MARIE-CLAIRE AND MARIE-ROSE: A LITERARY COINCIDENCE.
FEW books have been more widely written about of recent years than "Marie-Claire," by Marguerite Audoux. Thousands who have never seen it have been interested in the life-story of its authoress, the poor dressmaker who suddenly found herself famous. Indeed, the popularity of the book, though fully justified by its merits, has been largely due to its origin. It seemed so wonderful that an illiterate semp- stress should write a book, and still more wonderful that it should be a good one. Now that " Marie-Claire " is available in English, and Marguerite Audoux promises to be as well known here as in her own country, it may not be without interest to recall that a precisely similar thing happened sixty years ago.
If it he strange that an uneducated woman should write a successful romance, it is stranger still that it should happen twice. That two women with sixty years between them, the latter knowing nothing of her predecessor, should not only pass through the same experience but write practically the same book, and reap the same success. Both orphans born under unhappy circumstances, and brought up by nuns ; both dress- makers after working on a farm ; both write their auto- biographies in novel form ; both find influential godfathers, reach the public, and become the literary heroines of their day. Substitute " Marie-Rose " for "Marie-Claire," Reine Garde for Marguerite Audoux, Alphonse de Lamartine for Octave Mirbeau, and the stories are almost identical, with little more than the differences due to lapse of time, the change of convention and costume. If anything, the older writer has the advantage, for Lamartine was, after all, something more than Octave Mirbeau, and "Marie-Rose" was crowned by the real Academie and not by an imitation.
Lamartine himself, in the preface dedicating his "Genevieve" (Paris, 1851) to Reine Garde, describes their first meeting in 1846, and reports a long and interesting discussion with her on literature for the people. He was staying at Marseilles on his way to his Voyage en Orient, when word was brought him that a poorly-dressed woman desired to see him. He saw a woman of between thirty-six and forty, still young-looking, her attractive countenance betraying "timidity and self- distrust mingled with confidence in the goodness of others . . . . in short, the image of the kindness she carries in her attitude as in her heart, and hopes to find in her fellow- creatures. . . . She drew from her pocket three or four little pieces of verse, written on coarse paper, crumpled by contact with her needle-case, thimble and scissors. . . . I read them under my breath. I was astonished, touched, by what I read. It was naive, graceful, felt, the tranquil palpitation of her heart grown harmony in her ear. It resembled her own aspect—modest, pious, tender, and sweet. It was . . . . the poetry of a woman who feels her way to the expression of her sentiments upon the more dulcet cords of an unfamiliar instrument."
It was natural that Reine Garde should put forward her verse first of all in seeking an opinion from the poet she admired. Even if she had begun to write " Marie-Rose " in 1846, it was certainly not complete. On his return from the East, Lamartine wrote of Reine Garde in the ametitutionnel and the Consealer du Teeple, quoting from her poems and drawing down upon her the thunders of the Detiats and the _Revue des Deux _blondes. He also assisted her to find a publisher, and in 1851 appeared a modest little volume : Essais poetigues, par Reine Garde, couturiere a Aix-en- Provence. This brought her many friends—Beranger, who corresponded with her and held her in high esteem ; Desire Nisard, who wrote a preface for her Nouvelles Poesies (Paris, 1861) ; and Mignet, who encouraged her to finish "Marie- Rose," joined with Lamartine in helping her to get it published, and brought it before the Academic.
"Marie-Rose, histoire de deux jeunes orphe2ines, par _Reins Garde, couturiere a Aix-en-Provence," was published at Paris in 1856, crowned by the Academie and accorded a prize of 1000f. On the strength of the prize she came to Paris, was much feted, and, had she desired, might have settled down to the career of femme de lettres. But the Paris of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Renan, Idiclielet, overwhelmed the simple and unspoilt provincial, and Reine Garde retired to Nimes, her native town, there, except for a few slight intervals, to live out her life. "Marie-Rose," like "Marie-Claire," is avowedly autobio- graphical and written in the first person, but the narrator is not the heroine. It is dedicated to the good sisters of the HOpital-gendral of Nimes, who had filled a mother's place to the poor orphan, the " charitonne," who suffered the same pains and miseries and dreamed the same dreams as Marguerite Audoux was to know sixty years later. But the Realists and the Russians lay far in the future ; Hugo reigned as a god, with Lamartine but little below him, and " Marie-Rose " has naturally none of the artful artlessness of " Marie-Claire." It is retrospective, full of adult reflections and rounded periods. Yet it is by no means so inflated in style as it might easily have been, and indeed may be read with pleasure even now. Nor is it quite so tearful as was the taste of the time.
At the orphanage Reine Garde is taught to sew, but little else. With eighty other girls she has to make and mend for the five or six hundred inmates of the hospital, which is at the same time a poor-house and an asylum. The years are like centuries, all the more that the child is shy, reserved, can confide in nobody, however kind they may be. She has never so much as heard of poetry or verse by name, but begins to express herself to herself in song, naively echoing the hymns she had been taught.
After her first communion little Reine finds an outlet for her tenderness in caring for the foundlings, the "enfants abandonnes," received by the hospital only to be sent on to the Cevennes, "where nurses are more numerous and cheaper," packed five or six at a time in baskets slung across a pack- horse, "like young lambs on their way to the slaughter-house."
While on a farm, a few years later, she meets the one romance of her life—an incomplete, inconsequent little romance, much resembling that of "Marie-Claire." A shepherd makes love to her and she does not know what it means; after her return to town she hears that he is happy with another. A homely little idyll, told tenderly and well.
But, as we have said, the narrator is not the real heroine of the book. Marie-Rose is another orphan to whom Reine Garde is more than a sister, protecting her, teaching her to read, giving up a good place to her; and to Marie-Rose is allotted the one love adventure of the book. The son of her employer falls in love with her, and his mother resists only long enough to give value to her consent. Just as the young couple are about to be married, however, the accidental discovery of a paper reveals the mother of Marie-Rose as one of those women for whom no sympathy had, as yet, been demanded on the stage, and towards whose children even romance must, as yet, be pitiless, and so poor Marie-Rose has to die. This is the one artificial episode in the book, due to convention instead of experience.
We have spoken of the difference between " Marie-Rose " and " Marie-Claire " as being one of time and convention. There is something more, however : the older book is warmer, more sympathetic in its outlook, casting far more light on the life of its time. For this last quality alone it is still worth
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