Chapter V: Part II: Interpretations (2)

Had I not such a high regard for Mr. Brooks as author and interpreter, I should reply to him as M’Liss did to the school-examiner who sought to humble her beloved schoolteacher by posing the question: “Has the sun ever stood still in the heavens?” But as I have such esteem of him, of his sincerity and artistry, I content myself with saying, “It is not true.” To bring Mr. Hueffer (I assume he means Ford Madox Ford) forward to give corroborative testimony does not bolster up the case. Mr. Ford is a discredited witness; his reputation for veracity has had a tremendous dent put in it recently by Mrs. Conrad. And I am in as favourable a position to give testimony as even Mr. Gosse. When Henry James made this “come back” attempt which Mr. Brooks elaborates in the chapter entitled “The Altar of the Dead,” the arterial disease to which he finally succumbed had already progressed to such a stage as to give great anxiety and concern to his intimates. He put himself under my professional care and I saw him at close range nearly every day for two months; and talked with him, or listened to him, on countless subjects. I believe that it would not have been possible for him to have harboured and essayed the plan that Mr. Brooks credits him with having, or to have ruminated on it as he says he did, without my having become aware of its existence in his mind.

Henry James was a man out of the ordinary. He was the type of man that one, no matter how widely travelled, meets but once or twice in a lifetime. It would take a long time to enumerate his virtues, for he had them all, the cardinal and the trivial. He loved bread, music and the laugh of a child, hence no one kept him three paces distant. It would also take a long time to enumerate his defects, for though he had few of the major ones, he had a multitude of the minor.

I have always questioned whether it facilitates an understanding of Henry James the artist to understand Henry James the man. In my own case, I am sure I had as comprehensive a peep into his artistic soul after I had read _The Turn of the Screw_, _The Princess Casamasima_, _The Ambassadors_, and _The Golden Bowl_, as after I had come to know him intimately, when he was engrossed in the problem of abstract design and fundamental organisation.

Henry James had an enormous amalgam of the feminine in his make-up; he displayed many of the characteristics of adult infantilism; he had a singular capacity for detachment from reality and with it a dependence upon realities that was even pathetic. He had a dread of ugliness in all forms, banality and vulgarity that the devil is reputed to have for Holy Water, and he was solitary-hearted. Unlike Hartley Coleridge’s queen of noble nature’s crowning, he had love and he had understanding friends, but he had small capacity to avail himself of the gifts which they desired to lavish on him. His life had been devoted to the pursuit of an ideal; he had never been able to formulate with precision, or to describe that ideal with words. He came as near to it in the little story called _The Figure in the Carpet_ as he could come to it. If he were not able to describe this ideal with the lucidity and comprehensibility with which Leonardo described his, when he was at the zenith of his creative power, why are we astonished at his inability to do it when these powers were undermined by arteriosclerosis?

The great defect in the make-up of Henry James was in the amatory side of his nature. His amatory coefficient was comparatively low; his gonadal sweep was narrow. Had he had a quarter of the former that Goethe possessed or one-half the sweep of Anatole France, it would be safe to say that Henry James would have been the greatest literary figure that ever came out of America, and that there would now be many James carrying his name to perpetuity. It is a measureless impediment, inability to fall in love; it is a dreadful handicap to have feminine and masculine characteristics nearly equally proportioned in one’s make-up; adult infantilism makes tremendously for dissatisfaction with what life brings, and a low basal metabolic rate which gives rise to a race of fletcherisers or other faddists is a burden that many find too hard to bear.

Henry James had them all. Had he not had them, he would have been happier and possibly he would have had a more successful career as an author, if success is measured by the rule of popularity. If his grandfathers had not been Irish; if he had spent his youth in Hoboken and not in Newport; if he had gone to school in the fifth ward and not in Switzerland; if he had had a little judicial starving meted out to him in his early maturity, he might have had a happier old age and fewer yearnings, fewer regrets that his life had not been fuller. Not that I admit for one moment that his old age was unhappy, or that he had such regrets or yearnings. The idea is Mr. Brooks’. It is in his book we find that here was a sort of a lost soul, beating its enfeebled wings against a cage from which time had not only removed the gild, but which it had rusted as well.

Henry James did not dislike America, but the people he met here with few exceptions did not interest him, and most of them annoyed him, sometimes to the point of explosion. He had had many pleasant experiences in Italy and in France, and he treasured them as a prima donna treasures programmes and testimonials. He often took them from the strongboxes of his memory and re-invoked the pleasurable sensations that he had had in acquiring them. Above everything in the world he valued good form, and all that it implies; good taste, good manners, good breeding, good conduct, and he had convinced himself from taking thought and from experience that it was to be had in England, even without the asking. He took his tree of life there and planted it and only one root developed, the social root. The political, the scholastic, the religious, the marathon roots, did not develop. In other words, the roots that make the tree of life so compelling of admiration in England did not grow from the tree that Henry James planted there. The tree that did grow was, however, sturdy and majestic. It has given shade and protection to many travellers since its full growth. The man who planted it insured, so far as he could, that it should not soon be cut down, by making, a few months before his death, the supreme genuflection to the country of his adoption. He forfeited citizenship in the country of his birth and obtained citizenship in the country that had sheltered him during the years of his fruition. How could any such thesis as that of Mr. Brooks be maintained in view of this last great gesture of Henry James, and why is the act not mentioned in a book that aims to describe his pilgrimage?

Had James known that England is full of men like Jacob Heming, one of Stella Benson’s Pipers, he probably would not have settled there; he might have gone to Spain. There are many things about that priest-infested, ceremonious country that would have appealed to Henry James. He would have fitted Toledo as an oyster its shell.

No one need concern himself with proving to me that a man sheds his inherited possessions only with the greatest difficulty. Among his inherited possessions I place his religion, his politics, and his “Patrie.” If a man whose father was known to me as a Democrat tells me he is a Republican, I do not believe him. If a man whose parents were Roman Catholics and who was brought up in that faith tells me that he is a Baptist, I suspect his veracity. If I encounter a man living in England without obvious reason who tells me that he is an American, I immediately surmise that his conduct has been an offence to his own land. And all this despite the fact that I have known the sons of a Democrat who have always voted the Republican ticket, that I am on terms of intimacy with an Unitarian clergyman who was formerly a Roman Catholic priest, and that Mr. George Santayana seems to find England more sympathetic as a permanent residence than Massachusetts. Moreover, I do not recall having heard of a lament from Joseph Conrad that he was not back in Poland or that he could not see Marseilles every now and then. I know an American family named James whose members have identified themselves conspicuously with the material and scientific progress of this country who sent a branch to England two generations ago and its members are more English than Winston Churchill; but that knowledge does not separate me from the belief that one of the most difficult things in the world to accomplish is to transfer a human tree, after it has had vigorous growth, from the soil of one country to another with the confident anticipation that it will bear abundant fruit. In the majority of cases, it will die; very rarely will it bear lusciously as it did in the case of Joseph Conrad. In some instances it will bear every few years, but then not copiously as it did in the case of Henry James.

Henry James had a happier life than any celibate who does not dedicate his days to verbal praise of God is entitled to have. Responsibilities as well as possessions are necessary for our happiness. They create facets which permit us contact with life; they tend to frustrate the increasing activities of the canker worm, egocentrism; and they succeed in convincing him who possesses them that he is but a leaf on the tree of humanity and not a branch or a bough. Had Henry James done his share in peopling the earth he would have been as happy as any man I have ever known save William Osler.

To uphold as a major thesis that, by forsaking the land of his birth he had not given an adequate earnest of his talent, that he had failed to saturate himself with life, that in his old age he found himself astray in the gloomy wood, and that “it had been too much for him over there,” must appear contrary to common sense or sound judgment to any one who knew Henry James, who admired him as an artist and loved him as a man.

Is it not natural that a sensitive man, supremely susceptible to the seductiveness of society, should, when the pulse of life begins to intermit, dwell upon the terrors of loneliness; become apprehensive of a future that would find him bereft of the sympathy that is the balm of life, of that understanding which is the support of the inelastic artery? Henry James knew that such society, sympathy, and staff were in Cambridge, that they were composited in the family of his brother William, that he might _have_ to go to them, as we all have to go to the spring if there is no one to bring us the water.

He minimised the defects of his countrymen and exalted the virtues of his country as he grew older. It is the way of a man with the world. How often have I heard widows whose wounds I had dressed in their matrimonial days, speak of their husbands as Anthony Burgesse spoke of the Staffordshire Puritan Thomas Blake? “His kindness towards you could not be considered without love, his presence without reverence, his conversation without imitation. To see him live was a provocation to a godly life, to see him dying might have made one weary of living.”

Any pilgrim who sets out on a journey may properly anticipate the necessities of life even though he does not take them with him, but it would be fatuous for him to hope for the comforts, and beyond belief that he should expect the luxuries. Henry James in his pilgrimage found the necessities, the comforts, and the luxuries, and we can never be sufficiently grateful to the country of his adoption for having given them to him without the asking.

François Mauriac, one of France’s coming great novelists, one indeed who may be considered as having already arrived, said something in explanation of his latest novel with which Henry James, at least in his old age, would have agreed: “Even after years of living in Paris of friendships, of loves and of travels, when the novelist is convinced that he has accumulated enough human experience to fill a thousand plots, he is astonished that his heroes always come from beyond this tumultuous life--that they take shape in the darkest period of years lived far from Paris and that they draw all their wealth from so much poverty and aridity.” This constant going back to the years of youth and early adolescence which obsesses François Mauriac has been felt by Henry James and it is something of that sort that he had in mind when, wishing to pump the pure essence of his wisdom and experience into his most brilliant disciple, Edith Wharton, he said: “She must be tethered to native pasture, even if it reduces her to a backyard in New York.”

Henry James was a master craftsman. He was concerned more with the pattern than with the material with which he worked. He was continually searching--not material but new ways of arranging it. M. Poiret reminds me of Henry James. Material does not concern him much. It is the way it is cut and basted. The finish is important too, but that is a detail. The pattern is the thing.

IV
LITTERATEURS: FOREIGN WRITERS

ANATOLE FRANCE HIMSELF, by _Jean-Jacques Brousson_.
ANATOLE FRANCE AND HIS CIRCLE, by _Paul Gsell_.
ANATOLE FRANCE, THE MAN AND HIS WORK, by _J. Lewis May_.
ANATOLE FRANCE À LA BÉCHELLERIE, by _Marcel Le Goff_.
SAINTE-BEUVE, by _Lewis Freeman Mott_.
LEONID ANDREYEV, by _Alexander Kaun_.
JOSEPH CONRAD, by _Ford Madox Ford_.
JOHN DONNE, by _Hugh l’Anson Fausset_.
THE WIND AND THE RAIN, by _Thomas Burke_.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, by _John A. Steuart_.

Anatole France was picturesque, enigmatic and intriguing. He attracted illuminators and interpreters. His protracted age gave biographers ample time to prepare their revelations, interpretations and judgments which came with a rush soon after his death--and before, and which still come. The last of all these biographies is the best, that is, it gives the best picture of him, both as individual and as savant. M. Brousson, his Secretary for many years, had abundant opportunity to see Anatole France without the mask he habitually wore. He has embodied his observations and reflections in _Anatole France Himself_, and all readers save literary historians and critics will find it satisfying.

Much was written of Anatole France during the latter years of his life. His mode of life, methods of work, political, religious and social ideas; his theoretical antinomianism and his practical conformity to convention; and more than all his erudition excited curiosity, and from attempt to satisfy it, there resulted envy in some, dislike in others, admiration in all.

_From a miniature Courtesy of Edward Wassermann_

The best interpretation of him and his work in English is by Mr. L. P. Shanks, a graceful writer, a penetrating critic. The works of Anatole France have been translated into English by Mr. Lewis May who published _Anatole France, the Man and His Work_ in the year that preceded his death. It is an agreeable introduction to the great novelist, even though it is such a left handed and inadequate one. The chief reason why Mr. May’s contribution to our knowledge and understanding of Anatole France falls short of its aim, is that the writer has not heeded the difference which exists between a biography and a panegyric. It is a custom sanctified by time that the death of a great contemporary figure should be the signal of a truce as it were; foes lay down their arms for a period of time, friends and admirers join in lauding the man who has gone to his reward. No one takes much stock in an obituary dictated by the emotional reaction engendered by death, and no one looks to such writing for constructive criticism, but when a biography is written during the lifetime of the subject--be he as old as Anatole France was when Mr. May published his--there should be less puffing and more illumination, less heat and more light. Mr. May allowed his personal feeling of friendship and his pleasure and pride of semi-intimacy with Anatole France to colour his estimate of the writer. He admires his versatility, his manysidedness, the rapidity with which he changed his point of view. These are no grounds for unqualified admiration. At most they would be occasion for wonder and amazement, but the biographer should point to the danger of such chameleon-like conduct, the weakness of such a nature. He “played all parts in turn and played them all well,” but this very versatility shows a lack of intimate convictions and standards. A philosophy which consists of having none, a religion which insists on the unsatisfactoriness of all belief--these are destructive and bewildering forms of reasoning; but Anatole France combined these traits with qualities and achievements which amply balanced their influence. What we should have liked Mr. May to do, a thing which we are still waiting for a biographer to do, is to have summed up, after consideration, the contradictions, the theories, the principles and the talent of Anatole France, from which we might obtain clear, critical, impartial, sober judgment of the writer. He was more than any other author the Proteus of modern time, an image and symbol of the constant change in man, and, like Proteus, he could undergo a metamorphosis of ideas and judgments which baffled the world at large, and made his personality a puzzle. However, he did not have the reticence that the Greek hero had, nor the loathing for answering questions; and he was so articulate that his evolution is not difficult to master.

Every one agrees with Mr. May that Anatole France was a stylist of talent, a psychologist of merit and a philosopher of profundity and penetration, of smiling scepticism and amused tolerance; but to say that a fairy bent over his cradle and endowed him with some of the “douceur angevine” sung by Du Bellay, and that his voice is “the voice of all humanity” is disregarding the claims of criticism. That is just what Anatole France lacked most of all--the inspiring, soothing, beneficial, unforgettable smile of a fairy over his cradle. Had he had it, Mr. May’s estimation of Anatole France’s poetry, “that it will endure so long as literature continues to interest mankind,” might find a more responsive acceptation.

Anatole France the man was so closely linked with Anatole France the writer that his biographers have been unable to separate them; and for this we should be thankful. From the best pictures that are presented to us, we gather an idea of the master-writer of the past generation that is complete and convincing; his life was devoted to writing; and his writing was always of life, as it appeared to him through intimacy with ancient masters; through study of history; through contemplation of his time; through deduction and observation of humanity. It is difficult to divorce him from his own personality, and the biographers who have succeeded in painting a picture of him that will endure have all recognised this impossibility.

Of the many authors who have attempted to set down some of the most interesting traits and characteristics of Anatole France, and who have done it when their personal recollections were still fresh and undimmed by time, Jean-Jacques Brousson has been the most successful. He lived in close intimacy with the Master for many years; he is himself endowed with critical faculty, with keen powers of observation and, like Anatole France, he has a leaning toward the aspect of life that puritans call the “unspeakable,” but which the French call “_gauloiserie_.” If _Anatole France Himself_ is not a tribute of respect and of deference Anatole France’s admirers would wish it to be, at least, it does more than any other book has done to convince us of the flesh-and-bone reality of the savant, to destroy the legend that he was heartless. M. Brousson has written a biography in everyday language, he has Boswellised his Master with fidelity, wit and a certain amount of irony and of mockery which Anatole France would probably have enjoyed and lauded. He has made him appear not only in the flesh, but in the spoken word, so that the reader is able to “listen in” and if he has an imagination vivid enough, he may believe that he is living in the shadow of Anatole France. M. Brousson tells of his first days of work at the Villa Saïd, of the tempers and tolerance of his master, of his simplicity and his sarcasm; of his generosity and his avarice; of his method of work and manner of play. The latter has a large place in this biography, especially the only sort of play in which Anatole France in his declining years could indulge: imagination and ratiocination. We see him at times like a sensuous and pleasure-bent faun; then he becomes the ascetic monk, with one hand raised to an imaginary heaven in which the wisdom of time and the wickedness of the world blend; now he is the writer, the historian, the novelist, intent on his self-imposed task and working with industrious and painstaking love. Then he becomes the child, reprimanded by “Madame” because he refuses to tell a story with which she wishes to impress her audience, or because he procrastinates in writing an article for a Viennese newspaper; in turn he is the lover of antiques and the searcher after old “estampes”; then he is the disillusioned art-collector who finds that what his fancy believed to be genuine does not bear the stamp of antiquity, and who overwhelms his secretary with the objects that have ceased to please--generally in payment of his services. We like him best when he is shown to be a real man, with a heart and a nervous system reacting to emotional disturbance. “If you could only read in my soul,” he said to his secretary one day, “you would be terrified.”

“He takes my hands in his, and his are trembling and
feverish. He looks me in the eyes. His are full of tears.
His face is haggard. He sighs: ‛There is not in all the
universe a creature more unhappy than I. People think me
happy. I have never been happy for one day, not for a
single hour’.”

This reminds one of the text that Mark Twain constructed for his autobiography:

“A person’s real life is led in his head, and is known
to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the
mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not
those other things that are his history. His acts and his
words are merely the visible, thin crust of his world
with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of
water--and they are so trifling a part of his bulk; a
mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden--it
and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never
rest, night nor day.”

Anatole France hid his soul well: his volcano was frequently on the point of eruption, but nearly always he succeeded in smothering it.

Jean-Jacques Brousson has written a valuable exposition of Anatole France’s personality, of the home and the semi-public life of his hero, and his intention to bring him as close and make him as familiar to us as he could is evident in the French title of _Anatole France Himself, Anatole France en Pantoufles_. This is the way in which we remember him most vividly, with his felt slippers lined with purple, and his multicoloured skull cap.

Another of his admirers is Paul Gsell, who was a frequent and faithful visitor at the morning meetings at the Villa Saïd. Introduction to these famous “audiences” was not difficult to get--the difficulty was to get there a second time if the Master found the visitor a bore or a fool. He could suffer neither, unless they were hidden in the pulchritudinous envelope of an attractive woman--then everything was allowed and overlooked to leave place for admiration and gallantry. Paul Gsell has written _Anatole France and His Circle_, and his book reads like a court report, or a newspaper interview, withal it is full of the charm of the conversation of Anatole France, and of his unforeseen and original reactions to ideas and beliefs. Among a great many anecdotes and conversations which are interesting and instructive, the episode of Mr. Brown, the Australian “stout, robust man of florid complexion with close-shaven lips and chin,” who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and who showed in his Anglo-Saxon elegance his assiduity to golf and polo, and who came to see Anatole France in search of the mystery ... the secret of literary genius, is one of the most diverting. He may have found what he wanted, but his visit resulted, at all events, in a disclosure of literary geniuses of the past as studied by Anatole France which is remarkable in its scope and in its truth.

Paul Gsell’s book has had imitators and it has given an incentive to assiduous followers of Anatole France to set down for posterity, some of the memorable conversations and discussions at which they were present. The most successful has been Marcel Le Goff, who, in the last ten years of the Master’s life, saw him at his country home near Tours, frequently and with increasing interest and admiration. He has recorded his talks, but fortunately, he could not resist the temptation of allowing us to peep into the intimacy of Anatole France, and into his life at “La Béchellerie.” His tastes, and the trivialities which form part of every life, have been divulged and even though M. Le Goff is one of France’s admirers, he has avoided Mr. Lewis May’s pitfall and has not allowed his personal feeling to blind him absolutely:

“Perhaps M. France has had weaknesses; it would be sad to
lay too much stress on them, to reveal them and to find
pleasure in their recital. One might better see in him,
the illustrious and permanent witness of the beauty of
our language and of the genius of our people.”

But the best biography of Anatole France is still the one he wrote himself, under guise of four novels, _Le Petit Pierre_, _Le Livre de Mon Ami_, _Pierre Nozière_ and _La Vie En Fleur_. They reveal the formation of the clever novelist, of the profound thinker, of the cultured critic, of the great stylist. Style was his obsession and perfect expression of thought was his constant care; he reached the heart of his subject as few younger authors have done, and never left it until he had obtained all he could from it; surveying it from one angle, then from another, he saw its shades and meanings, and this explains some of his contradictions. Anatole France, partial as he was as a man, was impartial when he wrote of universally interesting and profoundly significant events.

By his allegiance to the teachings of the past, he deserved to be called the last of the classicists; by his fidelity in maintaining the traditions of novels, he is entitled to be called “romantic”; by his love for the perfect phrase, for purity of form and loftiness of sentiments, he proved himself a true son of the ancient masters; and by his keen appreciation of intelligence, analysis and objectivity, he made a definite place for himself in the modern school. His mind has been influenced by the greatest minds of history and of literature. He adopted their thoughts, and adapted their interpretation of life to his own style, and he had neither scruples nor shyness in copying what had already been said: “When a thing has been said, and well said, have no scruples, take it. Give references? What for? Either your readers know where you have gathered the passage and the reference is useless, or else they do not know it, and you humiliate them by giving it.” That was one tenet of his creed and many have said he lived up to it. He did, indeed, and for that reason posterity is likely to rate him as an interpreter more than as a creator, and to set him below men of real creative genius, such as Ibsen, Dostoievsky, or Chekhov.

We do not need Jean-Jacques Brousson to point out to us France’s principal fault in his literary work. It is evident in all his books. He lacked a formulated plan, and had he had one, he probably would not have pursued it with the energy, determination and single-mindedness that Dostoievsky or Ibsen displayed. It was not his versatility that shortened his reach for the crown of glory, it was his distractibility. He could be diverted from a determination by whim, fancy, sentiment or appeal, and most of all by the bigotries, stupidities, vanities and selfishness of his people. He must hold them up to ridicule, lash them with stinging words, scorch them with scorn and sting them with sarcasm, before he could find peace in his “objets d’art,” satisfaction in his bibelots, and contentment in contemplation of concrete beauty.

* * * * *

The star of Sainte-Beuve in the literary firmament of France shone brilliantly during his lifetime; since his death its luminosity has increased. Indeed, one may say that it has become a sort of sun which lights the literary way with great brilliancy. Much has been written about Sainte-Beuve in the brief half century since his death--brief because of the tremendous changes which have taken place in his country during that time and which have left relatively little leisure to discuss and estimate the influence and achievement of a contemporary. Moreover, the French are loath to commit themselves by placing a crown of immortality on the brow of their artists, before time and a certain unanimity of public opinion have confirmed the judgment of early admirers. Yet, in the case of Sainte-Beuve it was different. Immediately after his death he became for them the greatest critic of the nineteenth century--possibly the greatest of all ages. It has not been thought premature to attribute to him paternity of the modern school of criticism, represented by Rémy de Gourmont. In the early seventies, Matthew Arnold popularised Sainte-Beuve in England and reverberations of this publicity soon reached this country; but it is doubtful that he has the reputation here, especially among the younger writers, that he deserves.

Until recently the biography by Count d’Haussonville has been our most important document about Sainte-Beuve. It requires a delicate and refined pen to write about Sainte-Beuve and it requires an inborn distinction of mind and a responsiveness of heart such as d’Haussonville possessed to understand and render the aristocracy of Sainte-Beuve’s art--the art of one who was above all an artist, with great intellectual powers at the service of his art, and who, not content with his natural endowments, took endless pains and by prodigious industry acquired vast learning.

And now we have another biography. A cultured and scholarly American has written the most voluminous life of Sainte-Beuve that has appeared in any language. Lewis Freeman Mott has gathered all the information that previous biographers have given; garnered the most minute details, elaborated and interpreted them. He has followed his subject from birth to death, minute by minute, with closest attention. Mr. Mott’s _Sainte-Beuve_ gives an impression of concentrated effort. He has worked close enough to the subject to detect nuances difficult to perceive, not close enough to hear the beating of the heart, and too close to comprehend, in one large inclusive sweep, the atmosphere, the local colour and the surroundings. It is a laboriously conceived study, painstakingly faithful, rigorously integral, but not alluring.

Mr. Mott is one of the few biographers to lay emphasis on Sainte-Beuve’s artistic endowment, but even he has done it more in the letter than in the spirit. We wish that this last biographer had traced Sainte-Beuve’s emotional reactions, instead of setting the finished work before us with no clue to its genesis and fabrication. We know that the French critic had more regard for good taste in literature than for talent; that he was constantly seeking truth, that he frowned on falsification of history and human nature; that he revolted against the unnatural, abhorred abstract language and found delight even in the most fugitive appearance of poetry, but all this we must divine, for Mr. Mott does not prove it. He states the case as it appears to him and is neither partisan nor judicial. He carries impartiality to the point of indifference.

In the days of Sainte-Beuve’s early maturity, literary clans were the fashion in Paris, and the _Cénacle_ of which he was one of the shining lights, together with Alexandre Dumas, Gérard de Nerval, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo, was one of the most fashionable. The young men who met there to discuss their ambitions, to find relaxation and stimulus and to air their views, were “strangely garbed, wearing a ‛Merovingian prolixity of hair,’ and were ferociously prepared to eat any stray Academician. They drank healths out of a skull, tore the green coat from the back of Dumas” and showed an effervescence and enthusiasm which has disappeared from the manners of modern writers. But the _Cénacle_ was short lived, and Mr. Mott has skilfully rendered the change of moods in Sainte-Beuve, whose enthusiasm took him along different channels after the crisis of 1830. He soon saw the danger of isolation, and of breaking up into groups; “literature must become broader, more profound, accessible to all. The time of the _Cénacle_ is past; the Romantic reversion to the Middle Ages, the solitary inward revery, the detachment from reality” have been replaced by sentiment for progressive and struggling humanity. Sainte-Beuve then became revolutionary and proletarian, but lost none of his delicate and artistic powers.

Sainte-Beuve had the capacity to shift quickly from one viewpoint to the other, from one belief to another, from one political opinion to its antithesis. This is common enough in men of great emotional make-up, but it seldom goes with the sangfroid, the coolness, the good sense and the clear judgment that he displayed. In him, these sudden turns had their key in his emotions. He was sick at heart, a prey to the passion that first Madame Hugo, then other women inspired in him. In order to distract or benumb himself, he played with every conceivable sort of thought. In all his love affairs, he was ardent and sincere, and entered them without reserve or calculation. Though he sought relief from the passion that possessed him, his emotional disturbance was not allowed to interfere with his intellectual labour.

Mr. Mott should have taken the following quotation from Sainte-Beuve, pondered and meditated it, for within it lies the secret of great biographies:

“I have always been fond of the correspondence of
great men, of their conversations, their thoughts, all
the details of their character and manners, of their
biography in short; and especially when this biography
has not already been compiled by another, but may be
composed and constructed by oneself. Shutting yourself up
for a fortnight with the writing of some dead celebrity,
some poet or philosopher, you study him, turn him over
and over, and question him at leisure; you make him pose
for you; it is almost as though you passed a fortnight in
the country making a portrait or a bust of Byron, Scott
or Goethe; only you are more at ease with your model
and the tête-à-tête at the same time that it requires
strict attention, permits much closer familiarity. Soon,
an individuality takes the place of the vague, abstract
type. The moment the familiar motion, the revealing
smile, the vainly hidden crack or wrinkle is seized,
at that moment, analysis disappears in creation, the
portrait speaks and lives, you have found the man.”

Somehow the reader feels that Mr. Mott did not make Sainte-Beuve _pose_ for him.

It was the man in Sainte-Beuve, not the intellectual, who broke with Victor Hugo and it was the jealousy of a human being, not the superiority of a poet, that made him hate Madame Hugo when his affair with her had lost its allurement. Mr. Mott has laid much stress on that affair, and some may question the taste that guided him in this phase of Sainte-Beuve’s life; but it must be said that Mr. Mott is firm in his belief that there was more imagination, sentiment and words in the romance of the two lovers than reality. He believes that their love was based on a spiritual understanding, and one is inclined to agree with him after reading his remarks on Sainte-Beuve’s inflamed state of mind, after becoming familiar with the behaviour of the characters in his only novel, _Volupté_, and after learning of the health of Madame Hugo. Mr. Mott contrasts skilfully the sort of affair in which Victor Hugo plunged with robustious frankness, with that of Sainte-Beuve and Madame Hugo, it makes the latter appear like the pretty frolics of adolescence.

Sainte-Beuve had a genuine flair for literature. He justified La Bruyère’s dictum: “the test of a man’s critical power is his judgment of contemporaries.” _Les Lundis_, his greatest contribution to critical literature, shows rare discernment in picking literary winners. He was one of the first to express doubts regarding the permanency of Chateaubriand’s works, and this despite the affection he had for him, and his prominent place in the literature of the day. Mr. Mott’s account of Sainte-Beuve’s position in the salon of Madame Récamier, the guardian angel of the great men of her time, shows the biographer at his best. His description of the “salon” and of the charm of Madame Récamier are a fine bit of writing. Sainte-Beuve did not remain long under her influence. About the time he forsook social intercourse with her, he abandoned poetry and turned to criticism. The poet in him was perpetually in conflict with the critic, sentimentality trying to overcome reason. His heart was continually haunted by visions of romantic situations--but prose was a medium in which he was particularly happy, and to prose he remained faithful--prose and interpretation.

Occasionally, Mr. Mott rewards his readers for attention to arid pages of bibliography by giving them a piece of characterisation which is all the more welcome because of its rarity. Some critics, even Sainte-Beuve himself, have given the impression that he was devoid of merriment and of gaiety, but Mr. Mott has found traces of joyousness. “This gaiety is a note, unobtrusive though it be, that should not be omitted if we are to appreciate the full harmony of Sainte-Beuve’s character. In spite of _Volupté_ and certain poems, he was a normal human being, with plenty of faults and weaknesses, it is true, but sincere with himself and others, remarkably endowed, universally interested and indefatigably laborious.” This is as near as Mr. Mott ever comes to letting us see behind the mask of the intellectual into the make-up of the man. But the biographer makes up for his lack of allurement with his profound and clear knowledge and understanding of _Port-Royal_, and some of his pages on it are not only the best in the book, but of the quality that makes literature.

Sainte-Beuve’s _Port-Royal_ is his most permanent contribution to literature, _Les Lundis_ excepted. The summary Mr. Mott makes of the book might apply to his own _Sainte-Beuve_:

“We would not convey the impression that the book is
especially entertaining ... to sit down and labour
consecutively through the present volumes is somewhat
of a task. We appreciate and we admire, but we not
infrequently look ahead to discover how many more pages
the chapter contains. An unregenerate appetite might be
satisfied with a smaller quantity of this very plain
spiritual nutriment.”

We appreciate Mr. Mott’s remarkable labour also; and we admire his mastery of the subject, but appreciation and admiration are not synonymous with entertainment.

Mr. Mott creates a relationship between Sainte-Beuve and La Rochefoucauld, and in the examples he has chosen to illustrate this similarity of their views, he has been successful. The former had a gift for imitation and he often took on the mentality of those he admired, so that many of their thoughts can be paralleled in their work. The same comparison might be made between Mr. Mott and his subject. He, like Sainte-Beuve, supplies his books copiously with summaries and with indications of location.

“Not infrequently, a chapter may open or close with
a paragraph, much in the manner of Macaulay, telling
us what the author is about to do, but rarely does
Sainte-Beuve persist, like Macaulay, in a consecutive
fulfilment of his prospectus. The side paths are too
alluring for his truant disposition.”

It is not a truant disposition that prompts Mr. Mott to follow the side paths, it is a laudable desire of going to the heart of his subject and presenting it as a whole, but the result is the same. Indeed, it may be said that the summary of the chapters in _Sainte-Beuve_ is one of its greatest attractions, for it states in a few words the main points which the chapter never fails to develop.

Sainte-Beuve made enemies, but he did not fear them. His attacks on Balzac especially brought a suit for damages to the magazine in which he published his wrath, but the suit was mocked in an article which he undoubtedly wrote and which concluded: “He (Balzac) will find that we never in the least dreamed of contesting the _intrepidity_ of his bad taste.” Had Sainte-Beuve lived in this age, he would have the same grounds for indignation; for “systems of inward degeneration--emulation, self-esteem, charlatanism, log-rolling, intimidation, avidity for popularity and gold” still exist.

Artistic preoccupation was one of Sainte-Beuve’s distinguishing characteristics. He joined art to literary criticism, giving his portraits creative value, and he does not renounce art when he speaks the truth. He believed in Chateaubriand and Lamennais, yet he told the truth about them, for believing with him was merely a way of understanding. And he insisted that literary criticism should never become static and dogmatic, but like art must remain dynamic and plastic. All this, Mr. Mott has explained clearly. And by so doing, he has written a book which will serve as a _vade mecum_ to all students of Sainte-Beuve. It may not interest the general public for it lacks the divine spark which changes bread into manna, coal into diamonds. The picture he paints of Sainte-Beuve does not make those unacquainted with his writings want to read them; those who know and love Sainte-Beuve, know him and love him for the qualities which Mr. Mott’s book has revealed.

* * * * *

Dr. Kaun, Professor of Slavic languages at the University of California, put the American reading public under obligations when he wrote Andreyev’s biography. It is the best I have encountered since Mr. Janko Lavrin’s psycho-critical study of Ibsen, and as it is more kindly, sympathetic and tolerant than that important contribution, it is pleasanter to read and quite as illuminating.

Next to Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev is more widely known in this country than any recent Russian writer. Many of his novels, sketches and plays have been translated and some, such as _The Seven That Were Hanged_, _Satan’s Diary_, _The Little Angel_, _Samson in Chains_, and various plays, have been extensively read.

The question has often been asked: “What kind of author was this soul-analyst, this student of the brute in man, this writer who caused more discord in the camp of Russian criticism than any of his fellows?” Mr. Kaun’s book not only provides the answer but gives a glimpse of literary tendencies in the Russia of yesterday which is as welcome as it is instructive.

Leonid Andreyev was forty-eight years old when he died in 1919; although he began literary work soon after his admission to the bar in 1897, it was not until the publication of _Once There Lived_ in 1901 that the critics had intimation that a new force had appeared in Russian literature. In the next fifteen years he won a place in the literary hierarchy of his country, which since his death has become more secure. When the history of Russia in the generation from 1895 to 1920 comes to be dispassionately and judicially written the name and influences of Leonid Andreyev will frequently be mentioned.

The Slav is an enigma to most Americans and the more we learn of Andreyev the less soluble seems the riddle. He was of the manic-depressive temperament; at least three times in his life he attempted suicide; he was addicted to strong drink; he had the naïveté and egotism of a child; he was mulishly obstinate. Maxim Gorky, who was one of the first to recognise his ability, who counselled and befriended him, has recently written: “Strangely, and to his own torment, Leonid split in two; in one and the same week he could sing hosanna to the world and pronounce anathema against it.” In this respect he resembled another writer of manic-depressive temperament, Giovanni Papini.

This lack of co-ordination in Andreyev’s moods is continually shown by Dr. Kaun, who follows him through all the periods of his life. His childhood was gloomy, filled with serious thoughts and arid reading. At times he put aside all his interests in literature and became a “rough boy.” He displayed a remarkable gift for the stage and an early inclination to draw and to paint. The death of his father, which occurred when Leonid was very young, gave him a taste of poverty, privation and humility and made him realise that his future was what he alone would make it. Soon after graduation he became a court reporter and then an editorial writer. Mr. Kaun devotes an instructive and interesting chapter to this plastic period, during which he displayed few indications of possessing constructive ability.

The transformation that Russia witnessed during the years of Andreyev’s adolescence and early maturity must of necessity have influenced a mind such as his. He saw aristocracy fail to convince itself that slavery was legitimate; he saw the slow but constant development of a sentiment of democracy which soon extended to all branches of society and turned all eyes and sympathies to the peasantry.

They became the idols of the day in Russia; literature was concentrated around their activities and that new discovery, their souls. The Intelligentsia, to which Andreyev belonged, recognised and praised their long disdained brothers. In his introduction Dr. Kaun has expressed all this in clear and simple language; he has shown the tendencies of Russian literature with such authority and coolness that what seemed an abyss of darkness passing understanding becomes at once easy to penetrate. Some of his definitions dismiss the cloud of vagueness that before surrounded the object. “The term Intelligentsia may be applied to the unorganised group of Russian men and women who, regardless of their social or economic status, have been united in a common striving for the betterment of material and spiritual conditions.”

When Russian literature became as it were “single tracked,” when all its interests turned abruptly to the “street” (save for the exception of a few writers who refused to give up “art for art’s sake” and take up the defence of any one class of society), the danger was that Russian literature would become “a didactic sermon.” But Dr. Kaun hastens to reassure us that “What saved it ... was the genius of its creators, who remained artists under all circumstances.”

There was need, however, for a man who would not allow his passions to rule his emotions, whose voice could be heard and heeded above the popular outbursts, who would attempt a search into the motives and the value of life, and Leonid Andreyev was the man, the voice and the writer.

From his earliest childhood he had been obsessed by interrogations about life and he expressed them constantly in his writings; he seldom attempted an answer or a solution to the problems that pressed upon his mind, and when he did it, it was ambiguous. Dr. Kaun points out that Andreyev’s failure to define or to classify was due to his lack of philosophical theory and to his incapacity for detaching himself and viewing life in perspective; he dwelled in the reality, and disdained philosophy and theories. He was neither a student nor a reader. He would have his friends believe that he had been influenced by Schopenhauer and there is no doubt that he showed envy of Nietzsche, affection for Tolstoi and admiration for Gorky; but it is doubtful that he read them, save casually.

One appealing quality in Dr. Kaun as a critic is his unbiased opinion; he allows neither his admiration for the author nor his sympathy for the man to influence his judgment. He seeks no excuse for Andreyev’s lack of humour and lightness or for his egotism. He states his defects, and finds a reason for his admitted eminence among modern authors in his realism, which makes him address the public not as a teacher or a reformer but as an observer from the rank and file, who related what he saw and did not draw conclusions. He was neither propagandist nor missionary.

Andreyev’s aim was to describe man as he was, with all the repulsive instincts that make him a beast and all the qualities that identify him with divinity; but it was the worse side of human nature that chiefly appealed to him, and that he described at length. If we agree with Samuel Butler that “virtue has never yet been adequately represented by any who have had any claim to be considered virtuous,” and that “it is the subvicious who best understand virtue. Let the virtuous people stick to describing vice--which they can do well enough,” we must consider Leonid Andreyev the personification of virtue.

He stood aloof from literary circles, parties or affiliations all his life. Not even the revolution of 1905, which brought a split in the ranks of the intelligentsia, changed him; he retained his impersonal attitude, probing the conscience of man, “ringing his alarm bell” of man’s vices, analysing life, and attempting to explain only its illusions. He continually peered beneath the surface and questioned the reactions of mankind, discovering vices where virtue seemed to lie. He was a firm believer in the power of ideas over the actions of an individual, and he has shown in _Thought_ how one unaccountable impulse will ruin the career of a man.

Andreyev was non-conformist to the last degree. He refused consistently to give way to the public’s tastes and held that sincerity was the first quality that one should find in an author. His sincerity was not to the taste of his readers. Andreyev neither approved of the “splendid isolation” of the Russian symbolists, decadents or other definite schools who refused to see beyond the limit of their ivory towers, nor did he join hands with the people. He confined his observations to their individual and immediate surroundings. But he also generalised events and expressed opinions that included the world in connection with an event that merely affected his country or his people. He extracted the essence of upheavals and carried them beyond his time. His passionate and ardent pen could describe horrors and cruelty better than the pen of any author of his time.