FRENCH FICTION OF TODAY.*
AT first sight, the idea of Madame Van de Velde's book seems not otherwise than a happy one. Literature, as she truly says, is becoming more and more cosmopolitan ; and it is the many now, not the few, who read French novels in England, enterprising publishers supplying more or less feeble transla- tions to those who find the originals beyond them. It seems to us that the effect of all this must be the weakening of the artistic sense, as well as the moral sense, in minds that make a habitual study of the most worthless foreign literature in translations. However, the tide cannot be checked ; and thus a book like the one before us has its value. It is evident that Madame Van de Velde has had access to a great deal of in- formation regarding the French writers of the present day, and has made a very complete study of their books. She now makes it her business to introduce the English public to these writers and their books, giving a full description both of the men themselves and of their literary work, and speaking very plainly of the moral as well as the artistic qualities of the latter. We can imagine the accomplished writer smiling a little as she advises the excellent English what to read, what to avoid, and what, even if they read it themselves, to remove out of the way of young girls. The English may take her advice, or they may not ; her book may even have an exactly contrary effect to what she intends, in the way of checking the circulation of some books and increasing that of others ; but certainly it will teach the ordinary reader a great deal that he did not know before.
It seems a pity that a book which really contains much useful information, and a certain amount of intelligent criticism, should follow the modern fashion, the interviewing craze, and lower itself to the level of a society paper by giving us these "celebrities at home," with details of personal gossip which have little or no bearing on their intellectual life and work. For instance, it is no particular help to those who read or do not read Zola, to know how he talks to his friends, "stretched at full length on a broad divan," or strolls out after lunch, "a cap pulled over his ears, a big silk handkerchief carelessly knotted round his throat." The most scientific of critics would not make much of details like these. Neither does it add a great deal to our appreciation of "Gyp," to know the colour of her hair, or how "she romps by the hour with her two sturdy little boys and a sickly dog picked up lathe street, who looks up at her with grateful eyes." French people, as Madame Van de Velde herself points out, set a high value on their foyer; the expression, with them, answers to "home" in English. A Frenchman's foyer is too sacred, too private a thing to be unveiled in his novels ; his home life is hardly believed in by foreigners, for the reason that he never describes it. This feeling seems worthy of respect ; and even in writing of French novelists, it would be as well to remember that they are human, and have their intimate home-lives as well as other people, lives which may as well keep their national character, unless they choose themselves to bare them to the public eye.
• French Fiction of To-Dan. By Madame 31. El. Van de Vekle, Author of "Random Becollections of Courts and Society," &o. 2 vols., with 12 Portraits. London: Trischler and (ho. 1891.
It is a pity too, we think, that Madame Van de Velde should have filled up her sketches of these writers with long trans- lated extracts from their works. Sometimes it is difficult to understand the view with which she has chosen these extracts. She gives them as specimens of style; but this a translation can never be. It can only be a specimen of idea and method ; any further attraction depends on the beauty and perfection of the language in which it is made. And Madame Van de Velde's English prose, though good enough in its way, is not, we think, capable of reproducing "Pierre Loti," or even Henri Lavedan, though the sketch in the Galerie des Antiques is perhaps the most telling extract in itself, and the best as translation, to be found in these two volumes. It is curious that the writer herself quotes, " Traduttore ! traditore," and talks of the " deflorating manipulation of the translator." She even declines to attempt any translations from some few writers, whom she considers "absolutely untranslatable." From an artistic point of view, we should have been glad if her scruples had been carried a little further. Here she in- cludes some of the lighter stories of Gustave Droz. Among his works she does not mention Tristesses et Sourires, which to our minds has a singular charm of its own.
The book, in spite of its smart outside appearance, has not been very well or carefully produced. It is full of misprints and faults in spelling ; the sentences are often oddly con- structed, and would have been the better for a little revision. Such an odd mistake as the following seems unaccountable :- "A hundred years ago, a Conseiller du Parlement du Roi in- vited the poet Ronsard to Medan, with other celebrities of the day." The book is illustrated with large photographs of the twelve best-known French novelists of the last ten years, and these are so characteristic and interesting as to make the book worth having, apart from its other attractions. But here, again, comes in careless arrangement. Instead of being in their right places, nearly everybody finds himself in the middle of a literary sketch of somebody else. The novelists seem to have been playing at some childish game, in the course of which M. Henri Lavedan takes his stand on M. Paul Bourget's around, M. Georges Ohnet on M. Lavedan's, M. Victor Cher- buliez on M. Ohnet's, M. Octave Fenillet on M. Cherbuliez's. M. Zola, who might have expected to be in his right place, looks rather contemptuously displeased at being forced to invade M. Gustave Droz. The same thing is carried on through both volumes. M. de Alaupassant and "Pierre Loti " are safely out of the way as frontispieces. We believe that M. Alphonse Daudet is the only man who occupies the place made for him.
However, and in spite of all defects, this is both an interesting and an amusing book. It is also instructive. Its idea is well carried out, though perhaps with some un- necessary developments. It professes to be a guide to the French fiction of to-day, and it is as good as its profession. If there is a good deal of gossip, there is also a good deal of really useful information, and the critical remarks are, as a Tule, well founded and true. This is especially the case, we think, in the chapter on M. Zola. Writers like " Ary Ecilaw," and the romans a clef with which they make bad worse in society, are treated with too much tolerance. In -fact, on the whole, Madame Van de Velde seems to us rather too lenient to the faults of the great modern literature of which she here gives a very complete description.
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