However strange it may seem to say so, Renan himself was more surprised than anyone else to find he had written a work which evoked so many criticisms. He had been so entirely absorbed by his subject that he had never given a thought to anything else but the picture of the Redeemer, such as it had presented itself to him, in the spot which had seen Him work and die. He had never intended publishing a book of controversy, and in presence of the storm which it provoked he was even more astounded than sorry. It was not in his nature to be angry, and regret was impossible for a soul like his, which only performed what it thought and firmly believed to be right.
Contrary to the feeling some express about him, Renan had never indulged in atheistic opinions, and he strongly condemned and opposed those who supported them. His belief and faith in a Supreme Being were as firm as they were sincere, and he only deplored that his convictions had not allowed him to remain a son of the Catholic Church, in which in his youth he had hoped to become a priest. Her teachings had left their impress upon his soul, and directed it towards the deeper studies in which he became absorbed.
Renan had married a woman well worthy of him, and who made him a wonderful helpmate. She knew how to smooth all difficulties from his path, and proved well fitted for her difficult position as the wife of one of the greatest thinkers of modern times. She was an accomplished hostess. To the evening parties which saw their friends assembled in their little home in the Rue de l’Observatoire, she gave the impress of her own charming personality, and presided over the conversations with immense tact and dignity. Their daughter, who married a professor at the Sorbonne, M. Psichari, a Greek by origin, continued the traditions left to her by her parents, and until lately had a literary salon, which was well known in Paris. I do not know whether it still exists or not.
Renan was extremely ugly; this has been repeated too often for anyone not to be aware of it. But a more attractive face than he possessed is not easily to be found. There was such kindness in his smile, in the look of his eyes, and such intelligence in that large head with its noble brow, that one could not help being struck by it, and admiring it far more than if it had indeed been a beautiful face. The painter Bonnat has made a portrait of him that is, I think, the best one that has ever come from his brush. It shows Renan as he really was; one has only got to look at it, and the original appears as we, who knew him well, saw him sitting in his deep arm-chair, with his head slightly bent down on his chest, and the expressive countenance that used to brighten up whenever he met a friend, or heard about some noble deed such as he himself would have liked to perform. It was impossible to know him and not to admire the man in him, even more, perhaps, than the great thinker or the great writer, because, after all, intellect or genius can be met sooner than real virtue or real goodness—and Renan was essentially good.
From Renan to Taine is not a far step, and somehow it seems to me that the latter’s name is the only one worthy to be pronounced immediately after that of my old friend and master. I have also known Taine well, met him often, and always been struck by his large, wide mind, so utterly devoid of prejudices, and at the same time so absolute in the judgments which he thought he had the right to formulate. I must emphasise the words, “which he thought he had the right,” because those judgments assume the intelligence as well as the moral personality of Hippolyte Taine. He was an historian before everything else, perhaps even before he was a critic, though he counts among the greatest that French literature has seen; but his inclinations led him before everything else towards the study of the past, and of the causes that had brought about the great transformations that the world has witnessed, ever since society in the sense we understand it to-day began to exist; and whilst trying to fathom these causes he slowly came to convictions, which he never would renounce when once he thought them justified. Nothing would move him to change one line in the writings which, after due consideration, he decided to publish, and even his long friendship with the Princesse Mathilde did not influence him in describing Napoleon in any other sense than the one in which he had understood that colossal figure. The story goes that after having read the study which he first gave to the Revue des Deux Mondes, she sent him her card with “p.p.c.” written on it, a hint which he took, and as is known everywhere, their intercourse of many years came to an end.
Taine used to spend the greater part of the year at Menthon, in Savoy, on the borders of the Lake of Annecy, and it was during a visit which I paid to him there, from Aix-les-Bains where I was undergoing a cure, that I had with him the longest and perhaps the most interesting conversation in the whole time of our intercourse with each other. We discussed many subjects, and among others his great work, the “Origines de la France Contemporaine.” He told me how he had begun it with the intention of stopping after the first two volumes devoted to the Ancien Régime, and how gradually the subject had taken hold of him and he had come to the conclusion that he must develop it, and bring it to the point which he considered to be the only right one for properly understanding the immense and terrible drama of the Revolution. He hated anarchy, he thought it his duty to show it up in all its vivid horror, and he tried to write the story of that tragedy with the same impartiality he would have brought to bear on the description of it in any other country than his own. As he told me on that day: “C’est un pauvre patriotisme que celui qui s’imagine que l’on doit excuser les crimes de son pays, simplement par ce qu’on en est un citoyen (“It is a poor kind of patriotism which imagines that it must excuse the crimes of its own country, simply because one is born a citizen”).
With this direction of mind it is not to be wondered that, though admired by many, Taine was merely liked by the few. He could not be complaisant to the illusions or the false idols of the crowd, and he repudiated all that he called in his expressive language, “les exagérations d’ignorants qui se croient instruits” (“the exaggerations of ignoramuses who believe themselves learned”). He was a philosopher in his way, though it was entirely a personal philosophy which was founded on his own experience rather than on the teachings of those who had preceded him on the road of life and knowledge. Living most of his time far away from Paris, he was, according to the words of Balzac, one of those great minds “which solitude had preserved from all worldly meannesses.” Left face to face with the magnificences of Nature, he had acquired some of its impassivity before the woes of mankind, and in his judgments of events he often forgot the tears and the sorrows, and the blood out of which they had developed.
Renan was a soft and kind moralist, Taine was an inexorable thinker, Dumas Fils was the type of the sceptical worldly philosopher who hastens to follow the advice of Figaro, that it is better to laugh at some things for fear of being obliged to cry over them. Anything more sparkling than his conversation it would be difficult to describe, anything more amusing than the paradoxes which he loved to develop has never been met with. But with it all there was also about that charming, delightful man a strong leaning towards the tendency to moralise, and to pose as a moralist. Indeed he might, perhaps, have become a moralist in fact, had his rambling, sharp mind allowed him to think about moral problems otherwise than in associating them with his “bons mots.” These constitute the great attraction of his plays, and give to some of them that bitter flavour which, in spite of all the wit displayed in the dialogue, hangs about their whole construction.
In his sadly truthful comedy, “La Visite de Noces,” the analysis which he makes there of the great fact, which especially in France has absorbed so much of public attention, the fact of love outside marriage, is certainly full of ingenious reasonings. But though it strikes the mind, it does not appeal to the heart of those who listen to it, because it is not with witty phrases that a social evil can be mended. However, this last fact did not disturb the equanimity of Alexandre Dumas. He did not pose as an apostle, and he knew very well that principles fall down very easily before the strength of passion aroused. He had no hopes of curing the evils of mankind, but it amused him to satirise them, and to laugh at them, and to talk of them, and he did perhaps more than any other writer of his generation to acclimatise society to the fact of the existence of many things, which until he made them popular had never been mentioned—in the society of ladies at least.
Alexandre Dumas was married to a Russian, a very intelligent and, in her youth, a very attractive woman, but who, towards the end of her life, developed slatternly habits. Those who called upon her unawares found her with her hair wrapped up in curl-papers, her face seldom washed, and in an untidy dressing-gown, the garment she most affected. I remember one morning at Dieppe, where the clever dramatist had a villa, I found her sitting in her garden overlooking the sea, in a kind of white wrapper, none too fresh, and without any stockings on her feet. When lunch was announced Dumas turned to his wife and asked her whether she would not tidy herself up a bit, to which she replied with indifference: “Why, I am all right.” To watch her husband shrug his shoulders was a sight in itself.