[422] Nicolas [Edme] Restif being apparently his baptismal name, and "de la Bretonne" merely one of the self-bestowed agnominal nourishes so common in the French eighteenth century. He chose to consider the surname evidence of descent from the Emperor Pertinax; and as for his Christian name he seems to have varied it freely. Rose Lambelin, one of his harem, and a soubrette of some literature, used to address him as "Anne-Augustin," Anne being, as no doubt most readers know, a masculine as well as a feminine prénom in French.
[423] Some, and perhaps not a few of their objects, may have been imaginary "dream-mistresses," created by Morpheus in an impurer mood than when he created Lamb's "dream-children." But some, I believe, have been identified; and others of the singular "Calendar" affixed to Monsieur Nicolas have probably escaped identification.
His life and the reasons for giving it.
It has not been necessary (and this is fortunate, for even if it had been necessary, it would have been scarcely possible) to give biographies of the various authors mentioned in this book, except in special cases. Something was generally known of most of them in the days before education received a large E, with laws and rates to suit: and something is still in a way, supposed to be known since. But of the life of Pigault, who called himself Lebrun, it may be desirable to say something, for more reasons than one. In the first place, this life had rather more to do with his work than is always the case; in the second, very little will be found about him in most histories of French literature; in the third, there will be found assigned to him, in the text—not out of crotchet, or contumacy, or desire to innovate, but as a result of rather painful reading—a considerably higher place in the history of the novel than he has usually occupied. His correct name—till, by one of the extremest eccentricities of the French Chats-Fourrés, he was formally unbegot by his Roman father, and the unbegetting (plus declaration of death) confirmed by the Parlement of Paris—was the imposing one of Charles Antoine Guillaume Pigault de L'Épinoy. The paternal Pigault, as may be guessed from his proceedings, was himself a lawyer, but of an old Calais family tracing itself to Queen Philippa's protégé, Eustache de Saint-Pierre; and, besides the mysterious life-in-death or death-in-life, Charles Antoine Guillaume had to suffer from him, while such things existed, several lettres de cachet. The son certainly did his best to deserve them. Having been settled, on leaving school as a clerk in an English commercial house, he seduced his master's daughter, ran away with her, and would no doubt have married her—for Pigault was never a really bad fellow—if she had not been drowned in the vessel which carried the pair back to France. He escaped—one hopes not without trying to save her. After another scandal—not the second only—of the same kind, he did marry the victim, and the marriage was the occasion of the singular exertion of patria potestas referred to above. At least two lettres de cachet had preceded it, and it is said that only the taking of the Bastille prevented the issue, or at least the effect, of a third. Meanwhile, he had been a gentleman-trooper in the gendarmerie d'élite de la petite maison du roi, which, seeing that the roi was Louis Quinze, probably did not conduct itself after the fashion of the Thundering Legion, or of Cromwell's Ironsides, or even of Captain Steele's "Christian Hero." The life of this establishment, though as probably merry, was not long, and Pigault became an actor—a very bad but rather popular actor, it was said. Like other bad actors he wrote plays, which, if not good (they are certainly not very cheerful to read), were far from unsuccessful. But it was not till after the Revolution, and till he was near forty, that he undertook prose fiction; his first book being L'Enfant du Carnaval in 1792 (noticed in text). The revolutionary fury, however, of which there are so many traces in his writings, caught him; he went back to soldiering and fought at Valmy. He did not stay long in the army, but went on novel-writing, his success having the rather unexpected, and certainly very unusual, effect of reconciling his father. Indeed, this arbitrary parent wished not only to recall him to life, which was perhaps superfluous, but to "make an eldest son of him." This, Pigault, who was a loose fish and a vulgar fellow, but, as was said above, not a scoundrel, could not suffer; and he shared and shared alike with his brothers and sisters. Under the Empire he obtained a place in the customs, and held it under succeeding reigns till 1824, dying eleven years later at over eighty, and having written novels continuously till a short time before his death, and till the very eve of 1830. This odd career was crowned by an odd accident, for his daughter's son was Émile Augier. I never knew this fact till after the death of my friend, the late Mr. H. D. Traill. If I had, I should certainly have asked him to write an Imaginary Conversation between grandfather and grandson. Some years (1822-1824) before his last novel, a complete edition of novels, plays, and very valueless miscellanies had been issued in twenty octavo volumes. The reader, like the river Iser in Campbell's great poem, will be justified for the most part in "rolling rapidly" through them. But he will find his course rather unexpectedly delayed sometimes, and it is the fact and the reasons of these delays which must form the subject of the text.—There is no doubt that Pigault was very largely read abroad as well as at home. We know that Miss Matilda Crawley read him before Waterloo. She must have inherited from her father, Sir Walpole, a strong stomach: and must have been less affected by the change of times than was the case with her contemporary, Scott's old friend, who having enjoyed "your bonny Mrs. Behn" in her youth, could not read her in age. For our poor maligned Afra (in her prose stories at any rate, and most of her verse, if not in her plays) is an anticipated model of Victorian prudery and nicety compared with Pigault. I cannot help thinking that Marryat knew him too. Chapter and verse may not be forthcoming, and the resemblance may be accounted for by common likeness to Smollett: but not, to my thinking, quite sufficiently.
[425] He had a younger brother, in a small way also a novelist, and, apparently, in the Radcliffian style, who extra-named himself rather in the manner of 1830—Pigault-Maubaillarck. I have not yet come across this junior's work.—For remarks of Hugo himself on Pigault and Restif, see note at end of chapter.
[426] At least in his early books; it improves a little later. But see note on p. 453.
[427] For a defence of this word, v. sup. p. 280, note.
[428] It may be objected, "Did not the Scudérys and others do this?" The answer is that their public was not, strictly speaking, a "public" at all—it was a larger or smaller coterie.
[429] It has been said that Pigault spent some time in England, and he shows more knowledge of English things and books than was common with Frenchmen before, and for a long time after, his day. Nor does he, even during the Great War, exhibit any signs of acute Anglophobia.