Chapter III: Part 3

One word as to his short stories. He is in these more purely literary than in his novels, presumably because in short stories he has not space enough to get out of hand. A few of them, such as _The Procurator of Judæa_, and one or two of the revolutionary tales in _Mother of Pearl_, are as good as any French short stories, while _Crainquebille_ and _Putois_ reach the highest standard of de Maupassant. Still, there is nothing to say about them here: there is only one thing to do, and that is to read them. There are others, though, worth mentioning because, together with their fine literary facture, they carry the author’s ideas. For instance, in _Les Sept Femmes de la Barbe Bleue_, Anatole France sets to work to rehabilitate Bluebeard, who, he contends, was henpecked and deceived, though a very good fellow. This is Anatole France’s little fling at rumour and misrepresentation. It amuses him to trace rumour to its sources, and I can imagine as good a story as _Putois_, the gardener who was invented and in the end nearly managed to exist, being written round the story of the bombs in the German governess’s bedroom that floated about during the early part of the war. This is half mystical and Anatole France is not a mystic, but he has written several stories, to which I refer a little later on, starting from which it might be contended that if humanity believed strongly enough in the bomb under the bed the House of Commons might eventually be blown up. Most of the short stories, however, are merely novels _in petto_; some are mediæval, many Italian, and, every now and then, they are modern and ironic. Most of them, such as _La Chemise_, where operations become fashionable among the Smart Set and where the professor asks Society, “together a crowd and an élite,” to his five-o’clock operation, “a charming bit of ovariotomy,” to the accompaniment of flowers, pretty frocks, music and ices, are a criticism of life. This story recalls a kind of life we know, for we are told that “the professor’s elegance and grace were marvellous. The operation was taken for the cinema.”

All through these stories runs his philosophy:

“I love life which is earthy life, life as it is, this dog’s life.
I love it brutal, vile and gross. I love it sordid, dirty, spoilt;
I love it stupid, imbecile and cruel; I love it in its obscenity,
in its infamy, with its violence, its stinks, its corruptions and
its infections.... On Sundays I go among the people, I mix with
the crowd that flows in the streets, I plunge into groups of men,
women and children, which form round street-singers or before the
booths at fairs; I touch dirty coats and greasy bodices; I breathe
the strong, warm scents of sweat, of hair, of breaths. In this
well of life I feel further from death. Death: nothingness, that
is an infinite naught, and this naught envelops us. Thence we come
and hence we go; we are always two nothingnesses as a shell upon
the waters. Nothingness is the impossible and the assured; it is
inconceivable and it is.”

A quotation such as this, taken in conjunction with the earlier quotation from the preface of _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, outlines the man within the writer, and I need not labour that the faith of Anatole France is the faith of Epicurus, of Petronius Arbiter, of Villon, of Rabelais, of Fielding. The whole basis of him is sensuality, and I hate to say this in a country such as England, where the maypole has been cut down and Calvinism reigns supreme, where sensuality, that once whispered melodies into the ears of Pan and hung garlands about the birch-trees, has been hated and hunted until it had to take refuge in the dirty talk of the public-house.

The sensuality of Anatole France is like sap arising in the trees, like the moth circling about the candle; it is joyous, frank, unashamed; the world and all that is in it is its toy. In this country it has become disgusting to like good food; you must not even talk of food, it is not done (and the result is English food, the laughing-stock of the universe). But listen to Anatole France on food in _Histoire Comique_:

“The Castelnaudary stew contains the preserved thighs of geese,
whitened beans, bacon and a little sausage. To be good it must have
been cooked lengthily upon a gentle fire. Clémence’s stew has been
cooking for twenty years. She puts into the pan sometimes goose or
bacon, sometimes sausage or beans, but it is always the same stew.
The foundation endures; this ancient and precious foundation gives
the stew the quality that in the pictures of old Venetian masters
you find in the women’s amber flesh....”

Here speaks the old Gaul who feasted on roast meats, drank much hydromel, and as he caressed the long droop of his fair moustache cast a negligent, amiable glance over his white-skinned, blue-eyed, black-haired women. For the Gaul never forgot women; he had anticipated Nietzsche by two thousand years or so, and decided that man was for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior. This offends some of us moderns, for the sensuality of the Frenchman, so strong in Anatole France, the sensuality of eating and drinking, of burlesque, of gross stories, some of them concerned with an apartment ignored in the English household since the days of William IV., lies thick over love.

It seems a pity to us that, in spite of all his æstheticism, of his sense of beauty, it should look as if Anatole France’s view of love were contained in the famous phrase of Alphonse Karr, or Gustave Droz, I forget which:

“Love? A matter of skin.”

Well, love is not a matter of skin, at least for us, and one would wish that Anatole France should have found something ethereal, symbolic in the union of man and woman. I cannot explain what I mean: I detest the word “spirituality,” and I hardly know what I miss in this French view of love that Anatole France holds, but I miss it. This view is not exactly: “One woman is as good as another,” but it certainly is: “One woman is as good as another if she is good-looking.” It is all flesh, and æsthetics, which do redeem the flesh, do not redeem it fully. The French heroine, beloved of Anatole France’s heroes, is merely Galatea animate; she is just the beautiful woman descended from her pedestal at the call of her chosen lover. Nothing calls to him save the warm body that once was beautiful marble, and he is content. _The Red Lily_ illustrates that idea. Here we have two people, an unfaithful wife and her lover. We are convinced by the suggestion of extreme passion that these people have reached the apogee of love. It is an unhappy, tormented love, unrolling near the Arno. It develops among a curious society of literary people, is coloured by the usual literary and artistic ideas of Anatole France. Dechartre, the lover, is tormented because his mistress had before him another lover; he is not tormented by the existence of her husband. His distress grows so intense when he begins to suspect, quite wrongly, that she is unfaithful to him with her first lover, produces a strain so great, that their alliance breaks. Well, that is natural enough, for, as Anatole France himself remarks, man is possessive and woman is not, because she has had to get used to sharing, but it is difficult to understand at first sight why Dechartre should be jealous of another lover, and not jealous of a husband. The answer, which is not evident to everybody, is that the act of love is symbolic and that a husband, taken as a social base, is not comparable with a lover taken for love.[6] That is true enough, but where fault must be found with the Gallic view is that there is not a single phrase in the book to show that Dechartre, represented as in the throes of extreme love, wishes to detach his mistress from her husband. He never suggests that he wants her to live with him always, that he wants her society, her presence, the subtle delight of hearing her walk in the room above. He wants nothing but her body from four to six, twice a week: he is honourable, he is an artist, but he is vile, he is a beast. Big words these, but I have come to think that if we differ at all from the brute it is by the courage with which we face the consequences of our deeds, by delicacies of feeling in which caresses have no place, by something that is more than elegance, that can maintain love when sickness, ugliness appear and æsthetics fall to the ground. There is not in the works of Anatole France a line devoted to love. Whether in _The Red Lily_ or in _The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche_, or in any of the episodes, “love” is either light and false and lying, or coarse and brutal, or limited by the passing efflorescence of a beauty that must die. He seems, like every other Frenchman I can think of, unable to understand what the Anglo-Saxon means by idealism in love, by that idealism so often made absurd by sentiment, but yet delightful, and distinguished from the impulse of a stag in rut.

[6] Relations between husband and wife may have ceased, but
this does not touch the argument.

And yet, strange to say, Anatole France has written a few stories in which there is a hint of mysticism. _Histoire Comique_ is a story of a haunting; in _Adrienne Buquet_ there is telepathy; in _The Graven Stone_ a fatal influence. There is _Putois_ too, that famous tale of a metaphysical conception in virtue of which a man who was originally a joke ends “like a mythological deity, in becoming actual.” There is _A Daughter of Lilith_, a tale of an immortal and fatal descendant of the pre-Adamites. But those, I feel, are intellectual exercises, and I suspect that they spring from a passing idea of the author: “I think I’ll write a mystical story; it would be rather fun.”

The true Anatole France which hides under the sentimental old gentlemen, so cynical and so human, born so cold and to-day so young, is the irreverent, jolly, blasphemous Frenchman of the Middle Ages. I have said this often and quoted much in support because I want to make the English understand what is so difficult for them to understand: the Gaul and his joviality. Still I cannot resist quoting a story from _Penguin Island_, which I am compelled to condense:

There was once a king and he had a beautiful queen. At their court
lived a young monk, called Oddoul, who resisted the devil and
even woman. So the queen, being woman and ambitious, attempted
his seduction. She called him into her chamber, and he would not
look upon her. She held out her arms to him, and he fled. Then in
her fury, as he fled, she called the guard and accused Oddoul of
having attempted to ravish her. He was thrown into gaol. But in
the night, as he waited for the time to come when he would be led
out to be burnt alive, the cell was visited by the angel of the
Lord. And the angel said: “What? Hast thou not done what the Queen
accuses thee of?” “No,” said Oddoul. “Then,” cried the angel, “what
art thou doing here, idiot?” The angel of the Lord opened the door
and Oddoul found himself driven out of the prison. Scarcely had he
gone down into the street when a hand from high above emptied upon
his head a pailful of slops. And he thought: “Mysterious are Thy
designs, O Lord, and Thy ways impenetrable.”

It is not easy to understand Anatole France because, like other men, he is neither good nor evil; he is merely what he is. I do not ask anyone to forgive him because he loved much, nor to try and understand, if that is the only way of forgiving him. It is very much better to thank him for having brought into the dusty old lumber-room of stale ideas the breath of the new; for having proclaimed pity in a world that had slid into callousness; for having been gay when the creeds bade us be sad. To do that, if one can, is enough, for though one may not understand him quite, the times not yet being enlightened, one can offer him the supreme tribute of loving him without understanding.

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ANATOLE FRANCE’S PRINCIPAL WRITINGS

FRENCH TITLES

NOTE.--_These bibliographies are not the work of Mr W. L. George._

Alfred de Vigny (_Bachelin-Deflorenne_). 1868.

Poëmes Dorés (_Lemerre_). 1873.

Les Noces Corinthiennes (_Lemerre_). 1902.

Jocaste et le Chat Maigre (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1879. (_Th. Nelson._)
1912.

Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1881.

Les Désirs de Jean Servien (_Lemerre_). 1882. (_Calmann-Lévy._)
1907.

Le Livre de Mon Ami (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1885.

Balthasar et la Reine Balkis (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1889. (_Carteret._)
1899.

Thais (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1890. (_Ramagnol._) 1900. (_Ferroud._) 1909.

L’Etui de Nacre (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1892.

La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1893.

Les Opinions de M. Jérome Coignard (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1893.

L’Elvire de Lamartine (_Champion_). 1893.

Le Lys Rouge (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1894. (_Romagnol._) 1903.

Le Jardin d’Epicure (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1895. Le Puits de
Sainte-Claire (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1895. (_Le Livre Contemporain._)
1908.

Clio (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1900.

L’Orme du Mail [Histoire Contemporaine] (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1897.

Le Mannequin d’Osier [Histoire Contemporaine] (_Calmann-Lévy_).
1897.

L’Anneau d’Améthyste [Histoire Contemporaine] (_Calmann-Lévy_).
1899.

Monsieur Bergeret à Paris [Histoire Contemporaine]
(_Calmann-Lévy_). 1901.

Pierre Nozière (_Lemerre_). 1899.

Crainquebille, Putois, Riquet (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1904.

Histoire Comique (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1903; 1911.

Sur la Pierre Blanche (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1905.

L’Eglise et la République (_E. Pelletan_). 1905.

Vie de Jeanne d’Arc (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1908. (_Manzi-Joyant._) 1909.

L’Ile des Pingouins (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1908.

Les Contes de Jacques Tournebroche (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1908.

Les Sept Femmes de Barbe-Bleue (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1909.

Les Dieux ont Soif (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1912.

La Révolte des Anges (_Calmann-Lévy_). 1914.

La Vie Littéraire, Series i., ii., iii. and iv. (_Calmann-Lévy_).
1891.

Le Génie Latin (_A. Lemerre_). 1913. (_E. Pelletan._) 1909.

L’Abeille (_Charavay Frères_). 1883.

All the above are Paris publishers.

ENGLISH BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mother of Pearl. Translated by F. Chapman (_Lane_). 1908.

The Red Lily. Translated by W. Stephens (_Lane_). 1908.

The Red Lily. Popular edition (_Lane_). 1913.

The Garden of Epicurus. Translated by A. Allinson (_Lane_). 1908.

Thais. Translated by R. B. Douglas (_Lane_). 1909.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. Translated by Lafcadio Hearn
(_Lane_). 1909.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. Popular edition (_Lane_). 1914.

My Friend’s Book. Translated by J. L. May (_Lane_). 1913.

The Life of Joan of Arc, in 2 vols. Translated by W. Stephens
(_Lane_). 1909.

The Well of St Clare. Translated by A. Allinson (_Lane_). 1909.

The White Stone. Translated by C. E. Roche (_Lane_). 1909.

Penguin Island. Translated by A. W. Evans (_Lane_). 1909.

Balthasar. Translated by Mrs J. Lane (_Lane_). 1909.

The Wickerwork Woman: A Chronicle of Our Own Times. Translated by
M. P. Willcocks (_Lane_). 1910.

Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche and Child Life in Town and
Country. Translated by A. Allinson (_Lane_). 1910.

The Elm Tree on the Mall: A Chronicle of Our Own Times. Translated
by M. P. Willcocks (_Lane_). 1910.

Complete Limited Edition in English. Edited by F. Chapman (_Lane_).
1911.

Honey Bee: A Fairy Story for Children. Translated by Mrs John Lane
(_Lane_). 1911.

Jocasta and the Famished Cat. Translated by A. Farley (_Lane_).
1912.

Jocaste et le Chat Maigre. Nozière Collection (_Nelson_). 1914.

Aspirations of Jean Servien. Translated by A. Allinson (_Lane_).
1912.

The Opinions of Jerome Coignard. Translated by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson
(_Lane_). 1912.

At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque. Translated by Mrs Wilfrid
Jackson. Introduction by W. J. Locke (_Lane_). 1912.

The Gods are Athirst. Translated by A. Allinson (_Lane_). 1913.

The Gods are Athirst. Popular edition (_Lane_). 1915.

Magill’s Series of Modern French Writers, No. 3 (_Sower_).

The Revolt of the Angels. Translated by Mrs Wilfrid Jackson
(_Lane_). 1914.

On Life and Letters. Translated by A. W. Evans. First Series
(_Lane_). 1911.

On Life and Letters. Translated by A. W. Evans. Second Series
(_Lane_). 1913.

AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

L’Abeille. Edited by C. P. Lebon. Translated by Peter Wright
(_Heath_).

Bee: The Princess of the Dwarfs. Retold in English by Peter Wright
(_Dutton_). 1912.

Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard. Edited by C. H. C. Wright (_Holt_).
1904.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. Translated by Lafcadio Hearn
(_Harper_). 1906.

Le Livre de Mon Ami, Le Livre de Pierre. Edited by O. G. Guerlac
(_Holt_). 1905.

Thais. A play in four acts by Paul Wilstach (_Bobbs-Merrill_). 1911.

La Vie de Jeanne d’Arc (_Goupil_). 1909.

Monsieur Bergeret: Passage de l’Histoire Contemporaine. Edited by
F. H. Dike (_Burdett_).

Girls and Boys: Scenes from the Country and the Town. Illustrations
in colour and pen and ink by Boutet de Monvel (_Duffield_). 1913.

La Révolte des Anges (_Bretano_). 1914.

[All the titles published in Great Britain by Mr Lane are also issued in the United States by the John Lane Co. in a uniform edition.]

INDEX

Agnosticism, 70

_Amycus and Célestin_, 64

_L’Anneau d’Améthyste_, 29

Monsieur Bergeret à Paris, 61 _n._

Bierce, Ambrose, 50

Blasphemy, 68

Brandes, Georg, 9, 13, 19

_Adrienne Buquet_, 119

Caine, Hall, 56

Calmette, M. F., 8

_La Chemise_, 99

_The Church and the Republic_, 89

Collège Stanislas, 14

Colonial Movement, 96

Coloured Races, 95

_Contemporary History_, 14, 29, 35

_Crainquebille_, 54

_The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_, 15, 17

_A Daughter of Lilith_, 119

_Les Désirs de Jean Servien_, 15, 22

_The Dream_, 57

Dreyfus, 36, 52

_The Elm Tree on the Mall_, 37

_The Famished Cat_, 15, 17

Food, 113

_Le Genie Latin_, 55

_The Gods are Athirst_, 15, 22, 83, 86, 87

_The Graven Stone_, 119

_Gulliver’s Travels_, 35

_Histoire Comique_, 119

Historical Work, 77

Japan, 96

_Jocasta_, 15, 16

_Komm l’Atrébate_, 65

_Lady of Verona, The_, 64

Lane, John, 10 _n._

_Life of Joan of Arc, The_, 78, 86

Literary Criticism, 55

Love, 115

Machiavelli, 49

_The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche_, 118

_Mother of Pearl_, 23

_La Muiron_, 65

_My Friend’s Book_, 14, 21, 22

_The Mystery of the Blood_, 64

Mysticism, 119

Napoleon III., 40

New Atlantis, 33

_Les Noces Corinthiennes_, 14

_Pierre Nozière_, 14

Ohnet, Georges, 56

_On Life and Letters_, 8, 55

_Opinions of Jerome Coignard_, 64

_Penguin Island_, 29, 35, 74, 120

Philosophy, 112

_Poèmes Dorés_, 14

_The Procurator of Judæa_, 66

_Putois_, 119

_The Red Lily_, 17, 118

Renan, 82

_Revolt of the Angels, The_, 22, 74, 87

Religion, 60

_Riquet_, 61 _n._

Satire, 27–28

_The Security_, 64

Shaw, G. B., 28

_Short Way with Dissenters, A_, 35

Socialism, 65

_Thais_, 71, 75

Thibault, 14

Utopia, 97

_The Well of St Clare_, 63

Wells, H. G., 28, 97

_The White Stone_, 91

_The Wickerwork Woman_, 41

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.