In 1897 he was received at the Académie Française, as the successor of Ferdinand de Lesseps. His addresses at the tombs of Zola and Renan are matters of history. As a public speaker, France has not the fiery eloquence of Jean Jaurès or Laurent Tailhade, but he displays a cool magnetism all his own. And he is absolutely fearless.
It is not through lack of technique that the structure of the France novels is so simple, his tales plotless, in the ordinary meaning of the word. Elaborate formal architecture he does not affect. The novel in the hands of Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola would seem to have reached its apogee as a canvas upon which to paint a picture of manners. In the sociological novel, the old theatrical climaxes are absent, the old recipes for cooking character find no place. Even the love motive is not paramount. The genesis of this form may be found in Balzac, in whom all the modern fiction is rooted. Certain premonitions of the genre are also encountered in L'Education Sentimentale of Flaubert, with its wide gray horizons, its vague murmurs of the immemorial mobs of vast cities, its presentation of undistinguished men and women. Truly democratic fiction, by a master who hated democracy with creative results.
Anatole France, Maurice Barrès, Edouard Estaunie, Rosny (the brothers Bex), René Bazin, Bertrand, and the astonishing Paul Adam are in the van of this new movement of fiction with ideas, endeavouring to exorcise the "demon of staleness." French fiction in the last decade of the past century saw the death of the naturalistic school. Paris had become a thrice-told tale, signifying the wearisome "triangle" and the chronicling of flat beer. Something new had to be evolved. Lo! the sociological novel, which discarded the familiar machinery of fiction, rather than miss the new spirit. It is unnecessary to add that in America the fiction of ideas has not been, thus far, of prosperous growth; indeed, it is viewed with suspicion.
Loosely stated, the fiction of Anatole France may be divided into three kinds: fantastic, philosophic, and realistic. This arbitrary grouping need not be taken literally; in any one of his tales we may encounter all three qualities. For example, there is much that is fantastic, philosophic, real, in that moving and wholly human narrative of Sylvestre Bonnard. France's familiarity with cabalistic and exotic literatures, his deep love and comprehension of the Latin and Greek classics, his knowledge of mediæval legends and learning, coupled with his command of supple speech, enable him to project upon a ground-plan of simple narrative extraordinary variations.
The full flowering of France's knowledge and imagination in things patristic and archæologic is to be seen in Thaïs, a masterpiece of colour and construction. Thaïs is that courtesan of Alexandrin, renowned for her beauty, wit, and wickedness, who was converted by the holy Paphnutius, saint and hermit of the Thebaïd. How the devil finally dislodges from the heart of Paphnutius its accumulation of virtue, is told in an incomparable manner. If Flaubert was pleased by the first offering of his pupil, Guy de Maupassant, (Boule de Suif), what would he not have said after reading Thaïs? The ending of the wretched monk, following his spiritual victories as a holy man perched on a pillar—a memory of the author's youthful dream—is lamentable. He loves Thaïs, who dies; and thenceforth he is condemned to wander, a vampire in this world, a devil in the next. A monument of erudition, thick with pages of jewelled prose, Thaïs is a book to be savoured slowly and never forgotten. It is the direct parent of Pierre Loüys's Aphrodite, and later evocations of the antique world.
Of great emotional intensity is Histoire Comique (1903). It is a study of the histrionic temperament, and full of the major miseries and petty triumphs of stage life. It also contains a startling incident, the suicide of a lovelorn actor. The conclusion is violent and morbid. The nature of the average actress has never been etched with such acrid precision. There are various tableaux of behind and before the footlights; a rehearsal, an actor's funeral, and the life of the greenroom. Set forth in his most disinterested style, M. France shows us that he can handle with ease so-called "objective" fiction. His Doctor Trublet is a new France incarnation, wonderful and kindly old consoler that he is. He is attached as house physician to the Odéon, and to him the comedians come for advice. He ministers to them body and soul. His discourse is Socratic. He has wit and wisdom. And he displays the motives of the heroine so that we seem to gaze through an open window. As vital as Sylvestre Bonnard, as Bergeret, Trublet is truly an avatar of Anatole France. Histoire Comique! The title is a rare jest aimed at mundane and bohemian vanity.
Passing Jocaste et le Chat maigre, and Le Puits de Sainte-Claire, we come to L'Etui de Nacre, a volume of tales published in 1892. This book may be selected as typical of a certain side of its author, a side in which his fantasy and historic sense meet on equal terms. The most celebrated is Le Procurateur de Judée, who is none other than Pontius Pilate, old, disillusioned of public ambition, and grumbling, as do many retired public officers, at the ingratitude of governments and princes. To his friend he confesses finally, after his memory has been vainly prompted, that he has no recollection of Jesus, a certain anarchistic prophet of Judea, condemned by him to death. His final phrases give us, as in the flare of lightning, the withering, double-edged irony of the author. He has quite forgotten the tremendous events that occurred in Jerusalem; forgotten, too, is Jesus. Not all the stories that follow, not the pious records of Sainte Euphrosine, of Sainte Oliverie et Liberetta, of Amyeus and Celestin, of Scolastica, can rob the reader of this first cruel impression. In Balthasar the narratives are of a superior quality. Nothing could be better, for example, than the recital of the Ethiopian king who sought the love of Balkis, Queen of Sheba, was accepted, after proofs of his bravery, and then quietly forgotten. He studies the secrets of the spheres, and when Balkis, repenting of her behaviour, seeks Balthasar anew, it is too late. He has discovered the star of Bethlehem which leads him straightway to the crib in company with Gaspar and Melchior, there to worship the King of Kings. Powerful, too, in its fantastic evocation is La Fille de Lilith, which relates the adventure of a modern Parisian with a deathless daughter of Adam's first wife, Lilith, so named in the Talmud. Laeta Acilia tells us one of France's best anecdotes about a Roman matron residing at Marseilles during the reign of Tiberius. She encounters Mary Magdalen, who almost converts the woman by a promise of children, long desired. The conclusion is touching. It discloses admirably the psychology of the two women. L'Oeuf Rouge is a tale of Cæsarian madness, and the bizarre Le Réséda du Curé is so simply related that we are disarmed by the style.
A graceful collection is that called Clio, illustrated in the highly decorative manner of Mucha. Possibly the first is the best, a story of Homer. Some confess a preference for a Gaulish recital of the times when Cæsar went to Britain. Napoleon, too, is in the list. An interesting discussion of Napoleon and the Napoleonic legend is in a full-fledged novel, The Red Lily. "Napoleon," says one of its characters, "was violent and frivolous; therefore profoundly human.... He desired with singular force, all that most men esteem and desire. He had the illusions which he gave to the people. He believed in glory. He retained always the infantile gravity which finds pleasure in playing with swords and drums, and the sort of innocence which makes good military men. It is this vulgar grandeur which makes heroes, and Napoleon is the perfect hero. His brain never surpassed his hand—that hand, small and beautiful, which crumpled the world.... Napoleon lacked interior life.... He lived from the outside." In the art of attenuating great reputations Anatole France has had few superiors.
This novel displeased his many admirers, who pretend to see in it the influence of Paul Bourget. Yet it is a memorable book. Paul Verlaine is depicted in it with freshness, that poet Paul, and his childish soul so ironically, yet so lovingly distilled by his critic. There are glimpses of Florence, of Paris; the study of an English girl-poet will arouse pleasant memories of a lady well known to Italian, Parisian, and London art life. And there is the sculptor, Jacques Dechartres, who may be a mask, among many others of M. France. But Chouiette-Verlaine is the lode-stone of the novel.
Where the ingenuity and mental flexibility, not to say historical mimicry, of France are seen at their supreme, is in La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque. Jacques Tournebroche, or Turnspit, is an assistant in the cook-shop of his father, in old Paris. He is of a studious mind, and becomes the pupil of the Abbé Jérôme Coignard, "who despises men with tenderness," a figure that might have stepped out of Rabelais, though baked and tempered in the refining fires of M. France's imagination. Such a man! Such an ecclesiastic! He adores his maker and admires His manifold creations, especially wine, women, and song. He has more than his share of human weakness, and yet you wonder why he has not been canonised for his adorable traits. He is a glutton and a wine-bibber, a susceptible heart, a pious and deeply versed man. Nor must the rascally friar be forgotten, surely a memory of Rabelais's Friar Jhon. There are scenes in this chronicle that would have made envious the elder Dumas; scenes of swashbuckling, feasting, and bloodshed. There is an astrologer who has about him the atmosphere of the black art with its imps and salamanders, and an ancient Jew who is the Hebraic law personified. So lifelike is Jérôme Coignard that a book of his opinions was bound to follow. His whilom pupil Jacques is supposed to be its editor. Le Jardin d'Epicure and Sur la Pierre Blanche (1905) are an excuse for the opinions of M. France on many topics—religion, politics, science, and social life.