" LES CELIBATAIRES "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Owing to a misunderstanding, my English publishers have published my recent novel Les Celibataires, under the title Lament for the Death of an Upper Class. I was not aware that the title of my book was going to be changed, and since the new title conveys a wrong impression to the British public I would be glad, through your agency, to correct it.
A year ago I wrote to the Journal des Debats of Paris the following lines "Those. who think that Lee Celibagaires is a satire of the nobility and who are pleased at seeing me portraying my old men as repre- • sentatives of the fall of the old French families, are absolutely wrong. The fact that my heroes are noblemen places a certain 'accentuation on their distresses and hobbies, but the background of those hobbies and distresses is the same as one might well find amongst the middle classes or even the common people."
The fact that I have, in my book, made some people of the upper class look ridiculous and childish does not imply that I am finding fault with a class of people amongst whom one can easily find today in France so many splendid gifts and virtues.
It is particularly painful to inc at the present moment, when the different classes of my country are opposed one against the other, that 'my novel should seem to have been written against one of these classes. That was never my
Previous page
