Maupassant's work is of very substantial bulk. Of the verse enough for our purpose has been or will be said, though I should like to repeat that I put it much higher than do most of Maupassant's admirers. The volumes of travel-sketches do not appear to me particularly successful, despite the almost unsurpassed faculty of their writer for sober yet vivid description. They have the air of being written to order, and they do not seem, as a rule, to arrive at artistic completeness either objectively or subjectively. Of the criticism, which concerns us more nearly, by far the most remarkable piece is the famous Preface to Pierre et Jean (to be mentioned again below), which contains the author's literary creed, refined and castigated by years of practice from the cruder form which he had already promulgated in the Preface to Flaubert's Correspondence with George Sand. It extols the "objective" as against the psychological method of novel-writing, but directs itself most strongly against the older romance of plot, and places the excellence of the novelist in the complete and vivid projection of that novelist's own particular "illusion" of the world, yet so as to present events and characters in the most actual manner. But, as promised, we shall return to it.
Bel-Ami.
To run through the actual "turn-out" in novel[484] and tale as far as is possible here, Bel-Ami started, in England at least, with the most favouring gales possible. It was just when the decree had gone forth, issued by the younger Later Victorians, that all the world should be made naughty; that the insipid whiteness of their Early and Middle elders should be washed black and scarlet, and especially "blue"; and that if possible, by this and other processes, something like real literature might be made to take the place of the drivellings and botcheries of Tennyson and Browning; of Dickens and Thackeray; of Ruskin and Carlyle. To these persons Bel-Ami was a sweet content, a really "shady boon." The hero never does a decent thing and never says a good one; but he has good looks and insinuating manners of the kind that please some women, whence his name, originally given to him by an innocent little girl, and taken up by her by no means innocent mamma and other quasi-ladies.[485] He starts as a soldier who has served his time in Algeria, but has found nothing better to do than a subordinate post in a railway office. He meets a former comrade who is high up in Paris journalism, and who very amiably introduces Georges Duroy to that bad resting-place but promising passageway. Duroy succeeds, not so much (though he is not a fool) by any brains as by impudence; by a faculty of making use of others; by one of the farce-duels in which combatants are put half a mile off each other to fire once, etc.; but most of all by his belamyship (for the word is good old English in a better sense). The women of the book are what is familiarly called "a caution." They revive the old Hélisenne de Crenne[486] "sensual appetite" for the handsome bounder; and though of course jealous of his infidelities, are quite ready to welcome the truant when he returns. They also get drunk at restaurant dinners, and then call their lovers—quite correctly, but not agreeably—"Cochon!" "Sale bête," etc. This of course is what our fin-de-siècle critics could "recommend to a friend."
But if the reader thinks that this summary is a prelude to anything like the "slate" that I thought it proper to bestow upon Les Liaisons Dangereuses, or even to such remarks as those made on the Goncourts, he is quite mistaken. Laclos had, as it seemed to me, a disgusting subject and no real compensation of treatment. In Bel-Ami the merits of the treatment are very great. The scenes pass before you; the characters play their part in the scenes—if not in an engaging manner, in a completely life-like one. There is none of the psychologie de commande, which I object to in Laclos, but a true adumbration of life. The music-hall opening; the first dinner-party; the journalist scenes; the death of Forestier and the proposal of re-marriage over his corpse;[487] the honeymoon journey to Normandy—a dozen other things—could not be better done in their way, though this way may not be the best. It did not fall to me to review Bel-Ami when it came out, but I do not think I should have made any mistake about it if it had. There are weak points technically; for instance, the character of Madeleine Forestier, afterwards Duroy—still later caught in flagrant delict and divorced—is left rather enigmatic. But the general technique (with the reservations elsewhere made) is masterly, and two passages—a Vigny-like[488] descant on Death by the old poet Norbert de Varenne and the death-scene of Forestier itself—give us Maupassant in that mood of macabre sentiment—almost Romance—which chequers and purifies his Naturalism.
But the main objection which I should take to the book is neither technical nor goody. The late Mr. Locker, in, I think, that most fascinating "New Omniana" Patchwork,[489] tells how, in the Travellers' Club one day, a haughty member thereof expressed surprise that he should see Mr. Locker going to the corner-house next door. The amiable author of London Lyrics was good enough to explain that some not uninteresting people also used the humbler establishment—bishops, authors, painters, cabinet-ministers, etc. "Ah!" said the Traverser of Perilous Ways, "that would be all very well if one wanted to meet that sort of people. But, you see, one doesn't want to meet them." Now, I do not want to meet anybody in Bel-Ami; in fact, I would much rather not.
Une Vie.
Une Vie is, in this respect and others, a curious pendant to Bel-Ami. It illustrates another side of Maupassant's pessimism—the overtly, but for the most part quietly, tragic. It might almost (borrowing a second title from the Index) call itself "Jeanne; ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu." The heroine is perfectly innocent, though both a femmelette and a fool. She never does any harm, nor, except through weakness and folly, deserves that any should be done to her. But she has an unwise and not blameless though affectionate and generous father, with a mother who is an invalid, and whom, after her death, the daughter discovers to have been, in early days, no better than she should be. Both of them are, if not exactly spendthrifts, "wasters," very mainly through careless and excessive generosity. She marries the first young man of decent family, looks, and manners that she comes across; and he turns out to be stingy, unfaithful in the most offensive way, with her own maid and others, and unkind. She loses him, by the vengeance of a husband whom he has wronged, and her second child is born dead in consequence of this shock. Her first she spoils for some twenty years, till he goes off with a concubine and nearly ruins his mother. We leave her consoling herself, in a half-imbecile fashion, with a grandchild. Her only earthly providence is her bonne Rosalie, the same who had been her husband's mistress, but a very "good sort" otherwise. The book is charged with grime of all kinds. It certainly cannot be said of M. de Maupassant, to alter the pronoun in Mr. Kipling's line, that "[He] never talked obstetrics when the little stranger came," for Une Vie contains two of these delectable scenes; and in other respects we are treated with the utmost "candour." But the book is again saved by some wonderful passages—specially those giving Jeanne's first night at the sea-side château which is to be her own, and her last visit to it a quarter of a century after, when it has passed to strangers—and generally by the true tragedy which pervades it. When Maupassant took Sorrow into cohabitation and collaboration, there was no danger of the result.
Mont-Oriol, though not, save in one respect, the most "arresting" of Maupassant's books, has rather more varied and at the same time coherent interest than some others. It is also that one which most directly illustrates—on the great scale—the general principles of the Naturalist school. Not, indeed, in specially grimy fashion, though there is the usual adultery (not behind the scenes) and the (for Maupassant) not unusual accouchement. (His fondness for this most unattractive episode of human life is astonishing: if he were a more pious person and a political feminist, one might think that he was trying to make us modern Adams share the curse of Eve, at least to the extent of the disgust caused by reading about its details.) The main extra-amatory theme throughout is the "physiologie" of an inland watering-place, its extension by the discovery of new springs, the financing of them, the jealousies of the doctors, the megrims of the patients, etc. All these are treated quite on the Zolaesque scheme, but with a lightness and beauty not often reached by the master, though common enough in the pupil.[490] The description of Christiane Andermatt's first bath, and the sensations of mild bliss that it gave her, is as true as it is pretty; and others of scenery have that vividness without over-elaboration which marks their author's work. Nor are his ironic-human touches wanting. Almost at its birth he satirises, in his own quiet Swiftian way, an absurd tendency which has grown mightily since, and flourishes now: "'Très moderne'—entre ses lèvres, était le comble de l'admiration." As for the love-affair itself, one's feelings towards it are mixed. A good deal of it shows that unusual grasp of the proper ways of the game with which Maupassant is fully credited here. Personally, I should not, after quoting Baudelaire to a lady (so far so good), inform her that I was a donkey for expecting her to enjoy anything so subtle. But perhaps Paul Brétigny, though neglectful of the Seventh Commandment, was an honester man than I am. And it is quite true that Christiane was not subtle. Her hot lover's[491] cooling partly dated from the time when she expected him to show palpable interest in the fact that she was likely to have a child by him. And though her cry (on the question what name this infant, of course accepted as his own by the unfortunate Andermatt, should bear) that as for her name, "Celà promet trop de souffrances de porter le nom du Crucifié," could not be better as a general sentiment, the particular circumstances in which it is uttered show a slight want of grace of congruity. Still, the minor characters are not only more in number, but more interesting than is always the case; and the book, if you skip the obstetrics, is readable throughout. Yet it is, to use wine-language, not above "Maupassant premier bourgeois," except in some of the earlier love-scenes.
Fort comme la Mort.
In Fort comme la Mort the author rises far above these two books, powerful as they are in parts. The basis is indeed the invariable and unsatisfactory "triangle." But the structure built on it might almost have been lifted to another, and stands foursquare in nearly all respects of treatment. The chief technical objection that can be brought against it is that there is a certain want of air and space; the important characters are too few, the situations too uniform; so that a kind of oppression results. Olivier Bertin, one of the most popular of Parisian painters though no longer young, a great man of society, etc., has, for many years, been the lover of the Countess de Guilleroy, and, of course, the dear friend of her husband. We are introduced to them just at the time when a sort of disgust of middle age is coming over him, as well as a certain feeling that the springs of his genius are running low. He is not tired of the Countess, who is passionately devoted to him; and, except that they do not live together, their relations are rather conjugal than anything else. Just at this moment her daughter Annette comes home from a country life with her grandmother, and proves to be the very double of what her mother was in her own youth. Bertin, without ceasing to love the mother, conceives a frantic passion for the daughter; and the vicissitudes of this take up the book. At last the explosives of the situation are "fused," as one may say, by one of the newspaper attacks of youth on age. Annette's approaching marriage, and this Figaro critique of his own "old-fashioned" art, put Bertin beside himself. Either hurrying heedlessly along, or deliberately exposing himself, he is run over by an omnibus, is mortally hurt, and dies with the Countess sitting beside him and receiving his last selfishness—a request that she will bring the girl to see him before he dies.