[100] When he thought of men and women, it was of men and women as in the presence and under the influence of those effective natural objects, and linked to them by many associations. Such influences have sometimes seemed to belittle those who are the subject of them, at the least to be likely to narrow the range of their sympathies. To Wordsworth, on the contrary, they seemed directly to dignify human nature, as tending to tranquillize it. He raises physical nature to the level of human thought, giving it thereby a mystic power and expression; he subdues man to the level of nature, but gives him therewith a certain breadth and vastness and solemnity.

Religious sentiment, consecrating the natural affections and rights of the human heart, above all that pitiful care and awe for the perishing human clay of which relic-worship is but the corruption, has always had much to do with localities, with the thoughts which attach themselves to definite scenes and places. And what is true of it everywhere is truest in those secluded valleys, where one generation after another maintains the same abiding-place; and [101] it was on this side that Wordsworth apprehended religion most strongly. Having so much to do with the recognition of local sanctities, the habit of connecting the very trees and stones of a particular spot of earth with the great events of life, till the low walls, the green mounds, the half-obliterated epitaphs, seemed full of oracular voices, even the religion of those people of the dales appeared but as another link between them and the solemn imageries of the natural world. And, again, this too tranquillized them, by bringing them under the rule of traditional, narrowly localized observances. "Grave livers," they seemed to him under this aspect, of stately speech, and something of that natural dignity of manners which underlies the highest courtesy.

And, seeing man thus as a part of nature, elevated and solemnized in proportion as his daily life and occupations brought him into companionship with permanent natural objects, he was able to appreciate passion in the lowly. He chooses to depict people from humble life, because, being nearer to nature than others, they are on the whole more impassioned, certainly [102] more direct in their expression of passion, than other men; it is for this direct expression of passion that he values their humble words. In much that he said in exaltation of rural life he was but pleading indirectly for that sincerity, that perfect fidelity to one's own inward presentations, to the precise features of the picture within, without which any profound poetry is impossible. It was not for their tameness, but for their impassioned sincerity, that he chose incidents and situations from common life, "related in a selection of language really used by men." He constantly endeavours to bring his language nearer to the real language of men; but it is to the real language of men, not on the dead level of their ordinary intercourse, but in certain select moments of vivid sensation, when this language is winnowed and ennobled by sentiment. There are poets who have chosen rural life for their subject for the sake of its passionless repose; and there are times when Wordsworth himself extols the mere calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest aim of poetical culture. But it was not for such passionless calm that he preferred the scenes of [103] pastoral life; and the meditative poet, sheltering himself from the agitations of the outward world, is in reality only clearing the scene for the exhibition of great emotions, and what he values most is the almost elementary expression of elementary feelings.

In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended to be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book of the first part was left in manuscript by Wordsworth—though in manuscript, it is said, in no great condition of forwardness for the printers. This book, now for the first time printed in extenso (a very noble passage from it found place in that prose advertisement to The Excursion), is the great novelty of this latest edition of Wordsworth's poetic works. It was well worth adding to the poet's great bequest to English literature. The true student of his work, who has formulated for himself what he supposes to be the leading characteristics [104] of Wordsworth's genius, will feel, we think, a lively interest in putting them to test by the many and various striking passages in what is there presented for the first time.

17th February 1889



VII. MR. GOSSE'S POEMS

On Viol and Flute. By Edmund Gosse.

[107] PERHAPS no age of literature, certainly no age of literature in England, has been so rich as ours in excellent secondary poetry; and it is with our poetry (in a measure) as with our architecture, constrained by the nature of the case to be imitative. Our generation, quite reasonably, is not very proud of its architectural creations; confesses that it knows too much—knows, but cannot do. And yet we could name certain modern churches in London, for instance, to which posterity may well look back puzzled.—Could these exquisitely pondered buildings have been indeed works of the nineteenth century? Were they not the subtlest creations of the age in which Gothic art was spontaneous? In truth, we have had instances of workmen, who, through long, large, [108] devoted study of the handiwork of the past, have done the thing better, with a more fully enlightened consciousness, with full intelligence of what those early workmen only guessed at. And something like this is true of some of our best secondary poetry. It is the least that is true—the least that can fairly be said in praise of the poetic work of Mr. Edmund Gosse.

Of course there can be no exact parallel between arts so different as architecture and poetic composition: But certainly in the poetry of our day also, though it has been in some instances powerfully initiative and original, there is great scholarship, a large comparative acquaintance with the poetic methods of earlier workmen, and a very subtle intelligence of their charm. Of that fine scholarship in this matter there is no truer example than Mr. Gosse. It is manifested especially in the even finish of his varied work, in the equality of his level—a high level—in species of composition so varied as the three specimens which follow.

Far away, in late spring, "by the sea in the south," the swallows are still lingering around "white Algiers." In Mr. Gosse's "Return of [109] the Swallows," the northern birds—lark and thrush—have long been calling to them:—

And something awoke in the slumbering heart Of the alien birds in their African air, And they paused, and alighted, and twittered apart, And met in the broad white dreamy square, And the sad slave woman, who lifted up From the fountain her broad-lipped earthen cup, Said to herself, with a weary sigh, "To-morrow the swallows will northward fly."

Compare the following stanzas, from a kind of palinode, "1870-1871," years of the Franco-German war and the Parisian Commune:—

The men who sang that pain was sweet Shuddered to see the mask of death Storm by with myriad thundering feet; The sudden truth caught up our breath Our throats like pulses beat.

The songs of pale emaciate hours, The fungus-growth of years of peace, Withered before us like mown flowers; We found no pleasure more in these When bullets fell in showers.

For men whose robes are dashed with blood, What joy to dream of gorgeous stairs, Stained with the torturing interlude That soothed a Sultan's midday prayers, In old days harsh and rude?

[110]

For men whose lips are blanched and white, With aching wounds and torturing thirst, What charm in canvas shot with light, And pale with faces cleft and curst, Past life and life's delight?

And then Mr. Gosse's purely descriptive power, his aptitude for still-life and landscape, is unmistakably vivid and sound. Take, for an instance, this description of high-northern summer:—

The ice-white mountains clustered all around us, But arctic summer blossomed at our feet; The perfume of the creeping sallows found us, The cranberry-flowers were sweet.

Below us through the valley crept a river, Cleft round an island where the Lap-men lay; Its sluggish water dragged with slow endeavour The mountain snows away.

There is no night-time in the northern summer, But golden shimmer fills the hours of sleep, And sunset fades not, till the bright new-comer, Red sunrise, smites the deep.

But when the blue snow-shadows grew intenser Across the peaks against the golden sky, And on the hills the knots of deer grew denser, And raised their tender cry,

[111]

And wandered downward to the Lap-men's dwelling, We knew our long sweet day was nearly spent, And slowly, with our hearts within us swelling, Our homeward steps we bent.

"Sunshine before Sunrise!" There's a novelty in that, for poetic use at least, so far as we know, though we remember one fine paragraph about it in Sartor Resartus. The grim poetic sage of Chelsea, however, had never seen what he describes: not so Mr. Gosse, whose acquaintance with northern lands and northern literature is special. We have indeed picked out those stanzas from a quiet personal record of certain amorous hours of early youth in that quaint arctic land, Mr. Gosse's description of which, like his pretty poem on Luebeck, made one think that what the accomplished group of poets to which he belongs requires is, above all, novelty of motive, of subject.

He takes, indeed, the old themes, and manages them better than their old masters, with more delicate cadences, more delicate transitions of thought, through long dwelling on earlier practice. He seems to possess complete command of the technique of poetry—every form of what may be called skill of hand in it; and what marks in [112] him the final achievement of poetic scholarship is the perfect balance his work presents of so many and varied effects, as regards both matter and form. The memories of a large range of poetic reading are blent into one methodical music so perfectly that at times the notes seem almost simple. Sounding almost all the harmonies of the modern lyre, he has, perhaps as a matter of course, some of the faults also, the "spasmodic" and other lapses, which from age to age, in successive changes of taste, have been the "defects" of excellent good "qualities." He is certainly not the—

Pathetic singer, with no strength to sing,

as he says of the white-throat on the tulip-tree,

Whose leaves unfinished ape her faulty song.

In effect, a large compass of beautiful thought and expression, from poetry old and new, have become to him matter malleable anew for a further and finer reach of literary art. And with the perfect grace of an intaglio, he shows, as in truth the minute intaglio may do, the faculty of structure, the logic of poetry. "The New Endymion" is a good instance of such sustained [113] power. Poetic scholar!—If we must reserve the sacred name of "poet" to a very small number, that humbler but perhaps still rarer title is due indisputably to Mr. Gosse. His work is like exquisite modern Latin verse, into the academic shape of which, discreet and coy, comes a sincere, deeply felt consciousness of modern life, of the modern world as it is. His poetry, according with the best intellectual instincts of our critical age, is as pointed out recently by a clever writer in the Nineteenth Century, itself a kind of exquisite, finally revised criticism.

Not that he fails in originality; only, the graces, inborn certainly, but so carefully educated, strike one more. The sense of his originality comes to one as but an after-thought; and certainly one sign of his vocation is that he has made no conscious effort to be original. In his beautiful opening poem of the "White-throat," giving his book its key-note, he seems, indeed, to accept that position, reasons on and justifies it. Yet there is a clear note of originality (so it seems to us) in the peculiar charm of his strictly personal compositions; and, generally, in such touches as he gives us of the soul, the life, of the [114] nineteenth century. Far greater, we think, than the charm of poems strictly classic in interest, such as the "Praise of Dionysus," exquisite as that is, is the charm of those pieces in which, so to speak, he transforms, by a kind of colour-change, classic forms and associations into those—say! of Thames-side—pieces which, though in manner or subject promising a classic entertainment, almost unaware bring you home.—No! after all, it is not imagined Greece, dreamy, antique Sicily, but the present world about us, though mistakable for a moment, delightfully, for the land, the age, of Sappho, of Theocritus:—

There is no amaranth, no pomegranate here, But can your heart forget the Christmas rose, The crocuses and snowdrops once so dear?

Quite congruously with the placid, erudite, quality of his culture, although, like other poets, he sings much of youth, he is often most successful in the forecast, the expression, of the humours, the considerations, that in truth are more proper to old age:—

When age comes by and lays his frosty hands So lightly on mine eyes, that, scarce aware

[115]

Of what an endless weight of gloom they bear, I pause, unstirred, and wait for his commands. When time has bound these limbs of mine with bands, And hushed mine ears, and silvered all my hair, May sorrow come not, nor a vain despair Trouble my soul that meekly girdled stands.

As silent rivers into silent lakes, Through hush of reeds that not a murmur breaks, Wind, mindful of the poppies whence they came, So may my life, and calmly burn away, As ceases in a lamp at break of day The flagrant remnant of memorial flame.

Euthanasia!—Yet Mr. Gosse, with all his accomplishment, is still a young man. His youthful confidence in the perpetuity of poetry, of the poetical interests in life, creed-less as he may otherwise seem to be, is, we think, a token, though certainly an unconscious token, of the spontaneous originality of his muse. For a writer of his peculiar philosophic tenets, at all events, the world itself, in truth, must seem irretrievably old or even decadent.

Old, decadent, indeed, it would seem with Mr. Gosse to be also returning to the thoughts, the fears, the consolations, of its youth in Greece, in Italy:—

[116]

Nor seems it strange indeed To hold the happy creed That all fair things that bloom and die Have conscious life as well as I.

Then let me joy to be Alive with bird and tree, And have no haughtier aim than this, To be a partner in their bliss.

Convinced, eloquent,—again and again the notes of Epicurean philosophy fall almost unconsciously from his lips. With poetry at hand, he appears to feel no misgivings. A large faith he might seem to have in what is called "natural optimism," the beauty and benignity of nature, if let alone, in her mechanical round of changes with man and beast and flower. Her method, however, certainly involves forgetfulness for the individual; and to this, to the prospect of oblivion, poetry, too, may help to brace us, if, unlike so genial and cheerful a poet as Mr. Gosse, we need bracing thereto:—

Now, giant-like, the tall young ploughmen go Between me and the sunset, footing slow; My spirit, as an uninvited guest, Goes with them, wondering what desire, what aim, May stir their hearts and mine with common flame, Or, thoughtless, do their hands suffice their soul?

[117]

I know not, care not, for I deem no shame To hold men, flowers, and trees and stars the same, Myself, as these, one atom in the whole.

That is from one of those half-Greek, half-English idylls, reminding one of Frederick Walker's "Ploughman," of Mason's "Evening Hymn," in which Mr. Gosse is at his best. A favourite motive, he has treated it even more melodiously in "Lying in the Grass":—

I do not hunger for a well-stored mind, I only wish to live my life, and find My heart in unison with all mankind.

My life is like the single dewy star That trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar,— A microcosm where all things living are.

And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death Should come behind and take away my breath, I should not rise as one who sorroweth;

For I should pass, but all the world would be Full of desire and young delight and glee, And why should men be sad through loss of me?

The light is flying; in the silver-blue The young moon shines from her bright window through: The mowers are all gone, and I go too.

A vein of thought as modern as it is old! More not less depressing, certainly, to our over-meditative [118], susceptible, nervous, modern age, than to that antiquity which was indeed the genial youth of the world, but, sweetly attuned by his skill of touch, it is the sum of what Mr. Gosse has to tell us of the experience of life. Or is it, after all, to quote him once more, that beyond those ever-recurring pagan misgivings, those pale pagan consolations, our generation feels yet cannot adequately express—

The passion and the stress Of thoughts too tender and too sad to be Enshrined in any melody she knows?

29th October 1890



VIII. FERDINAND FABRE

[NORINE]: AN IDYLL OF THE CEVENNES

[121] A FRENCH novelist who, with much of Zola's undoubted power, writes always in the interest of that high type of Catholicism which still prevails in the remote provinces of France, of that high type of morality of which the French clergy have nobly maintained the ideal, is worth recommending to the more serious class of English readers. Something of the gift of Francois Millet, whose peasants are veritable priests, of those older religious painters who could portray saintly heads so sweetly and their merely human proteges so truly, seems indeed to have descended to M. Ferdinand Fabre. In the Abbe Tigrane, in Lucifer, and elsewhere, he has delineated, with wonderful power and patience, a strictly ecclesiastical portraiture— [122] shrewd, passionate, somewhat melancholy heads, which, though they are often of peasant origin, are never by any chance undignified. The passions he treats of in priests are, indeed, strictly clerical, most often their ambitions—not the errant humours of the mere man in the priest, but movements of spirit properly incidental to the clerical type itself. Turning to the secular brothers and sisters of these peasant ecclesiastics, at first sight so strongly contrasted with them, M. Fabre shows a great acquaintance with the sources, the effects, of average human feeling; but still in contact—in contact, as its conscience, its better mind, its ideal—with the institutions of religion. What constitutes his distinguishing note as a writer is the recognition of the religious, the Catholic, ideal, intervening masterfully throughout the picture he presents of life, as the only mode of poetry realizable by the poor; and although, of course, it does a great deal more beside, certainly doing the high work of poetry effectively. For his background he has chosen, has made his own and conveys very vividly to his readers, a district of France, gloomy, in spite of its almonds, its [123] oil and wine, but certainly grandiose. The large towns, the sparse hamlets, the wide landscape of the Cevennes, are for his books what the Rhineland is to those delightful authors, Messrs. Erckmann-Chatrian. In Les Courbezon, the French Vicar of Wakefield, as Sainte-Beuve declared, with this imposing background, the Church and the world, as they shape themselves in the Cevennes, the priest and the peasant, occupy about an equal share of interest. Sometimes, as in the charming little book we wish now to introduce, unclerical human nature occupies the foreground almost exclusively; though priestly faces will still be found gazing upon us from time to time.

In form, the book is a bundle of letters from a Parisian litterateur to the friend of his boyhood, now the cure of one of those mountain villages. He is refreshing himself, in the midst of dusty, sophisticated Paris, with memories of their old, delightful existence—vagabonde, libre, agreste, pastorale—in their upland valley. He can appeal safely to the aged cure's friendly justice, even in exposing delicacies of sentiment which most men conceal:—

[124] "As for you, frank, certain of your own mind, joyous of heart, methinks scarce understanding those whose religion makes their souls tremble instead of fortifying them—you, I am sure, take things by the large and kindly side of human life."

The story our Parisian has to tell is simple enough, and we have no intention of betraying it, but only to note some of the faces, the scenes, that peep out in the course of it.

The gloom of the Cevennes is the impression M. Fabre most commonly conveys. In this book it is rather the cheerful aspect of summer, those upland valleys of the Cevennes presenting then a symphony in red, so to call it—as in a land of cherries and goldfinches; and he has a genial power certainly of making you really feel the sun on the backs of the two boys out early for a long ramble, of old peasants resting themselves a little, with spare enjoyment, ere the end:—

"As we turned a sharp elbow of the stream the aspect of the country changed. It seemed to me entirely red. Cherries in enormous bunches were hanging everywhere over our heads....

[125] "It was a hut, rather low, rather dark. A log of chestnut was smouldering in a heap of ashes. Every object was in its place: the table, the chairs, the plates ranged on the dresser. A fairy, in truth, reigned there, and, by the touch of her wand, brought cleanliness and order on every side.

"'Is it you, Norine?' asked a voice from a dark corner, three steps from the fireplace.

"'Yes, mon grand, it is I! The heat was growing greater every moment, and I have taken in the goats.'

"Norine unclosed the window. A broad light spread over the floor of beaten earth, like a white cloth. The cottage was illuminated. I saw an old man seated on a wooden stool in a recess, where an ample serge curtain concealed a bed. He held himself slightly bent, the two hands held forth, one over the other, on the knob of a knotty staff, highly polished. In spite of eighty years, Norine's grandfather—le grand, as they say up there—had not lost a hair: beautiful white locks fell over his shoulders—crisp, thick, outspread. I thought of those fine wigs of tow or hemp with which the distaff of [126] our Prudence was always entangled. He was close shaved, after the manner of our peasants; and the entire mask was to be seen disengaged, all its admirable lines free, commanded by a full-sized nose, below which the good, thick lips were smiling, full of kindness. The eyes, however, though still clear and soft in expression, had a certain fixity which startled me. He raised himself. His stature seemed to me beyond proportion. He was really beautiful, with the contentment of his face, straight as the trunk of a chestnut, his old velvet coat thrown back, his shirt of coarse cloth open at the breast, so that one saw the play of the ribs.

"'Monsieur le neveu!' he cried; 'where are you? Come to me! I am blind.'

"I approached. He felt me, with ten fingers, laying aside his staff.

"'And you would not take offence if a poor peasant like me embraced you?'

"'Quick, Jalaguier!' I cried, throwing myself into his arms. 'Quick!' He pressed me till the joints started. Leaned upon his broad chest, I heard the beating of his heart. It beat under my ears with a burden like our bell at [126] Camplong. What powerful vitality in Norine's grand! 'It does an old man good:—a good hug!' he said, letting me go."

The boyish visitors are quite ready to sit down there to dinner:—

"With the peasant of the Cevennes (M. Fabre tells us) the meal is what nature meant it to be—a few moments for self-recovery after fatigue, a short space of silence of a quite elevated character, almost sacred. The poor human creature has given the sweat of his brow to extort from an ungrateful soil his daily bread; and now he eats that well-savoured bread in silent self-respect.

"'It is a weary thing to be thinking always of one's work (says the grand to the somewhat sparing Norine). We must also think of our sustenance. You are too enduring, my child! it is a mistake to demand so much of your arms. In truth, le bon Dieu has cut you out after the pattern of your dead father. Every morning, in my prayers, I put in my complaint thereanent. My poor boy died from going too fast. He could never sit still when it was a question of gathering a few sous from the [128] fields; and those fields took and consumed him.'"

The boy fancies that the blind eyes are turned towards a particular spot in the landscape, as if they saw:—

"'I often turn my eyes in that direction (the old man explains) from habit. One might suppose that a peasant had the scent of the earth on which he has laboured. I have given so much of the sweat of my brow—there—towards Rocaillet! Angelique, my dead wife, was of Rocaillet; and when she married me, brought a few morsels of land in her apron. What a state they're in now!—those poor morsels of land we used to weed and rake and hoe, my boy and I! What superb crops of vetches we mowed then, for feeding, in due time, our lambs, our calves! All is gone to ruin since my blindness, and especially since Angelique left me for the churchyard, never to come back.' He paused to my great relief. For every one of those phrases he modulated under the fig-trees more sadly than the Lamentations of Jeremiah on Jeudi Saint overset me—was like death."

[129] That is good drawing, in its simple and quiet way! The actual scene, however, is cheerful enough on this early summer day—a symphony, as we said, in cherries and goldfinches, in which the higher valleys of the Cevennes abound. In fact, the boys witness the accordailles, the engagement, of Norine and Justin Lebasset. The latter is calling the birds to sing good luck to the event:—

"He had a long steady look towards the fruit-trees, and then whistled, on a note at once extremely clear and extremely soft. He paused, watched awhile, recommenced. The note became more rapid, more sonorous. What an astounding man he was, this Justin Lebasset! Upright, his red beard forward, his forehead thrown back, his eyes on the thick foliage of the cherry-trees, his hands on his haunches, in an attitude of repose, easy, superb, he was like some youthful pagan god, gilded with red gold, on his way across the country—like Pan, if he chose to amuse himself by charming birds. You should have seen the enthusiastic glances with which Norine watched him. Upright—she too, slim, at full height, inclining from [130] time to time towards Justin with a movement of irresistible fascination, she followed the notes of her mate; and sometimes, her, lips half opening, added thereto a sigh—something of a sigh, an aspiration, a prayer, towards the goldfinch, withdrawn into the shadows.

"The leaves were shaken in the clear, burning green; and, on a sudden, a multitude of goldfinches, the heads red in the wind, the wings half spread, were fluttering from branch to branch. I could have fancied, amid the quivering of the great bunches of fruit, that they were cherries on the wing. Justin suffered his pipe to die away: the birds were come at his invitation, and performed their prelude."

It is forty years afterwards that the narrator, now a man of letters in Paris, writes to his old friend, with tidings of Justin and Norine:—

"In 1842 (he observes) you were close on fifteen; I scarcely twelve. In my eyes your age made you my superior. And then, you were so strong, so tender, so amiteux, to use a word from up there—a charming word. And so God, Who had His designs for you, whereas I, in spite of my pious childhood, wandered on [131] my way as chance bade me, led you by the hand, attached, ended by keeping you for Himself. He did well truly when He chose you and rejected me!"

His finding the pair in the wilds of Paris is an adventure, in which, in fact, a goldfinch again takes an important part—a goldfinch who is found to understand the Cevenol dialect:—

"The goldfinch (escaped from its cage somewhere, into the dreary court of the Institute) has seen me: is looking at me. If he chose to make his way into my apartment, he would be very welcome. I feel a strong impulse to try him with that unique patois word, which, whistled after a peculiar manner, when I was a boy never failed to succeed in the mountains of Orb—Beni! Beni! Viens! Viens! I dare not! He might take fright and fly away altogether."

In effect, the Cevenol bird, true to call, introduces Norine, his rightful owner, whose husband Justin is slowly dying. Towards the end of a hard life, faithful to their mountain ideal, they have not lost their dignity, though in a comparatively sordid medium: [132]

"As for me, my dear Arribas, I remained in deep agitation, an attentive spectator of the scene; and while Justin and Norine, set both alike in the winepress of sorrow, le pressoir de la douleur, as your good books express it, murmured to each other their broken consoling words, I saw them again, in thought, young, handsome, in the full flower of life, under the cherry-trees, the swarming goldfinches, of blind Barthelemy Jalaguier. Ah me! It was thus that, five-and-forty years after, in this dark street of Paris, that festive day was finishing, blessed, in the plenitude of nature, by that august old man, celebrated by the alternate song of all the birds of Rocaillet."

Justin's one remaining hope is to go home to those native mountains, if it may be, with the dead body of his boy, dead "the very morning on which he should have received the tonsure from the hands of Mgr. l'Archeveque," and buried now temporarily at the cemetery of Montparnasse:—

Theodore calls me. I saw him distinctly to-night. He gave me a sign. After all said, life is heavy, sans le fillot, and but [133] for you it were well to be released from it....'

"I have seen Justin Lebasset die, dear Arribas, and was touched, edified, to the bottom of my soul. God grant, when my hour comes, I may find that calm, that force, in the last struggle with life. Not a complaint! not a sigh! Once only he gave Norine a sorrowful, heartrending look; then, from lips already cold, breathed that one word, 'Theodore!' Marcus Aurelius used to say: 'A man should leave the world as a ripe olive falls from the tree that bore it, and with a kiss for the earth that nourished it.' Well! the peasant of Rocaillet had the beautiful, noble, simple death of the fruit of the earth, going to the common receptacle of all mortal beings, with no sense that he was torn away. Pardon, I pray, my quotation from Marcus Aurelius, who persecuted the Christians. I give it with the same respect with which you would quote some holy writer. Ah! my dear Arribas! not all the saints have received canonization."

It is to the priestly character, in truth, that M. Fabre always comes back for tranquillizing [134] effect; and if his peasants have something akin to Wordsworth's, his priests may remind one of those solemn ecclesiastical heads familiar in the paintings and etchings of M. Alphonse Legros. The reader travelling in Italy, or Belgium perhaps, has doubtless visited one or more of those spacious sacristies, introduced to which for the inspection of some more than usually recherche work of art, one is presently dominated by their reverend quiet: simple people coming and going there, devout, or at least on devout business, with half-pitched voices, not without touches of kindly humour, in what seems to express like a picture the most genial side, midway between the altar and the home, of the ecclesiastical life. Just such interiors we seem to visit under the magic of M. Fabre's well-trained pen. He has a real power of taking one from Paris, or from London, to places and people certainly very different from either, to the satisfaction of those who seek in fiction an escape.

12th June 1889



IX. THE "CONTES" OF M. AUGUSTIN FILON

TALES OF A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE ["CONTES DU CENTENAIRE." PAR AUGUSTIN FILON. PARIS: HACHETTE ET CIE. ]

[137] IT was a happy thought of M. Filon to put into the mouth of an imaginary centenarian a series of delightfully picturesque studies which aim at the minute presentment of life in France under the old regime, and end for the most part with the Revolution. A genial centenarian, whose years have told happily on him, he appreciates not only those humanities of feeling and habit which were peculiar to the last century and passed away with it, but also that permanent humanity which has but undergone a change of surface in the new world of our own, wholly different though it may look. With a sympathetic sense of life as it is always, [138] M. Filon has transplanted the creations of his fancy into an age certainly at a greater distance from ourselves than can be estimated by mere lapse of time, and where a fully detailed antiquarian knowledge, used with admirable tact and economy, is indeed serviceable in giving reality of effect to scene and character. In truth, M. Filon's very lively antiquarianism carries with it a genuine air of personal memory. With him, as happens so rarely, an intimate knowledge of historic detail is the secret of life, of the impression of life; puts his own imagination on the wing; secures the imaginative cooperation of the reader. A stately age—to us, perhaps, in the company of the historic muse, seeming even more stately than it actually was—it is pleasant to find it, as we do now and again on these pages, in graceful deshabille. With perfect lightness of touch, M. Filon seems to have a complete command of all the physiognomic details of old France, of old Paris and its people—how they made a holiday; how they got at the news; the fashions. Did the English reader ever hear before of the beautifully dressed doll which came once a month [139] from Paris to Soho to teach an expectant world of fashion how to dress itself? Old Paris! For young lovers at their windows; for every one fortunate enough to have seen it: "Qu'il est joli ce paysage du Paris nocturne d'il y a cent ans!" We think we shall best do justice to an unusually pretty book by taking one of M. Filon's stories (not because we are quite sure it is the cleverest of them) with a view to the more definite illustration of his method, therein.

Christopher Marteau was a warden of the corporation of Luthiers. He dealt in musical instruments, as his father and grandfather had done before him, at the sign of Saint Cecilia. With his wife, his only child Phlipote, and Claude his apprentice, who was to marry Phlipote, he occupied a good house of his own. Of course the disposition of the young people, bred together from their childhood, does not at first entirely concur with the parental arrangements. But the story tells, reassuringly, how—to some extent how sadly—they came heartily to do so. M. Marteau was no ordinary shopkeeper. The various distinguished people who had fingered his clavecins, and turned over the [140] folios of music, for half a century past, had left their memories behind them; M. de Voltaire, for instance, who had caressed the head of Phlipote with an aged, skeleton hand, leaving, apparently, no very agreeable impression on the child, though her father delighted to recall the incident, being himself a demi-philosophe. He went to church, that is to say, only twice a year, on the Feast of St. Cecilia and on the Sunday when the Luthiers offered the pain benit. It was his opinion that everything in the State needed reform except the Corporations. The relations of the husband to his affectionate, satiric, pleasure-seeking wife, who knew so well all the eighteen theatres which then existed in Paris, are treated with much quiet humour. On Sundays the four set forth together for a country holiday. At such times Phlipote would walk half-a-dozen paces in advance of her father and mother, side by side with her intended. But they never talked to each other: the hands, the eyes, never met. Of what was Phlipote dreaming? and what was in the thoughts of Claude?

It happened one day that, like sister and brother, the lovers exchanged confidences. "It [141] is not always," observes Phlipote, whom every one excepting Claude on those occasions sought with admiring eyes—

"'It is not always one loves those one is told to love.'

"'What, have you, too, a secret, my little Phlipote?'

"'I too, Claude! Then what may be yours?'

"'Listen, Phlipote!' he answered. 'We don't wish to be husband and wife, but we can be friends—good and faithful friends, helping each other to change the decision of our parents.'

"'Were I but sure you would not betray me—'

"'Would you like me to confess first? The woman I love—Ah! but you will laugh at my folly!'

"'No, Claude! I shall not laugh. I know too well what one suffers.'

"'Especially when love is hopeless.'

"'Hopeless?'

"'Alas! I have never spoken to her. Perhaps never shall!'

[142] "'Well! as for me, I don't even know the name of him to whom my heart is given!'

"'Ah! poor Phlipote!'

"'Poor Claude!'

"They had approached each other. The young man took the tiny hand of his friend, pressing it in his own.

"'The woman I adore is Mademoiselle Guimard!'

"'What! Guimard of the Opera?—the fiancee of Despreaux?'"

Claude still held the hands of Phlipote, who was trembling now, and almost on fire at the story of this ambitious love. In return she reveals her own. It was Good Friday. She had come with her mother to the Sainte Chapelle to hear Mademoiselle Coupain play the organ and witness the extraordinary spectacle of the convulsionnaires, brought thither to be touched by the relic of the True Cross. In the press of the crowd at this exciting scene Phlipote faints, or nearly faints, when a young man comes kindly to their aid. "She is so young!" he explains to the mother, "she seems so delicate!" "He looked at me," she tells Claude—"he looked at [143] me, through his half-closed eyelids; and his words were like a caress."—

"'And have you seen him no More?' asks Claude, full of sympathy.

"'Yes! once again. He pretended to be looking at the window of the Little Dunkirk, over the way, but with cautious glances towards our house. Only, as he did not know what storey we live on, he failed to discover me behind my curtain, where I was but half visible.'

"'You should have shown yourself.'

"'Oh, Claude!' she cried, with a delicious gesture of timidity, of shame.

"So they prattled for a long time; he talking of the great Guimard, she of her unknown lover, scarce listening to, but completely understanding each other.

"'Holloa!'cries the loud voice of Christopher Marteau. 'What are you doing out there?'

"The young people arose. Phlipote linked her arm gaily in that of Claude. 'How contented I feel!' she says; 'how good it is to have a friend—to have you whom I used to detest, because I thought you were in love with me. Now, when I know you can't bear me, I [144] shall be nicely in love with you.' The soft warmth of her arm seemed to pass through Claude, and gave him strange sensations. He resumed naively, 'Yes! and how odd it is after all that I am not in love with you. You are so pretty!' Phlipote raised her finger coquettishly, 'No compliments, monsieur. Since we are not to marry each other, it is forbidden to pay court to me!'"

From that day a close intimacy established itself between the formerly affianced pair, now become accomplices in defeating the good intentions of their elders. In long conversations, they talked in turn, or both together, of their respective loves. Phlipote allows Claude entrance to her chamber, full of admiration for its graceful arrangements, its virgin cleanliness. He inspects slowly all the familiar objects daily touched by her, her books, her girlish ornaments. One day she cried with an air of mischief, "If she were here in my place, what would you do?" and no sooner were the words uttered than his arms were round her neck. "'Tis but to teach you what I would do were she here." They were a little troubled by this adventure.

[145] And the next day was a memorable one. By the kind contrivance of Phlipote herself, Claude gains the much-desired access to the object of his affections, but to his immense disillusion. If he could but speak to her, he fancies he should find the courage, the skill, to bend her. Breathless, Phlipote comes in secret with the good news. The great actress desires some one to tune her clavecin:—

"'Papa would have gone; but I begged him so earnestly to take me to the Theatre Francais that he could not refuse; and it is yourself will go this evening to tune the clavecin of your beloved.'

"'Phlipote, you've a better heart than I! This morning I saw a gentleman, who resembled point by point your description of the unknown at the Sainte Chapelle, prowling about our shop.'

"'And you didn't tell me!'

"Claude hung his head.

"'But why not?' the young girl asks imperiously. 'Why not?'

"'In truth I could hardly say, hardly understand, myself. Do you forgive me, Phlipote?'

"'I suppose I must. So make yourself as smart as you can, to please your goddess.'"

[146] Next day she hears the story of Claude's grievous disappointment on seeing the great actress at home—plain, five-and-forty, ill-tempered. He had tuned the clavecin and taken flight.

And now for Phlipote's idol! It was agreed that Whitsunday should be spent at Versailles. On that day the royal apartments were open to the public, and at the hour of High Mass the crowd flowed back towards the vestibule of the chapel to witness what was called the procession of the Cordons Bleus. The "Blue Ribbons" were the knights of the Order Du Saint-Esprit in their robes of ceremony, who came to range themselves in the choir according to the date of their creation. The press was so great that the parents were separated from the young people. Claude, however, at the side of Phlipote, realized the ideal of a faithful and jealous guardian. The hallebardes of the Suisses rang on the marble pavement of the gallery. Royalty, now unconsciously presenting its ceremonies for the last time, advanced through a cloud of splendour; but before the Queen appeared it was necessary that all the knights of the order down to the youngest should pass by, slow, solemn, majestic.

[147] They wore, besides their ribbons of blue moire, the silver dove on the shoulder, and the long mantle of sombre blue velvet lined with yellow satin. Phlipote watched mechanically the double file of haughty figures passing before them: then, on a sudden, with a feeble cry, falls fainting into the arms of Claude.

Recovered after a while, under shelter of the great staircase, she wept as those weep whose heart is broken by a great blow. Claude, without a word, sustained, soothed her. A sentiment of gratitude mingled itself with her distress. "How good he is!" she thought.

"It was a pity," says her mother a little later "a pity you did not see the Cordons Bleus. Fancy! You will laugh at me! But in one of the handsomest of the Chevaliers I felt sure I recognized the stranger who helped us at the Sainte Chapelle, and was so gallant with you."

Phlipote did not laugh. "You are deceived, mother!" she said in a faint voice. "Pardi!" cries the father. "'Tis what I always say. Your stranger was some young fellow from a shop."

Two months later the young people receive [148] the nuptial benediction, and continue the musical business when the elders retire to the country. At first a passionate lover, Claude was afterwards a good and devoted husband. Phlipote never again opened her lips regarding the vague love which for a moment had flowered in her heart: only sometimes, a cloud of reverie veiled her eyes, which seemed to seek sadly, beyond the circle of her slow, calm life, a brilliant but chimeric image visible for her alone.

And once again she saw him. It was in the terrible year 1794. She knew the hour at which the tumbril with those condemned to die passed the windows; and at the first signal would close them and draw the curtain. But on this day some invincible fascination nailed her to her place. There were ten faces; but she had eyes for one alone. She had not forgotten, could not mistake, him—that pale head, so proud and fine, but now thin with suffering; the beautiful mobile eyes, now encircled with the signs of sorrow and watching. The convict's shirt, open in large, broad folds, left bare the neck, delicate as a woman's, and made for that youthful face an aureole, of innocence, of martyrdom. His looks [149] met hers. Did he recognize her? She could not have said. She remained there, paralyzed with emotion, till the moment when the vision disappeared.

Then she flung herself into her chamber, fell on her knees, lost herself in prayer. There was a distant roll of drums. The man to whom she had given her maiden soul was gone.

"Cursed be their anger, for it was cruel!" says the reader. But Monsieur Filon's stories sometimes end as merrily as they begin; and always he is all delicacy—a delicacy which keeps his large yet minute antiquarian knowledge of that vanished time ever in service to a direct interest in humanity as it is permanently, alike before and after '93. His book is certainly one well worth possessing.



THE END

16th July 1890