L'Enfant du Carnaval and Les Barons de Felsheim.
The worst of it is, that to be amused by him—to be, except as a student, even interested in a large part of his work—you must be almost as ill-bred in literature as he himself is. He is like a person who has had before him no models for imitation or avoidance in behaviour: and this is where his successor, Paul de Kock, by the mere fact of being his successor, had a great advantage over him. But to the student he is interesting, and the interest has nothing factitious in it, and nothing to be ashamed of. There is something almost pathetic in his struggles to master his art: and his frequent remonstrances with critics and readers appear to show a genuine consciousness of his state, which is not always the case with such things.
The book which stands first in his Works, L'Enfant du Carnaval, starts with an ultra-Smollettian[429] passage of coarseness, and relapses now and then. The body of it—occupied with the history of a base-born child, who tumbles into the good graces of a Milord and his little daughter, is named by them "Happy," and becomes first the girl's lover and then her husband—is a heap of extravagances, which, nevertheless, bring the picaresque pattern, from which they are in part evidently traced, to a point, not of course anywhere approaching in genius Don Quixote or Gil Blas, but somehow or other a good deal nearer general modern life. Les Barons de Felsheim, which succeeds it, seems to have taken its origin from a suggestion of the opening of Candide, and continues with a still wilder series of adventures, satirising German ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage. There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting something and finding that he cannot bring it off.
At the close of one of his most extravagant, most indecent, and stupidest novels, La Folie Espagnole—a supposed tale of chivalry, which of course shows utter ignorance of time, place, and circumstance, and is, in fact, only a sort of travestied Gil Blas, with a rank infusion of further vulgarised Voltairianism[430]—the author has a rather curious note to the reader, whom he imagines (with considerable probability) to be throwing the book away with a suggested cry of "Quelles misères! quel fatras!" He had, he says, previously offered Angélique et Jeanneton, a little work of a very different kind, and the public would neither buy nor read it. His publisher complained, and he must try to please. As for La Folie, everybody, including his cook, can understand this. One remembers similar expostulations from more respectable authors; but it is quite certain that Pigault-Lebrun—a Lebrun so different from his contemporary "Pindare" of that name—thoroughly meant what he said. He was drawing a bow, always at a venture, with no higher aim than to hit his public, and he did hit it oftener than he missed. So much the worse, perhaps, both for him and for his public; but the fact is a fact, and it is in the observation and correlation of facts that history consists.
Angélique et Jeanneton.
Angélique et Jeanneton itself, as might be expected from the above reference, is, among its author's works, something like Le Rêve among Zola's; it is his endeavour to be strictly proper. But, as it is also one of his most Sternian exercises, the propriety is chequered. It begins in sufficiently startling fashion; a single gentleman of easy fortune and amiable disposition, putting his latchkey in the door of his chambers one night, is touched and accosted by an interesting young person with an "argentine" voice. This may look louche; but the silvery accents appeal only for relief of needs, which, as it shortly appears, are those most properly to be supplied by a maternity hospital. It is to be understood that the suppliant is an entire stranger to the hero. He behaves in the most amiable and, indeed, noble fashion, instals her in his rooms, turns himself and his servant out to the nearest hotel, fetches the proper ministress, and, not content with this Good Samaritanism, effects a legitimate union between Jeanneton and her lover, half gives and half procures them a comfortable maintenance, resists temptation of repayment (not in coin) on more than one occasion, and sets out, on foot, to Caudebec, to see about a heritage which has come to Jeanneton's husband. On the way he falls in with Angélique (a lady this time), falls also in love with her, and marries her. The later part of the story, as is rather the way with Pigault, becomes more "accidented." There are violent scenes, jealousies, not surprising, between the two heroines, etc. But the motto-title of Marmontel's Heureusement governs all, and the end is peace, though not without some spots in its sun. That the public of 1799 did not like the book and did like La Folie Espagnole is not surprising; but the bearing of this double attempt on the growth of novel-writing as a regular craft is important.
Mon Oncle Thomas.
Perhaps on the whole Mon Oncle Thomas, which seems to have been one of the most popular, is also one of the most representative, if not the best, of Pigault-Lebrun's novels. Its opening, and not its opening only, is indeed full of that mere nastiness which we, with Smollett and others to our discredit, cannot disclaim for our own parallel period, and which was much worse among the French, who have a choice selection of epithets for it. But the fortunes of the youthful Thomas—child of a prostitute of the lowest class, though a very good mother, who afterwards marries a miserly and ruffianly corporal of police—are told with a good deal of spirit—one even thinks of Colonel Jack—and the author shows his curious vulgar common sense, and his knowledge of human nature of a certain kind, pretty frequently, at least in the earlier part of the book.
Jérôme.
Jérôme is another of Pigault's favourite studies of boys—distinctly blackguard boys as a rule—from their mischievous, or, as the early English eighteenth century would have put it, "unlucky" childhood, to their most undeserved reward with a good and pretty wife (whom one sincerely pities), and more or less of a fortune. There is, however, more vigour in Jérôme than in most, and, if one has the knack of "combing out" the silly and stale Voltairianism, and paying little attention to the far from exciting sculduddery, the book may be read. It contains, in particular, one of the most finished of its author's sketches, of a type which he really did something to introduce into his country's literature—that of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic routier or professional soldier—brave as you like, and—at least at some times when neither drunk nor under the influence of the garden god—not ungenerous; with a certain simplicity too: but as braggart as he is brave; a mere brute beast as regards the other sex; utterly ignorant, save of military matters, and in fact a kind of caricature of the older type, which the innocent Rymer was so wrath with Shakespeare for neglecting in Iago.