A History of the French Novel Volume I Part 8

Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three nights in her company after all. [_After thinking some time he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very day of her marriage: for she has, in the circ.u.mstances, kept her word to her parents._] Then he tried to go up to her and salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and he could never manage to speak to her all through the day.

He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.

Now whether this, as the book a.s.serts and as is not at all improbable, is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person one farthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story, that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest, and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity of administration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at much greater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, by great novelists of the most widely varying cla.s.ses--by Scott and by Dumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention no living writer, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have more character between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual _nouvelles_, and each lends him or herself to endless further development. Not a few of the separate scenes--the good parents fussing over their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingenious objections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first three of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of this); the dramatic and risky pa.s.sages at the castle _en Barrois_; the contrast of Katherine's pa.s.sion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the fas.h.i.+on in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and saves the lady from danger at his hands--all this is novel-matter of almost the first cla.s.s as regards incident, with no lack of character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"

than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais to complete the insult by dancing with another.

[Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]

One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight trivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of the personages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_ themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by cla.s.s-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a "priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only by very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied, transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons of narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.

It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale, that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing popularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we may say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which consists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the _nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse and prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appet.i.tes and tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic representation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famous principle of _segnius irritant_. Nor was the political state of France during the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, two separate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them is the rather famous, though probably not widely read, _Pet.i.t Jehan de Saintre_ of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain work of his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmen intentionally uncomplimentary, _Jehan de Paris_ of an unknown writer. La Salle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, if he died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. _Jehan de Paris_ has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.

[Sidenote: _Pet.i.t Jehan de Saintre._]

The history of "little John of Saintre and the Lady of the Beautiful Cousins"[86] has not struck all judges, even all English judges,[87] in the same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsily imitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others, admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the stately society it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was a bitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous _Quinze Joyes de Mariage_, one of the most unmitigated pieces of unsweetened irony--next to _A Tale of a Tub_ and _Jonathan Wild_--to be found in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same quality appears of course in the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_, which few good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is little positive evidence. In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ again, as has been said, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well as perhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in _Pet.i.t Jehan_ itself; for, after all the gracious courts.h.i.+p of the earlier part, the _dame des belles Cousines_, during an absence of her lover on service, falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the _nouvelles_ themselves. But the earlier part _is_ gracious--a word specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little unreal; does not the secondary form and sense which has been fastened upon reality--"realism"--show that, in the opinion of many people at least, reality is _not_ gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despise all your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out--not in the least seeing the real drift of their argument--that the fifteenth century was, in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of morals and manners, may urge these things. But the best part of _Pet.i.t Jehan_ remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers--a picture of a kind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anything foolish, but only adoration of the adorable.

[Sidenote: _Jehan de Paris._]

It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything more different than the not much later _Jehan de Paris_, an evident folk-tale[88] of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popular chapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmen provide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact or fails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them tales with other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historically demonstrable that in crossing a river many English hors.e.m.e.n would be likely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through; nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the game and all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consist of starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells (with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zest for the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queen of Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulent barons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; how they forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, and how that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetch his bride. As soon as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead) hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John of Paris, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than the English (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and sets of _quiproquos_ follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone and baffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state, reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with the natural effect of making him _bien marry et courrouce_, though no fight comes off.

The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than a hundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the _Collection Jannet-Picard_), and there is a zest and _verve_ about it which ought to please any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked of Comic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it as certainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by side with the other "John," especially if both are again compared with the certainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, to which that rather ambitious t.i.tle was given by Mr. Thoms. There is nothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling _Jehan de Saintre_: you must get on to the _Arcadia_ or at least to _Euphues_ before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in our stuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with _Jehan de Paris_; but it works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fas.h.i.+on; no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It is astonis.h.i.+ng that a language which had had, if only in verse, such an unsurpa.s.sable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. But then the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially in England, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Even in France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no means large.[89] Nor shall we find it very greatly increased even in the next age, though there is one masterpiece in quant.i.ty as well as quality.

But, for our purpose, the _Cent Nouvelles_ and the two separate pieces just discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to show the vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found and the feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Prose as well as verse.

[81] In the very delightful imaginative introduction to _Quentin Durward_.

[82] This is one of the points which a modern novelist would certainly have seized; but whether to advantage or not is another question.

[83] And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to La Salle.

[84] Only contrast "_Tom, Tom_, the piper's son," with "_There was once_ a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormities of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymous instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is, or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborate and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of the beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In that tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp.

84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lost if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisle and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Briere. And would the _bocca bacciata_ of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it was merely anybody's?

[85] The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estates_ could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French farces of older date.

[86] n.o.body seems to be entirely certain what this odd t.i.tle means: though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses. But it has, like other _rhetoriqueur_ names of 1450-1550, such as "Traverser of Perilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic attraction for some people.

[87] If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson was wont to abuse it.

[88] As such, the substance is found in other languages. But the French itself has been traced by some to an earlier _roman d'aventure_, _Blonde d'Oxford_, in which an English heiress is carried off by a French squire.

[89] Perhaps one should guard against a possible repet.i.tion of a not uncommon critical mistake--that of inferring ignorance from absence of mention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of known French stories in prose has been given; and the failure to supplement a former glance at the late prose versions of romance is intentional. They have nothing new in romance-, still less in novel-_character_ for us. The _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_ volumes have been dwelt upon, not as a _corpus_, but because they appear to represent, without any unfair manipulation or "window-dressing," the kind at the time with a remarkable combination of interest both individual and contrasted.

CHAPTER VI

RABELAIS

[Sidenote: The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authors.h.i.+p up to this point.]

Although--as it is hoped the foregoing chapters may have shown--the amount of energy and of talent, thrown into the department of French fiction, had from almost the earliest times been remarkably great; although French, if not France, had been the mother of almost all literatures in things fict.i.tious, it can hardly be said that any writer of undeniable genius, ent.i.tling him to the first cla.s.s in the Art of Letters, had shown himself therein. A hundred _chansons de geste_ and as many romances _d'aventures_ had displayed dispersed talent of a very high kind, and in the best of them, as the present writer has tried to point out, a very "extensive a.s.sortment" of the various attractions of the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it.

The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the case of those given from _Partenopeus_--the fatal revelation of Melior's charms and the galloping of the maddened palfrey along the seash.o.r.e, with the dark monster-haunted wood behind and the bright moonlit sea and galley in front--are more often stock and lifeless; while, above all, the characters are rarely more than sketched, if even that. The one exception--the great Arthurian history, as liberated from its Graal-legend swaddling clothes, and its kite-and-crow battles with Saxons and rival knights, but retaining the mystical motive of the Graal-search itself and the adventures of Lancelot and other knights; combining all this into a single story, and storing it with incident for a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of Lancelot himself and Guinevere--this great achievement, it has been frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and more firm conviction that Chrestien did not do it and could not have done it; others of more note, perhaps of closer acquaintance with MS.

sources, but also perhaps not uniting knowledge of the subject with more experience in general literary criticism and in special study of the Novel, will not allow Mapes to have done it.

The _Roman de la Rose_, beautiful as is its earlier part and ingenious as is (sometimes) its later, is, as a _story_, of the thinnest kind. The _Roman de Renart_ is a vast collection of small stories of a special cla.s.s, and the _Fabliaux_ are almost a vaster collection (if you do not exclude the "waterings out" of _Renart_) of kinds more general. There is abundance of amus.e.m.e.nt and some charm; but nowhere are we much beyond very simple forms of fiction itself. None of the writers of _nouvelles_, except Antoine de la Salle, can be said to be a known personality.

[Sidenote: Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer.]

There has always been a good deal of controversy about Rabelais, not all of which perhaps can we escape, though it certainly will not be invited, and we have no very extensive knowledge of his life. But we have some: and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by some extra-literary prejudice--religious, moral, or whatever it may be.

But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master Francis as a man of letters, his possession not merely of consummate wit, but of that precious thing, so much rarer in French, actual humour; his wonderful influence on the future word-book and phrase-book of his own language, nay, not every one who would go almost the whole length of the most uncompromising Pantagruelist, and would allow him profound wisdom, high aspirations for humanity, something of a complete world-philosophy--would at once admit him as a very great novelist. For my own part I have no hesitation in doing so, and to make the admission good must be the object of this chapter.

[Sidenote: But the first great novelist?]

It may almost be said that his very excellence in this way has "stood in its own light." The readableness of Rabelais is extraordinary. The present writer, after for years making of him almost an Addison according to Johnson's prescription, fell, by mere accident and occupation with other matters, into a way of _not_ reading him, except for purposes of mere literary reference, during a long time. On three different occasions more recently, one ten or a dozen years ago, one six or seven, and the third for the purposes of this very book, he put himself again under the Master, and read him right through. It is difficult to imagine a severer test, and I am bound to confess (though I am not bound to specify) that in some, though not many, instances I have found famous and once favourite cla.s.sics fail to stand it. Not so Master Francis. I do not think that I ever read him with greater interest than at this last time. Indeed I doubt whether I have ever felt the _catholicon_--the pervading virtue of his book--quite so strongly as I have in the days preceding that on which I write these words.

[Sidenote: Some objections considered.]

Of course Momus may find handles--he generally can. "You are suffering from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have said this in print before [I have not exactly done so] and are bound to stick to it," etc. etc. etc., down to that final, "You are a bad critic, and it doesn't matter what you say," which certainly, in a sense, does leave nothing to be replied. But whether this is because the accused is guilty, or because the Court does not call upon him, is a question which one may leave to others.

Laying it down, then, as a point of fact that Rabelais _has_ this curious "holding" quality, whence does he get it? As everybody ought to know, many good people, admitting the fact, have, as he would himself have said, gone about with lanterns to seek for out-of-the-way reasons and qualities; while some people, not so good, but also accepting the fact in a way, have grasped at the above-mentioned indecency itself for an explanation. This trick requires little effort to kick it into its native gutter. The greater proportion of the "_Indexable_" part of Rabelais is mere nastiness, which is only attractive to a very small minority of persons at any age, while to expert readers it is but a time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible.

Of the other part of this kind--the "naughty" part which is not nasty and may be somewhat nice--there is, when you come to consider it dispa.s.sionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a seductive fas.h.i.+on. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create laughter, but never pa.s.sion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a glutton for garbage.

Less easily dismissible, but, it will seem, not less inadequate is the alleged "key"-interest of the book. Of course there are some people, and more than a person who wishes to think n.o.bly of humanity might desire to find, who seem never to be tired of identifying Grandgousier, Gargantua, and Pantagruel himself with French kings to whom they bear not the slightest resemblance; of obliging us English by supposing us to be the Macreons (who seem to have been very respectable people, but who inhabit an island singularly unlike England in or anywhere near the time of Rabelais), and so on. But to a much larger number of persons--and one dares say to all true Pantagruelists--these interpretations are either things that the Master himself would have delighted to satirise, and would have satirised unsurpa.s.sably, or, at best, mere superfluities and supererogations. At any rate there is no possibility of finding in them the magic spell--the "Fastrada's ring," which binds youth and age alike to the unique "Alcofribas Nasier."

One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further quality or property--the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This riddle-attraction--or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a very large plural--is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, as there can have been in the scholastic among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being more likely than Francois Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change) the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's?

_I_ to such block-heads set my wit!

_I_ [_pose_] such fools! Go, go--you're bit."

And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps."

[Sidenote: And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the book.]

These things--or at least elaborate discussions of them--lie somewhat, though not so far as may at first seem, outside our proper business. It must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot const.i.tute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in _Gulliver_--the Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant--these attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and (especially if you take the _Polite Conversation_ into Swift's claim) consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than "incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift.

[Sidenote: Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.]

Not much serious objection will probably be taken to the place allotted to Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later.

But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may cause more demur, and even suggest the presence of the now hopelessly discredited thing--paradox itself. Of course, if anybody requires regular plot as a necessary const.i.tuent, only paradox could contend for that. It _has_ been contended--and rightly enough--that in the general scheme and the two (or if you take in Grandgousier, three) generations of histories of the good giants, Rabelais is doing nothing more than parody--is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions of Romance--Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence of which the good-natured G.o.d or Muse of fiction is quite willing to wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of Panurge, is showered, in sc.r.a.ps and sketches, all over the book, and description and dialogue abound.

[Sidenote: Contrast of the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]

But it is not on such beggarly special pleading as this that the claim shall be founded. It must rest on the unceasing, or practically unceasing, impetus of story-interest which carries the reader through. A remarkably useful contrast-parallel in this respect, may be found in that strange book, the _Moyen de Parvenir_. I am of those who think that it had something to do with Rabelais, that there is some of his stuff in it, even that he may have actually planned something like it. But the "make-up" is not more inferior in merit to that of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ than it is different in kind. The _Moyen de Parvenir_ is full of separate stories of the _fabliau_ kind, often amusing and well told, though exceedingly gross as a rule. These stories are "set" in a framework of promiscuous conversation, in which a large number of great real persons, ancient and modern, and a smaller one of invented characters, or rather names, take part. Most of this, though not quite all, is mere _fatrasie_, if not even mere jargon: and though there are glimmerings of something more than sense, they are, with evident deliberation, enveloped in clouds of nonsense. The thing is not a whole at all, and the stories have as little to do with each other or with any general drift as if they were professedly--what they are practically--a bundle of _fabliaux_ or _nouvelles_. As always happens in such cases--and as the author, whether he was Beroalde or another, whether or not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch together things too good for him, no doubt intended--attempts have been made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously vain.