Tartarin de Tarascon

by Alphonse Daudet

Daudet's remarkable power of observation was innate. From his youth he exercised this instinct and carried a notebook in which he set down impressions, studies, and sketches of characters and scenes. These notebooks proved to be of inestimable value to the realist; and the natural inclination to seek the naked truth, to which they bear witness, strengthened the determination of the postbellum Daudet to enter the ranks of the sociological novelists. So far as possible, he borrowed every detail of character and environment from real life; almost all his characters represent real persons whom he studied with a view of using them in his books. Daudet's is a microscopic, notebook realism quite different from the universal verity of Balzac, but there are many pages prompted by an exquisite sympathy or a violent passion in which the indomitable personality of the author breaks through the impassiveness imposed by the accepted masters of the craft. Sadness is the prevailing tone in his work, the sort of sadness that proceeds from pity. Where sadness does not dominate in Daudet, irony takes its place. These two qualities, sadness which is inspired by pity for human suffering and irony which betrays impatience with human folly, these two qualities which are the heart and soul of Daudet's work are the enemies of that impassiveness which is the indispensable attitude of the realist, and which Daudet tried in vain to acquire.

Paris, the war, his intercourse with Flaubert and Goncourt and Zola, were the influences, then, that transformed Daudet, most easily susceptible to impressions from without. The Daudet of the great novels is not the real Daudet, however; the real Daudet is the author of "Les Amoureuses," of the "Lettres de mon moulin," and of "Tartarin de Tarascon."

But even in the "Tartarin" series he is not entirely himself. The pure stream of his native simplicity and naïveté is already tinged with the worldly-wiseness of the Parisian. In the "Lettres de mon moulin" the writer is still in sympathy with his native land, while in the earliest of the "Tartarin" series, "Tartarin de Tarascon," there is already a spirit of disdainful raillery which Daudet learned in Paris. Tarascon was piqued when "Tartarin de Tarascon" appeared. Indeed, there is more than a little in the book that may well offend local pride.

In "Numa Roumestan" the satire is still less sympathetic and less good-natured. Numa is utterly detestable. He is a visionary; we readily forgive such a weakness, and we are amused by this characteristic trait of the south in Bompard and Tartarin. These two are visionaries and liars; they are cowards too, boastful and conceited. But they have never had the happiness of others in their hands. If a true child of the south, such as Tartarin or Bompard, were placed in a position of trust, he would not prove equal to the occasion and the result would be a Numa Roumestan. That is Daudet's verdict, and certainly his decision is not flattering to the south. Is this the decision of the better Daudet? is it not a Parisian Daudet, whose sympathy for his native land has been warped by the play of Parisian mockery on his sensitive, easily convinced nature?

It is precisely in "Numa Roumestan," where he is making his most complete study of the character of the southerner, that Daudet is most pessimistic. Le Quesnoy, the worthy northerner, deceives his wife as does Numa, the lying southerner. The spirit of the novel is epitomized in such sentiments as "Joie de rue, douleur de maison," "Au nord au midi--tous pareils, traîtres et parjures," "Grand homme pour tout le monde excepté pour sa femme." A decided pessimism pervades the great novels. Optimistic Daudet is frequently said to be. He was truly so by nature, he is so in the "Lettres de mon moulin" and in all his work before the war, but his pessimism is unquestionable in the great novels.

Surely nature did not intend Daudet to become a pessimist; he loved mankind, he had many devoted friends and no enemies. He carried happiness wherever he went. The attic of Auteuil, the rendezvous of the Goncourt group, is dark and gloomy. A serious, mirthless band surrounds the armchair of the patriarch. The door opens and Daudet enters. Old Goncourt rises to greet him: "Eh bien! mon petit, ça va?" "Assez bien, mon Goncourt" is the reply. The terrible malady has already seized the younger man, but he still radiates life and cheer: his lightness of heart dispels the gravity of the company; little by little his animation is communicated to them all, and the attic resounds with peals of laughter.

It was always so. The sympathy of Daudet, the man, was unfailing; his pity For the weak, his love for his family and friends, his hatred of villainy, were boundless. He delighted in little acts of charity the source of which remained unknown to the world and even to the recipient.

"My father said to me again and again," Léon Daudet tells us, "I should like, after I have accomplished my task, to set myself up as a merchant of happiness. My reward would be in my success!" This longing, so entirely characteristic of the man, is manifest everywhere in his earlier work, only rarely in the great novels; unfortunately the great novels were his "task."

If only he had continued as he began, if only he had remained the poet of the "Lettres de mon moulin"; if only he had not been led astray by his "task", he might have brought to the world of readers that happiness which he brought to his few friends in the attic of Auteuil.

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