Critical Studies

by Ouida

One could well spare the hundreds of pages devoted to long and, one must say, tiresome descriptions of moral and mental states, for a few pages of lucid and graphic information as to the causes which brought the characters of the book to the pass in which we find them at their first appearance. But this is a method of composition too simple, direct, and natural to commend itself to les jeunes. And when on rare occasions they do furnish personal descriptions, these are so wrapped up in anatomical and physiological language that we can conjure up from them little or no real likeness. The characteristic of this new school is an extreme vagueness, an intentional nebulosity. Their personages are never introduced to the reader, nor are they given any pedigree; even personal description of them is of the slightest. They come abruptly on the scene as though they came up through a trap-door. It is left to the intelligence of the reader to supply all the details which the author disdains to furnish. In a book, as in life, one likes to have people duly presented before making their acquaintance; but this is a prejudice which the new school scorns to gratify.

There is a certain tedium in some of the experiences of Fougeraye, such as in his visits to the hospitals and the asylum of misshappen human creatures; and the young woman Louise, a medical student, who has learned to look on death with professional indifference, is so virtuous and self-satisfied that one is indisposed to share the admiration which Fougeraye feels for her. He himself is so unpretentious, so warm-hearted, so single-minded, and so manly that he deserves a more sympathetic and less vain helpmeet than this female doctor, with her too prosy platitudes and her chill philosophies.

Jeanne Dargelle, whom he rejects, is the least truthful, the most artificial, figure in the book. We are never interested in her. The breath of life has not been breathed into her; and when she kills herself we remain indifferent; we know that in her world women do not kill themselves, and a very proud woman would have found the idea of dying, because her husband's secretary had no love for her, altogether unendurable. We feel also that in real life Fougeraye would probably have shared her passion, and the struggle it would have caused between his temptation, and his loyalty and gratitude to Dargelle, would have been of profound interest. The chapter following on her death, in which Dargelle is alone with her dead body, is very fine, and reflects exactly that strange mixture of emotions and sensations which sway the survivor who passes long hours of solitude beside the corpse of one once dear to him—the trivial incongruities which force themselves in amidst intense regret, the eccentric fancies which dance like marsh-lights over the sombre swamp of a deep despair. Who amongst us has not cried, like Dargelle, 'Pardon, pardon!' from the depths of an aching heart, looking on the dead features of one to whom, in the eyes of the world, we had no fault?

There is in the Rosnys the distressing habit, common to all the more recent French writers, with few exceptions, of endeavouring to be pedantic, to be involved, to express an idea barbarously and bewilderingly instead of harmoniously and clearly; to say épiderme instead of peau, véridique instead of vrai, prunelles instead of yeux; to use the jargon of science, the abomination of foreign or technical idioms; to turn away from the natural, the direct, the usual, the obvious, and seek an appearance of profundity in what is merely a confusion of sounds. These affectations, these efforts, spoil many of the pages, and weary the most attentive reader in many of the chapters; as does also the incessant tendency to find similes of the most bizarre and eccentric kind, such as the comparison of dead leaves to the fur of animals; of a simile 'frail as the downy blow-ball of dandelion-seed'; of a sky 'of a powdery blue, with the horizon of an aquarium'; of a heart beating 'like a pear oscillating in a breeze,' and many others as far-fetched, as incongruous, and as grotesque. The excessive use of simile, however apt and exact, is always a fault; but similes as absurd and as strained as are most of those employed by the Rosnys, become a deformity of style, annoy the mind, and disagreeably abstract and distract the thoughts.

A too long, too technical, and too involved description is an inventory which leaves no concrete whole upon the reader's mind; it is a mere conglomeration of items. Take, as an instance, this description of Dargelle's physiognomy; and be it remembered that we never know who or what Dargelle is, how he came by his vast fortune, or anything, indeed, about him, except that he is un pauvre riche, a capitalist, one supposes, rich by inheritance. Here is the personal description of him:—

'A fat face, sad, meditative; his cheeks fell in; they were flabby. The forehead was a half-circle, with three deep wrinkles, the temples inflamed. The brow was vast but undecided, despite heavy eyebrows above violent eyes. The lips of a wild beast; a short beard which had never grown; flat hair, forming a little patch behind the brow and advancing laterally to the ears. The whole a Finnish face, very pale, with a disposition of the skin to become scaly. The nose long, broad, very irregular, between the snub and the aquiline, the end raised, the bridge bowed. Hardly any back to the head; the neck, like a Celt's, running straight up to the crown. The ears folded backward, stiff, cartilaginous,' etc., etc., etc.

This long and disagreeable description merely conveys the impression of a monster; and it does not in any way agree with the character of Dargelle, magnanimous, tender, generous, and sensitive; suffering acutely from a sense of utter loneliness amidst the parasites, who trade on his kind feelings. A man of this temperament would not have violent eyes or wild-beast lips; and the elevation of his sentiments would certainly have given some beauty of expression to his features.

Of Jacques Fougeraye, the hero of the work, we are given no description whatever. On the other hand, the portraiture of the frightful occupant of a monsters' asylum is traced in fullest and most minute detail, with an ostentation of technical knowledge, in that passion for what is horrible and abnormal which is characteristic of this school.

Dargelle, morally, is throughout consistent and lovable, from his first movement of suspicion and distrust, feeling that his new favourite will only use him and cheat him, as all the other dispensers of his charities have done, to the last frank smile with which, though jealous of the happiness he has himself created, he says: 'Allons donc! Je vois bien que vous m'aimez aussi.'

The rich man will only have the crumbs of the bread of the soul which is called love, but his generosity is content with it. 'Le pauvre riche!' say the Rosnys, with rare insight into the small consolation which, to those in full possession of them, the powers of wealth can give. Dargelle is unique, and it is almost to be regretted that he should occupy but a secondary place in the narrative. The description of his physical malady is perhaps exaggerated; deafness would scarcely cause such violent moral and mental torture; but the pathos of his last appearance is unexaggerated, and goes to the heart of the reader. By his mere word so many people are made happy, and yet, to secure happiness, even relief, for himself his millions are powerless! This is what many a rich and generous man must have felt. The irony of fate is more cruel in a sense to the heirs, than to the disinherited, of fortune. But the pain which the rich suffer is purely sentimental, and there are very few indeed who have nobility of nature enough to feel this at all.