I do not think that Iza is an impossible personage; nor do I think that she is even an improbable one to such an extent as to bar her out, possible or impossible. But I am not sure that she is not rather arbitrarily synthetised instead of being re-created, or that she, though possible and not quite improbable, is not singly abnormal[386] to the verge of monstrosity. It must be evident to any reader of tolerable acuteness that the obsession of Manon Lescaut has not left Dumas fils. Although the total effect of Manon and of Iza is very different, and although they are differently "staged," their resemblances in detail are very great; and, to speak paradoxically, the differences are almost more resembling still. Iza offers herself as mistress if there are any difficulties in the way of her being a wife; would, in fact, as she admits long afterwards, have preferred the less honourable, but also less fettering, estate. On the other hand, be it remembered, it was something of an accident that Manon and Des Grieux were not actually married. The two women are alike in their absolute insistence on luxury and pleasure before anything else; but they differ in that Iza does—as we said Manon did not, or did not specially—want "what Messalina wanted." On the other hand, Iza is ill-natured and Manon is not. In these respects we may say that the Manon-formula has passed through that of Madame de Merteuil, and bears unpleasant signs of the passage. Manon repents, which Iza never could do. But they agree in the courtesan essence—the readiness to exchange for other things that commodity of theirs which should be given only for love. I never wish to supply my readers with problem-tabloids; but I think that in this paragraph I have supplied them with materials for working out the double question, "Is Iza less human than Manon? and if so, why?" for themselves, as well as, if by any chance they should care to do so, of guessing my own answers to it.[387]

Reflections.

It is more germane to custom and purpose here to add a few general remarks on the story, and more, but still few, on its author's general position. Affaire Clémenceau is certainly, as has been said before, his strongest book, and, especially if taken together with La Dame aux Camélias (which, if less free from faults, contains some different merits), it constitutes a strong thesis or diploma-piece for all but the highest degree as a novelist. Taking in the others which have been surveyed, we must also acknowledge in the author an unusually wide range and a great display of faculty—even of faculties—almost all over that range, though perhaps in no other case than the two selected has he thoroughly mastered and firmly held the ground which he has attempted to win. If he has not—if Tristan le Roux is, on the whole, only a second- or third-rate historical romance; Trois Hommes Forts a fair and competent, but not thrilling melodrama, and so on, and so on—it is no doubt partly, to speak with the sometimes useful as well as engaging irrationality of childhood, "because he couldn't." But I think it is also because of something that can be explained. It was because he was far too prone to theorise about men and women and to make his books attempted demonstrations, or at least illustrations, of his theories. Now, to theorise about men is seldom very satisfactory; but to theorise about women is to weigh gossamer and measure moonbeams. The very wisest thing ever said about them is said in the old English couplet:

Some be lewd, and some be shrewd,
But all they be not so,

and I think that our fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century vates showed his wisdom most in sticking to the strict negative in his exculpatory second line, here italicised.

Now if Alexander the Younger does not absolutely insist that "all they be so," he goes very near to it, excepting only characters of insignificant domesticity. When he does give you an "honnête femme" who is not merely this, such as the Clémentine of the Roman d'une Femme or the Marceline of Diane de Lys, he gives them some queer touches. His "shady Magdalenes" (with apologies to one of the best of parodies for spoiling its double rhyme) and his even more shady, because more inexcusable, marquises; his adorable innocents, who let their innocence vanish "in the heat of the moment" (as the late Mr. Samuel Morley said when he forgot that Mr. Bradlaugh was an atheist), because the husbands pay too much attention to politics; and his affectionate wives, like the Lady in Thérèse,[388] who supply their missing husbands' place just for once, and forget all about it—these might be individually creatures of fact, but as a class they are creatures of theory. And theory never made a good novel yet: it is lucky if it has sometimes, but too rarely, failed to make a good into a bad one. But it has been urged—and with some truth as regards at least the later forms of the French novel—that it is almost founded on theory, and certainly Dumas fils can be cited in support—perhaps, indeed, he is the first important and thoroughgoing supporter. And this of itself justifies the place and the kind of treatment allotted to him here, the justification being strengthened by the fact that he, after Beyle, and when Beyle's influence was still little felt, was a leader of a new class of novelist, that he is the first novelist definitely of the Second Empire.

FOOTNOTES:

[349] As, for instance, in A Short History of French Literature (Oxford, 7th ed., 1917), pp. 550-552.

[350] At the same time, and admitting (see below) that it is wrong to meet overpraise with overblame, I think that it may be met with silence, for the time at any rate.