Anatole France

When the friend remarked that he himself, under similar circumstances, had plainly announced his practical adherence to a party, but at the same time his dissent from its doctrine, France turned to some ladies who were present, and said, laughing: "Is he not impossible? As honest and obstinate as a donkey!"

For more than half of his life France undoubtedly agreed with his Abbé Coignard, who had an affectionate contempt for mankind, and who would not have signed the Declaration of the Rights of Man, not a line of it, "because of the sharply defined and unjust distinction made in it between man and the gorilla." He in those days inclined, like Coignard, to the belief that men are mischievous animals who can be kept under control only by force or cunning.

Even many years later, after he has proclaimed himself a democrat, he makes his mouthpiece, Bergeret, say to his dog: "To-morrow you will be in Paris. It is an illustrious and noble city. The nobility, to tell the truth, is not common to all its inhabitants. It is, on the contrary, to be found in only a very small number of the citizens. But a whole town, a whole nation, exists in a few individuals who think with more power and more justice than the rest." And later, in the same book, when Biquet, with gaping jaws and flaming eyes, has flown at the heels of the clever workman who has been setting up Bergeret's book-shelves, his master explains to him that what exalts a nation is not the foolish cry that resounds in the streets, but the silent thought which is conceived in a garret, and one day changes the face of the earth.

France does not share the reactionary's fear of the power of the masses. But if he does not fear it, it is not because of their wisdom. It is because of their caution. He knows that fear of the unknown renders universal suffrage a perfectly safe institution. He has made too good use of his eyes and his reasoning powers to have more reverence for the sovereign people than for any of the other sovereigns to whom men throughout the ages have offered homage and flattery. He knows that knowledge is sovereign, not the people. He knows that a foolish cry, though taken up by thirty-six millions of voices, does not cease to be foolish, and that truth is irresistible and will make itself ruler of the earth, though it may be perceived and proclaimed only by a single man, and though millions may unite and shout in chorus against his "individualism."

France is no optimist. He has seen too much declension and apostasy around him in France and Europe generally, to believe in the fable of uninterrupted progress. He has lived through times of universal indifference and apathy, when no sting was sharp enough to stir men to think, much less to act. When men's souls are hungering and thirsting after unrighteousness, it is of little use offering them a refreshing draught of culture. As is said of the "people" in Bergeret: "It is not easy to make an ass which is not thirsty drink." France knows, too, what popularity means. He has good reasons for making one of his principal characters say: "If the crowd ever takes you lovingly into its arms, you will soon discover the vastness of its impotence and of its cowardice." And we have elsewhere his quiet, witty explanation of the election of a Nationalist candidate for the Municipal Council and the defeat of the Republican. The Nationalist candidate was entirely ignorant of all the subjects connected with the office, and this ignorance stood him in good stead; it rendered his oratory more spontaneous and eloquent. The Republican, on the contrary, lost himself in technical questions and details. Although he knew his public, he harboured some illusions regarding the intelligence of the electors who had nominated him. From a certain respect for them, he dared not venture on too much humbug, and entered into explanations. Consequently he seemed cold, obscure, tiresome – and all support was withdrawn.

But, on the other hand, France is no pessimist. He knows and says of the France of to-day: "The weak are in the wrong. That is the sum of our morality, my friend. Do you suppose that we are on the side of Poland or Finland? No, no! That is not the way the wind blows at present!" But he also knows that the earth will not finally belong to armed barbarity. Alone, unarmed, naked, truth is stronger than everything. Might and violence oppose it in vain. It strikes at injustice and annihilates it. The word of man changes the world. The alliance of strong reasons and noble thoughts is an indissoluble alliance, and against its onslaught nothing can stand. Bergeret, the tranquil philosopher, is absolutely certain of the final victory of reason. "The visions of the philosopher have in all ages aroused men of action, who have set to work to realise them. Our thoughts create the future. Statesmen work after the plans which we leave behind us."

Certain it is that the future is hidden from us. But we must, as France says, work at it as the weavers work who produce the Gobelin tapestry without seeing the pictures which they are weaving. Nor is it altogether true that the future is hidden. Or, granting it to be so to us, "we can conceive of more developed beings to whom to-morrow is realised as yesterday and to-day are. It makes it the easier to imagine beings who perceive simultaneously phenomena which appear to us separated by a long interval of time, when we remember that our own eyes, looking up to the night sky, receive, mingled beams of light which have left different stars at intervals of centuries, and centuries of centuries."

A man holding such views as these may be claimed as an adherent by both the Radical and the Conservative party, as Ibsen was for a time in Scandinavia. France actually was incorporated in the Conservative party. As late as 1897 he was the candidate for the Academy whom the Conservative party, the Dukes, opposed to Ferdinand Fabre, an author hostile to the power of the Church.

Highly valuing moderation and tact, he at that time detested his future companion in arms, Zola – detested him, indeed, without moderation – wrote: "I do not envy him his disgusting celebrity. Never has a man so exerted himself to abase humanity and to deny everything that is good and right. Never has any one so entirely misunderstood the human ideal." There is more love of good taste here than appreciation of genius. It must be remembered that France afterwards publicly recanted this and many similar utterances. He did so in the beautiful and heartfelt speech which he made at Emile Zola's grave; but he had done it long before.

He overlooked the genius of the man who was to become his best comrade in arms because of that man's bad taste and exaggerations, and himself exaggeratedly praised the men with whom he was afterwards compelled to engage in mortal combat, and of whose narrowness and weaknesses he afterwards had ample experience.

He wrote in serious earnest: "I do not believe that more intelligent men than Paul Bourget and Jules Lemaître can ever have existed."

He had no perception then of Bourget's fear of hell, or of Lemaitre's want of moral equilibrium. Here is his testimonial to the latter, the future Nationalist fanatic: "He is one of the men who bear ill-will to none, but are long-suffering and benevolent. His is a fearless spirit, a smiling soul; he is all tolerance."

When this was written Jules Lemaître was already malicious and ungenerous, though perhaps not yet base. A few years later he was, as Vice-President of the Patrie Française, leader of the band which kept Dreyfus prisoner in the île du Diable and advocated the coup d'état against Loubet. A few years later Paul Bourget had returned to the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and was attacking with the utmost violence every progressive movement, even the enlightenment of the people and instruction for the working man. These were France's models of intelligence.

Compared with the attitude of these men, France's own attitude during the past six years may almost be termed exemplary.

It may be that as the popular orator – a career for which he was not intended by nature – he has proclaimed himself rather more strongly convinced than he is in his inmost soul; this does not prevent its being the real man who has come to light during the last decade – the man who was concealed behind the thinker's play of thought and the poet's metamorphoses.

Suddenly he stripped himself of all his scepticism and stood forth, with Voltaire's old blade gleaming in his hand – like Voltaire irresistible by reason of his wit, like him the terrible enemy of the power of the Church, like him the champion of innocence. But, taking a step in advance of Voltaire, France proclaimed himself the friend of the poor in the great political struggle.

That he did thus come forth was undoubtedly a consequence of the circumstance that the whole civilisation of France and her old position as protector of justice appeared to him to be endangered during a crisis in public morality; but, in the absence of some instigation from without, he might quite possibly have remained inactive. The person who influenced him more than any other at this time was a lady in whose house he has for years been the most welcome of daily visitors – whose house is, indeed, his second home.

France did not hesitate to bring the whole weight of his influence publicly to bear when it came in France to a trial of strength between a few chosen spirits on the one side, and the army, the Church, those in authority, and the misled masses on the other.

In his capacity as combatant France has written the last two volumes of his Histoire Contemporaine, published his speeches in the Cahier de la Quinzaine, spoken at the unveiling of Renan's statue and at Zola's grave, and written the Introduction to Combe's collected speeches It is one of the signs of the times that he should now be the man to whom the Prime Minister of France applies to have his utterances placed before the French reading public. It shows what a degree of influence is ascribed to him, and how definitely he has espoused a cause.

France has at times introduced himself into his books. He takes the retiring and wise element in his nature, and out of it creates Monsieur Bergeret. He takes the serene sensualism, and of it constructs Trublet, the doctor of the Histoire Comique. He takes his intensely beauty-loving ego, and we have the sculptor Dechartre in Le Lys Rouge. He introduces himself into this same novel in the person of the author Paul Vence, almost with the mention of his name – this, of course, to prevent its being observed that Anatole France is also the principal character, the sculptor; just as Mary Robinson is named in the book to conceal her identity with Miss Bell, the English authoress in it, and Oppert is referred to to prevent its being said that he is Schmoll, the antiquarian, as he undoubtedly is.

When Vence is introduced to us in the heroine's drawing-room we are told: "She considered Paul Vence to be the one really clever man who came to her house. She had appreciated him before his books had made him famous. She admired his profound irony, his sensitive pride, his talent, ripened in solitude."

And to such an extent is Paul Vence France himself that when, towards the end of the book, he remarks: "He was a wise man who said, 'Let us give to men for their witnesses and judges Irony and Compassion'" – an utterance to be found in more than one of France's books – Madame Martin-Bellême answers: "But, Monsieur Vence, it was yourself who wrote that."

Profound irony is, then, the first quality which he attributes to himself.

We have seen how this irony, unlike Renan's, is indirect; we only catch a glimpse of it through the naïveté of another person.

We are told, for instance, in Thaïs, of the heroine, a Grecian courtesan: "This woman showed herself at the festival games, and did not hesitate to dance publicly in such a manner that her excessively agile and artful movements suggested the most dreadful passions and excited to them." This is felt and spoken from the standpoint of a monk.

Pafnucius, in the same book, sees the devil torturing souls. The narrator of the occurrence expresses no doubt or incredulity; it is nowhere remarked that this was a vision, not reality. No! "Small green devils pierced his lips and his throat with red-hot irons."

This naïveté is a rare quality in French literature, the literary art of the French being (in spite of Lafontaine) as a rule not naïve, but even in Molière, and throughout his whole century, as well as the next, perfectly self-conscious. Yet naïveté is a powerful means of producing artistic effects – the indirect process which requires the reader's own co-operation being undoubtedly always more effective than the direct communication, which does not impart the useful little impetus to the intellect.

France, in his historical tales, writes ingenuously, as a contemporary would have spoken and thought. We are most conscious of this in the series collected and published under the title of Clio. Simple tales they are, yet this book, which bears the name of the goddess of history, concerns itself with some of the greatest historical personages – Homer, Cæsar, Dante, Joan of Arc, Napoleon. Of these only Homer and Napoleon are directly presented to us.

When the tale, The Singer of Kyme, first appeared, its seemingly arbitrary invention displeased many. Why take up this legend of the blind or half-blind old man? Why give this insignificant figure, this poor creature going from place to place earning his bread by his songs, the awe-inspiring name of Homer? But upon maturer reflection we acknowledge how correctly France has seen, and what wisdom there is in his view of the matter. The singer of his tale is unmistakably akin to the bards described in the Homeric poems; and it is only natural that his house should have been cramped and low in comparison with that of his neighbour, the wealthy soothsayer.

The secret of the art of France's historical style is, as already said, that he thinks and speaks in the spirit of the age which he is portraying, seems to share its views, to accept its beliefs and superstitions, its prejudices and ideas, without a trace of irony or of fatuity, but with an artistic skill which forcibly brings out the contrast between the spirit of those ages or countries and ours.

Take, for instance, in the story just mentioned, the way in which he communicates to the reader, by means of his description of the old singer's methods, his own conception of the genesis of the Homeric poems. When a king requests the old man to sing, but to let it be the truth that he sings, he answers: "What I know of the heroes I have from my father, who learned it from the Muses themselves; for of old the Muses were wont to visit the divine singers in caves and woods. I shall mingle no lies with the old histories." And the author adds: "He spoke thus from prudence. For to the songs which he had learned in his childhood he was in the habit of adding verses which he had taken from other songs or found within himself. But he did not confess this, fearing Jest he should be blamed for it. The chieftains almost always asked for the old tales, which they believed to have been dictated by a divinity, and mistrusted the new songs. Therefore he carefully concealed the origin of those which he had composed himself. And as he was a very good poet, and carefully observed the established customs, his verses were in no wise distinguishable from those of his forefathers; they resembled them in form and beauty, and from the moment of their conception were worthy of immortal fame." The singer is, we observe, praised, in the spirit of the age, for the quality which, according to modern ideas, detracts from his worth.

In precisely the same manner is the dialogue entitled Farinata degli Uberti thrown into relief. With his unerring critical instinct France has selected the most interesting of all the figures in Dante's Inferno. And this figure has for us one element of interest in addition to those which it possessed for Dante? namely, the diametrical opposition between Farinata's views and ours. In our days it is a very honourable thing to fight for one's countrymen against foreign troops, and an abominable thing to stir up civil war. When Farinata is justifying himself for having fought on the side of Siena against his Florentine fellow countrymen, he says: "Undoubtedly it would have been better for us Florentines to have fought out the quarrel amongst ourselves. Civil war is such a fine and noble thing, a thing of such delicacy, that the implication of foreigners in it ought, if possible, to be avoided… I do not maintain the same of wars with other States. They are useful, at times necessary, enterprises, undertaken to defend or to extend the frontiers of a country or to further its commerce. But as a rule there is neither much advantage nor much honour to be gained by fighting in these vulgar wars. For them a sensible people prefers to employ mercenary troops, under experienced leaders, who can do a great deal with a small force."

To appreciate the characteristic qualities of this dialogue the reader should compare it with the corresponding versified dialogue by Robert Browning, in which the old Italian passionateness finds expression. Browning's language is more vehement than France's, more spasmodic and more spontaneous.

France, as a rule, produces his effect entirely by the contrast between the inner logic of men's feelings in these old days and in ours.

The most fully elaborated of the tales is that entitled Commius, the Atrebate, which describes the career of a Gallic chieftain in the time of Cæsar. Although the author appears to have drawn as freely on his imagination here as in The Singer of Kyme, he has in this case built upon a sound historical foundation. The reader with Cæsar's Commentaries fresh in his memory will remember what they tell about the Atrebate chief, Commius. To France it has been a congenial task to probe the mind of a barbarian of those days – to describe Commius's care-free life as the chief of his tribe, to show how he is won over by the Romans and feels flattered by being called Cæsar's friend, but is gradually led to regard the loss of freedom as a disgrace, until his feeling towards the Romans becomes the barbarian's fierce hatred. Most readers will feel that not until they made acquaintance with this story had they a thorough understanding of the difference between the Roman methods of warfare and those of the barbarians, and in especial of the skill in engineering which had been acquired by the little dark soldiers who made war more with the pickaxe and the spade than with the javelin and the sword. Very masterly is the description of the barbarian king's astonishment and affright when, after an absence of a few years, he returns to his poor capital, Nemetoeenna (the Arras of to-day), and finds it transformed by the Romans into a magnificent town, with temples and colonnades. He cannot but believe them possessed of magic power. We follow him with keen interest as he wanders through the town disguised as a beggar; we watch his surprise at the paintings on the houses, of the subjects of which he understands nothing; we see him murder a young Roman who is sitting in the amphitheatre composing Latin verses in a Greek metre to his Phoebe. Here again France produces his effect by the silent throwing into relief of the difference between men's ideas in those days and in ours. He writes as follows, for instance, of the prefect of the Roman horse, Caius Volucenus Quadratus, who resolves to invite Commius to a friendly conference, and to have a deadly blow dealt him from behind whilst he himself is taking him by the hand.

"He was a good general, learned in mathematics and mechanics. In times of peace, under the terebinth trees of his Campanian villa, he conversed with other high officials upon the laws, manners, and customs of different races. He lauded the virtues of olden days, extolled liberty, read Greek history and philosophy. He was distinguished for nobility and refinement of mind. And as Commius the Atrabate was a barbarian, hostile to Rome and the Roman cause, he considered it right and wise to have him assassinated."

Although it is only in faint silhouette that Cæsar is presented to us, we are conscious here, as elsewhere, that Anatole France is deeply interested in him. He admires him without any cordial sympathy. His Abbé Coignard, who muses upon Cæsar, is repelled by his cruelty. The cutting off of the Gauls' hands at Uxellodunum is, of course, not forgotten. Yet Cæsar was more merciful than any other Roman general. But France, following his usual custom, puts into one book all that tells in favour of Cæsar, and into another what tells against him.

He has done the same with Napoleon. In Le Lys Rouge the shallowness of Napoleon's character is dwelt upon – nay, insisted upon to such an extent that poor Napoleon III. is actually maintained to be a more interesting figure. In the short story, La Muiron (the ship which conveyed Bonaparte from Egypt to France), we are, on the other hand, told of the young commander's inclination to mysticism, of his mysterious belief in his own future. And France puts into his mouth the following profound words: "No man escapes his fate. Brutus, who was a mediocrity, believed in the power of the human will. A greater man does not harbour that illusion. He sees the necessity which limits him… Children are rebellious. A great man is not. What is a human life? The curve traced by a projectile." Bonaparte says this at the very moment when, with implicit faith in his own luck, he is venturing out on the Mediterranean among the English cruisers. The whole short story is based, as it were, upon his premonition of coming greatness.

But here, as always, France, with the unerring taste of the really great writer, avoids cheap effect. India-rubber in hand, he goes over all the outlines, erasing, toning down.

It is characteristic, and in harmony with the naïveté of the style, that naïveté should form a distinguishing quality of the most lifelike characters which France has produced. Another of their qualities is often strongly developed, sometimes very shameless sensuality, which is not repugnant to him, and which it amuses him to delineate.

Take Abbé Coignard in La Reine Pédauque, a man with an astoundingly able mind, a childlike soul, and a shameless body. Take Choulette in Le Lys Rouge, a childlike, drunken, shameless genius. This portrait of Verlaine we find again, with variations, in the Gestas of L'Étui de Nacre. In all three there is a mixture of simplicity and cynic voluptuousness – a half-childlike absence of shame.

Abbé Coignard undermines everything established with his doubts and leads an exceedingly loose life, but remains faithful in the very smallest particular to the Catholic religion. Even more childlike than he himself is his disciple, Tourne-broche. Choulette is the old, ruined Bohemian, eternally young as the poet, melting with drunken compassion for the poor and the mean – as is said of Coignard, "half a St. Francis of Assisi, half an Epicurean, a big, believing, shameless child."

It is in virtue of this combination – naïveté and shamelessness – that Riquet the dog becomes one of France's best characters. No man is as devoid of shame as a dog, and no child is more childlike.

Biquet has great difficulty in seeing things from Monsieur Bergeret's point of view. He flies at the heels of the worthy carpenter, merely because that workman wears a blouse and carries tools; he is steeped in all the old prejudices of the feudal age.

But his "Thoughts" are a little masterpiece of canine innocence and compressed irony. Let me give a few examples.

"Men, animals, and stones grow larger as they approach me, and become enormous when they are quite close. It is not so with me. I remain the same size wherever I am."

"The smell of a dog is a delicious smell."

"My master keeps me warm when I lie behind him in his arm-chair. That is because he is a god. In front of the fire there is a warm hearthstone. The hearthstone is divine."

"I speak when I choose. From my master's mouth, too, issue sounds which have a kind of meaning. But their meaning is less plain than that which I express with my voice. Everything uttered by my voice means something. But from my master's mouth comes much senseless noise."

"There are carriages which horses draw in the streets. They are terrible. There are carriages which move of themselves, puffing loudly. These, too, are full of malice."