TO EDMOND DE GONCOURT
Sunday evening, 1870.
How I pity you, my poor friend! Your letter overcame me this morning. Except for the personal confidence you made me (which you may be sure I shall keep), it told me nothing new, or rather, I mean that I had guessed all that you wrote me. I think of you every day and many times a day. The memory of my lost friends leads me fatally to the thought of you! The schedule has been well filled during the past year – your brother, Bouilhet, Sainte-Beuve, and Duplan! My dreams are darkened by the shadows of tombs, among which I walk.
But I dare not complain to you; for your grief must surpass all those one could feel or imagine.
Do you wish me to speak of myself, my dear Edmond? Well, I am engrossed in a work that gives me much pain, – it is the preface to Bouilhet’s book. I have glided over the biographical part as much as possible. I shall write more at length after an examination of his works, and still more upon his (or our) literary doctrines.
I have re-read all that he ever wrote. I have run through our old letters. I have found a series of souvenirs, some of which are thirty years old. It is not very cheerful work, as you may imagine! And besides, here at Croisset, I am pursued by his phantom, which I find behind every bush in the garden, on the divan in my study, and even among my garments – in my dressing-gown, which sometimes he used to wear.
I hope to think less about him when this sad work is finished, – in about six weeks. After that I shall try to re-write Saint Antony, although my heart is not in it now. You know well that one always writes with the thought of some particular person in view.
The particular person being, for me, no more, my courage fails me.
I live alone here with only my mother, who grows visibly older from day to day. It has become impossible to hold any serious conversation with her, and I have no one to whom I can talk.
I hope to go to Paris in August, and then I shall see you. But where shall you be? Write to me about yourself sometimes, my poor Edmond! No one pities you more than I. I embrace you warmly.
TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday, June 26, 1870.
Someone forgets her old troubadour, who has just come from the funeral of a friend. Of the seven friends that used to gather at the Magny dinners, only three remain! I am stuffed with coffins, like an old churchyard! I have had enough of it, frankly!
Yet in the midst of all this, I go on working! I finished last night the preface to my poor Bouilhet’s book. I intend to see whether some means may not be found to produce a comedy of his in prose. After that I shall take up Saint Antony once more.
And you, dear master, what has become of you and yours? My niece is in the Pyrenees, and I live here alone with my mother, who grows more and more deaf, so that my existence is far from lively. I should go to some warmer climate. But to do that I have neither time nor money. So I must erase and re-write, and dig away as hard as possible.
I shall go to Paris early in August. I shall stay here through October, in order to see the performance of Aïssé. My absence will be limited to a week at Dieppe about the end of the month. These are my projects.
The funeral of Jules de Goncourt was very sad. Théo was there and shed floods of tears.
TO MADAME REGNIER
Thursday evening, 7 o’clock, 1871.
Dear Madame: I have had to occupy me during the last few weeks
First: the arrangements regarding Bouilhet’s tomb;
Second: plans about his monument;
Third: looking after his volume of poems, which has just gone to press;
Fourth: finding an engraver to make his portrait;
Fifth: all my time for two weeks was taken up with Aïssé, I shall read it to-morrow to the actors. The rehearsals will begin next Saturday, and the play will be produced about the first of January.
I was obliged to leave Croisset so unexpectedly that my servant and my belongings will not arrive until three days later. A detailed account of the intrigues I have had to demolish would fill a volume.
I have engaged the actors. I have worked myself on the costumes at the Cabinet des Estampes; in short, I have not had a moment’s rest for two weeks; and this petty life, so exasperating and so busy, will last at this rate at least two full months.
What a world! I am not surprised that it killed my good Bouilhet! Besides, I have re-written my preface to his books, as it displeased me in its former state.
I beg you, for heaven’s sake, to give me a little liberty for the moment because with the best will in the world, it is impossible for me to do everything at once. I must attend first to the most pressing affairs. Besides, you are wrong to wish to publish now. What good will it do? Where would you find readers?
I do not hide from you the fact that I find rather unjust your amiable reproaches regarding the voyage to Mantes. Why can you not understand that it would be very painful to me to go to Mantes? Every time I pass before the buffet, I turn away my head! Nevertheless, I will keep my promise. But it would be easier for me to go from Paris to Mantes than to stop there in passing. Do not be vexed with me any longer; pity me, rather!
TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday, April 16, 1872.
Dear good master: I ought to have replied at once to your first letter, so sweet and tender. But I was too sad. The physical force to do it failed me.
To-day, at last, I have begun to hear the birds sing and to notice the green leaves. The sunshine no longer irritates me, which is a good sign. If I could only follow my inclination to travel, I should be saved.
Your second letter (that of yesterday) moved me to tears. How good you are! What a kind heart! I have no need of money just at present, thank you. But if I were in need of it, I should certainly ask you for it.
My mother left Croisset to Caroline, on condition that I should retain my apartments there. So until the complete liquidation of the succession, I shall remain here. Before deciding upon the future, I must know what I shall have to live upon; after that, we shall see.
Shall I have the courage to live absolutely alone in a solitary place? I doubt it. I am growing old. Caroline cannot live here now. She has two places already, and the house at Croisset is expensive to keep up.
I believe that I shall give up my lodgings in Paris. Nothing calls me there any more. All my friends are dead, and the last, my poor Théo, is not likely to be here long. I fear it! Ah, it is hard to make oneself over at fifty years!
I have realised during the last two weeks that my poor good mamma was the being I have loved most! To lose her is like tearing away a part of my own body.
TO THE BARONESS LEPIC
At my hermitage,September 14 (the monthcalled Boédromion by theGreeks), 1872.
I take up my pen to write to you, and, shutting myself up in the silence of my study, I permit myself, O beautiful lady, to burn at your feet some grains of purest incense!
I say to myself: She has gone to the new Athens with the foster-sons of Mars! Their limbs are covered with brilliant blue, while I wear a rustic coat! Glittering swords dangle at their sides, while I carry only my pens! Plumes ornament their heads, while I have scarcely any hair! Many cares and much study have ravished from me that crown of youth – that forest which the hand of Time, the destroyer, strips from our brows.
This is the reason why my breast is torn by blackest jealousy, O lovely lady!
But your missive, thank the gods! came to me like a refreshing breeze, like a veritable perfume of dittany.
If I could only have the certainty of seeing you, at no distant time, amid our fields, settled near us! The rigour of the approaching blasts of winter would be softened by your presence.
As to the political outlook, your anxieties are, perhaps, greater than they need be. We must hope that our great national historian will close, for a time, the era of revolutions. May we see the doors of the temple of Janus shut forever! That is the desire of my heart, as a friend of the arts and of innocent gaiety.
Ah, if all men, fleeing the pomp of courts and the agitations of the Forum, would listen to the simple voice of nature, there would be only happiness here below, the dances of shepherds, fond embraces beneath the trees on one side and another – here, there, everywhere! But my ideas run away with me.
Will Madame your mother devote herself always to the occupations of Thalia? Very well! She proposes to face the public in the house of Molière. I comprehend that, but I believe it would be better (in the interest of her dramatic lucubration) if I myself should take this fruit of her muse to the director of that establishment. Then, as soon as I should arrive in the capital, I should make my toilet, call my servant and command him to go and find a coach for me in the public square; I should enter the vehicle, drive through the streets, arrive at the Théâtre Française, and finish by finding our man. All this would be for me only the affair of a moment!
In declaring myself, Madame, your unworthy slave, I depose
PRUD’ HOMME.
TO EMILE ZOLA
Croisset, near Rouen, June 3, 1874.
I have read it —La Conquête de Plassans– read it all at one breath, as one swallows a glass of good wine; then I ruminated over it, and now, my dear friend, I can talk sensibly about it. I feared, after the Ventre de Paris, that you would bury yourself in the “system” in your resolution. But no! You are a good fellow! And your latest book is a fine, swaggering production!
Perhaps it fails in making prominent any special place, or having a central scene (a thing that never happens in real life), and perhaps also there is a little too much dialogue among the accessory characters. There! in picking you to pieces carefully, these are the only defects I discover. But what power of observation! what depth! what a masterly hand!
That which struck me most forcibly in the general tone of the work was the ferocity of passion underlying the surface of good-fellowship. That is very strong, old friend, very strong and broad, and well sustained.
What a perfect bourgeois is Mouret, with his curiosity, his avarice, his resignation, and his flatness! The Abbé Faujas is sinister and great – a true director! How well he manages the woman, how ably he makes himself her master, first in taking her up through charity, and then in brutalising her!
As to her (Marthe), I cannot express to you how much I admire her, and the art displayed in developing her character, or rather her malady. Her hysteric state and her final avowal are marvellous. How well you describe the breaking-up of the household!
I forgot to mention the Tronches, who are adorable ruffians, and the Abbé Bouvelle, who is exquisite with his fears and his sensibility.
Provincial life, the little gardens, the Paloque family, the Rastoil, and the tennis-parties, – perfect, perfect!
Your treatment of details is excellent, and you use the happiest words and phrases: “The tonsure like a cicatrice;” “I should like it better if he went to see the women;” “Mouret had stuffed the stove,” etc.
And the circle of youth – that was a true invention! I have noted many other things on the margins, viz.:
The physical details which Olympe gives regarding her brother; the strawberry; the mother of the abbé ready to become his pander; and her old trunk.
The harshness of the priest, who waves away the handkerchief of his poor sweetheart, because he detects thereon “an odour of woman.”
The description of the sacristy, with the name of M. Delangre on the wall – the whole phrase is a jewel.
But that which surpasses everything, that which crowns the whole work, is the end! I know of nothing more powerful than that dénouement. Marthe’s visit at her uncle’s house, the return of Mouret, and his inspection of the house! One is seized by fear, as in the reading of some fantastic tale, and one arrives at this effect by the tremendous realism, the intensity of truth. The reader feels his head turned, in sympathy with Mouret.
The insensibility of the bourgeois, who watches the fire seated in his armchair, is charming, and you wind up with one sublime stroke: the apparition of the soutane of the Abbé Serge at the bedside of his dying mother, as a consolation or a chastisement!
There is one bit of chicanery, however. The reader (that has no memory) does not know by instinct what motive prompts M. Rougon and Uncle Macquart to act as they do. Two paragraphs of explanation would have been sufficient.
Never mind! it is what it is, and I thank you for the pleasure it has given me.
Sleep on both ears, now your work is done!
Lay aside for me all the stupid criticisms it draws forth. That kind of document interests me very much.
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Dieppe, July 28, 1874.
My dear friend: As Saturday is for you a kind of consecrated day, and as I could be in Paris only one day, which was last Saturday, I shall not be able to see you on your return from Helvetia.
Know, then, that Le Sexe Faible was enthusiastically received at the Cluny Theatre, and it will be acted there after Zola’s piece, that is, about the last of November.
Winschenk, the director of this little box of a theatre, predicts a great pecuniary success. Amen!
It goes without saying, it is the general opinion that I lower myself in making my appearance in an inferior theatre. But this is the story: Among the artists engaged by Winschenk for my play was Mlle. Alice Regnault. He feared that she would be taken by the Vaudeville Theatre, and that the Vaudeville would not allow her to appear in my play. Will you be kind enough to inform yourself discreetly of the state of the case when you are in Paris?
I shall return to Croisset Friday evening, and Saturday I shall begin Bouvard et Pécuchet. I tremble at the prospect, as one would the night before embarking for a voyage around the world!
All the more reason why we should meet and embrace.
TO MAURICE SAND
Croisset, Sunday, June 24, 1876.
You have forestalled me, my dear Maurice! I wished to write to you, but I waited until you should be a little more free, more alone. I thank you for your kind thought.
Yes, there are few of us left now. And if I do not remain here long, it is because my former friends have drawn me to them.
This has seemed to me like burying my mother a second time. Poor, dear, great woman! What genius and what a heart! But she lacked nothing; it is not she who calls for pity!
What shall you do now? Shall you remain at Nohant? That dear old house must seem terribly empty to you. But you, at least, are not alone. You have a wife – a rare woman! – and two exquisite children. While I was with you there, I felt above all my sadness, two desires: to run away with Aurore, and to kill Monsieur …! That is the truth: it is useless to try to analyse the psychology of the thing.
I received yesterday a very tender letter from the good Tourgueneff. He, too, loved her! But who did not love her? If you had beheld the grief of Martine in Paris! It was overwhelming.
Plauchut is still at Nohant, I suppose. Tell him I love him after seeing him weep so bitterly.
And let your own tears flow freely, my dear friend! Do not try to console yourself – it would be almost impossible. Some day you will find within yourself a deep and sweet certainty that you were always a good son, and that she knew it well. She spoke of you as a blessing.
And after you shall have joined her once more, and after the great-grandchildren of the grandchildren of your two little daughters also shall have rejoined her, and when for a long time people have ceased to talk of the things and the persons that surround us at present – in some centuries to come – there will still be hearts that will palpitate at her words! People will read her books, will ponder over her thoughts, will love as she loved.
But all that does not give her back to you! With what shall we sustain ourselves, then, if pride fails us, and what man can feel more of that for his mother than yourself?
Now, my dear friend, adieu! When shall we meet again? For I feel an insatiable desire to talk of her!
Embrace Madame Maurice for me, as I embraced her on the stairs at Nohant, also your little ones.
Yours, from the depths of my heart.
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Night of August 28, 1876.
Your letter has rejoiced me, young man! But I advise you to moderate yourself, in the interest of literature.
Take care! all depends upon the end one wishes to attain. A man who has accredited himself an artist has no right to live like other men.
All that which you tell me about Catulle Mendès does not surprise me at all. He wrote to me the day before yesterday, to ask me to give him gratis the fragments of the Château des Cœurs, and also the unedited stories that I had just finished. I replied that it was quite impossible, which is true. Yesterday I wrote him a rather sharp letter, as I was indignant at the article on Renan. It attacked him in the grossest fashion, and there was also some humbug about Berthelot. Have you read it, and what do you think of it? In short, I said to Catulle, first, that I wished him to efface my name from the list of his collaborators; and, second, not to send me his journal any more! I do not wish to have anything in common with such fellows! It is a very bad set, my dear friend, and I advise you to do as I have done – let them entirely alone. Catulle will probably reply to my letter, but my decision is taken, and that is an end of it. That which I cannot pardon is the base democratic envy.
The tiresome article on Offenbach goes to the extremest limits about his comic spirit. And what stupidity! I mean the joke that was invented by Fiorantino in 1850, and is still alive to-day!
In order to make a triad, add the name of Littré, the gentleman who pretends that we are all descended from apes; and last Friday the butchery of Sainte-Beuve! Oh, the idiocy of it!
As to myself, I am working very hard, seeing no one, reading no journals, and bawling away like a maniac in the seclusion of my study. I pass the whole day, and almost the whole night, bent over my table, and admire the sunrise with great regularity! Before my dinner (about seven o’clock) I splash about in the bourgeoise waves of the Seine. —À propos of health, you do not appear to me to look very ill. All the better! Think no more about it!
TO GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Wednesday night, 1880.
My dear friend: I do not know yet what day De Goncourt, Zola, Alphonse Daudet and Charpentier will come here to breakfast and dine, and perhaps to sleep. They must decide this evening, so that I may know by Friday morning. I think they will come on Monday. If your eye will permit you then, kindly transport your person to the dwelling of one of these rascals, learn when they expect to leave, and come along with them.
Should they all pass Monday night at Croisset, as I have only four beds to offer, you will take that of the femme de chambre– who is absent just now.
Commentary: I have conjured up so many alarms and improbabilities regarding your malady, that I should be glad, purely for my own satisfaction, to have you examined by my Doctor Fortin, a simple health officer, but a man I consider very able.
Another observation: If you have not the wherewithal to make the journey, I have a superb double louis at your service. To refuse through mere delicacy would be a very stupid thing to do!
A last note: Jules Lemaître, to whom I have promised your protection in regard to Graziani, will present himself at your place. He has talent and is a true littérateur, – a rara avis, to whom we must give a cage larger than Havre.
Perhaps he too will come to Croisset on Monday; and as it is my intention to stuff you all, I have invited Doctor Fortin, so then he may extend his services to the sick ones!
The festival would lack much in splendour if my “disciple” were not there.
Thy old friend.
P.S. – I received this morning an incomprehensible letter, four pages long, signed Harry Alis. It appears that I have wounded him! How? In any case, I shall ask his pardon. Vive the young bloods!
I have re-read Boule de Suif, and I maintain that it is a masterpiece. Try to write a dozen stories like that, and you will be a man! The article by Wolff has filled me with joy! O eunuchs!
Madame Brainne has written me that she was enchanted with it. So did Madame Lapierre!
You will remember that you promised me to make some inquiries of D’Aurevilly. He has written this of me: “Can no one persuade M. Flaubert not to write any more?” It might be a good time now to make certain extracts from this gentleman’s works. There is need of it!
How about the Botanique? How is your health? And how goes the volume of verse?
Sarah Bernhardt seems to me gigantic! And the “fathers of families” petition for the congregations!
Decidedly, this is a farcical epoch!