Chapter IX: The Seventeenth-Century Novel--Ii (2)

It begins with a sketch, very cleverly done, of the Court of Henri II., with the various prominent personages there--the King and the Queen, Diane de Poitiers, Queen Mary of Scotland ("La Reine Dauphine"), "Madame, soeur du Roi" (the second Margaret of Valois--not so clever as her aunt and niece namesakes, and not so beautiful as the latter, but, like both of them, a patroness of men of letters, especially Ronsard, and apparently a very amiable person, though rude things were said of her marriage, rather late in life, to the Duke of Savoy), with many others of, or just below, royal blood. Of these latter there are Mademoiselle de Chartres, the Prince de Cleves, whom she marries, and the Duc de Nemours, who completes the usual "triangle."[272] As is also usual--in a way not unconnected in its usuality with that of triangular sequences--the Princess has more _amitie_ and _estime_ than _amour_ for her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her. So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful" order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the most atrocious manner; chatters about his love affairs in a way almost worse; and skulks round the Princess's country garden at night in a manner exceedingly unlikely to do his passion any good, and nearly certain to do (as it does) her reputation much harm. Still, if not an Amadis, he is not in the least a Lovelace, and that is saying a good deal for a French noble of his time. The Princess slowly falls in love with him (she has seen him steal the portrait, though he does not know this and she dares say nothing for fear of scandal); and divers Court and other affairs conduct this concealed _amourette_ (for she prevents all "declaration") in a manner very cleverly and not too tediously told, to a point when, though perfectly virtuous in intention, she feels that she is in danger of losing self-control.

[Sidenote: Its central scene.]

Probably, though it is the best known part of the book, it may be well to give the central scene, where M. de Nemours plays the eavesdropper to M. and Mme. de Cleves, and overhears the conversation which, with equal want of manners and of sense, he afterwards (it is true, without names) retails to the Vidame de Chartres, a relation of Mme. de Cleves herself, and a well-known gossip, with a strong additional effect on the fatal consequences above described. It is pretty long, and some "cutting" will be necessary.

He[273] heard M. de Cleves say to his wife, "But why do you
wish not to return to Paris? What can keep you in the
country? For some time past you have shown a taste for
solitude which surprises me and pains me, because it keeps
us apart. In fact, I find you sadder than usual, and I am
afraid that something is annoying you." "I have no
mind-trouble," she answered with an embarrassed air; "but
the tumult of the Court is so great, and there is always so
much company at home, that both body and mind must needs
grow weary, and one wants only rest." "Rest," replied he,
"is not the proper thing for a person of your age. Your
position is not, either at home or at Court, a fatiguing
one, and I am rather afraid that you do not like to be with
me." "You would do me a great injustice if you thought so,"
said she with ever-increasing embarrassment, "but I entreat
you to leave me here. If you would stay too, I should be
delighted--if you would stay here alone and be good enough
to do without the endless number of people who never leave
you." "Oh! Madam," cried M. de Cleves, "your looks and your
words show me that you have reasons for wishing to be alone
which I do not know, and which I beg you to tell me." He
pressed her a long time to do so without being able to
induce her, and after excusing herself in a manner which
increased the curiosity of her husband, she remained in deep
silence with downcast eyes. Then suddenly recovering her
speech, and looking at him, "Do not force me," said she, "to
a confession which I am not strong enough to make, though I
have several times intended to do so. Think only that
prudence forbids a woman of my age, who is her own
mistress,[274] to remain exposed to the trials[275] of a
Court." "What do you suggest, Madame?" cried M. de Cleves.
"I dare not put it in words for fear of offence." She made
no answer, and her silence confirming her husband in his
thought, he went on: "You tell me nothing, and that tells me
that I do not deceive myself." "Well then, Sir!" she
answered, throwing herself at his feet, "I will confess to
you what never wife has confessed to her husband; but the
innocence of my conduct and my intentions gives me strength
to do it. It is the truth that I have reasons for quitting
the Court, and that I would fain shun the perils in which
people of my age sometimes find themselves. I have never
shown any sign of weakness, and I am not afraid of allowing
any to appear if you will allow me to retire from the Court,
or if I still had Mme. de Chartres to aid in guarding me.
However risky may be the step I am taking, I take it
joyfully, as a way to keep myself worthy of being yours. I
ask your pardon a thousand times if my sentiments are
disagreeable to you; at least my actions shall never
displease you. Think how--to do as I am doing--I must have
more friendship and more esteem for you than any wife has
ever had for any husband. Guide me, pity me, and, if you
can, love me still." M. de Cleves had remained, all the time
she was speaking, with his head buried in his hands, almost
beside himself; and it had not occurred to him to raise his
wife from her position. When she finished, he cast his eyes
upon her and saw her at his knees, her face bathed in tears,
and so admirably lovely that he was ready to die of grief.
But he kissed her as he raised her up, and said:

[_The speech which follows is itself admirable as an expression of despairing love, without either anger or mawkishness; but it is rather long, and the rest of the conversation is longer. The husband naturally, though, as no doubt he expects, vainly, tries to know who it is that thus threatens his wife's peace and his own, and for a time the eavesdropper (one wishes for some one behind him with a jack-boot on) is hardly less on thorns than M. de Cleves himself. At last a reference to the portrait-episode (see above) enlightens Nemours, and gives, if not an immediate, a future clue to the unfortunate husband._]

It will be seen at once that this is far different from anything we have had before--a much further importation of the methods and subjects of poetry and drama into the scheme of prose fiction.

We need only return briefly to the main story, the course of which, as one looks back to it through some 250 years of novels, cannot be very difficult to "_pro_ticipate." A continuance of Court interviews and gossip, with the garrulity of Nemours himself and the Vidame, as well as the dropping of a letter by the latter, brings a complete _eclaircissement_ nearer and nearer. The Countess, though more and more in love, remains virtuous, and indeed hardly exposes herself to direct temptation. But her husband, becoming aware that Nemours is the lover, and also that he is haunting the grounds at Coulommiers by night when the Princess is alone, falls, though his suspicion of actual infidelity is removed too late, into hopeless melancholy and positive illness, till the "broken heart" of fact or fiction releases him. Nemours is only too anxious to marry the widow, but she refuses him, and after a few years of "pious works" in complete retirement, herself dies early.

It is possible that, even in this brief sketch, some faults of the book may appear; it is certain that actual reading of it will not utterly deprive the fault-finder of his prey. The positive history--of which there is a good deal, very well told in itself,[276] and the appearance of which at all is interesting--is introduced in too great proportions, so as to be largely irrelevant. Although we know that this extremely artificial world of love-making with your neighbours' wives was also real, in a way and at a time, the reality fails to make up for the artifice, at least as a novel-subject. It is like golf, or acting, or bridge--amusing enough to the participants, no doubt, but very tedious to hear or read about.[277] Another point, again true to the facts of the time, no doubt, but somewhat repulsive in reading, is the almost entire absence of Christian names. The characters always speak to each other as "Monsieur" and "Madame," and are spoken of accordingly. I do not think we are ever told either of M. or of Mme. de Cleves's name. Now there is one person at least who cannot "see" a heroine without knowing her Christian name. More serious, in different senses of that word, is the fact that there is still ground for the complaint made above as to the too _solid_ character of the narrative. There is, indeed, more positive dialogue, and this is one of the "advances" of the book. But even there the writer has not had the courage to break it up into actual, not "reported," talk, and the "said he's" and "said she's," "replied so and so's" and "observed somebody's" perpetually get in the way of smooth reading.

So much in the way of alms for Momus. Fortunately a much fuller collection of points for admiration offers itself. It has been admitted that the historical element[278] is perhaps, in the circumstances and for the story, a trifle irrelevant and even "in the way." But its presence at all is the important point. Some, at any rate, of the details--the relations of that Henri II., with whom, it seems, we may _not_ connect the very queer, very rare, but not very beautiful _faience_ once called "Henri Deux" ware,[279] with his wife and his mistress; his accidental death at the hands of Montgomery; the history of Henry VIII.'s matrimonial career, and the courtship of his daughter by a French prince (if not _this_ French prince)--are historical enough to present a sharp contrast with the cloudy pseudo-classical canvas of the Scudery romances, or the mere fable-land of others. Any critical Brown ought to have discovered "great capabilities" in it; and though it was not for more than another century that the true historical novel got itself born, this was almost the nearest experiment to it. But the other side--the purely sentimental--let us not say psychological--side, is of far more consequence; for here we have not merely aspiration or chance-medley, we have attainment.

There is a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments, especially of novels, and more especially against what are called condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of _La Princesse de Cleves_, as it stands, a much shorter but fully intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight want of _individual_ character may still be desiderated; it is hardly till _Manon Lescaut_ that we get that, but it was not to be expected. Scarcely more to be expected, but present and in no small force, is that truth to life; that "knowledge of the human heart" which had been hitherto attempted by--we may almost say permitted to--the poet, the dramatist, the philosopher, the divine; but which few, if any, romancers had aimed at. This knowledge is not elaborately but sufficiently "set" with the halls and _ruelles_ of the Court, the gardens and woods of Coulommiers; it is displayed with the aid of conversation, which, if it seems stilted to us, was not so then; and the machinery employed for working out the simple plot--as, for instance, in the case of the dropped letter, which, having originally nothing whatever to do with any of the chief characters, becomes an important instrument--is sometimes far from rudimentary in conception, and very effectively used.

It is therefore no wonder that the book did two things--things of unequal value indeed, but very important for us. In the first place, it started the School of "Sensibility"[280] in the novel, and so provided a large and influential portion of eighteenth-century fiction. In the second--small as it is--it almost started the novel proper, the class of prose fiction which, though it may take on a great variety of forms and colours, though it may specialise here and "extravagate" there, yet in the main distinguishes itself from the romance by being first of all subjective--by putting behaviour, passion, temperament, character, motive before incident and action in the commoner sense--which had had few if any representatives in ancient times, had not been disentangled from the romantic envelope in mediaeval, but was to be the chief new development of modern literature.

* * * * *

There seemed to be several reasons for separating Hamilton from the other fairy-tale writers. The best of all is that he has the same qualification for the present chapter as that which has installed in it the novelists already noticed--that of idiosyncrasy. This leads to, or rather is founded on, the consideration that his tales are fairy-tales only "after a sort," and testify rather to a prevalent fashion than to a natural affection for the kind.[281] Thirdly, he exhibits, in his supernatural matter, a new and powerful influence on fiction generally--that of the first translated _Arabian Nights_. Lastly, he is in turn himself the head of two considerable though widely different sub-departments of fiction--the decadent and often worthless but largely cultivated department of what we may call the fairy-tale _improper_,[282] and the very important and sometimes consummately excellent "ironic tale," to be often referred to, and sometimes fully discussed, hereafter.

The singularity of Hamilton's position has always been recognised; but until comparatively recently, his history and family relations were very little understood. Since the present writer discussed him in a paper[283] now a quarter of a century old in print, and older in composition, further light has been thrown on his life and surroundings in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and more still in a monograph by a lady[284] whose researches will, it is hoped, sooner or later be published. A very little, too, of the unprinted work which was held back at his death has been recovered. But this, it seems, includes nothing of importance; and his fame will probably always rest, as it has so long and so securely rested, on the _Memoires de Grammont_, the few but sometimes charming independent verses, some miscellanies not generally enough appreciated, and the admirable group of ironic tales which set a fashion hardly more admirably illustrated since by Voltaire and Beckford[285] and Lord Beaconsfield, to name no others. Of these things the verses,[286] unfortunately, do not concern us at all; and the _Memoires_ and miscellanies[286] only in so far as they add another, and one of the very best, to the brilliant examples of personal narrative of which the century is so full, and which have so close a connection with the novel itself. But the _Tales_ are, of course, ours of most obvious right; and they form one of the most important _points de repere_ in our story.

To discuss, on the one hand, how Hamilton's singularly mixed conditions and circumstances of birth[287] and life[288] influenced his literary production would be interesting, but in strictness rather irrelevant. To attempt, on the other, at any great length to consider the influences which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be called, though both were of very recent date and one actually contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now ingrained disposition towards ironic writing which, begun by Rabelais, as a most notable origin, varied and increased by Montaigne and others, had, just before Hamilton, received fresh shaping and tempering from not a few writers, especially Saint-Evremond. There is indeed no doubt that this last remarkable and now far too little read writer,[289] who, let it be remembered, was, like Hamilton, and even more so, an intimate friend of Grammont and also an inmate of Charles's court, was Hamilton's direct and immediate model so far as he had any such--his "master" in the general tone of _persiflage_. But master and pupil chose, as a rule, different subjects, and the idiosyncrasy of each was intense; it must be remembered, too, that both were of Norman blood, though that of the Hamiltons had long been transfused into the veins of a new nationality, while Saint-Evremond was actually born in Normandy. The Norman (that is to say, the English, with a special intention of difference[290]) in each could be very easily pointed out if such things were our business. But it is the application of this, and of other things in relation to the development of the novel, that we have to deal with.

It is said, and there is good reason for believing it to be true, that all the stories have a more or less pervading vein of "key" application in them. But this, except for persons particularly interested in such things, has now very little attraction. It has been admitted that it probably exists, as indeed it does in almost everything of the day, from the big as well as "great" _Cyrus_ to the little, but certainly not much less great, _Princesse de Cleves_. But our subject is what Hamilton writes about these people, not the people about whom he may or may not be writing.

What we have left of Hamilton's tales, as far as they have been printed (and, as was said above, not much more seems to exist), consists of five stories of very unequal length, and in two cases out of the five unfinished. One of the finished pieces, _Fleur d'Epine_, and one of the unfinished--although unfinished it is not only one of the longest, but, unluckily in a way, by far the best of all--_Les Quatre Facardins_, are "framework" stories, and avowedly attach themselves, in an irreverent sort of attachment, to the _Arabian Nights_; the others, _Le Belier_, _Zeneyde_ (unfinished), and _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, are independent, and written in the mixed verse-and-prose style which had been made popular by various writers, especially Chapelle, but which cannot be said to be very acceptable in itself. Taken together, they fill a volume of just over 500 average octavo pages in the standard edition of 1812; but their individual length is very unequal. The two longest, the fragmentary _Quatre Facardins_ and the finished _Le Belier_, run each of them to 142 pages; the shortest, _L'Enchanteur Faustus_, has just five-and-twenty; while _Fleur d'Epine_, in its completeness, has 114, and _Zeneyde_, in its incompleteness, runs to 78, and might have run, for aught one can tell--in the mixed tangle of Roman and Merovingian history in which the author (possibly in ridicule of Madeleine de Scudery's classical chronicling) has chosen to plunge it--to 780 or 7800, which latter figure would, after all, have been little more than half the length of the _Grand Cyrus_ itself.

We may take _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ first, as it requires the shortest notice. In fact, if it had not been Hamilton's, it would hardly require any. Written to a "charmante Daphne" (evidently one of the English Jacobite exiles, from a reference to a great-great-grandfather of hers who was "admiral in Ireland" during Queen Elizabeth's time), it is occupied by a story of the great Queen herself, who is treated with the mixture of admiration (for her intelligence and spirit) with "scandal" (about her person and morals) that might be expected at St. Germains. The subject is the usual exhibition of dead beauties (here by, not to, Faustus), with Elizabeth's affected depreciation of Helen, Cleopatra, and Mariamne, and her equally affected admiration of Fair Rosamond,[291] whom she insists on summoning _twice_, despite Faustus's warning, and with disastrous consequences. Hamilton's irony is so pervading that one does not know whether ignorance, carelessness, or intention made him not only introduce Sidney and Essex as contemporary favourites of Elizabeth, but actually attribute Rosamond's end to poor Jane Shore instead of to Queen Eleanor! This would matter little if the tale had been stronger; but though it is told with Hamilton's usual easy fluency, the Queen's depreciations, the flattery of the courtiers, and the rest of it, are rather slightly and obviously handled. One would give half a dozen like it for that _Second_ (but not necessarily _Last_) _Part_ of the _Facardins_, which Crebillon the younger is said to have actually seen and had the opportunity of saving, a chance which he neglected till too late.

As _L'Enchanteur Faustus_ is the shortest of the completed tales, so _Le Belier_ is the longest; indeed, as indicated above, it is the same length as what we have of _Les Quatre Facardins_. It is also--in that unsatisfactory and fragmentary way of knowledge with which literature often has to content itself--much the best known, because of the celebrated address of the giant Moulineau to the hero-beast "Belier, mon ami,... si tu voulais bien commencer par le commencement, tu me ferais plaisir." There are many other agreeable things in it; but it has on the whole a double or more than double portion of the drawback which attends these "key" stories. It was written to please his sister, Madame de Grammont, who had established herself in a country-house, near Versailles. This she transformed from a mere cottage, called Moulineau, into an elegant villa to which she gave the name of Pontalie. There were apparently some difficulties with rustic neighbours, and Anthony wove the whole matter into this story, with the giant and the (of course enchanted) ram just mentioned; and the beautiful Alie who hates all men (or nearly all); and her father, a powerful druid, who is the giant's enemy; and the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse, and other personages of the environs of Paris, who were no doubt recognisable and interesting once, but who, whether recognisable or not, are not specially interesting now. To repeat that there are good scenes and piquant remarks is merely to say once more that the thing is Hamilton's. But, on the whole, the present writer at any rate has always found it the least interesting (next to _L'Enchanteur Faustus_) of all.

On the other hand, _Zeneyde_--though unfinished, and though containing, in its ostensibly main story, things compared to which the Prince de Noisy and the Vicomte de Gonesse excite to palpitation--has points of remarkable interest about it. One of these--a prefatory sketch of the melancholy court of exiles at St. Germains--is like nothing else in Hamilton and like very few things anywhere else. This is in no sense fiction--it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and it gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet _persiflage_ of the _Contes_ themselves. This, however, though easily "cobbled on" to the special tale, and possibly not unconnected with it key-fashion, is entirely separable, and might just as well have formed part of an actual letter to the "Madame de P.," to whom it is addressed.

The tale itself, like some if not all the others, but in a much more strikingly contrasted fashion, again consists of two strands, interwoven so intimately, however, that it is almost impossible to separate them, though it is equally impossible to conceive two things more different from each other. The ostensible theme is a history of herself, given by the Nymph of the Seine to the author--a history of which more presently. But this is introduced at considerable length, and interrupted more than once, by scenes and dialogues, between the nymph and her distinctly unwilling auditor, which are of the most whimsically humorous character to be found even in Hamilton himself.

The whole account of the self-introduction of the nymph to the narrator is extremely quaint, but rather long to give here as a whole. It is enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to make fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated on land. What there takes place is, unfortunately, as has been said, mainly the telling of a very dull story with one not so dull episode. But the conclusion of the preface exemplifies the whimsicality even of the writer, and points to the existence of a commodity in the fashion of wig-wearing which few who glory in "their own hair," and despise their periwigged forefathers, are likely to have thought of:

[Sidenote: Hamilton and the Nymph.]

At these words [_her own_] raising her eyes to heaven, she
sighed several times; and though she tried to keep them
back, I saw, coursing the length of her cheeks and falling
on her beautiful neck, tears so natural, in the midst of a
silence so touching, that I was just about to follow her
example.[293] But she soon recovered herself; and having
shown me by a languishing look that she was not insensible
to my sympathetic emotion ... [_she enjoins discretion, and
then_:--] After having looked at me attentively for some
time she came closer to me, and as she gently pulled one
side of my wig in order to whisper in my ear, I had to lean
over her in a rather familiar manner.[294] Her face touched
mine, and it seemed to me animated by a lively warmth, very
different from the insensibility which I had accused[295]
her of shedding upon me when she came out of the water. Her
breath was pure and fresh, and her goddess-ship, which I had
suspected of being something marshy, had no taint of mud
about it. If only I might reveal all that she said to me in
a confidence which I could have wished longer![295] But
apparently she got tired of it[295] and let go my wig.
"'Twould be too tiresome," she said, "to go on talking like
this. Go out there, and leave us alone!" I turned round, and
seeing no one in the room, I thought this order was
addressed to me, so I was just rising....

This quaint presentation of a craven swain is perhaps as good an example as could be found of the curious mixture of French and English in Hamilton. Hardly any Frenchman could have borne to put even a fictitious eidolon of himself in such a contemptible light; very few Englishmen, though they might easily have done this, would have done it so neatly, and with so quaint a travesty of romantic situation. But the main story, as admitted above, is _assommant_, though, just before the breach, a substitution of three agreeable damsels for the nymph herself promises something better.

This combination of the dullest with some of the finest and most characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more "serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull fools suppose, are singularly elastic to skilled players.

We are left with what, even as it exists, is by far his most ambitious attempt, and with one in which, considering all its actual features, one need not be taking things too seriously if one decides that he had an aim at something like a whole--even if the legends[296] about further parts, actually seen and destroyed by a more than Byzantine pudibundity, are not taken as wholly gospel.

The completed _Fleur d'Epine_ and the uncompleted _Quatre Facardins_[297] are in effect continuous parts (and to all appearance incomplete in more than the finishing of the second story) of an untitled but intelligibly sketched continuation of the _Arabian Nights_ themselves. Hamilton, like others since, had evidently conceived an affection for Dinarzade: and a considerable contempt for Schahriar's notion of the advantages of matrimony. It is less certain, but I think possible, that he had anticipated the ideas of those who think that the unmarried sister went at least halves in the composition or remembrance of the stories themselves, or she could not have varied her timing at dawn so adroitly. He had, at any rate, an Irish-Englishman's sense of honest if humorous indignation at the part which she has to play (or rather endure) in these "two years" (much nearer three!), and the sequel in a way revenges her.

I should imagine that Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in _Bluebeard's Ghost_. Like her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her, she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning, "takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, alas! torsoed epic of the Facardins,[298] of whom he is himself one. But as there are only two stories, there is no room for much framework, and we see much less of the "resurrected" Dinarzade[299] than we could wish from what we do see and hear.

_Fleur d'Epine_, which she herself tells, is a capital story, somewhat closer to the usual norm of the _Nights_ than is usual with Hamilton. It bases itself on the well-known legends of the Princess with the literally murderous eyes; but this Princess Luisante is not really the heroine, and is absent from the greater part of the tale, though she is finally provided with the hero's brother, who is a reigning prince, and has everything handsome about him. The actual hero Tarare (French for "Fiddlestick!" or something of that sort, and of course an assumed name), in order to cure Luisante's eyes of their lethal quality, has to liberate a still more attractive damsel--the title-heroine--putative daughter of a good fairy and actual victim of a bad one, quite in the orthodox style. He does this chiefly by the aid of a very amiable mare, who makes music wherever she goes, and can do wonderful things when her ears are duly manipulated. It is a good and pleasant story, with plenty of the direct relish of the fairy-tale, Eastern and Western, and plenty also of satirical parody of the serious romance. But it is not quite consummate. The opening, however, as a fair specimen of Hamilton's style, may be given.

[Sidenote: The opening of _Fleur d'Epine_.]

Two thousand four hundred and fifty-three leagues from here
there is an extraordinarily fine country called Cashmere. In
this country reigned a Caliph; that Caliph had a daughter,
and that daughter had a face; but people wished more than
once that she had never had any. Her beauty was not
insupportable till she was fifteen; but at that age it
became impossible to endure it. She had the most beautiful
mouth in the world; her nose was a masterpiece; the lilies
of Cashmere--a thousand times whiter than ours--were
discoloured beside her complexion; and it seemed impertinent
of the fresh-blown rose to show itself beside the carnation
of her cheek. Her forehead was unmatchable for shape and
brilliancy; its whiteness was contrasted with a Vandyke
point of hair blacker and more shining than jet--whence she
took her name of "Luisante"; the shape of her face seemed
made to frame so many wonders. But her eyes spoilt
everything.

No one had ever been able to look at them long enough to
distinguish their exact colour; for as soon as one met her
glance it was like a stroke of lightning. When she was eight
years old her father, the Caliph, was in the habit of
sending for her, to admire his offspring and give the
courtiers the opportunity of paying a thousand feeble
compliments to her youthful beauty; for even then they used
to put out the candles at midnight, no other light being
necessary except that of the little one's eyes. Yet all this
was nothing but--in the literal sense, and the
other--child's play; it was when her eyes had acquired full
strength that they became no joking matter.

[_The fatal effects--killing men in twenty-four hours, and blinding women--are then told, with the complaints of the nobility whose sons have fallen victims, and the various suggestions for remedying the evil made at a committee, which is presided over by the Seneschal of the kingdom ... "the silliest man who had ever held such an office--so much so that the caliph could not possibly think of choosing any one less silly." Tarare happens to be in this pundit-potentate's service; and so the story starts._]

[Sidenote: _Les Quatre Facardins._]

But--and indeed the writer's opinion on this point has already been indicated--Hamilton's masterpiece, unfinished as it is, is _Les Quatre Facardins_. Indeed, though unfinished in one sense, it is, in another, the most finished of all. Beside it the completed _Faustus_ is a mere trifle, and not a very interesting trifle. It has no dull parts like _Zeneyde_ and even _Le Belier_. It has much greater complication of interest and variety of treatment than _Fleur d'Epine_, in which, after the opening, Hamilton's peculiar _persiflage_, though not absent, is much less noticeable. It at least suggests, tantalising as the suggestion is, that the author for once really intended to wind up all his threads into a compact ball, or (which is the better image) to weave them into a new and definite pattern. Moreover--this may not be a recommendation to everybody, but it is a very strong one to the present historian,--it has no obvious or insistent "key"-element whatsoever. It is, indeed, not at all unlikely that there _is_ one, for the trick was ingrained in the literature and the society of the time. But if so, it is a sleeping dog that neither bites nor barks; and if you let it alone it will stay in its kennel, and not even obtrude itself upon your view.

To these partly, if not wholly, negative merits it adds positive ones of a very considerable and delectable kind. The connection with the _Arabian Nights_ is brought closer still in the fact that it is not only told (as of himself) by the Prince of Trebizond, Dinarzade's servant-cavalier, but is linked--to an important extent, and not at all to Schahriar's unmixed satisfaction--with one of the earliest incidents of the _Nights_ themselves, the remarkable story how the Lady from the Sea increases her store of rings at the cost of some exertion and alarm--not to mention the value of the rings themselves--to the Sultan and his brother, the King of Tartary. This lady, with her genie and her glass box, reappears as "Cristalline la Curieuse"--one of the two heroines. The other, of whose actual adventures we hear only the beginning, and that at the very close of the story, is Mousseline la Serieuse, who never laughs, and who, later, escaping literally by the loss of her last garment, twitched off by the jaws of an enormous crocodile, afterwards the pest of the country, finds herself under a mysterious weird. She is never able to get a similar vestment made for her, either of day- or night-fashion. Three hundred and seventy-four dozen of such things, which formed her wardrobe, had disappeared[300] after the death (actually crocodile-devoured) of her Mistress of the Robes; and although she used up all the linen-drapers' stocks of the capital in trying to get new ones, they were all somewhat milder varieties of the shirt of Nessus. For the day-shifts deprived her of all appetite for food or drink, and the night ones made it impossible for her to sleep.

This particular incident comes, as has been said, just at the end of what we have of the book; indeed there is nothing more, save a burlesque embassy, amply provided with painted cloth[301] and monkeys, to the great enchanter Caramoussal (who has already figured in the book), and the announcement, by one of the other Facardins, of its result--a new adventure for champions, who must either make the Princess laugh or kill the crocodile. "It is indifferent," we learn from a most Hamiltonian sentence, "whether you begin with the crocodile or with the Princess." Indeed there is yet another means of restoring peace in the Kingdom of Astrachan, according to the enchanter himself, who modestly disclaims being an enchanter, observing (again in a thoroughly Hamiltonian manner) that as he lives on the top of a mountain close to the stars, they probably tell him more than they tell other people. It is to collect three spinning-wheels[302] which are scattered over the universe, but of some of which we have heard earlier in the story.

One takes perhaps a certain pleasure in outraging the feelings of the giant Moulineau, so hateful to Madame de Grammont, by beginning not merely in the middle but at the end--an end, alas! due, if we believe all the legends, to her own mistaken zeal when she became a _devote_--a variety of person for whom her brother[303] certainly had small affection, though he did not avenge himself on it in novel-form quite so cruelly as did Marivaux later. It is, however, quite good to begin at the beginning, though the verse-preface needs perhaps to be read with eyes of understanding. Ostensibly, it is a sort of historical condemnation of all the species of fiction which had been popular for half a century or so, and is thus very much to our purpose, though, like almost all the verses included in these tales, it does not show the poetic power which the author of _Celle que j'adore_[304] undoubtedly possessed. Mere tales, he says, have quite banished from court favour romances, celebrated for their sentiments, from _Cyrus_ to _Zaide_, _i.e._ from Mlle. de Scudery to Mme. de la Fayette. _Telemaque_ had no better fate

On courut au Palais[305] le rendre,
Et l'on s'empressa d'y reprendre
Le Rameau d'Or et l'Oiseau Bleu.[306]

Then came the "Arabian tales," of which he speaks with a harshness, the sincerity or design of which may be left to the reader; and then he himself took up the running, of course obliged by request of irresistible friends of the other sex. All which may or may not be read with grains of salt--the salt-merchant of which everybody is at liberty to choose for himself. Something may be said on the subject when we, in all modesty, try to sum up Hamilton and the period.

But we must now give some more account of the "Four Facardins" themselves. He of Trebizond is a tributary Prince of Schahriar's, much after the fashion (it is to be feared here burlesqued) of the innumerable second- and third-class heroes whom one meets in the _Cyrus_. He begins, like Dinarzade,[307] by "cheeking" the Sultan on his views of matrimony; and then he tells how he set out from his dominions in quest of adventures, and met another bearer of the remarkable name which his mother had insisted on giving him. This second adventurer happened to be bearer also of a helmet with a strange bird, apparently all made of gems, as its crest. They exchange confidences, which are to the effect that the Trebizondian Facardin is a lady-killer of the most extravagant success, while the other (who is afterwards called Facardin of the Mountain) is always unfortunate in love; notwithstanding which he proposes to undertake the adventure (to be long afterwards defined) of Mousseline la Serieuse. For the present he contents himself with two or three more stories (or, rather, one in several "fyttes"), which reduce the wildest of the _Nights_ to simple village tales--of an island where lions are hunted with a provision of virgins, chanticleers, and small deer on an elaborately ruled system; of a mountain full of wild beasts, witches, lovely nymphs, savages, and an enchanter at the top. After an interruption very much in the style of Chaucer's Host and _Sir Thopas_, from Dinarzade, who is properly rebuked by the Sultan, Facardin of the Mountain (he has quite early in the story received the celebrated scratch from a lion's claw, "from his right shoulder to his left heel") recounts a shorter adventure with Princess Sapinelle of Denmark, and at last, after a fresh outburst from Dinarzade, the Prince of Trebizond comes to his own affairs.

Then it is that (after some details about the Prince of Ophir, who has a minim mouth and an enormous nose, and the Princess of Bactria, whose features were just the reverse) we recover Cristalline. It is perhaps only here that even Mrs. Grundy, though she may have been uncomfortable elsewhere, can feel really shocked at Hamilton; others than Mrs. Grundy need not be so even here. The genie has discovered his Lady's little ways, and has resolved to avenge himself on her by strict custody, and by a means of delivery which, if possible, might not have entirely displeased her. The hundred rings are bewitched to their chain, and are only to be recovered by the same process which strung them on it. But this process must be applied by one person in the space of twelve hours, and the conditions are only revealed to him after he has been kidnapped or cajoled within the genie's power. If he refuses to try, he is clad as Omphale clad Hercules, and set to work. If he tries and fails, he is to be flayed alive and burnt. Facardin, to the despair of his secretary, enters--beguiled by a black ambassadress, who merely informs him that a lady wants help--the enchanted boat which takes him to the fatal scene. But when he is to be introduced to the lady he entirely declines to part with his sword; and when the whole secret is revealed he, with the help of Cristalline, who is really a good-natured creature in more senses than one, slays the three chief minions of the tyrant--a watchmaker who sets the clock, a locksmith who is to count the detached rings, and a kind of Executioner High-priest who is to do the flaying and burning,--cuts his way with Cristalline herself to the enchanted boat, regaining _terra firma_ and (relatively speaking) _terra_ not too much enchanted. But at his very landing at the mouth of the crocodile river he again meets Facardin of the Mountain (who has figured in Cristalline's history earlier) with the two others, whose stories we shall never hear; and is told about Mousseline; whereat we and the tale "join our ends" as far as is permitted.

It would be easy to pick from this story alone a sort of nosegay of Hamiltonisms like that from Fuller, which Charles Lamb selected so convincingly that some have thought them simply invented. But it would be unjust to Anthony, because, unless each was given in a _matrix_ of context, nobody could, in most cases at any rate, do justice to this curious glancing genius of his. It exists in Sydney Smith to some extent--in Thackeray to more--among Englishmen. There is, in French, something of it in Lesage, who possibly learnt it directly from him; and of course a good deal, though of a lower kind, in Voltaire, who certainly did learn it from him. But it is, with that slight indebtedness to Saint-Evremond noticed above, essentially new and original. It is a mixture of English-Irish (that is to say, Anglo-Norman) humour with French wit, almost unattainable at that day except by a man who, in addition to his natural gifts, had the mixed advantages and disadvantages of his exile position.

Frenchmen at the time--there is abundance, not of mere anecdote, but of solid evidence to prove it--knew practically nothing of English literature. Englishmen knew a good deal more of French, and imitated and translated it, sometimes more eagerly than wisely. But they had not as yet assimilated or appreciated it: that was left for the eighteenth century to do. Meanwhile Hamilton brought the double influence to bear, not merely on the French novel, but on the novel in general and on the eccentric novel in particular. To appreciate him properly, he ought to be compared with Rabelais before him and with Voltaire or Sterne--with both, perhaps, as a counsel of perfection--after him. He is a smaller man, both in literature and in humanity, than Master Francis; but the phrase which Voltaire himself rather absurdly used of Swift might be used without any absurdity in reference to him. He _is_ a "Rabelais de bonne compagnie," and from the exactly opposite point of view he might be called a Voltaire or a Sterne _de bonne compagnie_ likewise. That is to say, he is a gentleman pretty certainly as well as a genius, which Rabelais might have been, at any rate in other circumstances, but did not choose to be, and which neither Francois Arouet nor Laurence Sterne could have been, however much either had tried, though the metamorphosis is not quite so utterly inconceivable in Sterne's case as in the other's. Hamilton, it has been confessed, is sometimes "naughty"; but his naughtiness is neither coarse nor sniggering,[308] and he depends upon it so little--a very important point--that he is sometimes most amusing when he is not naughty at all. In other words, he has no need of it, but simply takes it as one of the infinite functions of human comedy. Against which let Mrs. Grundy say what she likes.

* * * * *

It is conceivable that objection may be taken, or at any rate surprise felt, at the fulness with which a group of mostly little books--no one of them produced by an author of the first magnitude as usual estimates run--has been here handled. But the truth is that the actual birth of the French novel took a much longer time than that of the English--a phenomenon explicable, without any national vainglory, by the fact that it came first and gave us patterns and stimulants. The writers surveyed in this chapter, and those who will take their places in the next--at least Scarron, Furetiere, Madame de La Fayette and Hamilton, Lesage, Marivaux, and Prevost--whatever objections or limitations may be brought against them, form the central group of the originators of the modern novel. They open the book of life, as distinguished from that of factitious and rather stale literature; they point out the varieties of incident and character; the manners and interiors and fantastic adjustments; the sentiment rising to passion--which are to determine the developments and departments of the fiction of the future. They leave, as far as we have seen them, great opportunities for improvement to those immediate followers to whom we shall now turn. Hamilton is, indeed, not yet much followed, but Lesage far outgoes Scarron in the raising of the picaresque; Marivaux distances Furetiere in painting of manners and in what some people call psychology; _Manon Lescaut_ throws _La Princesse de Cleves_ into the shade as regards the greatest and most novel-breeding of the passions. But the whole are really a _bloc_, the continental sense of which is rather different from our "block." And perhaps we shall find that, though none of them was equal in genius to some who succeeded them in novel-writing, the novel itself made little progress, and some backsliding, during nearly a hundred years after they ceased to write.

NOTE ON _TELEMAQUE_

It may not perhaps be superfluous to give the rest of that
criticism of Hamilton's on _Telemaque_, the conclusion of
which has been quoted above. "In vain, from the famous
coasts of Ithaca, the wise and renowned Mentor came to
enrich us with those treasures of his which his _Telemaque_
contains. In vain the art of the teacher delicately
displays, in this romance of a rare kind, the usefulness and
the deceitfulness of politics and of love, as well as that
fatal sweetness--frail daughter of luxury--which intoxicates
a conquering hero at the feet of a young mistress or of a
skilful enchantress, such as in each case this Mentor
depicts them. But, well-versed as he was in human weakness,
and elaborately as he imitated the style and the stories of
Greece, the vogue that he had was of short duration. Weary
of inability to understand the mysteries which he unfolded,
men ran to the Palais to give back the volume," etc., etc.

Hamilton, no doubt intentionally, has himself made this
criticism rather "mysterious." It is well known that, if not
quite at first, very soon after its appearance, the fact
that the politics, if not also the morals, of Fenelon's book
were directly at variance with Court standards was
recognised. At a time when Court favour and fashion were the
very breath of the upper circles, and directly or indirectly
ruled the middle, the popularity of this curious
romance-exhortation was, at any rate for a time, nipped in
the bud, to revive only in the permanent but not altogether
satisfactory conditions of a school-book. Whether Hamilton
dealt discreetly with the matter by purposely confining
himself to the record of a fact, or at least mixing praise
to which no exception could be taken, with what might be
taken for blame, one cannot say. By dotting a few i's,
crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden
letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a
not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this
envelope. _Telemaque_, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's
"thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "_Lovel
Parsonage_ and _Framley the Widower_," has, or with some
easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments
might have, much more pure romance interest than its
centuries of scholastic use allow it to have for most
people. Eucharis is capable of being much more than she is
allowed to show herself; and some Mrs. Grundys, with more
intelligence than the average member of the clan, have
hinted that Calypso might be dangerous if the persons who
read about her were not likely to consider her as too old to
be interesting. The style is, of course, admirable--there
has hardly ever been a better writer of French than Fenelon,
who was also a first-rate narrator and no mean critic.
Whether by the "mysteries" Hamilton himself meant politics,
morals, religion, or all three and other "serious" things,
is a point which, once more, is impossible to settle. But it
is quite certain that, whether there is any difficulty in
comprehending them or not, a great many--probably the huge
majority--of novel readers would not care to take the
trouble to comprehend them, and might, even if they found
little difficulty, resent being asked to do so. And so we
have here not the first--for, as has been said, the Heroic
romance itself had much earlier been "conscripted" into the
service of didactics--but the first brilliant, or almost
brilliant, example of that novel of purpose which will meet
us so often hereafter. It may be said to have at once
revealed (for the earlier examples were, as a rule, too dull
to be fair tests) the ineradicable defects of the species.
Even when the purpose does not entirely preclude the
possibility of enjoyment, it always gets in the way thereof;
and when the enjoyable matter does not absorb attention to
the disregard of the purpose altogether, it seldom--perhaps
never--really helps that purpose to get itself fulfilled.

FOOTNOTES:

[247] It is perhaps not quite superfluous to point out that the principle of separation in these chapters is quite different from that (between "idealist" and "realist") pursued by Koerting and others, and reprobated, partially or wholly, by MM. Le Breton and Brunetiere.

[248] _L'Autre Monde: ou Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune_, etc.

[249] It must be remembered that even Gerard Hamilton made many more speeches, but only one good one, while the novelists discussed here wrote in most cases many other books. But their goodness shows itself in hardly more than a single work in each case. Anthony Hamilton's is in all his.

[250] It has been noted, I think, by all who have written about the _Berger_, that Sorel is a sort of Balak and Balaam in one. He calls on himself to curse the _Astree_, but he, sometimes at least, blesses it.