king  in  Israel;  every  man  did  that  which 
was  right  in  his  own  eyes.")  Indeed,  his 
notions  as  to  Property  and  Money  —  "  it  will  al- 
ways be  money"  —  sound  suspiciously  like  those 
of  our  "captains  of  industry."  Might  conquers 
Right.  He  has  brought  to  bear  the  most  bla- 
zing light-rays  upon  the  shifts  and  evasions  of 
those  who  decry  Egoism,  who  are  what  he  calls 
"involuntary,"  not  voluntary,  egotists.  Their 
motives  are  shown  to  the  bone.  Your  Sir  Wil- 
loughby  Patternes  are  not  real  Egoists,  but  only 
half-hearted,  selfish  weaklings.  The  true  egotist 
is  the  altruist,  says  Stimer;  yet  Leibnitz  was  right; 
so  was  Dr.  Pangloss.  This  is  the  best  of  possible 
worlds.  Any  other  is  not  conceivable  for  man, 
who  is  at  the  top  of  his  zoological  series.  (Though 
Quinton  has  made  the  statement  that  birds 
followed  the  mammal.)  We  are  all  "spectres 
of  the  dust,"  and  to  live  on  an  overcrowded 
planet  we  must  follow  the  advice  of  the  Boyg: 
"Go  roundabout!"  Compromise  is  the  only 
sane  attitude.  The  world  is  not,  will  never  be, 
to  the  strong  of  arm  or  spirit,  as  Nietzsche  be- 
lieves. The  race  is  to  the  mediocre.  The  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  means  survival  of  the  weakest. 
Society  shields  and  upholds  the  feeble.  Mediocrity 
rules,  let  Carlyle  or  Nietzsche  thunder  to  the 
contrary.  It  was  the  perception  of  these  facts 
that  drove  Stimer  to  formulate  his  theories  in 
The  Ego  and  His  Own.  He  was  poor,  a  failure, 
and  despised  by  his  wife.  He  lived  under  a  dull, 
brutal  regime.  The  Individual  was  naught,  the 
369 


EGOISTS 

State  all.  His  book  was  his  great  revenge.  It 
was  the  efflorescence  of  his  Ego.  It  was  his 
romance,  his  dream  of  an  ideal  world,  his  Platonic 
republic.  Philosophy  is  more  a  matter  of  man's 
temperament  than  some  suppose.  And  philoso- 
phers often  live  by  opposites.  Schopenhauer 
preached  asceticism,  but  hardly  led  an  ascetic 
life;  Nietzsche's  injunctions  to  become  Immoral- 
ists  and  Supermen  were  but  the  buttressing  up 
of  a  will  diseased,  by  the  needs  of  a  man  who 
suffered  his  life  long  from  morbid  sensibility. 
James  Walker's  suggestion  that  ''We  will  not  al- 
low the  world  to  wait  for  the  Superman.  We  are 
the  Supermen,'*  is  a  convincing  criticism  of  Nietz- 
scheism.  I  am  Unique.  Never  again  will  this 
aggregation  of  atoms  stand  on  earth.  Therefore 
I  must  be  free.  I  will  myself  free.  (It  is  spiritual 
liberty  that  only  counts.)  But  my  I  must  not  be 
of  the  kind  described  by  the  madhouse  doctor  in 
Peer  Gynt:  ''Each  one  shuts  himself  up  in  the 
barrel  of  self.  In  the  self-fermentation  he  dives 
to  the  bottom;  with  the  self -bung  he  seals  it 
hermetically."  The  increased  self-responsibil- 
ity of  life  in  an  Egoist  Union  would  prevent  the 
world  from  ever  entering  into  such  ideal  anarchy 
(an-arch,  i.e.,  without  government).  There  is  too 
much  of  renunciation  in  the  absolute  freedom  of 
the  will  —  that  is  its  final,  if  paradoxical,  impli- 
cation —  for  mankind.  Our  Utopias  are  secretly 
based  on  Chance.  Deny  Chance  in  our  existence 
and  life  would  be  without  salt.  Man  is  not  a  per- 
fectible animal;  not  on  this  side  of  eternity. 
370 


MAX  STIRNER 

He  fears  the  new  and  therefore  ch'ngs  to  his  old 
beliefs.  To  each  his  own  chimera.  He  has  not 
grown  mentally  or  physically  since  the  Sumerians 
—  or  a  million  years  before  the  Sumerians.  The 
squirrel  in  the  revolving  cage  thinks  it  is  progres- 
sing; Man  is  in  a  revolving  cage.  He  goes  round 
but  he  does  not  progress.  Man  is  not  a  logical 
animal.  He  is  governed  by  his  emotions,  his 
affective  life.  He  lives  by  his  illusions.  His  brains 
are  an  accident,  possibly  from  ovemutrition  as 
De  Gourmont  has  declared.  To  fancy  him  cap- 
able of  existing  in  a  community  where  all  will  be 
selfgovemed  is  a  poet's  vision.  That  way  the 
millennium  lies,  or  the  High  Noon  of  Nietzsche. 
And  would  the  world  be  happier  if  it  ever  did 
attain  this  condition? 

The  English  translation  of  The  Ego  and  His 
Own,  by  Stephen  T.  Byington,  is  admirable;  it 
is  that  of  a  philologist  and  a  versatile  scholar. 
Stimer's  form  is  open  to  criticism.  It  is  vermic- 
ular. His  thought  is  sometimes  confused;  he 
sees  so  many  sides  of  his  theme,  embroiders  it 
with  so  many  variations,  that  he  repeats  himself. 
He  has  neither  the  crystalline  brilliance  nor  the 
poetic  glamour  of  Nietzsche.  But  he  left  behind 
him  a  veritable  breviary  of  destruction,  a  strik- 
ing and  dangerous  book.  It  is  dangerous  in 
every  sense  of  the  word  —  to  socialism,  to  poli- 
ticians, to  hypocrisy.  It  asserts  the  dignity  of  the 
Individual,  not  his  debasement. 

"Is  it  not  the  chief  disgrace  in  the  world  not 
to  be  a  unit;  to  be  reckoned  one  character;  not 
371 


EGOISTS 

to  yield  that  peculiar  fruit  which  each  man  was 
created  to  bear,  but  to  be  reckoned  in  the  gross, 
in  the  hundred  of  thousands,  of  the  party,  of  the 
section  to  which  we  belong,  and  our  opinion 
predicted  geographically  as  the  North  or  the 
South?" 

Herbert  Spencer  did  not  write  these  words, 
nor  Max  Stirner.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  wrote 
them. 


372 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES  HUNEKER 

EGOISTS: 

A  Book  of  Supermen 

STENDHAL,  BAUDELAIRE,  FLAUBERT,  ANATOLE 

FRANCE.   HUYSMANS,   B.\RRf:s,   HELLO.   BLAKE, 

NIETZSCHE,  IBSEN,  and  MAX  STIRNER 

WITH  PORTRAIT  AND  FACSIMILE 
REPRODUCTIONS 

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This  new  book  by  James  Huneker,  the  first  in  more 
than  three  years,  is  wholly  devoted  to  those  modem  poets, 
philosophers  and  prose  masters  whose  writings  embody 
the  individualistic  idea  as  opposed  to  altruistic  and  social- 
istic sentiments.  Amply  discussed  are  Stendhal,  whose 
cult,  recently  revived  on  the  Continent,  is  steadily  growing; 
Maurice  Barres,  French  Academician;  Anatole  France, 
blithe  pagan  and  delicious  ironist;  Max  Stimer,  the  fore- 
runner of  Nietzsche;  the  mystics,  Ernest  Hello — new  to 
American  readers  —  and  William  Blake.  Much  new  his- 
torical material  may  be  found  in  the  studies  of  Charles 
Baudelaire  and  Gustave  Flaubert.  A  hitherto  unpublished 
letter  of  the  novelist,  together  with  an  original  page  proof 
of  "Madame  Bovary,"  corrected  by  his  own  hand,  will 
prove  of  interest  to  his  admirers.  That  brilliant  virtuoso 
of  the  French  language,  J.  K.  Huysmans,  forms  the  sub- 
ject of  a  chapter,  while  certain  phases  of  Nietzsche,  in- 
cluding his  newly  published  biography,  "  Ecce  Homo," 
and  the  Ibsen  dramas,  are  also  subjects  of  discussion. 
Altogether  the  book  represents  the  most  mature  critical 
and  analytical  thought  of  the  author  applied  to  some  of 
the  most  interesting  literary  personages  in  modem 
Europe. 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES    HUNEKER 

ICONOCLASTS: 

A  Book  of  Dramatists 

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Contents:  Henrik  Ibsen — August  Strindberg — Henry  Becque — 
Gerhart  Hauptmann — Paul  Hervieu — The  Quintessence  of 
Shaw — Maxim  Gorky's  Nachtasyl — Hermann  Sudermann — 
Princess  Mathilde's  Play — Duse  and  D'Annunzio — Villiers  de 
risle  Adam — Maurice  Maeterlinck. 

"  His  style  is  a  little  jerky,  but  it  is  one  of  those  rare  styles  in  which 
we  are  led  to  expect  some  significance,  if  not  wit,  in  every  sentence." 
— G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  London  Daily  News. 

"  No  other  book  in  English  has  surveyed  the  whole  field  so  com- 
prehensively."— The  Outlook. 

"A  capital  book,  lively,  informing,  suggestive." 

— London  Times  Saturday  Review. 

"Eye-opening  and  mind-clarifying  is  Mr.  Huneker's  criticism; 
,  .  .no  one  having  read  that  opening  essay  in  this  volume 
will  lay  it  down  until  the  final  judgment  upon  Maurice  Maeterlinck 
is  reached." — Boston  Transcript. 


OVERTONES: 

A  Book  of  Temperaments 

H^IIH  FRONTISPIECE  PORTRAIT  OF 
RICHARD  STRAUSS 

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Contents:  Richard  Strauss — Parsifal:  A  Mystical  Melodrama — 
Literary  Men  who  loved  Music  (Balzac,  Turgenieff,  Daudet, 
etc.) — The  Eternal  Feminine — The  Beethoven  of  French  Prose 
— Nietzsche  the  Rhapsodist— Anarchs  of  Art — After  Wagner, 
What? — Verdi  and  Boito. 

"The  whole  book  is  highly  refreshing  with  its  breadth  of  knowl- 
edge, its  catholicity  of  taste,  and  its  inexhaustible  energy." 

— Saturday  Review,  London. 

"In  some  respects  Mr.  Himeker  must  be  reckoned  the  most 
brilUant  of  all  living  writers  on  matters  musical." — Academy,  London. 

"No  modem  musical  critic  has  shown  greater  ingenuity  in  the 
attempt  to  correlate  the  literary  and  musical  tendencies  of  the  nine- 
teenth century." — Spectator,  London. 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES   HUNEKER 

MEZZOTINTS  IN 
MODERN  MUSIC 

BRAHMS,  TSCHAIKOWSKY,  CHOPIN, 

RICHARD  STRAUSS.  LISZT 

AND  WAGNER 

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"Mr.  Huneker  is,  in  the  best  sense,  a  critic;  he  listens  to  the 
music  and  gives  you  his  impressions  as  rapidly  and  in  as  few  words 
as  possible ;  or  he  sketches  the  composers  in  fine,  broad,  sweeping 
strokes  with  a  magnificent  disregard  for  imimportant  details.  And 
as  Mr.  Huneker  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  powerful  personality,  a  man  of 
quick  brain  and  an  energetic  imagination,  a  man  of  moods  and  tem- 
perament— a  string  that  vibrates  and  sings  in  response  to  music — 
we  get  in  these  essays  of  his  a  distinctly  original  and  very  valuable 
contribution  to  the  world's  tiny  musical  literatiu^." 

— J.  F.  RuNCiMAN,  in  London  Saturday  Review. 


MELOMANIACS 

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Contents:  The  Lord's  Prayer  in  B — A  Son  of  Liszt — A  Chopin 
of  the  Gutter — The  Piper  of  Dreams — An  Emotional  Acrobat 
— Isolde's  Mother — The  Rim  of  Finer  Issues — An  Ibsen  Girl — 
Tannhauser's  Choice — The  Red-Headed  Piano  Player — Bryn- 
hild's  Immolation — The  Quest  of  the  Elusive — An  Involuntary 
Insurgent — Hunding's  Wife — The  Corridor  of  Time — Avatar 
— The  Wegstaffes  give  a  Musicale — The  Iron  Virgin — Dusk 
of  the  Gods — Siegfried's  Death — Intermezzo — A  Spinner  of 
Silence — The  Disenchanted  Symphony — Music  the  Conqueror. 

"It  would  be  difficult  to  sum  up  ' Melomaniacs '  in  a  phrase. 
Never  did  a  book,  in  my  opinion  at  any  rate,  exhibit  greater  con- 
trasts, not,  perhaps,  of  strength  and  wesikness,  but  of  clearness  and 
obsciuity.  It  is  inexplicably  uneven,  as  if  the  writer  were  perpetu- 
ally playing  on  the  boundary  line  that  divides  sanity  of  thought  from 
intellectual  chaos.  There  is  method  in  the  madness,  but  it  is  a 
method  of  intangible  ideas.  Nevertheless,  there  is  genius  written 
over  a  large  portion  of  it,  and  to  a  musician  the  wealth  of  musical 
imagination  is  a  living  spring  of  thought." 

— Harold  E.  Gorst,  in  London  Saturday  Review  (Dec  8, 1906). 


BOOKS   BY  JAMES   HUNEKER 


VISIONARIES 

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Contents:  A  Master  of  Cobwebs — The  Eighth  Deadly  Sin — The 
Purse  of  Aholibah — Rebels  of  the  Moon — The  Spiral  Road — 
A  Mock  Sun— Antichrist— The  Eternal  Duel— The  Enchanted 
Yodler— The  Third  Kingdom— The  Haunted  Harpsichord— 
The  Tragic  Wall— A  Sentimental  Rebellion— Hall  of  the  Miss- 
ing Footsteps — The  Cursory  Light — An  Iron  Fan — The  Woman 
Who  Loved  Chopin— The  Tune  of  Time— Nada— Pan. 

"The  author's  style  is  sometimes  grotesque  in  its  desire  both  to 
startle  and  to  find  true  expression.  He  has  not  followed  those  great 
novelists  who  write  French  a  child  may  read  and  understand.  He 
calls  the  moon  'a  spiritual  gray  wafer';  it  faints  in  'a  red  wind'; 
'truth  beats  at  the  bars  of  a  man's  bosom';  the  sun  is  'a  sulphur- 
colored  cymbal';  a  man  moves  with  'the  jaunty  grace  of  a  young 
elephant.'  But  even  these  oddities  are  significant  and  to  be  placed 
high  above  the  slipshod  sequences  of  words  that  have  done  duty 
till  they  are  as  meaningless  as  the  imprint  on  a  worn-out  coin. 

"  Besides,  in  nearly  every  story  the  reader  is  arrested  by  the  idea, 
and  only  a  little  troubled  now  and  then  by  an  over-elaborate  style. 
If  most  of  us  are  sane,  the  ideas  cherished  by  these  visionaries  are 
insane,  but  the  imagination  of  the  author  so  illuminates  them  that 
we  follow  wondering  and  spellbound.  In  'The  Spiral  Road'  and 
in  some  of  the  other  stories  both  fantasy  and  narrative  may  be  com- 
pared with  Hawthorne  in  his  most  unearthly  moods.  The  younger 
man  has  read  his  Nietzsche  and  has  cast  off  his  heritage  of  simple 
morals.  Hawthorne's  Puritanism  finds  no  echo  in  these  modem 
souls,  all  sceptical,  wavering  and  imblessed.  But  Hawthorne's 
splendor  of  vision  and  his  power  of  sympathy  with  a  tormented 
mind  do  live  again  in  the  best  of  Mr.  Huneker's  stories." 

— London  Academy  (Feb.  3,  1906). 


CHOPIN: 

The  Man  and  His  Music 

IVITH  ETCHED  PORTRAIT 
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^ "  No  pianist,  amateur  or  professional,  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of 
his  pages  without  a  deeper  appreciation  of  the  new  forms  of  beauty 
which  Chopin  has  added,  like  so  many  species  of  orchids,  to  the 
musical  flora  of  the  nineteenth  century." — The  Nation. 

"  I  think  it  not  too  much  to  predict  that  Mr.  Huneker's  estimate 
of  Chopin  and  his  works  is  destined  to  be  the  permanent  one.  He 
gives  the  reader  the  cream  of  the  cream  of  all  noteworthy  previous 
commentators,  besides  much  that  is  wholly  his  own.  He  speaks  at 
once  with  modesty  and  authority,  always  with  personal  charm." 

— Boston  Transcript. 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS,  NEW  YORK 


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