August 18, 2025 • 55 mins
In Partial Portraits, acclaimed writer Henry James offers a fascinating exploration into the lives and works of a remarkable array of literary figures, some of whom he knew personally. Delve into the creative minds of legends like Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Alphonse Daudet, Guy De Maupassant, Ivan Turgenev, and George du Maurier. This insightful narrative reveals the rich tapestry of their inspirations and artistic journeys. (Summary by Rita Boutros)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of Partial Portraits by Henry James. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain recording by Rite Boutro's
Chapter seven Alphonse Daudet, Section three. It is for the
expressive talents that we feel an affection, and Daudet is
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eminently expressive. His manner is the manner of talk, and
if the talk is sincere, that makes a writer touch us.
Daudet expresses many things, but he most frequently expresses himself,
his own temper, in the presence of life, his own
feeling on a thousand occasions. This personal note is especially
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to be observed in his earlier productions, in the Latte
de Marmoulain the Comte du londie le Petitchause. It is
also very present in the series of prefaces which he
has undertaken to supply to the Octavio edition of his works.
In these prefaces he gives the history of each successive book,
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relates the circumstances under which it was written. These things
are ingenuously told, but what we are chiefly conscious of
in regard to them is that Alphonse Daudet must express himself.
His brother informs us that he is writing his memoirs
and this will have been another opportunity for expression. Ernest Daudet,
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as well, as I have mentioned, has attempted to express him.
Montfrere es Mois is one of those productions which it
is difficult for an English reader to judge. In fairness,
it is so much more confidential than we in public,
ever venture to be. The French have, on all occasions
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the courage of their amoment, and Monsieur Ernest Daudet's leading
emotion is a boundless admiration for his junior. He lays
it before us very frankly and gracefully, not on the
whole indiscreetly. And I have no quarrel whatever with his volume,
for it contains a considerable amount of information on a
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very interesting subject. Indirectly, indeed, as well as directly, it
helps us to a knowledge of his brother, Alphonse Daudet
was born in Provence. He comes of an expansive, a
confidential race. His style is impregnated with the southern sunshine,
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and his talent has the sweetness of a fruit that
has grown in the warm open air. He has the
advantage of being a provencal converted, as it were, of
having a southern temperament, and a northern reason. We know
what he thinks of the southern temperament. Numa Romston is
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a vivid exposition of that go de carrierro dolu do Ston,
as the provinceal has it. Jouis de ru do lur
du maison, joy in the street and pain in the house.
That proverb says Alphonstoudi describes and formulates a whole race.
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It has given him the subject of an admirable story,
in which he has depicted with equal force and tenderness,
the amiable weaknesses, the mingled violence and levity of the
children of the clime of the fig and olive. He
has put before us above all their mania for talk.
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They are irrepressible chatter, the qualities that with them render
all passion, all purpose, inordinately vocal himself a complete produill
do medie, like the famil Mefre in Numa Rumastan, he
has achieved the feat of becoming objective to his own vision,
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getting outside of his ingredients and judging them. This he
has done by the aid of his Parisianized conscience, his
exquisite taste, and that finer wisdom which resides in the artist.
From whatever soil he springs successfully as he has done it.
However he has not done it so well. But that
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he too does not show a little of the heightened color,
the superabundant statement, the restless movement of his compatriots. He
is nothing if not demonstrative. He is always in a
state of feeling. He is not a very definite ideal
of reserve. It must be added that he is a
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man of genius, and that genius never spends its capital.
That he is an artist, and that an artist always
has a certain method and order. But it remains characteristic
of his origin that the author of Numa Rumastan, one
of the happiest and most pointed of satires, should have
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about him the aroma of some of the qualities satirized.
There are passages in his tales and in his prefaces
that are genuine produis du Midi, and his brother's account
of him could only have been written by a provencal
brother to be personnel to that point, transparent effusive gushing
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to give oneself away in one's books has never been,
and never will be the ideal of us of English speech.
But that does not prevent our enjoying immensely when we
meet it a happy example of this alien spirit. For myself,
I am free to confess. Half. My affection for Alphonse
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Daudet comes from the fact that he writes in a
way in which I would not write even if I could.
There are certain kinds of feeling and observation, certain impressions
and ideas to which we are rather ashamed to give
a voice, and yet are ashamed not to have in
our scale. In these matters. Alphonse Daudet renders us a
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great service. He expresses such things on our behalf. I
may add that he usually does it much better than
the cleverest of us could do, even if we were
to try. I have said that he is a provencal converted,
and I should do him a great injustice if I
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did not dwell upon his conversion. His brother relates the
circumstances under which he came up to Paris at the
age of twenty in a threadbare overcoat and a pair
of India rubbers to seek his literary fortune. His beginnings
were difficult. His childhood had been hard. He was familiar
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with poverty and disaster. He had no adventitious aid to success.
His whole fortune consisted in his exquisite organization. But Paris
was to be artistically a mine of wealth to him,
and of all the anxious and eager young spirits who,
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on the battlefield of uncarpeted Zankiem have laid siege to
the indifferent city, none can have felt more deeply conscious
of the mission to take possession of it. Alphonse Daudet,
at the present hour, is in complete possession of Paris.
He knows it, loves it, uses it. He has assimilated
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it to its last particle. He has made of it
a Paris of his own, a Paris like a vast,
crisp water color, one of the water colors of the
School of Fortuny. The French have a great advantage in
the fact that they admire their capital very much as
if it were a foreign city. Most of their artists,
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their men of letters, have come up from the provinces,
and well as they may learn to know the metropolis,
it never ceases to be a spectacle, a wonder, a
fascination for them. This comes partly from the intrinsic brilliancy
and interest of the place, partly from the poverty of
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provincial life, and partly from the degree to which the
faculty of appreciation is developed in frenchmen of the class
of which I speak to Daudet. At any rate, the
familiar aspects of Paris are endlessly pictorial, and part of
the charm of his novels for those who share his
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relish for that ar huge flower of civilization is in
the way he recalls it, evokes it, suddenly presents it
in parts or as a whole to our senses. The light,
the sky, the feeling of the air, the odors of
the streets, the look of certain vistas, the silvery muddy sin,
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the cool gray tone of color, the physiognomy of particular quarters,
The whole Parisian expression meets you suddenly in his pages
and remind you again and again that if he paints
with a pen, he writes with a brush. I remember
that when I read Le Nabab and Le Rois on
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Exile for the first time, I said to myself that
this was the artigl de Baris in supreme perfection, and
that no reader could understand such productions who had not
had a copious experience of the scene. It is certain,
at any rate that those books have their full value
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only for minds more or less parisianized half, their meaning,
their magic, their subtlety of intention, is liable to be lost.
It may be said that this is a great limitation
that the works of the best novelists may be understood
by all the world. There is something in that, But
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I know not all the same whether the fact I
indicate be a great limitation. It is certainly a very
illustrative quality. Daudet has caught the tone of a particular
pitch of manners. He applies it with the lightest, surest hand,
and his picture shines and lives the most generalized representation
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of life. Cannot do more than that. I shrink very
much from speaking of systems in relation to such a
genius as this. I should incline to believe that Daudet's
system is simply to be as vivid as he can.
Emil Zola has a system, at least he says so,
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But I do not remember on the part of the
author of Numa Roumastain the smallest technical profession of faith. Nevertheless,
he has taken a line, as we say, and his
line is to sail as close as possible to the actual,
the life of Paris being his subject. His attempt most
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frequently is to put his finger upon known examples, so
that he has been accused of portraying individuals instead of
portraying types. There are a few of his figures to
which the name of some celebrity of the day has
not been attached. The ne Bob is Francois Braves, the
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Duc de Mors is, the Duc de mornis. The Irish
doctor J. Dnkins is an English physician who flourished in
Paris from such a year to such another. People are
still living, wonderful to say who took his little pills
abbas or senecal Felicia Ruis is Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt. Constance
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Kremitz is Madame Taglioni, the Queen of Illyria is, the
Queen of Naples, the Prince of Axel is the Prince
of Orange. Tom Levis is an English house agent, not
in the rule royal but hard by. Elise Merout is
a well known journalist, and doctor Boucherau a well known surgeon.
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Such is the key we are told to these ingenious mystifications,
and to many others which I have not the space
to mention. It matters little to my mind whether in
each case, the cap fits the supposed model. For nothing
is more evident than that Alphonse Daudet has proposed to
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himself to represent not only the people, but the persons
of his time. The conspicuity of certain individuals has added
to the force with which they speak to his imagination.
His taste is for salient figures, and he has said
to himself that there is no greater proof of being
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salient than being known. The temptation to put people into
a book is a temptation of which every writer of
fiction knows something, and I hold that to succumb to
it is not only legitimate but inevitable. Putting people into
books is what the novelist lives upon. The question in
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the matter is the question of delicacy, For according to
that delicacy the painter conjures away recognition or insists upon it.
Daudet has been accused of the impertinence of insisting, and
I believe that two or three of his portraits have
provoked a protest. He is charged with ingratitude for having
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produced an effigy of the Duke of Mornis, who had
been his benefactor and employed him as a secretary. Such
a matter as this is between Monsieur Daudet and his conscience,
and I am far from pretending to pronounce upon it.
The uninitiated reader can only say that the figure is
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a very striking one. Such a picture as it may
be imagined, the Duc de Mornis would not be displeased
to have inspired it. May fairly be conceded, however, that
Daudet is much more an observer than an inventor. The
invented parts of his tales, like the loves of Jack
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and of Paul de Gerie, and the machinations of Madame Othemann,
the theological vampire of Levangeliste, to whom I shall return
for a moment, are the vague the ineffective, as well
as the romantic parts. I remember that in reading Le
Nabab it was not very easy to keep Paul du
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Gerie and Andre Marin apart. It is the real, the
transmuted real, that he gives us best, the fruit of
a process that adds to observation what a kiss adds
to a greeting. The joy the excitement of recognition are keen,
even when the object recognized is dismal. They are part
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of his spirit, part of his way of seeing things,
Levangelist is the saddest story conceivable. But it is lighted
throughout by the author's irrepressibly humorous view of the conditions
in which its successive elements present themselves, and by the
extraordinary vivacity with which in his hands narration and description proceed.
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His humor is of the finest. It is needless to
say that it is never violent nor vulgar. It is
a part of the high spirits, the animal spirits, I
should say, if the phrase has not an association of
coarseness that accompany the temperament of his race. And it
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is stimulated by the perpetual entertainment which so rare a
visual faculty naturally finds in the spectacle of life, even
while encountering there a multitude of distressing things. Daudet's gaiety
is a part of his poetry, and his poetry is
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a part of everything he touches. There is little enough
gaiety in the subject of Jack, and yet the whole
story is told with a smile to complete the charm
of the thing. The smile is full of feeling. Here
and there it becomes an immense laugh, and the result
is a delightful piece of drollery less avanteur prodegues de
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tartarande de Tarascon contain all his high spirits. It is
one of his few stories in which laughter and tears
are not intermingled. This little tale, which is one of
his first, is like Numa Umastain, a satire on a
southern foible. Tartarin de Tarascon is an excellent man who
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inhabits the old town on the Rhone, over which the
palace of the good King Renee keeps guard. He has
not a fault in the world except an imagination too vivid.
He is liable to visions two hallucinations. The desire that
a thing shall happen speedily resolves itself into the belief
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that the thing will happen, then that it is happening,
then that it has happened. Tartarin accordingly presents himself to
the world and to himself, as a gentleman to whom
all wonders are familiar. His experience blooms with supposititious flowers.
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The coveted thing for a man of his romantic mold
is that he shall be the bravest of the brave,
And he passes his life in a series of heroic
exploits in which as you listen to him it is
impossible not to believe. He passes over from Marseilles to Algiers,
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where his adventures deepen to a climax, and where he
has a desperate flirtation with the principal ornament of the
harem of a noble Arab. The lady proves at the
end to be a horribly improper little frenchwoman, and poor Tartarine,
abused and disabused, returns to Tarascon to meditate on what
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might have been. Nothing could be more charming than the light,
comicality of the sketch, which fills a small volume. This
is the most mirthful, the most completely diverting, of all
Daudet's tales, But the same element, in an infinitely subtler form,
runs through the others. The essence of it is the
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wish to please, and this brings me back to the
point to which I intended to return. The wish to
please is the quality by which Daudet persuades his reader's most.
It is this that elicits from them, that friendliness, that
confession that they are charmed, of which I spoke at
the beginning of these remarks, it gives a sociability to
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his manner, in spite of the fact that he describes
all sorts of painful and odious things. This contradiction is
a part of his originality. He has no pretension to
being simple. He is perfectly conscious of being complex. And
in nothing is he more modern than in this expressive
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and sympathetic smile, the smile of the artist, the skeptic,
the man of the world, with which he shows us
the miseries and cruelties of life. It is singular that
we should like him for that, and doubtless many people
do not, or think they do not. What they really dislike,
I believe is the things he relates, which are often lamentable.
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Section four. The first of these were slight and simple,
and for the most part, cheerful, little anecdotes and legends
of Provence, impressions of an artist's holidays in that strange,
bare lovely land, and of wanderings further afield in Corsica
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and Algeria. Sketches of Paris during the siege, incidents of
the invasion, the advent of the Prussian rule in other
parts of the country. In all these things, there is
la notte amuy the smile, which is only a more
synthetic sign of being moved. And then such grace of form,
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such lightness of touch, such alertness of observation. Some of
the chapters of the Leche de Monmoulain are such perfect
vignettes that the brief treatment of small subjects might well
have seemed at first Alphonse Daudet's appointed work. He had
almost invented a manner, and it was impossible to do
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better than he. The small peace, or even the passage glimpses,
reminiscences accidents. He rendered them with the brilliancy of a
violinist improvising on a sudden hint. The latch de Monmulin, moreover,
are impregnated with the light, with the fragrance of a
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provinceal summer. The Rosemarian time are in the air. As
we read. The white rocks and the gray foliage stretch
away to a horizon of hills, the l p the
little alps, on which color is as iridescent as the
breast of a dove. The Provence of Alphonse Dodey is
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a delightful land. Even when the mistral blows there it
has a music in its whistle, Emil Dolin has protested
against this. He too is of provensal race. He passed
his youth in the old Langdoc, and he intimates that
his fanciful friend throws too much sweetness into the picture.
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It is beyond contradiction that Doude, like Tartarin de Tarascon
and Numa rumas Stan, exaggerates a little. He sees with
great intensity, and is very sensitive to agreeable impressions. The Pettitchos,
his first long story, reads to day like the attempt
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of a beginner, and of a beginner who had read
and enjoyed Dickens. I risk this allusion to the author
of Copperfield in spite of a conviction that Alphonse Daudet
must be tired of hearing that he imitates him. It
is not imitation. There is nothing so gross as imitation
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in the length and breadth of Daudet's work. But it
is conscious sympathy, for there is plenty of that. There
are pages in his tales which seem to say to
us that, at one moment of his life Dickens had
been a revelation to him. Pages more particularly in Le
Petitio's in fromont June and in Jack the heroine of
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the first of these works, a very shadowy personage is
never mentioned, but as the black Eyes. Some one else
is always spoken of as the Dame de grande Merite.
The heroine's father, who keeps a flourishing china shop, never
opens his mouth without saying, se lecase de loudieaux. These
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are harmless. They are indeed sometimes very happy dickensisms. We
make no crime of them to Monsieur Daudet, who must
have felt as intelligently as he has felt everything else
the fascinating form of the English novelist's drollery. Froment Jeune
a rislay Anne is a study of life in the
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old quarter of the Maree, the Paris of the seventeenth century,
whose stately hotel have been invaded by the innumerable activities
of modern trade. When I say a study, I use
the word with all those restoredictions with which it must
be applied to a genius who is truthful without being literal,
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and who has a pair of butterfly's wings attached to
the back of his observation. If subtitles were the fashion today,
the right one for fromont Jeune would be or The
Dangers of Partnership The action takes place, for the most
part in a manufactory of wallpapers, and the persons in
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whom the author seeks to interest us are engaged in
this useful industry. There are delightful things in the book,
but as I intimated at the beginning of these remarks,
there are considerable inequalities. The pages that made Monsieur d'audet's fortune,
for it was with fromont Jeune that his fortune began,
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are those which relate to the history of Monsieur de Lobelle,
the super annuated tradigion, his long suffering wife, and his
exquisite lame daughter who makes butterflies and humming birds for
ladies head dresses. This eccentric and pathetic household was an
immense hit, and Daudet has never been happier than in
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the details of the group. D'lobel himself, who has not
had an engagement for ten years, and who never will
have one again, but who holds none the less that
it is his duty not to leave the stage, not
to give up the theater. Though his platonic passion is
paid for by the weary eyesight of his wife and daughter,
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who sit up half the night attaching bead eyes to
little stuffed animals. The blooming and sonorous Delobell, ferociously selfish
and fantastically vain under the genial forms of melodrama, is
a beautiful representation of a vulgarly factitious nature. The book
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revealed a painter. All the descriptive passages, the pictorial touches
had the truest felicity. No one better than Daudet gives
what we call the feeling of a place. The story illustrates,
among other things, the fact that a pretty little woman
who is consumed with the lowest form of vanity and
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unimpeded in her operations by the possession of a heart,
may inflict an unlimited amount of injury upon people about her,
if she only have the opportunity. The case is well demonstrated,
and Sidoni cheb is an elaborate study of flimsiness. Her
papery quality, as I may call it, her rustling dryness
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are effectively rendered. But I think there is a limit
to the interest which the English speaking reader of French
novels can take to day in the adventures of a
lady who leads the life of Madame Sidon. In the
first place, he has met her again and again. He
knows exactly what she will do and say in every situation,
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and in the second there always seems to him to
be in her vices, her disorders, an element of the conventional.
There is a receipt among French novelists for making little,
high heeled reprobates. However this may be, he has at
least a feeling that at night all cats are gray,
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and that the particular tint of depravity of a woman
whose nature has the shallowness of a sanded floor is
not a very important constantation. Daudet has expended much ingenuity
in endeavoring to hit the particular tint of Sidoni. He
has wished to make her a type, the type of
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the daughter of small, unsuccessful shopkeepers, narrow minded and self
go complaisant to imbecility, whose corruption comes from the examples
temptations opportunities of a great city, as well as from
her impure blood and the infection of the meanest associations.
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But what all this illustrates was not worth illustrating. The
early chapters of Jack are admirable. The later ones suffer
a little, I think, from the story being drawn out
too much like an accordion when it wishes to be plaintive.
Jack is a kind of younger brother of the Pettichos,
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though he takes the troubles of life rather more stoutly
than that delicate and diminutive hero. A poor boy with
a doting and disreputable mother, whose tenderness is surpassed by
her frivolity, and who sacrifices her son to the fantastic
egotism of an unsuccessful man of letters, with whom she
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passes several years of her life. She is another study
of cochinery. She is another shade, but she is a
more apprehensible figure than Sidony Sebb. She is, indeed a
very admirable portrait. The success of the book, however, is
the figure of her lover, that is, of her protector
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and bully, the unrecognized genius aforesaid author of lefell de Faust,
an uncirculated dramatic poem in the manner of Gerta and
center of a little group of rattai, a collection of
dead beats, as we say to day, as pretentious, as impotent,
as envious, and as bilious as himself, he conceives a
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violent hatred of the offspring of his amiable companion, and
the subject of Jack is the persecution of the boy
by this monstrous charlatan. This persecution is triumph faintly successful.
The youthful hero dies on the threshold of manhood, broken
down by his tribulations and miseries. He has been thrown
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upon the world to earn his bread, and, among other things,
seeks a livelihood as a stoker on an Atlantic steamer.
Jack has been taken young, and though his nature is
gentle and tender, his circumstances succeed in degrading him. He
is reduced at the end to a kind of bewildered brutishness.
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The story is simply the history of a juvenile martyrdom
pityingly expansively told. And I am afraid that mister Charles
Dudley Warner, who, in writing lately about modern fiction, complains
of the abuse of pathetic effects in that form of composition,
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would find little to commend in this brilliant paraphrase of suffering.
Mister Warner's complaint is eminently just, and the fault of
Jack is certainly the abuse of pathos. Mister Warner does
not mention Alphonse Daudet by name but it is safe
to assume that, in his reflections upon the perversity of
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those writers who will not make a novelist comfortable as
one's stockings or as pretty as a Christmas card, he
was thinking of the author of so many uncompromising denoument.
It is true that this probability is diminished by the
fact that when he remarks that surely the main object
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in the novel is to entertain, he appears to imply
that the writers who furnish his text are faithless to
this duty. It is possible he would not have made
that implication if he had had in mind the productions
of a story teller who has the great peculiarity of
being amusing, as the old fashioned critics say, even when
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he touches the source of tears. The word entertaining has
two or three shades of meaning. But in whatever sense
it is used, I may say in parentheses that I
do not agree with mister Warner's description of the main
object of the novel. I should put the case differently.
I should say that the main object of the novel
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is to represent life. I cannot understand any other motive
for interweaving imaginary incidents and I do not perceive any
other measure of the value of such combinations. The effect
of a novel, the effect of any work of art,
is to entertain, But that is a very different thing.
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The success of a work of art, to my mind,
may be measured by the degree to which it produces
a certain illusion. That illusion makes it appear to us,
for the time that we have lived another life, that
we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience. The greater
the art, the greater the miracle, and the more certain
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also the fact that we have been entertained in the
best meaning of that word, at least, which signifies that
we have been living at the expense of some one else.
I am perfectly aware that to say the object of
a novelist to represent life does not bring the question
to a point so fine as to be uncomfortable for
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any one. It is of the greatest importance that there
should be a very free appreciation of such a question,
And the definition I have hinted at gives plenty of
scope for that. For after all, may not people differ
infinitely as to what constitutes life what constitutes representation. Some people,
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for instance, hold that miss Austen with life that Miss
Austen represents. Others attribute these achievements to the accomplished Oida.
Some people find that illusion, that enlargement of experience, that
miracle of living at the expense of others, of which
I have spoken in the novels of Alexandre Dumint. Others
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revel in them in the pages of mister Howells, Section five.
Monsieur Daudet's unfortunate Jack, at any rate, lives altogether at
his own cost, that of his poor, little juvenile constitution,
and of his innocent affections and aspirations. He is sent
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to the horrible Jimnais mourn Val, where he has no
beguiling works of fiction to read. The Jimnaeis moran Val
is a doth boy's hall in a Parisian passage, a
very special class of academy. Nothing could be more effective
than Daudet's picture of this horrible institution with its bankrupt
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and exasperated proprietors, the greasy penitentiary of a group of
unremunerative children whose parents and guardians have found it convenient
to forget them. The episode of the wretched little hereditary
monarch of an African tribe, who has been placed there
for a royal education, and who, livid with cold, short
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rations and rough usage, and with his teeth chattering with
a sense of dishonor, steals away and wanders in the
streets of Paris, and then, recaptured and ferociously punished, surrenders
his little dusky soul in the pestilential dormitory of the establishment.
All this part of the tale is a masterpiece of
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vivid description. We seem to assist at the terrible soirees
where the Rattays exhibit their talents. Monsieur moran Val is,
of course a Rattais, and where the wife of the Principal,
a very small woman with a very big head and
a very high forehead, expounds the wonderful method de Costaire,
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invented by herself and designated by her maiden name, for
pronouncing the French tongue with elegance. My criticism of this
portion of the book, and indeed of much of the
rest of it, would be that the pathetic element is
too intentional, too voileus, as the French say, and I
am not sure that the reader enters into the author's
(37:38):
reason for making Charlotte Jack's mother a woman of the
class that we do not specify in American magazines. She
is an accommodating idiot, but her good nature is unfortunately
not consecutive, and she consents, at the instigation of the
diabolical Dargentan to her her child's being brought up like
(38:01):
a pauper. Dar Gentan, like Delobelle, is a study of
egotism pushed to the grotesque. But the portrait is still
more complete, and some of the details are inimitable. As
regards the infatuated Charlotte, who sacrifices her child to the
malignity of her lover, I repeat that certain of the
(38:25):
features of her character appear to me a mistake judged
in relation to the effect that the author wishes to produce.
He wishes to show us all that the boy loses
in being disinherited, if I may use that term with
respect to his situation, in which there is nothing to inherit.
(38:45):
But his loss is not great when we consider that
his mother had, after all, very little to give him.
She had divested herself of important properties. Bernard jan Soulas
in Lene Bob, is not like the two most successful
figures that Dodet has previously created a representation of full
(39:08):
blown selfishness. The unhappy Nabob is generous to a fault.
He is the most good natured and free handed of men.
And if he has made use of all sorts of
means to build up his enormous fortune, he knows an
equal number of ways of spending it. This voluminous tale
had an immense success. It seemed to show that Daudet
(39:32):
had found his manner, a manner that was perfectly new
and remarkably ingenious. As I have said, it held up
the mirror to contemporary history and attempted to complete for
us by supplementary revelations those images which are projected by
the modern newspaper. And the album of photographs Lerois on
(39:56):
Exile is an historical novel of this patter, in which
the process is applied with still more spirit. In these
two works, Doudet enlarged his canvas surprisingly and showed his
ability to deal with a multitude of figures. The distance
traversed artistically from the little anecdotes of the Let de
(40:19):
Monmoulain to the complex narrative of Le Nabab and its
successor are like the transformation, often so rapid of a
slim and charming young girl into a blooming and accomplished
woman of the world. The author's style had taken on
bone and muscle and become conscious of treasures of nervous agility.
(40:44):
I have left myself no space to speak of these
things in detail, and it was not part of my
purpose to examine Daudet's novels piece by piece. But I
may say that it is the items, the particular touches,
that make them value of writing of this kind. I
am not concerned to defend the process the system, so
(41:07):
far as there is a system. But I cannot open
either Le ne Bab or Lerois on exile, cannot rest
my eyes upon a page without being charmed by the
brilliancy of execution. It is difficult to give an idea
by any general terms of Daudet's style. A style which
(41:28):
defies convention, tradition, homogeneity, prudence, and sometimes even syntax, gathers
up every patch of color, every colloquial note that will
help to illustrate, and moves eagerly, lightly triumphantly along like
a clever woman in the costume of an eclectic age.
(41:50):
There is nothing classic in this mode of expression. It
is not the old fashioned drawing in black and white.
It never rests, never is said, never leaves the idea
sitting half draped like patience on a monument. It is
always panting, straining, fluttering, trying to add a little more
(42:12):
to produce the effect which shall make the reader see
with his eyes, or rather with the marvelous eyes of
Alphonse Daudet. Le Nabob is full of episodes, which are
above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The author
has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities and
(42:34):
painted the portrait or given a summary of each of them.
The opening day at the Salon, a funeral at Pere Lachaise,
a debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the premiere of
a new play at a favorite theater, furnish him with
so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation. I should
(42:56):
like to say, how rich and entertaining I think the
figure of Jean Soult, the robust and good natured son
of his own works, originally a doc porter at Marseilles, who,
after amassing a fabulous number of millions and selling European luxuries,
on commission to the Bay of Tunis comes to Paris
(43:18):
to try to make his social fortune, as he has
already made his financial And, after being a nine days wonder,
a public joke, and the victim of his boundless hospitality,
after being flattered by charlatans, rifled by adventurers, be labored
by newspapers, and exploited to the last penny of his coffers,
(43:42):
and the last pulsation of his vanity by everyone who
comes near him, dies of apoplexy in his box at
the theater, while the public hoots him for being unseated
for electoral frauds in the Chamber of Deputies, where for
a singer full mocking hour he has tasted the sweetness
(44:03):
of political life. I should like to say too, that,
however much or however little, the Duc de Moras may
resemble the Duc de Mournis, the character depicted by d'auda,
is a wonderful study of that modern passion the love
of good form. The chapter that relates the death of
(44:24):
the Duke and describes the tumult, the confusion of his palace,
the sudden extinction of the rapacious interests that crowd about him,
and to which the collapse of his splendid security comes
as the first breath of a revolution. This chapter is
famous and gives the fullest measure of what Daudet can
(44:46):
do when he fairly warms to his work. Lerois on Exiel, however,
has a greater perfection. It is simpler, more equal, and
it contains much more of the beautif. In Le Nebob
there are various lacune and a certain want of logic.
It is not a sustained narrative, but a series of
(45:10):
almost diabolically clever pictures. But the other book has more
largeness of line, a fine, tragic movement which deepens and
presses to the catastrophe. Daudet had observed that several dispossessed
monarchs had taken up their residence in the French capital,
(45:30):
some of them waiting and plotting for a restoration, and
chafing under their disgrace, others indifferent, resigned, relieved, eager to
console themselves with the pleasures of Paris. It occurred to
him to suppose a drama in which these exalted personages
should be the actors, and which, unlike either of his
(45:53):
former productions, should have a pure and noble heroine. He
was conscious of a dantless little imagination. The idea of
making kings and queens talk among themselves had no terror
for him. He had faith in his good taste, in
his exquisite powers of divination. The success is worthy of
(46:16):
the spirit, the gallant artistic spirit in which it was invoked.
LeRoi on exiell is a finished picture he has had.
It is true to simplify his subject a good deal
to make it practicable. The court of the King and
Queen of Illyria, in the suburb of Saint Monday is
(46:37):
a little too much like a court in a fairy tale.
But the amiable depravity of Christian in whom conviction resolution
ambition are hopelessly dead, and whose one desire is to
enjoy Paris with the impunity of a young man about town.
The proud, serious, concentrated nature of Frederica, who believes ardently
(47:02):
in her royal function and lives with her eyes fixed
on the crown, which she regards as a symbol of duty.
Both of these conceptions do Monsieur du Day the utmost
honor and prove that he is capable of handling great situations,
situations which have a depth of their own and do
(47:23):
not depend for their interest on amusing accidents. It takes
perhaps some courage to say so. But the feelings, the passions,
the view of life of royal personages differ essentially from
those of common mortals. Their education, their companions, their traditions,
their exceptional position take sufficient care of that. Alphonse Daudet
(47:49):
has comprehended the difference, and I scarcely know in the
last few years. A straitor flight of imagination. The history
of the Queen of Illyria is a tragedy. Her husband
sells his birthright for a few millions of francs and
rolls himself in the Parisian gutter. Her child perishes from
(48:11):
poverty of blood, she herself dries up in her despair.
There is nothing finer in all Daudet than the pages
at the end of the book, which describe her visits
to the great physician Boucheraux, when she takes her poor
half blind child by the hand, and, wishing an opinion
unbiased by the knowledge of her rank, goes to sit
(48:35):
in his waiting room like one of the vulgar multitude.
Wonderful or the delicacy, the verity, the tenderness of these pages.
We always point to them to justify our preediction. But
we must stop pointing. We will not say more of
Numa Rumastan than we have already said, for it is
(48:56):
better to pass so happy a work by than to
speak of inadequately. We will only repeat that we delight
in Numa Rumastan. Alphonse Daudet's last book is a novelty.
At the time I write, Levangeliste has been before the
public but a month or two. I will say but
(49:16):
little of it, partly because my opportunity is already over,
and partly because I have found that, for a fair
judgment of one of Daudet's works, the book should be
read a second time, after a certain interval has elapsed.
This interval has not brought round my second perusal of Levangeliste.
(49:39):
My first suggests that, with all the author's present mastery
of his resources, the book has a grave defect. It
is not that the story is painful. That is a
defect only when the sources of this element are not,
as I may say, abundant. It treats of a young girl,
a Danish Protestant, who is turned to stone by a
(50:02):
medusa of Calvinism, the somber and fanatical wife of a
great Protestant banker, Madame Outhemmond persuades Eileene Ebsen to wash
her hands of the poor old mother with whom up
to this moment she has lived in the closest affection,
and go forth into strange countries to stir up the
(50:24):
wicked to conversion. The excellent Madame Ebsen bewildered, heart broken, desperate,
terrified at the imagined penalties of her denunciation of the
rich and powerful bigot, so that she leaves her habitation
and hides in a household of small mechanics to escape
from them. One of the best episodes in the book,
(50:47):
Protess Struggles goes down on her knees in vain. Then,
at last, stupefied and exhausted, desists, looks for the last
time at her inexorable, impenetrable daughter, who has hard texts
on her lips and no recognition in her eye, and
who lets her pass away without an embrace forever. The
(51:11):
incident in itself is perfectly conceivable. Many well meaning persons
have held human relations cheap in the face of a
religious call, but Daudet's weakness has been simply a want
of acquaintance with his subject, proposing to himself to describe
a particular phase of French Protestantism. He has got up
(51:34):
certain of his facts with commendable zeal, but he has
not felt nor understood the matter, has looked at it
solely from the outside, sought to make it above all
things grotesque and extravagant. Into these excesses it doubtless frequently falls.
But there is a general human verity which regulates even
(51:58):
the most stubborn wills the most perverted lives. And of
this saving principle the author, in quest of striking pictures
has rather lost his grasp. His pictures are striking as
a matter of course. But to us readers of Protestant race,
familiar with the large, free, salubrious life which the children
(52:20):
of that faith have carried with them over the globe,
there is almost a kind of drollery in these fearsome
pictures of the Protestant temperament. The fact is that Monsieur
d'audet has not, to my belief, any natural understanding of
the religious passion. He has a quick perception of many things,
(52:42):
but that province of the human mind cannot be fey
d chkh experience. There is the only explorer. Madame Othemond
is not a real bigot. She is simply a dusky effigy.
She is undemonstrated. Aileen Epsen is not a victim inasmuch
as she is but half alive, and victims are victims
(53:05):
only in virtue of being thoroughly sentient. I do not
easily perceive her spiritual joints. All the human part of
the book, however, has the author's habitual felicity. And the
reader of these remarks knows what I hold that to be.
It may seem to him, indeed, that in making the
(53:26):
concession I made just above, in saying that Alphonse Daudet's
insight fails him when he begins to take the soul
into account, I partly retract some of the admiration I
have expressed for him, For that amounts, after all, to
saying that he has no high imagination, and, as a consequence,
(53:48):
no ideas. It is very true I am afraid that
he has not a great number of ideas. There are
certain things he does not conceive, certain forms that never
appear to him. Imaginative writers of the first order always
give us an impression that they have a kind of philosophy.
(54:09):
We should be embarrassed to put our finger on Daudet's philosophy.
And yet you have praised him so much we fancy
we hear it urged. You have praised him as if
he were one of the very first. All that is
very true, and yet we take nothing back. Determinations of
rank are a delicate matter, and it is sufficient priority
(54:32):
for an author that one likes him immensely. Dauday is bright, vivid, tender.
He has an intense artistic life. And then he is
so free for the spirit that moves slowly, going carefully
from point to point, not sure whether this or that
or the other will do. The sight of such freedom
(54:55):
is delightful. Eighteen eighty three, end of chapter seven, Alphonse
Daude
Chapter seven of Partial Portraits by Henry James. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain recording by Rite Boutro's
Chapter seven Alphonse Daudet, Section three. It is for the
expressive talents that we feel an affection, and Daudet is
(00:23):
eminently expressive. His manner is the manner of talk, and
if the talk is sincere, that makes a writer touch us.
Daudet expresses many things, but he most frequently expresses himself,
his own temper, in the presence of life, his own
feeling on a thousand occasions. This personal note is especially
(00:48):
to be observed in his earlier productions, in the Latte
de Marmoulain the Comte du londie le Petitchause. It is
also very present in the series of prefaces which he
has undertaken to supply to the Octavio edition of his works.
In these prefaces he gives the history of each successive book,
(01:12):
relates the circumstances under which it was written. These things
are ingenuously told, but what we are chiefly conscious of
in regard to them is that Alphonse Daudet must express himself.
His brother informs us that he is writing his memoirs
and this will have been another opportunity for expression. Ernest Daudet,
(01:36):
as well, as I have mentioned, has attempted to express him.
Montfrere es Mois is one of those productions which it
is difficult for an English reader to judge. In fairness,
it is so much more confidential than we in public,
ever venture to be. The French have, on all occasions
(01:58):
the courage of their amoment, and Monsieur Ernest Daudet's leading
emotion is a boundless admiration for his junior. He lays
it before us very frankly and gracefully, not on the
whole indiscreetly. And I have no quarrel whatever with his volume,
for it contains a considerable amount of information on a
(02:22):
very interesting subject. Indirectly, indeed, as well as directly, it
helps us to a knowledge of his brother, Alphonse Daudet
was born in Provence. He comes of an expansive, a
confidential race. His style is impregnated with the southern sunshine,
(02:43):
and his talent has the sweetness of a fruit that
has grown in the warm open air. He has the
advantage of being a provencal converted, as it were, of
having a southern temperament, and a northern reason. We know
what he thinks of the southern temperament. Numa Romston is
(03:05):
a vivid exposition of that go de carrierro dolu do Ston,
as the provinceal has it. Jouis de ru do lur
du maison, joy in the street and pain in the house.
That proverb says Alphonstoudi describes and formulates a whole race.
(03:25):
It has given him the subject of an admirable story,
in which he has depicted with equal force and tenderness,
the amiable weaknesses, the mingled violence and levity of the
children of the clime of the fig and olive. He
has put before us above all their mania for talk.
(03:46):
They are irrepressible chatter, the qualities that with them render
all passion, all purpose, inordinately vocal himself a complete produill
do medie, like the famil Mefre in Numa Rumastan, he
has achieved the feat of becoming objective to his own vision,
(04:08):
getting outside of his ingredients and judging them. This he
has done by the aid of his Parisianized conscience, his
exquisite taste, and that finer wisdom which resides in the artist.
From whatever soil he springs successfully as he has done it.
However he has not done it so well. But that
(04:31):
he too does not show a little of the heightened color,
the superabundant statement, the restless movement of his compatriots. He
is nothing if not demonstrative. He is always in a
state of feeling. He is not a very definite ideal
of reserve. It must be added that he is a
(04:53):
man of genius, and that genius never spends its capital.
That he is an artist, and that an artist always
has a certain method and order. But it remains characteristic
of his origin that the author of Numa Rumastan, one
of the happiest and most pointed of satires, should have
(05:15):
about him the aroma of some of the qualities satirized.
There are passages in his tales and in his prefaces
that are genuine produis du Midi, and his brother's account
of him could only have been written by a provencal
brother to be personnel to that point, transparent effusive gushing
(05:39):
to give oneself away in one's books has never been,
and never will be the ideal of us of English speech.
But that does not prevent our enjoying immensely when we
meet it a happy example of this alien spirit. For myself,
I am free to confess. Half. My affection for Alphonse
(06:00):
Daudet comes from the fact that he writes in a
way in which I would not write even if I could.
There are certain kinds of feeling and observation, certain impressions
and ideas to which we are rather ashamed to give
a voice, and yet are ashamed not to have in
our scale. In these matters. Alphonse Daudet renders us a
(06:25):
great service. He expresses such things on our behalf. I
may add that he usually does it much better than
the cleverest of us could do, even if we were
to try. I have said that he is a provencal converted,
and I should do him a great injustice if I
(06:45):
did not dwell upon his conversion. His brother relates the
circumstances under which he came up to Paris at the
age of twenty in a threadbare overcoat and a pair
of India rubbers to seek his literary fortune. His beginnings
were difficult. His childhood had been hard. He was familiar
(07:08):
with poverty and disaster. He had no adventitious aid to success.
His whole fortune consisted in his exquisite organization. But Paris
was to be artistically a mine of wealth to him,
and of all the anxious and eager young spirits who,
(07:30):
on the battlefield of uncarpeted Zankiem have laid siege to
the indifferent city, none can have felt more deeply conscious
of the mission to take possession of it. Alphonse Daudet,
at the present hour, is in complete possession of Paris.
He knows it, loves it, uses it. He has assimilated
(07:53):
it to its last particle. He has made of it
a Paris of his own, a Paris like a vast,
crisp water color, one of the water colors of the
School of Fortuny. The French have a great advantage in
the fact that they admire their capital very much as
if it were a foreign city. Most of their artists,
(08:16):
their men of letters, have come up from the provinces,
and well as they may learn to know the metropolis,
it never ceases to be a spectacle, a wonder, a
fascination for them. This comes partly from the intrinsic brilliancy
and interest of the place, partly from the poverty of
(08:37):
provincial life, and partly from the degree to which the
faculty of appreciation is developed in frenchmen of the class
of which I speak to Daudet. At any rate, the
familiar aspects of Paris are endlessly pictorial, and part of
the charm of his novels for those who share his
(08:59):
relish for that ar huge flower of civilization is in
the way he recalls it, evokes it, suddenly presents it
in parts or as a whole to our senses. The light,
the sky, the feeling of the air, the odors of
the streets, the look of certain vistas, the silvery muddy sin,
(09:21):
the cool gray tone of color, the physiognomy of particular quarters,
The whole Parisian expression meets you suddenly in his pages
and remind you again and again that if he paints
with a pen, he writes with a brush. I remember
that when I read Le Nabab and Le Rois on
(09:44):
Exile for the first time, I said to myself that
this was the artigl de Baris in supreme perfection, and
that no reader could understand such productions who had not
had a copious experience of the scene. It is certain,
at any rate that those books have their full value
(10:05):
only for minds more or less parisianized half, their meaning,
their magic, their subtlety of intention, is liable to be lost.
It may be said that this is a great limitation
that the works of the best novelists may be understood
by all the world. There is something in that, But
(10:27):
I know not all the same whether the fact I
indicate be a great limitation. It is certainly a very
illustrative quality. Daudet has caught the tone of a particular
pitch of manners. He applies it with the lightest, surest hand,
and his picture shines and lives the most generalized representation
(10:50):
of life. Cannot do more than that. I shrink very
much from speaking of systems in relation to such a
genius as this. I should incline to believe that Daudet's
system is simply to be as vivid as he can.
Emil Zola has a system, at least he says so,
(11:12):
But I do not remember on the part of the
author of Numa Roumastain the smallest technical profession of faith. Nevertheless,
he has taken a line, as we say, and his
line is to sail as close as possible to the actual,
the life of Paris being his subject. His attempt most
(11:34):
frequently is to put his finger upon known examples, so
that he has been accused of portraying individuals instead of
portraying types. There are a few of his figures to
which the name of some celebrity of the day has
not been attached. The ne Bob is Francois Braves, the
(11:55):
Duc de Mors is, the Duc de mornis. The Irish
doctor J. Dnkins is an English physician who flourished in
Paris from such a year to such another. People are
still living, wonderful to say who took his little pills
abbas or senecal Felicia Ruis is Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt. Constance
(12:18):
Kremitz is Madame Taglioni, the Queen of Illyria is, the
Queen of Naples, the Prince of Axel is the Prince
of Orange. Tom Levis is an English house agent, not
in the rule royal but hard by. Elise Merout is
a well known journalist, and doctor Boucherau a well known surgeon.
(12:43):
Such is the key we are told to these ingenious mystifications,
and to many others which I have not the space
to mention. It matters little to my mind whether in
each case, the cap fits the supposed model. For nothing
is more evident than that Alphonse Daudet has proposed to
(13:04):
himself to represent not only the people, but the persons
of his time. The conspicuity of certain individuals has added
to the force with which they speak to his imagination.
His taste is for salient figures, and he has said
to himself that there is no greater proof of being
(13:27):
salient than being known. The temptation to put people into
a book is a temptation of which every writer of
fiction knows something, and I hold that to succumb to
it is not only legitimate but inevitable. Putting people into
books is what the novelist lives upon. The question in
(13:51):
the matter is the question of delicacy, For according to
that delicacy the painter conjures away recognition or insists upon it.
Daudet has been accused of the impertinence of insisting, and
I believe that two or three of his portraits have
provoked a protest. He is charged with ingratitude for having
(14:15):
produced an effigy of the Duke of Mornis, who had
been his benefactor and employed him as a secretary. Such
a matter as this is between Monsieur Daudet and his conscience,
and I am far from pretending to pronounce upon it.
The uninitiated reader can only say that the figure is
(14:37):
a very striking one. Such a picture as it may
be imagined, the Duc de Mornis would not be displeased
to have inspired it. May fairly be conceded, however, that
Daudet is much more an observer than an inventor. The
invented parts of his tales, like the loves of Jack
(14:59):
and of Paul de Gerie, and the machinations of Madame Othemann,
the theological vampire of Levangeliste, to whom I shall return
for a moment, are the vague the ineffective, as well
as the romantic parts. I remember that in reading Le
Nabab it was not very easy to keep Paul du
(15:22):
Gerie and Andre Marin apart. It is the real, the
transmuted real, that he gives us best, the fruit of
a process that adds to observation what a kiss adds
to a greeting. The joy the excitement of recognition are keen,
even when the object recognized is dismal. They are part
(15:46):
of his spirit, part of his way of seeing things,
Levangelist is the saddest story conceivable. But it is lighted
throughout by the author's irrepressibly humorous view of the conditions
in which its successive elements present themselves, and by the
extraordinary vivacity with which in his hands narration and description proceed.
(16:13):
His humor is of the finest. It is needless to
say that it is never violent nor vulgar. It is
a part of the high spirits, the animal spirits, I
should say, if the phrase has not an association of
coarseness that accompany the temperament of his race. And it
(16:34):
is stimulated by the perpetual entertainment which so rare a
visual faculty naturally finds in the spectacle of life, even
while encountering there a multitude of distressing things. Daudet's gaiety
is a part of his poetry, and his poetry is
(16:54):
a part of everything he touches. There is little enough
gaiety in the subject of Jack, and yet the whole
story is told with a smile to complete the charm
of the thing. The smile is full of feeling. Here
and there it becomes an immense laugh, and the result
is a delightful piece of drollery less avanteur prodegues de
(17:18):
tartarande de Tarascon contain all his high spirits. It is
one of his few stories in which laughter and tears
are not intermingled. This little tale, which is one of
his first, is like Numa Umastain, a satire on a
southern foible. Tartarin de Tarascon is an excellent man who
(17:43):
inhabits the old town on the Rhone, over which the
palace of the good King Renee keeps guard. He has
not a fault in the world except an imagination too vivid.
He is liable to visions two hallucinations. The desire that
a thing shall happen speedily resolves itself into the belief
(18:04):
that the thing will happen, then that it is happening,
then that it has happened. Tartarin accordingly presents himself to
the world and to himself, as a gentleman to whom
all wonders are familiar. His experience blooms with supposititious flowers.
(18:24):
The coveted thing for a man of his romantic mold
is that he shall be the bravest of the brave,
And he passes his life in a series of heroic
exploits in which as you listen to him it is
impossible not to believe. He passes over from Marseilles to Algiers,
(18:45):
where his adventures deepen to a climax, and where he
has a desperate flirtation with the principal ornament of the
harem of a noble Arab. The lady proves at the
end to be a horribly improper little frenchwoman, and poor Tartarine,
abused and disabused, returns to Tarascon to meditate on what
(19:07):
might have been. Nothing could be more charming than the light,
comicality of the sketch, which fills a small volume. This
is the most mirthful, the most completely diverting, of all
Daudet's tales, But the same element, in an infinitely subtler form,
runs through the others. The essence of it is the
(19:31):
wish to please, and this brings me back to the
point to which I intended to return. The wish to
please is the quality by which Daudet persuades his reader's most.
It is this that elicits from them, that friendliness, that
confession that they are charmed, of which I spoke at
the beginning of these remarks, it gives a sociability to
(19:54):
his manner, in spite of the fact that he describes
all sorts of painful and odious things. This contradiction is
a part of his originality. He has no pretension to
being simple. He is perfectly conscious of being complex. And
in nothing is he more modern than in this expressive
(20:16):
and sympathetic smile, the smile of the artist, the skeptic,
the man of the world, with which he shows us
the miseries and cruelties of life. It is singular that
we should like him for that, and doubtless many people
do not, or think they do not. What they really dislike,
I believe is the things he relates, which are often lamentable.
(20:42):
Section four. The first of these were slight and simple,
and for the most part, cheerful, little anecdotes and legends
of Provence, impressions of an artist's holidays in that strange,
bare lovely land, and of wanderings further afield in Corsica
(21:03):
and Algeria. Sketches of Paris during the siege, incidents of
the invasion, the advent of the Prussian rule in other
parts of the country. In all these things, there is
la notte amuy the smile, which is only a more
synthetic sign of being moved. And then such grace of form,
(21:25):
such lightness of touch, such alertness of observation. Some of
the chapters of the Leche de Monmoulain are such perfect
vignettes that the brief treatment of small subjects might well
have seemed at first Alphonse Daudet's appointed work. He had
almost invented a manner, and it was impossible to do
(21:48):
better than he. The small peace, or even the passage glimpses,
reminiscences accidents. He rendered them with the brilliancy of a
violinist improvising on a sudden hint. The latch de Monmulin, moreover,
are impregnated with the light, with the fragrance of a
(22:08):
provinceal summer. The Rosemarian time are in the air. As
we read. The white rocks and the gray foliage stretch
away to a horizon of hills, the l p the
little alps, on which color is as iridescent as the
breast of a dove. The Provence of Alphonse Dodey is
(22:29):
a delightful land. Even when the mistral blows there it
has a music in its whistle, Emil Dolin has protested
against this. He too is of provensal race. He passed
his youth in the old Langdoc, and he intimates that
his fanciful friend throws too much sweetness into the picture.
(22:51):
It is beyond contradiction that Doude, like Tartarin de Tarascon
and Numa rumas Stan, exaggerates a little. He sees with
great intensity, and is very sensitive to agreeable impressions. The Pettitchos,
his first long story, reads to day like the attempt
(23:12):
of a beginner, and of a beginner who had read
and enjoyed Dickens. I risk this allusion to the author
of Copperfield in spite of a conviction that Alphonse Daudet
must be tired of hearing that he imitates him. It
is not imitation. There is nothing so gross as imitation
(23:34):
in the length and breadth of Daudet's work. But it
is conscious sympathy, for there is plenty of that. There
are pages in his tales which seem to say to
us that, at one moment of his life Dickens had
been a revelation to him. Pages more particularly in Le
Petitio's in fromont June and in Jack the heroine of
(23:59):
the first of these works, a very shadowy personage is
never mentioned, but as the black Eyes. Some one else
is always spoken of as the Dame de grande Merite.
The heroine's father, who keeps a flourishing china shop, never
opens his mouth without saying, se lecase de loudieaux. These
(24:22):
are harmless. They are indeed sometimes very happy dickensisms. We
make no crime of them to Monsieur Daudet, who must
have felt as intelligently as he has felt everything else
the fascinating form of the English novelist's drollery. Froment Jeune
a rislay Anne is a study of life in the
(24:44):
old quarter of the Maree, the Paris of the seventeenth century,
whose stately hotel have been invaded by the innumerable activities
of modern trade. When I say a study, I use
the word with all those restoredictions with which it must
be applied to a genius who is truthful without being literal,
(25:06):
and who has a pair of butterfly's wings attached to
the back of his observation. If subtitles were the fashion today,
the right one for fromont Jeune would be or The
Dangers of Partnership The action takes place, for the most
part in a manufactory of wallpapers, and the persons in
(25:29):
whom the author seeks to interest us are engaged in
this useful industry. There are delightful things in the book,
but as I intimated at the beginning of these remarks,
there are considerable inequalities. The pages that made Monsieur d'audet's fortune,
for it was with fromont Jeune that his fortune began,
(25:52):
are those which relate to the history of Monsieur de Lobelle,
the super annuated tradigion, his long suffering wife, and his
exquisite lame daughter who makes butterflies and humming birds for
ladies head dresses. This eccentric and pathetic household was an
immense hit, and Daudet has never been happier than in
(26:15):
the details of the group. D'lobel himself, who has not
had an engagement for ten years, and who never will
have one again, but who holds none the less that
it is his duty not to leave the stage, not
to give up the theater. Though his platonic passion is
paid for by the weary eyesight of his wife and daughter,
(26:38):
who sit up half the night attaching bead eyes to
little stuffed animals. The blooming and sonorous Delobell, ferociously selfish
and fantastically vain under the genial forms of melodrama, is
a beautiful representation of a vulgarly factitious nature. The book
(26:59):
revealed a painter. All the descriptive passages, the pictorial touches
had the truest felicity. No one better than Daudet gives
what we call the feeling of a place. The story illustrates,
among other things, the fact that a pretty little woman
who is consumed with the lowest form of vanity and
(27:21):
unimpeded in her operations by the possession of a heart,
may inflict an unlimited amount of injury upon people about her,
if she only have the opportunity. The case is well demonstrated,
and Sidoni cheb is an elaborate study of flimsiness. Her
papery quality, as I may call it, her rustling dryness
(27:45):
are effectively rendered. But I think there is a limit
to the interest which the English speaking reader of French
novels can take to day in the adventures of a
lady who leads the life of Madame Sidon. In the
first place, he has met her again and again. He
knows exactly what she will do and say in every situation,
(28:09):
and in the second there always seems to him to
be in her vices, her disorders, an element of the conventional.
There is a receipt among French novelists for making little,
high heeled reprobates. However this may be, he has at
least a feeling that at night all cats are gray,
(28:31):
and that the particular tint of depravity of a woman
whose nature has the shallowness of a sanded floor is
not a very important constantation. Daudet has expended much ingenuity
in endeavoring to hit the particular tint of Sidoni. He
has wished to make her a type, the type of
(28:54):
the daughter of small, unsuccessful shopkeepers, narrow minded and self
go complaisant to imbecility, whose corruption comes from the examples
temptations opportunities of a great city, as well as from
her impure blood and the infection of the meanest associations.
(29:15):
But what all this illustrates was not worth illustrating. The
early chapters of Jack are admirable. The later ones suffer
a little, I think, from the story being drawn out
too much like an accordion when it wishes to be plaintive.
Jack is a kind of younger brother of the Pettichos,
(29:37):
though he takes the troubles of life rather more stoutly
than that delicate and diminutive hero. A poor boy with
a doting and disreputable mother, whose tenderness is surpassed by
her frivolity, and who sacrifices her son to the fantastic
egotism of an unsuccessful man of letters, with whom she
(30:00):
passes several years of her life. She is another study
of cochinery. She is another shade, but she is a
more apprehensible figure than Sidony Sebb. She is, indeed a
very admirable portrait. The success of the book, however, is
the figure of her lover, that is, of her protector
(30:21):
and bully, the unrecognized genius aforesaid author of lefell de Faust,
an uncirculated dramatic poem in the manner of Gerta and
center of a little group of rattai, a collection of
dead beats, as we say to day, as pretentious, as impotent,
as envious, and as bilious as himself, he conceives a
(30:47):
violent hatred of the offspring of his amiable companion, and
the subject of Jack is the persecution of the boy
by this monstrous charlatan. This persecution is triumph faintly successful.
The youthful hero dies on the threshold of manhood, broken
down by his tribulations and miseries. He has been thrown
(31:10):
upon the world to earn his bread, and, among other things,
seeks a livelihood as a stoker on an Atlantic steamer.
Jack has been taken young, and though his nature is
gentle and tender, his circumstances succeed in degrading him. He
is reduced at the end to a kind of bewildered brutishness.
(31:34):
The story is simply the history of a juvenile martyrdom
pityingly expansively told. And I am afraid that mister Charles
Dudley Warner, who, in writing lately about modern fiction, complains
of the abuse of pathetic effects in that form of composition,
(31:54):
would find little to commend in this brilliant paraphrase of suffering.
Mister Warner's complaint is eminently just, and the fault of
Jack is certainly the abuse of pathos. Mister Warner does
not mention Alphonse Daudet by name but it is safe
to assume that, in his reflections upon the perversity of
(32:17):
those writers who will not make a novelist comfortable as
one's stockings or as pretty as a Christmas card, he
was thinking of the author of so many uncompromising denoument.
It is true that this probability is diminished by the
fact that when he remarks that surely the main object
(32:38):
in the novel is to entertain, he appears to imply
that the writers who furnish his text are faithless to
this duty. It is possible he would not have made
that implication if he had had in mind the productions
of a story teller who has the great peculiarity of
being amusing, as the old fashioned critics say, even when
(33:02):
he touches the source of tears. The word entertaining has
two or three shades of meaning. But in whatever sense
it is used, I may say in parentheses that I
do not agree with mister Warner's description of the main
object of the novel. I should put the case differently.
I should say that the main object of the novel
(33:25):
is to represent life. I cannot understand any other motive
for interweaving imaginary incidents and I do not perceive any
other measure of the value of such combinations. The effect
of a novel, the effect of any work of art,
is to entertain, But that is a very different thing.
(33:47):
The success of a work of art, to my mind,
may be measured by the degree to which it produces
a certain illusion. That illusion makes it appear to us,
for the time that we have lived another life, that
we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience. The greater
the art, the greater the miracle, and the more certain
(34:10):
also the fact that we have been entertained in the
best meaning of that word, at least, which signifies that
we have been living at the expense of some one else.
I am perfectly aware that to say the object of
a novelist to represent life does not bring the question
to a point so fine as to be uncomfortable for
(34:33):
any one. It is of the greatest importance that there
should be a very free appreciation of such a question,
And the definition I have hinted at gives plenty of
scope for that. For after all, may not people differ
infinitely as to what constitutes life what constitutes representation. Some people,
(34:57):
for instance, hold that miss Austen with life that Miss
Austen represents. Others attribute these achievements to the accomplished Oida.
Some people find that illusion, that enlargement of experience, that
miracle of living at the expense of others, of which
I have spoken in the novels of Alexandre Dumint. Others
(35:22):
revel in them in the pages of mister Howells, Section five.
Monsieur Daudet's unfortunate Jack, at any rate, lives altogether at
his own cost, that of his poor, little juvenile constitution,
and of his innocent affections and aspirations. He is sent
(35:44):
to the horrible Jimnais mourn Val, where he has no
beguiling works of fiction to read. The Jimnaeis moran Val
is a doth boy's hall in a Parisian passage, a
very special class of academy. Nothing could be more effective
than Daudet's picture of this horrible institution with its bankrupt
(36:06):
and exasperated proprietors, the greasy penitentiary of a group of
unremunerative children whose parents and guardians have found it convenient
to forget them. The episode of the wretched little hereditary
monarch of an African tribe, who has been placed there
for a royal education, and who, livid with cold, short
(36:30):
rations and rough usage, and with his teeth chattering with
a sense of dishonor, steals away and wanders in the
streets of Paris, and then, recaptured and ferociously punished, surrenders
his little dusky soul in the pestilential dormitory of the establishment.
All this part of the tale is a masterpiece of
(36:53):
vivid description. We seem to assist at the terrible soirees
where the Rattays exhibit their talents. Monsieur moran Val is,
of course a Rattais, and where the wife of the Principal,
a very small woman with a very big head and
a very high forehead, expounds the wonderful method de Costaire,
(37:16):
invented by herself and designated by her maiden name, for
pronouncing the French tongue with elegance. My criticism of this
portion of the book, and indeed of much of the
rest of it, would be that the pathetic element is
too intentional, too voileus, as the French say, and I
am not sure that the reader enters into the author's
(37:38):
reason for making Charlotte Jack's mother a woman of the
class that we do not specify in American magazines. She
is an accommodating idiot, but her good nature is unfortunately
not consecutive, and she consents, at the instigation of the
diabolical Dargentan to her her child's being brought up like
(38:01):
a pauper. Dar Gentan, like Delobelle, is a study of
egotism pushed to the grotesque. But the portrait is still
more complete, and some of the details are inimitable. As
regards the infatuated Charlotte, who sacrifices her child to the
malignity of her lover, I repeat that certain of the
(38:25):
features of her character appear to me a mistake judged
in relation to the effect that the author wishes to produce.
He wishes to show us all that the boy loses
in being disinherited, if I may use that term with
respect to his situation, in which there is nothing to inherit.
(38:45):
But his loss is not great when we consider that
his mother had, after all, very little to give him.
She had divested herself of important properties. Bernard jan Soulas
in Lene Bob, is not like the two most successful
figures that Dodet has previously created a representation of full
(39:08):
blown selfishness. The unhappy Nabob is generous to a fault.
He is the most good natured and free handed of men.
And if he has made use of all sorts of
means to build up his enormous fortune, he knows an
equal number of ways of spending it. This voluminous tale
had an immense success. It seemed to show that Daudet
(39:32):
had found his manner, a manner that was perfectly new
and remarkably ingenious. As I have said, it held up
the mirror to contemporary history and attempted to complete for
us by supplementary revelations those images which are projected by
the modern newspaper. And the album of photographs Lerois on
(39:56):
Exile is an historical novel of this patter, in which
the process is applied with still more spirit. In these
two works, Doudet enlarged his canvas surprisingly and showed his
ability to deal with a multitude of figures. The distance
traversed artistically from the little anecdotes of the Let de
(40:19):
Monmoulain to the complex narrative of Le Nabab and its
successor are like the transformation, often so rapid of a
slim and charming young girl into a blooming and accomplished
woman of the world. The author's style had taken on
bone and muscle and become conscious of treasures of nervous agility.
(40:44):
I have left myself no space to speak of these
things in detail, and it was not part of my
purpose to examine Daudet's novels piece by piece. But I
may say that it is the items, the particular touches,
that make them value of writing of this kind. I
am not concerned to defend the process the system, so
(41:07):
far as there is a system. But I cannot open
either Le ne Bab or Lerois on exile, cannot rest
my eyes upon a page without being charmed by the
brilliancy of execution. It is difficult to give an idea
by any general terms of Daudet's style. A style which
(41:28):
defies convention, tradition, homogeneity, prudence, and sometimes even syntax, gathers
up every patch of color, every colloquial note that will
help to illustrate, and moves eagerly, lightly triumphantly along like
a clever woman in the costume of an eclectic age.
(41:50):
There is nothing classic in this mode of expression. It
is not the old fashioned drawing in black and white.
It never rests, never is said, never leaves the idea
sitting half draped like patience on a monument. It is
always panting, straining, fluttering, trying to add a little more
(42:12):
to produce the effect which shall make the reader see
with his eyes, or rather with the marvelous eyes of
Alphonse Daudet. Le Nabob is full of episodes, which are
above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The author
has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities and
(42:34):
painted the portrait or given a summary of each of them.
The opening day at the Salon, a funeral at Pere Lachaise,
a debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the premiere of
a new play at a favorite theater, furnish him with
so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation. I should
(42:56):
like to say, how rich and entertaining I think the
figure of Jean Soult, the robust and good natured son
of his own works, originally a doc porter at Marseilles, who,
after amassing a fabulous number of millions and selling European luxuries,
on commission to the Bay of Tunis comes to Paris
(43:18):
to try to make his social fortune, as he has
already made his financial And, after being a nine days wonder,
a public joke, and the victim of his boundless hospitality,
after being flattered by charlatans, rifled by adventurers, be labored
by newspapers, and exploited to the last penny of his coffers,
(43:42):
and the last pulsation of his vanity by everyone who
comes near him, dies of apoplexy in his box at
the theater, while the public hoots him for being unseated
for electoral frauds in the Chamber of Deputies, where for
a singer full mocking hour he has tasted the sweetness
(44:03):
of political life. I should like to say too, that,
however much or however little, the Duc de Moras may
resemble the Duc de Mournis, the character depicted by d'auda,
is a wonderful study of that modern passion the love
of good form. The chapter that relates the death of
(44:24):
the Duke and describes the tumult, the confusion of his palace,
the sudden extinction of the rapacious interests that crowd about him,
and to which the collapse of his splendid security comes
as the first breath of a revolution. This chapter is
famous and gives the fullest measure of what Daudet can
(44:46):
do when he fairly warms to his work. Lerois on Exiel, however,
has a greater perfection. It is simpler, more equal, and
it contains much more of the beautif. In Le Nebob
there are various lacune and a certain want of logic.
It is not a sustained narrative, but a series of
(45:10):
almost diabolically clever pictures. But the other book has more
largeness of line, a fine, tragic movement which deepens and
presses to the catastrophe. Daudet had observed that several dispossessed
monarchs had taken up their residence in the French capital,
(45:30):
some of them waiting and plotting for a restoration, and
chafing under their disgrace, others indifferent, resigned, relieved, eager to
console themselves with the pleasures of Paris. It occurred to
him to suppose a drama in which these exalted personages
should be the actors, and which, unlike either of his
(45:53):
former productions, should have a pure and noble heroine. He
was conscious of a dantless little imagination. The idea of
making kings and queens talk among themselves had no terror
for him. He had faith in his good taste, in
his exquisite powers of divination. The success is worthy of
(46:16):
the spirit, the gallant artistic spirit in which it was invoked.
LeRoi on exiell is a finished picture he has had.
It is true to simplify his subject a good deal
to make it practicable. The court of the King and
Queen of Illyria, in the suburb of Saint Monday is
(46:37):
a little too much like a court in a fairy tale.
But the amiable depravity of Christian in whom conviction resolution
ambition are hopelessly dead, and whose one desire is to
enjoy Paris with the impunity of a young man about town.
The proud, serious, concentrated nature of Frederica, who believes ardently
(47:02):
in her royal function and lives with her eyes fixed
on the crown, which she regards as a symbol of duty.
Both of these conceptions do Monsieur du Day the utmost
honor and prove that he is capable of handling great situations,
situations which have a depth of their own and do
(47:23):
not depend for their interest on amusing accidents. It takes
perhaps some courage to say so. But the feelings, the passions,
the view of life of royal personages differ essentially from
those of common mortals. Their education, their companions, their traditions,
their exceptional position take sufficient care of that. Alphonse Daudet
(47:49):
has comprehended the difference, and I scarcely know in the
last few years. A straitor flight of imagination. The history
of the Queen of Illyria is a tragedy. Her husband
sells his birthright for a few millions of francs and
rolls himself in the Parisian gutter. Her child perishes from
(48:11):
poverty of blood, she herself dries up in her despair.
There is nothing finer in all Daudet than the pages
at the end of the book, which describe her visits
to the great physician Boucheraux, when she takes her poor
half blind child by the hand, and, wishing an opinion
unbiased by the knowledge of her rank, goes to sit
(48:35):
in his waiting room like one of the vulgar multitude.
Wonderful or the delicacy, the verity, the tenderness of these pages.
We always point to them to justify our preediction. But
we must stop pointing. We will not say more of
Numa Rumastan than we have already said, for it is
(48:56):
better to pass so happy a work by than to
speak of inadequately. We will only repeat that we delight
in Numa Rumastan. Alphonse Daudet's last book is a novelty.
At the time I write, Levangeliste has been before the
public but a month or two. I will say but
(49:16):
little of it, partly because my opportunity is already over,
and partly because I have found that, for a fair
judgment of one of Daudet's works, the book should be
read a second time, after a certain interval has elapsed.
This interval has not brought round my second perusal of Levangeliste.
(49:39):
My first suggests that, with all the author's present mastery
of his resources, the book has a grave defect. It
is not that the story is painful. That is a
defect only when the sources of this element are not,
as I may say, abundant. It treats of a young girl,
a Danish Protestant, who is turned to stone by a
(50:02):
medusa of Calvinism, the somber and fanatical wife of a
great Protestant banker, Madame Outhemmond persuades Eileene Ebsen to wash
her hands of the poor old mother with whom up
to this moment she has lived in the closest affection,
and go forth into strange countries to stir up the
(50:24):
wicked to conversion. The excellent Madame Ebsen bewildered, heart broken, desperate,
terrified at the imagined penalties of her denunciation of the
rich and powerful bigot, so that she leaves her habitation
and hides in a household of small mechanics to escape
from them. One of the best episodes in the book,
(50:47):
Protess Struggles goes down on her knees in vain. Then,
at last, stupefied and exhausted, desists, looks for the last
time at her inexorable, impenetrable daughter, who has hard texts
on her lips and no recognition in her eye, and
who lets her pass away without an embrace forever. The
(51:11):
incident in itself is perfectly conceivable. Many well meaning persons
have held human relations cheap in the face of a
religious call, but Daudet's weakness has been simply a want
of acquaintance with his subject, proposing to himself to describe
a particular phase of French Protestantism. He has got up
(51:34):
certain of his facts with commendable zeal, but he has
not felt nor understood the matter, has looked at it
solely from the outside, sought to make it above all
things grotesque and extravagant. Into these excesses it doubtless frequently falls.
But there is a general human verity which regulates even
(51:58):
the most stubborn wills the most perverted lives. And of
this saving principle the author, in quest of striking pictures
has rather lost his grasp. His pictures are striking as
a matter of course. But to us readers of Protestant race,
familiar with the large, free, salubrious life which the children
(52:20):
of that faith have carried with them over the globe,
there is almost a kind of drollery in these fearsome
pictures of the Protestant temperament. The fact is that Monsieur
d'audet has not, to my belief, any natural understanding of
the religious passion. He has a quick perception of many things,
(52:42):
but that province of the human mind cannot be fey
d chkh experience. There is the only explorer. Madame Othemond
is not a real bigot. She is simply a dusky effigy.
She is undemonstrated. Aileen Epsen is not a victim inasmuch
as she is but half alive, and victims are victims
(53:05):
only in virtue of being thoroughly sentient. I do not
easily perceive her spiritual joints. All the human part of
the book, however, has the author's habitual felicity. And the
reader of these remarks knows what I hold that to be.
It may seem to him, indeed, that in making the
(53:26):
concession I made just above, in saying that Alphonse Daudet's
insight fails him when he begins to take the soul
into account, I partly retract some of the admiration I
have expressed for him, For that amounts, after all, to
saying that he has no high imagination, and, as a consequence,
(53:48):
no ideas. It is very true I am afraid that
he has not a great number of ideas. There are
certain things he does not conceive, certain forms that never
appear to him. Imaginative writers of the first order always
give us an impression that they have a kind of philosophy.
(54:09):
We should be embarrassed to put our finger on Daudet's philosophy.
And yet you have praised him so much we fancy
we hear it urged. You have praised him as if
he were one of the very first. All that is
very true, and yet we take nothing back. Determinations of
rank are a delicate matter, and it is sufficient priority
(54:32):
for an author that one likes him immensely. Dauday is bright, vivid, tender.
He has an intense artistic life. And then he is
so free for the spirit that moves slowly, going carefully
from point to point, not sure whether this or that
or the other will do. The sight of such freedom
(54:55):
is delightful. Eighteen eighty three, end of chapter seven, Alphonse
Daude
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