ALPHONSE DAUDET, MAN AND ARTIST
When the gods parceled out their gifts, to Alphonse Daudet fell a rich endowment: a poet’s imaginative nature, yet withal a clear vision for realities which is often denied the disciple of poesy; a sure dramatic instinct, too, with a contrasting power of repression which checked his slightest tendency toward the florid and the melodramatic; and, coloring all, a native sense of humor so tenderly sympathetic that it prevented his satire from biting with that acid sharpness of which his wit was capable. An all-round, well-poised literary genius was he, efficient in many fields, and preëminent in more than one.
There is one word of all the happy many which, in the opinion of all his critics, fitly characterizes Daudet—he possessed charm, charm of manner personally and charm of literary style. I wish his portrait were before us here, that we might trace in that striking countenance the record of those fascinating qualities of mind and heart which are so patent in his life and work.
As for his person, from boyhood his hair grew in that untamed profusion which we so often associate with strong individuality, and even in later life he wore his locks long and full. His beard was silky, and unrestrained rather than unkempt. Near-sighted eyes, peering from behind the inevitable black-rimmed pince nez, or at times a monocle, seemed curious and inquiring, typifying perfectly the spirit of naïve interest with which he looked out on life to observe its myriad moods and forms. In this look there was something reflective, too, as though he had just noticed a matter of unusual interest, and was inwardly speculating upon its further meanings. The nose was pleasure-loving, though robust, dignified, and individual—counteracted upon by the satirical mouth, whose sarcasm, in turn, was gently toned by twinkling furrows that flanked his eyes. In later days the sharpness of Daudet’s expression of mouth had been almost lost, and a gentle detachment, betokening a just but sympathetic critical spirit, marked his countenance and made it less keen than lovable. Yet it was in those later years that his cherished hatred for the French Academy led to the bitter satirical outburst against that institution in his novel, The Immortal (1888). But that was only one phase temporarily dominant in the man whom everyone loved and who himself loved all.
Alphonse Daudet was—especially in youth—the exponent of the south, the south as typified by his native Provence. His was the rich, effusive, impressionable southland nature—abundantly moved upon by all the southern charm and vivacity and naïveté and life, as well as richly gifted in the ability to reproduce those impressions in the pages of his writings. Then what more natural than that he should both personally and in his fiction embody the vivid life of the carefree land? When, in 1869, his first important volume of collected stories appeared, it was seen that into Letters from My Mill—which included “The Pope’s Mule”—Daudet had poured not only the young unspoiled richness of his own buoyancy, but also the fulness of his feeling for local landscapes, traditions, and characters of town and country. And again and again, even in his later work, Daudet reverts to the scenes of his boyhood life, and gives us pictures—now jocund as the wine of the country, now sad as a poet’s wail—whose tone and spirit are of the Provençal life, all delicately set in the atmosphere of that sunny clime.
In the History of My Books, which forms an integral part of the author’s Thirty Years in Paris, he takes us by the hand in his dear, intimate way and shows us the great white house, the ancient and unique manor of Montauban. Near by, its shattered wings swaying in the wind on the summit of a little pine-clad mountain, stands Mon Moulin—the windmill about whose dusty portals for centuries had gathered the quaint characters of the district, and where, now that its traffic was forever departed, the young Alphonse first began to distinguish man from man in the stories told him by the ancients of the province.
“Excellent people, blessed house!” he writes. “How often have I repaired thither in the winter to recuperate in the embrace of nature, to heal myself of Paris and its fevers in the wholesome emanations of our little Provençal hills.”
The greetings of old friends at an end, he would whistle to Miracle, a venerable spaniel some fisherman had once found on a bit of wreckage at sea, and climb up to his mill, there to browse and dream and wander in fancy whithersoever the spirits of the place should beckon.
“The mill was a ruin,” he says; “a crumbling mass of stone, iron, and ancient boards which had not turned in the wind for many years, and which lay, with broken limbs, as useless as a poet, while all around on the hillside the miller’s trade prospered and ground and ground with all its wings. Strange affinities subsist between ourselves and inanimate objects. From the first day, that cast-off structure was dear to my heart; I loved it for its desolation, its road overgrown with weeds, those little grayish, fragrant mountain weeds with which Père Gaucher compounded his elixir; for its little worn platform where it was so pleasant to loiter, sheltered from the wind, while a rabbit hurried by, or a long snake, rustling among the leaves with crafty detours, hunted the field mice with which the ruin swarmed. With the creaking of the old building shaken by the north wind, the flapping of its wings like the rigging of a ship at sea, the mill stirred in my poor, restless, nomadic brain memories of journeys by sea, of landings at lighthouses and far-off islands; and the shivering swell all about completed the illusion. I know not whence I derived this taste for wild and desert places which has characterized me from my childhood, and which seems so inconsistent with the exuberance of my nature, unless it be at the same time the physical need of repairing by a fast from words, by abstinence from outcries and gestures, the terrible waste which the southerner makes of his whole being. Be that as it may, I owe a great deal to those places of refuge for the mind; and no one of them has been more salutary in its effect upon me than that old mill in Provence.”
Here, both in boyhood and in young manhood’s revisitations, Daudet found the “grasshopper’s library,” and in its secret alcoves discovered such delightful stories as “The Elixir of the Reverend Father Gaucher,” “The Three Low Masses,” “The Goat of Monsieur Seguin,” “Master Cornille’s Secret,” and “The Old Folks,” all abounding in naïve character and told with his own delicate charm. Here, too, he learned to take a delight in his craft which waned not with the years; and to find joy in pleasing “the people,” who were ever the subjects of his finest delineations.
Born at Nîmes in 1840, and as a mere lad leaving home for the city of Lyons, Daudet’s public career began with his journey to Paris in November, 1857. The boy of seventeen and a half came possessed of a slender collection of poems which, though the product of so youthful a rhymester, met with no little favor. In manner common to those who must win their way along the precarious paths of letters, he pressed on, until in 1859—he being not yet twenty—Daudet published his first volume of poems, Les Amoureuses, which won high praise from the critics, but is now sought chiefly by collectors. Thus he began to gain confidence, and others of his works followed almost yearly. The pages of Le Figaro were now freely opened to him, and that public by whom he never ceased to be loved began to scan its columns for his fantastic chronicles of Provençal life. In that same journal he began in 1866 to publish his Letters from My Mill, which were collected in volume form in 1869, and constituted his first real popular triumph.
The third period in our author’s life is marked by the sad experiences of the Siege of Paris, in 1870. Just as his life in the south inspired the Letters, so did the grave impressions made by those terrible days in the French capital during the Franco-Prussian War move him to write the little masterpieces which, in part, appeared in the volume entitled Monday Tales, published in 1873. Who that has read them can forget the “piercing pathos” of “The Last Class” and “The Siege of Berlin”? Not only are these human episodes of singularly tender appeal, but they are masterpieces of form, unsurpassed among short-stories of any language. As Daudet’s best work, they deserve further notice here.
At the close of the Franco-Prussian War, Alsace and Lorraine were ceded to Germany by France. One of the edicts issued by the conquerors, with a view to nationalizing the acquired territory, was that the French language should no longer be taught in their public schools. And this furnishes the motif for Daudet’s “The Last Class.”
The story is simply told in the first person by Frantz, a little Alsatian. Frantz recalls that historic day when he set off for school a little late. Hoping that he might perhaps escape the teacher’s ferrule, he cuts across the public square without even stopping to find out the meaning of the knot of perturbed villagers who are discussing an announcement upon the bulletin board in front of the mayor’s office. As he slips into his seat, hoping to escape observation, he is impressed by the unnatural quiet in the school-room, and also by the presence of a number of the town notables, all solemnly garbed in holiday dress.
The lad marvels that he is not even chided for his lateness, and is more than ever mystified as the schoolmaster proceeds with one lesson and another, all under stress of deep emotion.
By and by the schoolmaster tells his pupils of the cruel edict, and Frantz begins to realize that the worthy master will no longer rule in his accustomed place. He becomes conscious of neglected work, and a whole tide of better resolutions surges in his breast. Finally the master has heard the last class and arising seeks utterance for his farewells. At first he is able to give his pupils some sound advice, but at length no words will come, and with such quiverings of lip as even Daudet tries not to depict, he chokes, swiftly turns to the blackboard, takes a piece of chalk, and, bearing with all his might, dashes off his final expression of patriotic protest and personal sorrow:
VIVE LA FRANCE!
“Then he stood there, with his head resting against the wall, and without speaking, he motioned to us with his hand:
“'That is all; go.’”
On rereading “The Last Class” for the dozenth time, I find that it is surrounded with an emotional atmosphere which, textually, the story does not contain. I think this must be the aura emanating from the spirit of the story; for a great work of fiction is not only the product of emotion, but it kindles emotion, because it is a creation, an entity, a living being. Doubtless the contention could not be demonstrated that, when properly received, a great work of fictional art will arouse the same emotions in the reader as were first enkindled in the breast of its author when the story was born. None the less, I believe it to be true. What feelings, then, must Daudet have known when he gave forth this little master-story! It must be these that I myself feel, for I do not, by analysis, find them all present in the text, even by suggestion. Happy artist, who can so project the creations of his soul that they henceforth live and expand and communicate their messages to multitudes to him unknown! So all great fiction is alive; so lives the work of Alphonse Daudet.
The emotion in “The Siege of Berlin” is of a different type. It, too, finds its motif in the Franco-Prussian War; this time in the Siege of Paris itself.
An invalided old cuirassier of the First Empire, Colonel Jouve, lies in his room in the Champs-Élysées, fronting the Arc de Triomphe. Day by day his grand-daughter brings to him news of the progress of the war. So fully is his life wrapped up in the success of the French armies that, in order to brighten his closing days, they tell him fictitious stories of his compatriots’ success. But one day, when the enemy’s lines have drawn close about the beleaguered capital and the end is at hand, it becomes difficult to deceive the old soldier any longer. Still, fresh victories are always supplied by the news-bureau of love, and the old man can scarcely wait for the homecoming of the victorious battalions. So when one day the sound of bugle and drum is heard, and the tramp of marching feet beneath the windows of the upper room, you can picture the delight of this old veteran. With a superhuman effort he leaves his bed and looks out of the window—only to see the Prussian troops instead of the cheering cohorts of his countrymen! And in this last pang of disappointment, the old man dies.
Both of these stories end with the note of disappointment and consequent sorrow. Poe has declared that the tone of beauty is sadness, and surely there is a penetrating beauty as well as a thrill of sublimity in the sadness of these wonderfully-wrought episodes. Here may be seen the beginnings of the realistic method which Daudet later adopted. Yet, as these stories both indicate, he still carried with him the romanticism of his earlier inspirations, untouched by either the too painful naturalism or the sentimentality of some of his later stories.
In still greater contrast than either of these to the other is the story of our present translation, “The Pope’s Mule.” Here are all the joyous satire, the rollicking fun-making, and the picturesque description, of this unexcelled interpreter of southern life. Daudet’s wit and humor, characterization and description, local color, kaleidoscopic pageantry, are at their best, with never a thought of enforcing a moral or of sounding any emotion deeper than that of boyish amusement. It is the creator of Tartarin who now writes, and not the later master of the novelist’s art.
Notwithstanding the success of the fecund and versatile author of Sapho, as a playwright, and his much wider vogue as a novelist, I wonder if after all he did not love best his short-stories and prose fantasies. In his greatest real novels, Froment, Jr., and Risler, Sr.; Jack; The Nabob; Kings in Exile; and Numa Roumestan, the episode often occurs, of which literary form some further words will be said in the treatment of Loti.
Such a temperament as Daudet’s, both introspective and finely sensitive to the impressions of his surroundings, would naturally make much of his fiction biographical, and even autobiographical. Indeed, a close study of his works, read in the light of his life, shows how he has woven into his stories many personal facts. In that exquisite child-document Little What’s-His-Name, we have a rather full record of his boyhood and entrance into Paris. Jack, also, is full of his own early sorrows, while one character after another may be traced to folk whom he knew. His mind, and his heart too, were note-books on which he was always transcribing his impressions of life, and—here is the vital thing, after all—recreating them for use in his own inimitable way.
So Daudet was not an extreme realist—scarcely a typical realist at all—for while he used the realistic method for observation and faithful record, he no more got beyond sympathizing with his characters than did Dickens, to whom more than to any other English-writing novelist he must be compared. Daudet “belonged” to no school, expounded no theories, stood for no reforms. He was just a kindly, humorous, sympathetic, patiently exact maker of fascinating fictions, and as such we shall love him quite in the proportion that we know him. Life, as he saw it, was full of sadness, but that did not make him conclude it to be not worth the living. Happily married, he knew the solaces of home life. Unlike Maupassant, “What’s the use!” was far from being the heart of his philosophy. Disenchanted with life he never was. A disheartening view of sordidness, vice, and misery left him still with open eyes, for he would not close them against truth; but it never prevented his turning his gaze upon the beautiful, the humorous, and the good—a lovable trio ever!—and finding in them some healing for his hurt.