One, who attended Mme. Adam’s reception when her salon was at the height of its political influence, tells how eager she was to withdraw from political discussion whenever an opportunity offered of talking about Greece and things Greek.
Her three best novels, Laide, Grecque and Païenne, are inspired throughout by these Hellenic sympathies. In a delightful article on Le Néo-Hellenisme,[338] Jules Lemaître, that most eminent of French critics since Sainte-Beuve, bestows high praise on this trilogy of novels, which he describes as “a rare effort of sympathetic imagination.” Nevertheless, though in all sincerity Mme. Adam strove hard to attain to the Greek point of view, a mind so essentially actual as hers could not fail to introduce a certain modernity into her portrayal of what seemed to her the Greek atmosphere and temperament. As Lemaître points out, in these novels every passion, every impression, every phrase, is obviously three thousand years older than a line of Homer, twenty-four centuries older than a line of Sophocles.
Mme. Adam, with her antipathy to everything Gothic, Teutonic and mediæval, may try to cultivate a dislike of romanticism, she remains notwithstanding, and her criticism of the Parnassians quoted above proves it, a romanticist, the child of Chateaubriand and Mme. de Staël. She may try to ignore the Middle Ages, but she cannot suppress them. And Jules Lemaître may well inquire whether “if the whole Middle Ages had not groaned and bled beneath the Cross Mme. Juliette Lambert would be able to rejoice so rapturously in her Greek gods.” For the vague paganism of that day depends for its very existence on the Christianity of which it was the negation. The paganism of Mme. Adam and her friends was provoked by the Christian’s enmity to all things carnal. It was a protest in favour of that joie de vivre, of that physical beauty, of those natural joys which the mediæval Christian had condemned as the works of the devil. When life’s joyfulness began to fade, Mme. Adam, like so many others, turned to Christianity. She had always, as she had confessed to Littré at Mme. d’Agoult’s dinner-party,[339] had the will to believe.
“Would you know how and why I became a Catholic, then you must read Chrétienne,” said Mme. Adam. And indeed this novel describes her conversion from paganism to Christianity. Here we see how that adoration of Greece, which she owed to her father’s upbringing had ceased to be a living inspiration, how it had been relegated to the past. That old conflict of her childhood between her father’s paganism and her grandmother’s Christianity recurring, resulted in her grandmother’s influence gradually alienating her soul from Greece, and transforming into a mere literary preference what was once a religious inspiration.
Chrétienne is the sequel to Païenne. The two novels tell the story of a beautiful Frenchwoman, Melissandre. She is married to a heartless rake, whom she has never loved, a M. de Noves. She has a lover, a gifted painter, Tiburce. Both novels are in the form of letters. They contain few incidents. But they tell the story of a consuming passion, which in Païenne burns with fierce ardour and in Chrétienne cools down into serene affection. The death of the husband, M. de Noves, which occurs in a duel at the close of Païenne does not, as one might expect, lead to the lovers’ immediate marriage. Before the consummation of their legal union intervenes the whole of Chrétienne. For religious misgivings, which have arisen in the heart of Melissandre, cause her to banish her lover for a while. He goes to Greece. She remains in France. In the interval, Melissandre and Tiburce, who had both been fervent pagans, fall under Catholic influences, which convince them that their Hellenic ideals are only to be cherished so far as they lead to Christ. In the words of Tiburce, they follow “the great pagan” St. Paul on the road to Damascus.[340] And not until they have been received back into the Church of their fathers do they become man and wife.
In these two books Mme. Adam brilliantly displays one of her most eminent literary gifts, which she has shown in all her writings: her passion for the beauties of nature and her power of describing them. It was their love of nature that had first attracted her to the Greeks.
The idea of race has ever played a dominant part in Mme. Adam’s mentality. “Je suis Gauloise, je suis Grecque, Latine, mais rien d’autre,” she writes.[341] In returning to Christianity she flattered herself that she was returning to the traditions of her race, to the Roman Church which she regards as the highest expression of Latin culture, and of that Mediterranean tradition, which embodies all that she loves and respects, and which is the direct antithesis to the northern tradition, to the Kultur of Berlin.[342] Bismarck she hated, not only as the conqueror of France and the persecutor of Catholics, but as the sworn foe of Latin culture. Spuller had told her that the Chancellor had a horror of everything Latin, that in his Kulturkampf he was warring not merely against the religious idea, but against Latin influence in letters, philosophy and art.[343]
FOOTNOTES:
[321] Souvenirs, VI. 30.
[322] Ibid., VII. 356.