She was but five years off her death-bed when she wrote that. In a sense it was her swan-song. Had she never loved so blindly, she might have been a better woman it may be. But she loved kindly, too, and will be forgiven no doubt because she loved much. Love at any rate inspired her to better purpose than Flaubert’s hate could have done. The world is not to be advantaged by intellectual arrogance; nor does it appear from these letters that poor Flaubert was at all advantaged either. It served him but ill in literature and not at all in the adventure of life. One must be a man before one can be an artist. Whether George Sand was an artist or not, she neither knew nor cared. There is no doubt at all, though, of her manliness.
A NOVEL AND A CLASSIC
LA PRINCESS DE CLÈVES
The first novelist in the world as we know it (I say nothing of the Greeks and Romans) was, I believe, a Pope—Pius II. It is not what we have come to expect from the Vatican; but his novel, I ought to add, was “only a little one.” The second, if I don’t mistake, was Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who did the thing on a large scale. Artamène, ou Le Grand Cyrus is in twenty volumes; and though men be so strong (some of them) as to have read it, it is not unkind to say that, for the general, it is as dead as King Pandion. “Works,” then, won’t secure more for an author than his name in a dictionary. You must have quality to do that. The little Princesse de Clèves, written by a contemporary of Mademoiselle’s, all compact in a small octavo of 170 pp., has quality. First published in 1678, at this hour, says Mr. Ashton, in his study of its author,[2] “there are preparing simultaneously an art edition, a critical edition, and an édition de luxe, to say nothing of the popular edition, which has just appeared.” Here is “that eternity of fame,” or something like it, hoped for by the poet. I suppose the nearest we can approach to that would be Robinson Crusoe.
The authoress of the little classic was Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, who was born in 1634. She was of petite noblesse on both sides, but her mother’s remarriage to the Chevalier Renaud de Sévigné lifted her into high society, and brought her acquainted with the incomparable Marquise. If it had done nothing else for her, in doing that it served two delightful women, and the world ever after. But it did more. It procured for Mlle. de La Vergne her entry to the Hôtel de Rambouillet; it gave her the wits for her masters; it gave her the companionship of La Rochefoucauld; and it gave us the Princesse de Clèves. She married, or was married to, a provincial seigneur of so little importance that everybody thought he was separated from his wife some twenty years before he was. When separation did come, it was only that insisted on by death; and through Mr. Ashton’s diligence we now know when he died. Nothing about him, however, seems to matter much, except the bare possibility that the relations between him, his wife, and La Rochefoucauld, which may have been difficult and must have been delicate, may also have given Madame de Lafayette the theme of her novels.
She wrote three novels altogether, and it is a curious thing about them that they all deal with the same subject—namely, jealousy. Love, of course, the everlasting French triangular love, is at the bottom of them: inclination and duty contend for the heroine. But the jealousy which consumes husband and lover alike is the real theme. Only in the Princesse de Clèves is the treatment fresh, the subject deeply plumbed, the dénoument original and unexpected. Those valuable considerations, and the eloquence with which they are brought to bear, may account for its instant popularity. It has another quality which recommends it to readers of to-day—psychology. To a surprising extent, considering its epoch, it does consider of men and women from within outwards—not as clothes-props to be decked with rhetoric, but as reasonable souls in human bodies, and sometimes as unreasonable souls.
Here’s the story. Mademoiselle de Chartres, a high-born young beauty of the Court of Henri II—is there any other novel in the world the name of whose heroine is never revealed?—is married by her mother in the opening pages to the Prince de Clèves, without inclination of her own, or any marked distaste. The prince, we are told, is “parfaitement bien fait,” brave, splendid, “with a prudence which is not at all consistent with youth.” I do not learn that he was, in fact, a youth. All goes well, nevertheless, until the return to Court of a certain Duc de Nemours, a renowned breaker of hearts, more brave, more splendid, more “bien fait,” and much less prudent, certainly, than the Prince de Clèves. He arrives during a ball at the Louvre; Madame de Clèves nearly steps into his arms by accident; their eyes meet; his are dazzled, hers troubled, and the seed is sown. For a space of time she does not know that she loves, or guess that he does: the necessary discoveries are provided for by some very good inventions. An accident to Nemours in a tournament, in the trouble which it causes her, reveals him the truth; his stealing of her picture, which she happens to witness, reveals it to her.
Discovery of the state of affairs, naturally, spurs the young man; but it terrifies the lady. Greatly agitated, she prevails upon her unsuspecting lord to take her into the country. Nemours follows them, as she presently learns. Then, when her husband insists on her return with him to Paris and the daily intercourse with the person she dreads, driven into a corner, she confesses that she dare not obey him, since her heart is not her own. Nothing will induce her to say more; and the prince, disturbed as he is, is greatly touched by the nobility and candour of her avowal. Unfortunately, he is not the only one to be touched; for Nemours, who had been on the point of paying a visit to his enchantress, stands in the ante-room and overhears the whole conversation. He knew it all before, no doubt—but wait a moment. He is so exalted by the sense of his mistress’s virtue that, on his way back to Paris, he casts the whole story into a tale of “a friend” of his, but with such a spirit of conviction thrilling in his tones, that it is quite easy for him who receives it to be certain that “the friend” was Nemours himself. That is really excellent invention, quite unforced, and as simple as kissing. Naturally the tale is repeated, and puts husband and wife at cross-purposes, since it makes either suspect the other of having betrayed the secret. More, it tells the husband the name of his wife’s lover. Further misunderstandings ensue, and last of all, the husband dies of it. I confess that that seems to me rather stiff. Men have died and worms have eaten them—but not the worms of jealousy.