Chapter XII (1)

"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS.

THE FRENCH NOVEL, _C._ 1800

[Sidenote: "Sensibility."]

Frequent reference has been made, in the last two chapters, to the curious phenomenon called in French _sensibilite_ (with a derivative of contempt, _sensiblerie_), the exact English form of which supplies part of the title, and the meaning an even greater part of the subject, of one of Miss Austen's novels. The thing itself appears first definitely[404] in Madame de la Fayette, largely, though not unmixedly, in Marivaux, and to some extent in Prevost and Marmontel, while it is, as it were, sublimed in Rousseau, and present very strongly in Saint-Pierre. There are, however, some minor writers and books displaying it in some cases even more extensively and intensively; and in this final chapter of the present volume they may appropriately find a place, not merely because some of them are late, but because Sensibility is not confined to any part of the century, but, beginning before its birth, continued till after its end. We may thus have to encroach on the nineteenth a little, but more in appearance than in reality. In quintessence, and as a reigning fashion, Sensibility was the property of the eighteenth century.[405]

[Sidenote: A glance at Miss Austen.]

To recur for a moment to Miss Austen and _Sense and Sensibility_, everybody has laughed, let us hope not unkindly, over Marianne Dashwood's woes. But she herself was only an example, exaggerated in the genial fashion of her creatress, of the proper and recognised standard of feminine feeling in and long before her time. The "man of feeling" was admitted as something out of the way--on which side of the way opinions might differ. But the woman of feeling was emphatically the accepted type--a type which lasted far into the next century, though it was obsolete at least by the Mid-Victorian period, of which some do so vainly talk. The extraordinary development of emotion which was expected from women need not be illustrated merely from love-stories. The wonderful transports of Miss Ferrier's heroines at sight of their long-lost mothers; even those of sober Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_, at the recovery of her estimable but not particularly interesting brother William, give the keynote much better than any more questionable ecstasies. "Sensibility, so charming," was the pet affectation of the period--an affectation carried on till it became quite natural, and was only cured by the half-caricature, half-reaction of Byronism.

[Sidenote: The thing essentially French.]

The thing, however, was not English in origin, and never was thoroughly English at all. The main current of the Sensibility novelists, who impressed their curious morals or manners on all men and women in civilised Europe, was French in unbroken succession, from the day when Madame de la Fayette first broke ground against the ponderous romances of Madeleine de Scudery, to the day when Benjamin Constant forged, in _Adolphe_, the link between eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century romance, between the novel of sentiment and the novel of analysis.

[Sidenote: Its history.]

Of the relations to it of the greater novelists of the main century we have already spoken: and as for the two greatest of the extreme close, Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, they mix too many secondary purposes with their philandering, and moreover do not form part of the plan of the present volume. For the true Sensibility, the odd quintessence of conventional feeling, played at steadily till it is half real, if not wholly so, which ends in the peculiarities of two such wholesome young Britonesses as Marianne Dashwood and Fanny Price, we must look elsewhere. After Madame de la Fayette, and excluding with her other names already treated, we come to Madame de Fontaines, Madame de Tencin (most heartless and therefore naturally not least sentimental of women), Madame Riccoboni, the group of lady-novelists of whom Mesdames de Souza and de Duras are the chief, and, finally, the two really remarkable names of Xavier de Maistre and Benjamin Constant. These are our "documents." Even the minor subjects of this inquiry are pleasant pieces of literary _bric-a-brac_; perhaps they are something a little more than that. For Sensibility was actually once a great power in the world. Transformed a little, it did wonderful things in the hands of Rousseau and Goethe and Chateaubriand and Byron. It lingers in odd nooks and corners even at the present day, when it is usually and irreverently called "gush," and Heaven only knows whether it may not be resuscitated in full force before some of us are dead.[406] For it has exactly the peculiarities which characterise all recurrent fashions--the appeal to something which is genuine connected with the suggestion of a great deal that is not.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Tencin and _Le Comte de Comminge_.]

In the followers of Madame de la Fayette[407] we find that a good many years have passed by. The jargon appropriated to the subject has grown still more official; and instead of using it to express genuine sentiments, which in another language might deserve expression well enough, the characters are constantly suspected by the callous modern reader or elaborately, though perhaps unconsciously, feigning the sentiments which the jargon seems to imply that they ought to have. This is somewhat less noticeable in the work of Madame de Tencin than elsewhere, because d'Alembert's mother was so very much cleverer a person than the generality of the novel-writers of her day that she could hardly fail to hide defects more cunningly. But it is evident enough in the _Comte de Comminge_ and in the _Malheurs de l'Amour_. Having as questionable morals as any lady of the time (the time of the Regency), Madame de Tencin of course always had a moral purpose in her writings, and this again gives her books a certain difference. But, like the former, this difference only exposes, all the more clearly, the defects of the style, and the drawbacks from which it was almost impossible that those who practised it should escape.

Madame de Tencin tried to escape by several gates. Besides her moral purposes and her _esprit_, she indulged in a good deal of rather complicated and sometimes extravagant incident. _M. de Comminge_, which is very short, contains, not to mention other things, the rather startling detail of a son who, out of chivalrous affection for his lady-love, burns certain of his father's title-deeds which he has been charged to recover, and the still more startling incident of the heroine living for some years in disguise as a monk. The following epistle, however, from the heroine to the hero, will show better than anything else the topsy-turvy condition which sensibility had already reached. All that need be said in explanation of it is that the father (who is furious with his son, and not unreasonably so) has shut him up in a dungeon, in order to force him to give up his beloved Adelaide.[408]

Your father's fury has told me all I owe you: I know what
your generosity had concealed from me. I know, too, the
terrible situation in which you are, and I have no means of
extracting you therefrom save one. This will perhaps make
you more unhappy still. But I shall be as unhappy as
yourself, _and this gives me the courage to do what I am
required to do_. They would have me, by engaging myself to
another, give a pledge never to be yours: 'tis at this price
that M. de Comminge sets your liberty. It will cost me
perhaps my life, certainly my peace. But I am resolved. I
shall in a few days be married to the Marquis de Benavides.
What I know of his character forewarns me of what I shall
have to suffer; _but I owe you at least so much constancy as
to make only misery for myself in the engagement I am
contracting_.

The extremity of calculated absurdity indicated by the italicised passages was reached, let it be remembered, by one of the cleverest women of the century: and the chief excuse for it is that the restrictions of the La Fayette novel, confined as it was to the upper classes and to a limited number of elaborately distressing situations, were very embarrassing.

[Sidenote: Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de Cressy_.]

Madame Riccoboni, mentioned earlier as continuing _Marianne_, shows the completed product very fairly. Her _Histoire du Marquis de Cressy_ is a capital example of the kind. The Marquis is beloved by a charming girl of sixteen and by a charming widow of six-and-twenty. An envious rival betrays his attentions to Adelaide de Bugei, and her father makes her write an epistle which pretty clearly gives him the option of a declaration in form or a rupture. For a Sensible man, it must be confessed, the Marquis does not get out of the difficulty too well. She has slipped into her father's formal note the highly Sensible postscript, "Vous dire de m'oublier? Ah! Jamais. On m'a force de l'ecrire; rien ne peut m'obliger a le penser ni le desirer." Apparently it was not leap-year, for the Marquis replied in a letter nearly as bad as Willoughby's celebrated epistle in _Sense and Sensibility_.

MADEMOISELLE,--Nothing can console me for having been the
innocent cause of fault being found with the conduct of a
person so worthy of respect as you. I shall approve whatever
you may think proper to do, without considering myself
entitled to ask the reason of your behaviour. How happy
should I be, mademoiselle, if my fortune, and the
arrangements which it forces me to make, did not deprive me
of the sweet hope of an honour of which my respect and my
sentiments would perhaps make me worthy, but which my
present circumstances permit me not to seek.

Sensibility does not seem to have seen anything very unhandsome in this broad refusal to throw the handkerchief; but though not unhandsome, it could not be considered satisfactory to the heart. So M. de Cressy despatches this private note to Adelaide by "Machiavel the waiting-maid"--

Is it permitted to a wretch who has deprived himself of the
greatest of blessings, to dare to ask your pardon and your
pity? Never did love kindle a flame purer and more ardent
than that with which my heart burns for the amiable
Adelaide. Why have I not been able to give her those proofs
of it which she had the right to expect? Ah! mademoiselle,
how could I bind you to the lot of a wretch all whose wishes
even you perhaps would not fulfil? who, when he possessed
you, though master of so dear, so precious a blessing, might
regret others less estimable, but which have been the object
of his hope and desire, etc. etc.

This means that M. de Cressy is ambitious, and wants a wife who will assist his views. The compliment is doubtful, and Adelaide receives it in approved fashion. She opens it "with a violent emotion," and her "trouble was so great in reading it through, that she had to begin it again many times before she understood it." The exceedingly dubious nature of the compliment, however, strikes her, and "tears of regret and indignation rise to her eyes"--tears which indeed are excusable even from a different point of view than that of Sensibility. She is far, however, from blaming that sacred emotion. "Ce n'est pas," she says; "de notre sensibilite, mais de l'objet qui l'a fait naitre, que nous devons nous plaindre." This point seems arguable if it were proper to argue with a lady.

The next letter to be cited is from Adelaide's unconscious rival, whose conduct is--translated into the language of Sensibility, and adjusted to the manners of the time and class--a ludicrous anticipation of the Pickwickian widow. She buys a handsome scarf, and sends it anonymously to the victorious Marquis just before a Court ball, with this letter--

A sentiment, tender, timid, and shy of making itself known,
gives me an interest in penetrating the secrets of your
heart. You are thought indifferent; you seem to me
insensible. Perhaps you are happy, and discreet in your
happiness. Deign to tell me the secret of your soul, and be
sure that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you have
no love for any one, wear this scarf at the ball. Your
compliance may lead you to a fate which others envy. She who
feels inclined to prefer you is worthy of your attentions,
and the step she takes to let you know it is the first
weakness which she has to confess.

The modesty of this perhaps leaves something to desire, but its Sensibility is irreproachable. There is no need to analyse the story of the _Marquis de Cressy_, which is a very little book[409] and not extremely edifying. But it supplies us with another _locus classicus_ on sentimental manners. M. de Cressy has behaved very badly to Adelaide, and has married the widow with the scarf. He receives a letter from Adelaide on the day on which she takes the black veil--

'Tis from the depths of an asylum, where I fear no more the
perfidy of your sex, that I bid you an eternal adieu. Birth,
wealth, honours, all vanish from my sight. My youth withered
by grief, my power of enjoyment destroyed, love past, memory
present, and regret still too deeply felt, all combine to
bury me in this retreat.

And so forth, all of which, if a little high-flown, is not specially unnatural; but the oddity of the passage is to come. Most men would be a little embarrassed at receiving such a letter as this in presence of their wives (it is to be observed that the unhappy Adelaide is profuse of pardons to Madame as well as to Monsieur de Cressy), and most wives would not be pleased when they read it. But Madame de Cressy has the finest Sensibility of the amiable kind. She reads it, and then--

The Marquise, having finished this letter, cast herself into
the arms of her husband, and clasping him with an
inexpressible tenderness, "Weep, sir, weep," she cried,
bathing him with her own tears; "you cannot show too much
sensibility for a heart so noble, so constant in its love.
Amiable and dear Adelaide! 'Tis done, then, and we have lost
you for ever. Ah! why must I reproach myself with having
deprived you of the only possession which excited your
desires? Can I not enjoy this sweet boon without telling
myself that my happiness has destroyed yours?"

[Sidenote: Her other work--_Milady Catesby_.]

All Madame Riccoboni's work is, with a little good-will, more or less interesting. Much of it is full of italics, which never were used so freely in France as in England, but which seem to suit the queer, exaggerated, topsy-turvyfied sentiments and expressions very well. The _Histoire d'Ernestine_ in particular is a charming little novelette. But if it were possible to give an abstract of any of her work here, _Milady Catesby_, which does us the honour to take its scene and personages from England, would be the one to choose. _Milady Catesby_ is well worth comparing with _Evelina_, which is some twenty years its junior, and the sentimental parts of which are quite in the same tone with it. Lord Ossery is indeed even more "sensible" than Lord Orville, but then he is described in French. Lady Catesby herself is, however, a model of the style, as when she writes--

Oh! my dear Henrietta! What agitation in my senses! what
trouble in my soul!... I have seen him.... He has spoken to
me.... Himself.... He was at the ball.... Yes! he. Lord
Ossery.... Ah! tell me not again to see him.... Bid me not
hear him once more.

That will do for Lady Catesby, who really had no particular occasion or excuse for all this excitement except Sensibility. But Sensibility was getting more and more exacting. The hero of a novel must always be in the heroics, the heroine in a continual state of palpitation. We are already a long way from Madame de la Fayette's stately passions, from Marianne's whimsical _minauderies_. All the resources of typography--exclamations, points, dashes--have to be called in to express the generally disturbed state of things. Now unfortunately this sort of perpetual tempest in a teacup (for it generally is in a teacup) requires unusual genius to make it anything but ludicrous. I myself have not the least desire to laugh when I read such a book as _La Nouvelle Heloise_, and I venture to think that any one who does laugh must have something of the fool and something of the brute in his composition. But then Rousseau is Rousseau, and there are not many like him. At the Madame Riccobonis of this world, however clever they may be, it is difficult not to laugh, when they have to dance on such extraordinary tight ropes as those which Sensibility prescribed.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Beaumont--_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_.]

The writers who were contemporary with Madame Riccoboni's later days, and who followed her, pushed the thing, if it were possible, even farther. In Madame de Genlis's tiny novelette of _Mademoiselle de Clermont_, the amount of tears shed, the way in which the knees of the characters knock together, their palenesses, blushes, tears, sighs, and other performances of the same kind, are surprising. In the _Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_ of Madame Elie de Beaumont (wife of the young advocate who defended the Calas family), a long scene between a brother and sister, in which the sister seeks to deter the brother from what she regards as a misalliance, ends (or at least almost ends, for the usual flood of tears is the actual conclusion) in this remarkable passage.

"And I," cried he suddenly with a kind of fury, "I suppose
that a sister who loves her brother, pities and does not
insult him; that the Marquis de Roselle knows better what
can make him happy than the Countess of St. Sever; and that
he is free, independent, able to dispose of himself, in
spite of all opposition." With these words he turned to
leave the room brusquely. I run to him, I stop him, he
resists. "My brother!" "I have no sister." He makes a
movement to free himself: he was about to escape me. "Oh, my
father!" I cried. "Oh, my mother! come to my help." At these
sacred names he started, stopped, and _allowed himself to be
conducted to a sofa_.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Souza.]

This unlucky termination might be paralleled from many other places, even from the agreeable writings of Madame de Souza. This writer, by the way, when the father of one of her heroes refuses to consent to his son's marriage, makes the stern parent yield to a representation that by not doing so he will "authorise by anticipation a want of filial attachment and respect" in the grandchildren who do not as yet exist. These excursions into the preposterous in search of something new in the way of noble sentiment or affecting emotion--these whippings and spurrings of the feelings and the fancy--characterise all the later work of the school.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Xavier de Maistre.]

Two names of great literary value and interest close the list of the novelists of Sensibility in France, and show at once its Nemesis and its caricature. They were almost contemporaries, and by a curious coincidence neither was a Frenchman by birth. It would be impossible to imagine a greater contrast than existed personally between Xavier de Maistre and Henri Benjamin de Constant-Rebecque, commonly called Benjamin Constant. But their personalities, interesting as both are, are not the matter of principal concern here. The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, its sequel the _Expedition Nocturne_, and the _Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_, exhibit one branch of the river of Sensibility (if one may be permitted to draw up a new Carte de Tendre), losing itself in agreeable trifling with the surface of life, and in generous, but fleeting, and slightly, though not consciously, insincere indulgence of the emotions. In _Adolphe_ the river rushes violently down a steep place, and _in nigras lethargi mergitur undas_. It is to be hoped that most people who will read these pages know Xavier de Maistre's charming little books; it is probable that at least some of them do not know _Adolphe_. Constant is the more strictly original of the two authors, for Xavier de Maistre owes a heavy debt to Sterne, though he employs the borrowed capital so well that he makes it his own, while _Adolphe_ can only be said to come after _Werther_ and _Rene_ in time, not in the least to follow them in nature.

The _Voyage autour de ma Chambre_ (readers may be informed or reminded) is a whimsical description of the author's meditations and experiences when confined to barracks for some military peccadillo. After a fashion which has found endless imitators since, the prisoner contemplates the various objects in his room, spins little romances to himself about them and about his beloved Madame de Hautcastel, moralises on the faithfulness of his servant Joannetti, and so forth. The _Expedition Nocturne_, a less popular sequel, is not very different in plan. The _Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste_ is a very short story, telling how the narrator finds a sufferer from the most terrible of all diseases lodged in a garden-house, and of their dialogue. The chief merit of these works, as of the less mannerised and more direct _Prisonnier du Caucase_ and _Jeune Siberienne_, resides in their dainty style, in their singular narrative power (Sainte-Beuve says justly enough that the _Prisonnier du Caucase_ has been equalled by no other writer except Merimee), and in the remarkable charm of the personality of the author, which escapes at every moment from the work. The pleasant picture of the Chevalier de B---- in the _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, which Joseph de Maistre is said to have drawn from his less formidable brother, often suggests itself as one follows the whimsicalities of the _Voyage_ and the _Expedition_. The affectation is so natural, the mannerism so simple, that it is some time before one realises how great in degree both are.

[Sidenote: His illustrations on the lighter side of Sensibility.]

Looked at from a certain point of view, Xavier de Maistre illustrates the effect of the Sensibility theory on a thoroughly good-natured, cultivated, and well-bred man of no particular force or character or strength of emotion. He has not the least intention of taking Sensibility seriously, but it is the proper thing to take it somehow or other. So he sets himself to work to be a man of feeling and a humorist at the same time. His encounter with the leper is so freshly and simply told, there is such an air of genuineness about it, that it seems at first sight not merely harsh, but unappreciative, to compare it to Sterne's account of his proceedings with his monks and donkeys, his imaginary prisoners, and his fictitious ensigns. Yet there is a real contact between them. Both have the chief note of Sensibility, the taking an emotion as a thing to be savoured and degusted deliberately--to be dealt with on scientific principles and strictly according to the rules of the game. One result of this proceeding, when pursued for a considerable time, is unavoidably a certain amount of frivolity, especially in dealing with emotions directly affecting the player. Sympathy such as that displayed with the leper may be strong and genuine, because there is no danger about it; there is the _suave mari magno_ preservative from the risk of a too deep emotion. But in matters which directly affect the interest of the individual it does not do to be too serious. The tear of Sensibility must not be dropped in a manner giving real pain to the dropper. Hence the humoristic attitude. When Xavier de Maistre informs us that "le grand art de l'homme de genie est de savoir bien elever sa bete," he means a great deal more than he supposes himself to mean. The great art of an easy-going person, who believes it to be his duty to be "sensible," is to arrange for a series of emotions which can be taken gently.

The author of the _Voyage_ takes his without any extravagance. He takes good care not to burn his fingers metaphorically in this matter, though he tells us that in a fit of absence he did so literally. His affection for Madame de Hautcastel is certainly not a very passionate kind of affection, for all his elaborately counted and described heartbeats as he is dusting her portrait. Indeed, with his usual candour, he leaves us in no doubt about the matter. "La froide raison," he says, "reprit bientot son empire." Of course it did; the intelligent, and in the other sense sensible, person who wishes to preserve his repose must take care of that. We do not even believe that he really dropped a tear of repentance on his left shoe when he had unreasonably rated his servant; it is out of keeping with his own part. He borrowed that tear, either ironically or by oversight, from Sterne, just as he did "Ma chere Jenny." He is much more in his element when he proves that a lover is to his mistress, when she is about to go to a ball, only a "decimal of a lover," a kind of amatory tailor or ninth part of man; or when, in the _Expedition_, he meditates on a lady's slipper in the balcony fathoms below his garret.

[Sidenote: A sign of decadence.]

All this illustrates what may be called the attempt to get rid of Sensibility by the humorist gate of escape. Supposing no such attempt consciously to exist, it is, at any rate, the sign of an approaching downfall of Sensibility, of a feeling, on the part of those who have to do with it, that it is an edged tool, and an awkward one to handle. In comparing Xavier de Maistre with his master Sterne, it is very noticeable that while the one in disposition is thoroughly insincere, and the other thoroughly sincere, yet the insincere man is a true believer in Sensibility, and the sincere one evidently a semi-heretic. How far Sterne consciously simulated his droppings of warm tears, and how far he really meant them, may be a matter of dispute. But he was quite sincere in believing that they were very creditable things, and very admirable ones. Xavier de Maistre does not seem by any means so well convinced of this. He is, at times, not merely evidently pretending and making believe, but laughing at himself for pretending and making believe. He still thinks Sensibility a _gratissimus error_, a very pretty game for persons of refinement to play at, and he plays at it with a great deal of industry and with a most exquisite skill. But the spirit of Voltaire, who himself did his _sensibilite_ (in real life, if not in literature) as sincerely as Sterne, has affected Xavier de Maistre "with a difference." The Savoyard gentleman is entirely and unexceptionably orthodox in religion; it may be doubted whether a severe inquisition in matters of Sensibility would let him off scatheless. It is not merely that he jests--as, for instance, that when he is imagining the scene at the Rape of the Sabines, he suddenly fancies that he hears a cry of despair from one of the visitors. "Dieux immortels! Pourquoi n'ai-je amene ma femme a la fete?" That is quite proper and allowable. It is the general tone of levity in the most sentimental moments, the undercurrent of mockery at his own feelings in this man of feeling, which is so shocking to Sensibility, and yet it was precisely this that was inevitable.

Sensibility, to carry it out properly, required, like other elaborate games, a very peculiar and elaborate arrangement of conditions. The parties must be in earnest so far as not to have the slightest suspicion that they were making themselves ridiculous, and yet not in earnest enough to make themselves really miserable. They must have plenty of time to spare, and not be distracted by business, serious study, political excitement, or other disturbing causes. On the other hand, to get too much absorbed, and arrive at Werther's end, was destructive not only to the individual player, but to the spirit of the game. As the century grew older, and this danger of absorption grew stronger, that game became more and more difficult to play seriously enough, and yet not too seriously. When the players did not blow their brains out, they often fell into the mere libertinism from which Sensibility, properly so called, is separated by a clear enough line. Two such examples in real life as Rousseau and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, one such demonstration of the same moral in fiction as _Werther_, were enough to discourage the man of feeling. Therefore, when he still exists, he takes to motley, the only wear for the human race in troublesome circumstances which beset it with unpleasant recurrence. When you cannot exactly believe anything in religion, in politics, in literature, in art, and yet neither wish nor know how to do without it, the safe way is to make a not too grotesque joke of it. This is a text on which a long sermon might be hung were it worth while. But as it is, it is sufficient to point out that Xavier de Maistre is an extremely remarkable illustration of the fact in the particular region of sentimental fiction.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Benjamin Constant--_Adolphe_.]

Benjamin Constant's masterpiece, which (the sequel to it never having appeared, though it was in existence in manuscript less than a century ago) is also his only purely literary work, is a very small book, but it calls here for something more than a very small mention. The books which make an end are almost fewer in literature than those which make a beginning, and this is one of them. Like most such books, it made a beginning also, showing the way to Beyle, and through Beyle to all the analytic school of the nineteenth century. Space would not here suffice to discuss the singular character of its author, to whom Sainte-Beuve certainly did some injustice, as the letters to Madame Recamier show, but whose political and personal experiences as certainly call for a large allowance of charity. The theory of _Adolphe's_ best editor, M. de Lescure (which also was the accepted theory long before M. de Lescure's time), that the heroine of the novel was Madame de Stael, will not, I think, hold water. In every characteristic, personal and mental, Ellenore and Madame de Stael are at opposite poles. Ellenore was beautiful, Madame de Stael was very nearly hideous; Ellenore was careless of her social position, Corinne was as great a slave to society as any one who ever lived; Ellenore was somewhat uncultivated, had little _esprit_, was indifferent to flattery, took not much upon herself in any way except in exacting affection where no affection existed; the good Corinne was one of the cleverest women of her time, and thought herself one of the cleverest of all times, could not endure that any one in company should be of a different opinion on this point, and insisted on general admiration and homage.

However, this is a very minor matter, and anybody is at liberty to regard the differences as deliberate attempts to disguise the truth. What is important is that Madame de Stael was almost the last genuine devotee of Sensibility, and that _Adolphe_ was certainly written by a lover of Madame de Stael, who had, from his youth up, been a Man of Feeling of a singularly unfeeling kind. When Constant wrote the book he had run through the whole gamut of Sensibility. He had been instructed as a youth[410] by ancient women of letters; he had married and got rid of his wife _a la mode Germanorum_; he had frequently taken a hint from _Werther_, and threatened suicide with the best possible results; he had given, perhaps, the most atrocious example of the atrocious want of taste which accompanied the decadence of Sensibility, by marrying Charlotte von Hardenburg out of pique, because Madame de Stael would not marry him, then going to live with his bride near Coppet, and finally deserting her, newly married as she was, for her very uncomely but intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote _Adolphe_. But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date which it bears. It is, as has been said, the history of the Nemesis of Sensibility, the prose commentary by anticipation on Mr. Swinburne's admirable "Stage Love"--

Time was chorus, gave them cues to laugh and cry,
They would kill, befool, amuse him, let him die;
Set him webs to weave to-day and break to-morrow,
Till he died for good in play and rose in sorrow.

That is a history, in one stanza, of Sensibility, and no better account than _Adolphe_ exists of the rising in sorrow.

The story of the book opens in full eighteenth century. A young man, fresh from the University of Goettingen, goes to finish his education at the _residenz_ of D----. Here he finds much society, courtly and other. His chief resort is the house of a certain Count de P----, who lives, unmarried, with a Polish lady named Ellenore. In the easy-going days of Sensibility the _menage_ holds a certain place in society, though it is looked upon a little askance. But Ellenore is, on her own theory, thoroughly respectable, and the Count de P----, though in danger of his fortune, is a man of position and rank. As for Adolphe, he is the result of the struggle between Sensibility, an unquiet and ironic nature, and the teaching of a father who, though not unquiet, is more ironically given than himself. His main character is all that a young man's should be from the point of view of Sensibility. "Je ne demandais alors qu'a me livrer a ces impressions primitives et fougueuses," etc. But his father snubs the primitive and fiery impressions, and the son, feeling that they are a mistake, is only more determined to experience them. Alternately expanding himself as Sensibility demands, and making ironic jests as his own nature and his father's teaching suggest, he acquires the character of "un homme immoral, un homme peu sur," the last of which expressions may be paralleled from the British repertory by "an ill-regulated young man," or "a young man on whom you can never depend."

All this time Adolphe is not in love, and as the dominant teaching of Sensibility lays it down that he ought to be, he feels that he is wrong. "'Je veux etre aime,' me dis-je, et je regardai autour de moi. Je ne voyais personne qui m'inspirait de l'amour; personne qui me parut susceptible d'en prendre." In parallel case the ordinary man would resign himself as easily as if he were in face of the two conditions of having no appetite and no dinner ready. But this will not do for the pupil of Sensibility. He must make what he does not find, and so Adolphe pitches on the luckless Ellenore, who "me parut une conquete digne de moi." To do Sensibility justice, it would not, at an earlier time, have used language so crude as this, but it had come to it now. Here is the portrait of the victim, drawn by her ten years younger lover.

Ellenore's wits were not above the ordinary, but her
thoughts were just, and her expression, simple as it was,
was sometimes striking by reason of the nobility and
elevation of the thought. She was full of prejudices, but
she was always prejudiced against her own interest. There
was nothing she set more value on than regularity of
conduct, precisely because her own conduct was
conventionally irregular.[411] She was very religious,
because religion rigidly condemned her mode of life. In
conversation she frowned on pleasantries which would have
seemed quite innocent to other women, because she feared
that her circumstances might encourage the use of such as
were not innocent. She would have liked to admit to her
society none but men of the highest rank and most
irreproachable reputation, because those women with whom she
shuddered at the thought of being classed usually tolerate
mixed society, and, giving up the hope of respect, seek only
amusement. In short, Ellenore and her destiny were at
daggers drawn; every word, every action of hers was a kind
of protest against her social position. And as she felt that
facts were too strong for her, and that the situation could
be changed by no efforts of hers, she was exceedingly
miserable.... The struggle between her feelings and her
circumstances had affected her temper. She was often silent
and dreamy: sometimes, however, she spoke with impetuosity.
Beset as she was by a constant preoccupation, she was never
quite calm in the midst of the most miscellaneous
conversation, and for this very reason her manner had an
unrest and an air of surprise about it which made her more
piquant than she was by nature. Her strange position, in
short, took the place of new and original ideas in her.

The difference of note from the earlier eighteenth century will strike everybody here. If we are still some way from Emma Bovary, it is only in point of language: we are poles asunder from Marianne. But the hero is still, in his own belief, acting under the influence of Sensibility. He is not in the least impassioned, he is not a mere libertine, but he has a "besoin d'amour." He wants a "conquete." He is still actuated by the odd mixture of vanity, convention, sensuality, which goes by the name of our subject. But his love is a "dessin de lui plaire"; he has taken an "engagement envers son amour propre." In other words, he is playing the game from the lower point of view--the mere point of view of winning. It does not take him very long to win. Ellenore at first behaves unexceptionably, refuses to receive him after his first declaration, and retires to the country. But she returns, and the exemplary Adolphe has recourse to the threat which, if his creator's biographers may be believed, Constant himself was very fond of employing in similar cases, and which the great popularity of _Werther_ made terrible to the compassionate and foolish feminine mind. He will kill himself. She hesitates, and very soon she does not hesitate any longer. The reader feels that Adolphe is quite worthless, that nothing but the fact of his having been brought up in a time when Sensibility was dominant saves him. But the following passage, from the point of view alike of nature and of expression, again pacifies the critic:[412]

I passed several hours at her feet, declaring myself the
happiest of men, lavishing on her assurances of eternal
affection, devotion, and respect. She told me what she had
suffered in trying to keep me at a distance, how often she
had hoped that I should detect her notwithstanding her
efforts, how at every sound that fell on her ears she had
hoped for my arrival; what trouble, joy, and fear she had
felt on seeing me again; how she had distrusted herself, and
how, to unite prudence and inclination, she had sought once
more the distractions of society and the crowds which she
formerly avoided. I made her repeat the smallest details,
and this history of a few weeks seemed to us the history of
a whole life. Love makes up, as it were by magic, for the
absence of far-reaching memory. All other affections have
need of the past: love, as by enchantment, makes its own
past and throws it round us. It gives us the feeling of
having lived for years with one who yesterday was all but a
stranger. Itself a mere point of light, it dominates and
illuminates all time. A little while and it was not: a
little while and it will be no more: but, as long as it
exists, its light is reflected alike on the past and on the
future.

This calm, he goes on to say, lasted but a short time; and, indeed, no one who has read the book so far is likely to suppose that it did. Adolphe has entered into the _liaison_ to play the game, Ellenore (unluckily for herself) to be loved. The difference soon brings discord. In the earlier Sensibility days men and women were nearly on equal terms. It was only in the most strictly metaphorical way that the unhappy lover was bound to expire, and his beloved rarely took the method of wringing his bosom recommended by Goldsmith, when anybody else of proper Sensibility was there to console her. But the game had become unequal between the Charlottes and the Werthers, the Adolphes and the Ellenores. The Count de P---- naturally perceives the state of affairs before long, and as naturally does not like it. Adolphe, having played his game and won it, does not care to go on playing for love merely. "Ellenore etait sans doute un vif plaisir dans mon existence, mais elle n'etait pas plus un but--elle etait devenue un lien." But Ellenore does not see this accurate distinction. After many vicissitudes and a few scenes ("Nous vecumes ainsi quatre mois dans des rapports forces, quelque fois doux, jamais completement libres, y rencontrant encore du plaisir mais n'y trouvant plus de charme") a crisis comes. The Count forbids Ellenore to receive Adolphe any more: and she thereupon breaks the ten years old union, and leaves her children and home.

Her young lover receives this riveting of his chains with consternation, but he does his best. He defends her in public, he fights with a man who speaks lightly of her, but this is not what she wants.

Of course I ought to have consoled her. I ought to have
pressed her to my heart and said, "Let us live for each
other; let us forget the misjudgments of men; let us be
happy in our mutual regard and our mutual love." I tried to
do so, but what can a resolution made out of duty do to
revive a sentiment that is extinct? Ellenore and I each
concealed something from the other. She dared not tell me
her troubles, arising from a sacrifice which she knew I had
not asked of her. I had accepted that sacrifice; I dared not
complain of ills which I had foreseen, and which I had not
had courage enough to forestall. We were therefore silent on
the very subject which occupied us both incessantly. We were
prodigal of caresses, we babbled of love, but when we spoke
of it we spoke for fear of speaking of something else.

Here is the full Nemesis of the sentiment that, to use Constant's own words, is "neither passion nor duty," and has the strength of neither, when it finds itself in presence of a stronger than itself. There were none of these unpleasant meetings in Sensibility proper. There sentiment met sentiment, and "exchanged itself," in Chamfort's famous phrase. When the rate of exchange became unsatisfactory it sought some other customer--a facile and agreeable process, which was quite consistent in practice with all the sighs and flames. Adolphe is not to be quit so easily of his conquest. He is recalled by his father, and his correspondence with Ellenore is described in one of the astonishingly true passages which make the book so remarkable.

During my absence I wrote regularly to Ellenore. I was
divided between the desire of not hurting her feelings and
the desire of truthfully representing my own. I should have
liked her to guess what I felt, but to guess it without
being hurt by it. I felt a certain satisfaction when I had
substituted the words "affection," "friendship," "devotion,"
for the word "love." Then suddenly I saw poor Ellenore
sitting sad and solitary, with nothing but my letters for
consolation: and at the end of two cold and artificial pages
I added in a hurry a few phrases of ardour or of tenderness
suited to deceive her afresh. In this way, never saying
enough to satisfy her, I always said enough to mislead her,
a species of double-dealing the very success of which was
against my wishes and prolonged my misery.

This situation, however, does not last. Unable to bear his absence, and half puzzled, half pained by his letters, Ellenore follows him, and his father for the first time expresses displeasure at this compromising step. Ellenore being threatened with police measures, Adolphe is once more perforce thrown on her side, and elopes with her to neutral territory. Then events march quickly. Her father's Polish property, long confiscated, is restored to him and left to her. She takes Adolphe (still struggling between his obligations to her and his desire to be free) to Warsaw, rejects an offer of semi-reconciliation from the Count de P----, grows fonder and more exacting the more weary of her yoke her lover becomes; and at last, discovering his real sentiments from a correspondence of his with an artful old diplomatic friend of his father's, falls desperately ill and dies in his arms. A prologue and epilogue, which hint that Adolphe, far from taking his place in the world (from which he had thought his _liaison_ debarred him), wandered about in aimless remorse, might perhaps be cut away with advantage, though they are defensible, not merely on the old theory of political justice, but on sound critical grounds.

[Sidenote: Mme. de Duras's "postscript."]

[Sidenote: _Sensibilite_ and _engouement_.]

This was the end of sensibility in more senses than one. It is true that, five years later than _Adolphe_, appeared Madame de Duras's agreeable novelettes of _Ourika_ and _Edouard_, in which something of the old tone revives. But they were written late in their author's life, and avowedly as a reminiscence of a past state of sentiment and of society. "Le ton de cette societe," says Madame de Duras herself, "etait l'engouement." As happy a sentence, perhaps, as can be anywhere found to describe what has been much written about, and, perhaps it may be said without presumption, much miswritten about. _Engouement_ itself is a nearly untranslatable word.[413] It may be clumsily but not inaccurately defined as a state of fanciful interest in persons and things which is rather more serious than mere caprice, and a good deal less serious than genuine enthusiasm. The word expresses exactly the attitude of French polite society in the eighteenth century to a vast number of subjects, and, what is more, it helps to explain the _sensibilite_ which dominated that society. The two terms mutually involve each other, and _sensibilite_ stands to mere flirtation on the one hand, and genuine passion on the other, exactly as _engouement_ does to caprice and enthusiasm. People flirted admirably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the art was, I fancy, recovered in the nineteenth with some success, but I do not think they flirted, properly speaking, in the eighteenth.[414] Sensibility (and its companion "sensuality") prevented that. Yet, on the other hand, they did not, till the society itself and its sentiments with it were breaking up, indulge in anything that can be called real passion. Sensibility prevented that also. The kind of love-making which was popular may be compared without much fancifulness to the favourite card-game of the period, quadrille. You changed partners pretty often, and the stakes were not very serious; but the rules of the game were elaborate and precise, and it did not admit of being treated with levity.

[Sidenote: Some final words on the matter.]

Only a small part, though the most original and not the least remarkable part, of the representation of this curious phenomenon in literature has been attempted in this discussion. The English and German developments of it are interesting and famous, and, merely as literature, contain perhaps better work than the French, but they are not so original, and they are out of our province. Marivaux[415] served directly as model to both English and German novelists, though the peculiarity of the national temperament quickly made itself felt in both cases. In England the great and healthy genius of Fielding applied the humour cure to Sensibility at a very early period; in Germany the literature of Sensibility rapidly became the literature of suicide--a consummation than which nothing could be more alien from the original conception. It is true that there is a good deal of dying in the works of Madame de la Fayette and her imitators. But it is quite transparent stage-dying, and the virtuous Prince of Cleves and the penitent Adelaide in the _Comte de Comminge_ do not disturb the mind at all. We know that, as soon as the curtain has dropped, they will get up again and go home to supper quite comfortably. It is otherwise with Werther and Adolphe. With all the first-named young man's extravagance, four generations have known perfectly well that there is something besides absurdity in him, while in Adolphe there is no extravagance at all. The wind of Sensibility had been sown, in literature and in life, for many a long year, and the whirlwind had begun to be reaped.[416]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Its importance here.]

This, however, is the moral side of the matter, with which we have not much to do. As a division of literature these sentimental novels, artificial as they are, have a good deal of interest; and in a _History_ such as the present they have very great importance. They are so entirely different in atmosphere from the work of later times, that reading them has all the refreshing effect of a visit to a strange country; and yet one feels that they themselves have opened that country for coming writers as well as readers. They are often extraordinarily ingenious, and the books to which in form they set the example, though the power of the writers made them something very different in matter--_Julie_, _La Religieuse_, _Paul et Virginie_,[417] _Corinne_, _Rene_--give their progenitors not a little importance, or at least not a little interest of curiosity. Besides, it was in the school of Sensibility that the author of _Manon Lescaut_ somehow or other developed that wonderful little book. I do not know that it would be prudent to recommend modern readers to study Sensibility for themselves in the original documents just surveyed. Disappointment and possibly maledictions would probably be the result of any such attempt, except in the case of Xavier de Maistre and Constant. But these others are just the cases in which the office of historical critic justifies itself. It is often said (and nobody knows the truth of it better than critics themselves) that a diligent perusal of all the studies and _causeries_ that have ever been written, on any one of the really great writers, will not give as much knowledge of them as half an hour's reading of their own work. But then in that case the metal is virgin, and to be had on the surface and for the picking up. The case is different where tons of ore have to be crushed and smelted, in order to produce a few pennyweights of metal.

* * * * *

Whatever fault may be found with the "Sensibility" novel, it is, as a rule, "written by gentlemen [and ladies] for [ladies and] gentlemen." Of the work of two curious writers, who may furnish the last detailed notices of this volume, as much cannot, unfortunately, be said.

[Sidenote: Restif de la Bretonne.]

It may, from different points of view, surprise different classes of readers to find Restif de la Bretonne (or as some would call him, Retif) mentioned here at all--at any rate to find him taken seriously, and not entirely without a certain respect. One of these classes, consisting of those who know nothing about him save at second-hand, may ground their surprise on the notion that his work is not only matter for the _Index Expurgatorius_, but also vulgar and unliterary, such as a French Ned Ward, without even Ned's gutter-wit, might have written. And these might derive some support from the stock ticket-jingle _Rousseau du ruisseau_, which, though not without some real pertinency, is directly misleading. Another class, consisting of some at least, if not most, of those who have read him to some extent, may urge that Decency--taking her revenge for the axiom of the boatswain in _Mr. Midshipman Easy_--forbids Duty to let him in. And yet others, less under the control of any Mrs. Grundy, literary or moral, may ask why he is let in, and Choderlos de Laclos[418] and Louvet de Courray, with some more, kept out, as they most assuredly will be.