I will not dwell on Guy de Maupassant's younger days. His relatives,
his old friends, he himself, here and there in his works, have
furnished us in their letters enough valuable revelations and touching
remembrances of the years preceding his literary début. His worthy
biographer, H. Édouard Maynial, after collecting intelligently all the
writings, condensing and comparing them, has been able to give us some
definite information regarding that early period.
I will simply recall that he was born on the 5th of August, 1850, near
Dieppe, in the castle of Miromesnil which he describes in Une Vie....
Maupassant, like Flaubert, was a Norman, through his mother, and
through his place of birth he belonged to that strange and adventurous
race, whose heroic and long voyages on tramp trading ships he liked to
recall. And just as the author of "Éducation sentimentale" seems to
have inherited in the paternal line the shrewd realism of Champagne,
so de Maupassant appears to have inherited from his Lorraine ancestors
their indestructible discipline and cold lucidity.
His childhood was passed at Étretat, his beautiful childhood; it was
there that his instincts were awakened in the unfoldment of his
prehistoric soul. Years went by in an ecstasy of physical happiness.
The delight of running at full speed through fields of gorse, the
charm of voyages of discovery in hollows and ravines, games beneath
the dark hedges, a passion for going to sea with the fishermen and, on
nights when there was no moon, for dreaming on their boats of
imaginary voyages.
Mme. de Maupassant, who had guided her son's early reading, and had
gazed with him at the sublime spectacle of nature, put off as long as
possible the hour of separation. One day, however, she had to take the
child to the little seminary at Yvetot. Later, he became a student at
the college at Rouen, and became a literary correspondent of Louis
Bouilhet. It was at the latter's house on those Sundays in winter when
the Norman rain drowned the sound of the bells and dashed against the
window panes that the school boy learned to write poetry.
Vacation took the rhetorician back to the north of Normandy. Now it
was shooting at Saint Julien-l'Hospitalier, across fields, bogs, and
through the woods. From that time on he sealed his pact with the
earth, and those "deep and delicate roots" which attached him to his
native soil began to grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and
virile, that he would presently demand his inspiration, fervent and
eager as a boy's love; it was in her that he would take refuge when,
weary of life, he would implore a truce, or when he simply wished to
work and revive his energies in old-time joys. It was at this time
that was born in him that voluptuous love of the sea, which in later
days could alone withdraw him from the world, calm him, console him.
In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for,
the family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position.
For several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he
turned over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks
of the admiralty.
Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where
bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are
certainly scarcely more onerous and he had as chiefs, or colleagues,
Xavier Charmes and Leon Dierx, Henry Roujon and René Billotte, but his
office looked out on a beautiful melancholy garden with immense plane
trees around which black circles of crows gathered in winter.
Maupassant made two divisions of his spare hours, one for boating, and
the other for literature. Every evening in spring, every free day, he
ran down to the river whose mysterious current veiled in fog or
sparkling in the sun called to him and bewitched him. In the islands
in the Seine between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of
Sartrouville and Triel he was long noted among the population of
boatmen, who have now vanished, for his unwearying biceps, his cynical
gaiety of goodfellowship, his unfailing practical jokes, his broad
witticisms. Sometimes he would row with frantic speed, free and
joyous, through the glowing sunlight on the stream; sometimes, he
would wander along the coast, questioning the sailors, chatting with
the ravageurs, or junk gatherers, or stretched at full length amid the
irises and tansy he would lie for hours watching the frail insects
that play on the surface of the stream, water spiders, or white
butterflies, dragon flies, chasing each other amid the willow leaves,
or frogs asleep on the lily-pads.
The rest of his life was taken up by his work. Without ever becoming
despondent, silent and persistent, he accumulated manuscripts, poetry,
criticisms, plays, romances and novels. Every week he docilely
submitted his work to the great Flaubert, the childhood friend of his
mother and his uncle Alfred Le Poittevin. The master had consented to
assist the young man, to reveal to him the secrets that make
chefs-d'oeuvre immortal. It was he who compelled him to make copious
research and to use direct observation and who inculcated in him a
horror of vulgarity and a contempt for facility.