EDMOND DE GONCOURT.
EDMOND DE GONCOURT'S death rings down the
curtain (so to say) upon the ancient school. A friend of Gavarni, a younger contemporary of Gautier, one of the five who dined at Magny's, he published his first work nearly half a century ago; and, as if to prove the continuity of his toil, the last volume of his " Journal " is still hot from the press. Being the legitimate heir of Balzac, he was also a godfather of modern realism, and he stands sponsor, with Flaubert and Stendhal, for the industry of Zola and the graver indiscretions of Medan.
From the very first he cultivated the ambition of an inno- vator. Associated with his brother, he was determined upon the invention of a new literature. In their eyes romance was dead, imagination discredited, the street the only proper field of observation. It was their purpose to produce an impres- sion of truth by a multiplicity of detail, and since, in their view, the elder Dumas had brought action into disrepute, they preferred a state of mind to a dramatic situation. " What- ever the critics may say," was Edmond de Goncourt's ambiguous boast, "my brother and I were the John the Baptist of modern nevrosity." A doubtful triumph, surely. and yet the Goncourts are not its only claimants.
But a new school of literature merges imperceptibly in the old, and "Charles Demailly," the earliest challenge of the Goncourts, is little else than the small change of Balzac. It is written with a more scrupulous study of phrase than the author of the " Comedie Hnmaine " bestowed upon his creations. The hero is dissected with a patience which the creator of Lucit n de Rubempre could only have despised. But in invention and in truth " L*Horeme de Lettres" (under which name " Charles Demailly " made its appearance) fell hopelessly below its magnificent model, " Illusions Perdues." None the less, the book was bitterly assailed and praised enthusiastically. Jules Janin, whom, in the character of Lonstea,u, Balzac had flayed alive, revenged himself upon the lesser talents, and denounced "Charles Demailly" as an outrage upon the craft of literature. Thereafter the Goncourts produced a series of romances, fresh sometimes in their material, and always in their alert and critical treatment. But their success was still a success of esteem, and even " Germinie Lacerteux," their masterpiece of workmanship and construction, has gained only a tardy and grudging popularity. And yet this tragedy of a housemaid deserved a better fate, for not merely is it composed with an almost Greek simplicity, not merely is it written with unfailing tact and reticence, but it proved one of the most prolific examples (for good or evil) of modern literature.
Jules de Goncourt died twenty-six years since, and the limits of the famous collaboration are ill-defined. Edmond has acknowledged his brother the finer master of style, and has claimed for himself a more fertile imagination. But it would be pedantic to pretend that "Les Freres Zemganno" differs in style or method from " Man ette Salomon," and though detractors have been eager to extol the genius of Jules, to the brother, who died but last week, belongs whatever there may be of praise or blame. Indeed, it was part of his loyalty to work until the end as though Jules were still there to counsel or reprove ; he wrote not merely as his judgment
dictated, but as he believed he would have written in collabora- tion. Realism being his aim, he was foredoomed to disap- pointment, and he has related, somewhat sadly, that his most successful passages were his own invention. Yet he was always loyal to what he believed the duty of observation. When he wrote "Les Freres Zemganno" he haunted the country fairs of his province. To catch the local colour of " La Faustin" he attended rehearsals at the Odeon, notebook in hand, though he had known the coulisses of the theatre for thirty years. And then Zola was certain that Athanassiadie, the old Greek of " La Faustin," was sketched from life ! And Athanassiadis is the one character of the book born in the author's brain ! How could you prove more conclusively the fatuity of realism ? When the masters of the craft deceive each other and themselves, is it not time to condemn an artifice, which was never completely sincere ? The first conditions of literature and art make realism an absurdity ; Zola himself, when he is not a pamphleteer, is an old romantigue ; and not even the pedant can proclaim it a. disgrace to invent what you could not possibly have seen.
Edmond de Goncourt, then, was a disappointed man. He would have invented a new literature, and be felt dimly that• there is safety only in tradition. He was an aristocrat by birth and temperament, an aristocrat who was even guilty of condescending to his art, and yet he hankered his life long after a popular success. He writes of sales and royalties like a bookseller—this Conservative, who generally contrives to. insult his public in a preface; and one presumes that his sales were never large nor his royalties generous. He was devoted to literature, the only "wife" (to use his own words) he ever knew, and he always looked through its achievement to an ultimate and immaterial effect. Even worse : for all his contempt of the world, there was in his nature a touch of the cabotin. Again and again the theatre repulsed him; but again and again this grand seigneur assailed the theatre, not frankly as a man to whom the drama was meat and drink, but imperiously as a gentleman claiming an inglorious success in the gutter.
To reveal the pathos of his life would be an indiscretion, had he not recorded day after day his own unhappiness. When his novels are forgotten, when the theatres know no longer those dramas, which never should have been written,. the "Journal" will be remembered as one of the amazing documents of the century. For in the pages of his "Journal"' Edmond de Goncourt revealed not only the indiscretions of his friends, but his own miseries and disappointments. The book is both above and below criticism. At the beginning, when Jules held the pen, it was simple, candid, and in- valuable. Even after Jules' death it contains the bones of history, and the description of Paris during the siege is the more moving, because it seems scarce deliberate. But as the years go by, Goncourt becomes more personal,. less considerate of others, until at last the reader convicts himself of eavesdropping. In every preface you are told that the sole object of the "Journal" is truth; but with the deliberate carelessness of the realist its author accepts the merest gossip, for gospel, and insults Swinburne (for example) on the tenth- hand authority of a youth who never saw the poet. In one aspect the book is a chronique seanclaleuse of the period; in another it is a storehouse of inaccurate "tit-bits." "The Protestants of Glasgow," says Goncourt, "cover their bird- cages with a cloth on Sundays, because on that day birds are not allowed to sing in Scotland." Now this astonishing jest is made in all simplicity of heart, for Goncourt was in- capable of humour, and furthermore it is made by a man. who proclaims publicly that the dominant ambition of his life is la vgrite absolue. Thus also he discusses the notorious English novel, entitled "Sarah Grand ; " thus also he tells you that, when one of his stories was appearing in Gil Blas, an admirer read it piece by piece through an opera-glass in. the office window. Doubtless the mischievous were eager to- deceive him and to see their deception in print, but his. credulity was equal to the most shameless assault, and doubt- less also he died believing that his popularity was immense in the Behring Straits, where they read " Germinie Lacer- teux " by the light of a lamp fed by blubber.
None of his novels presents a stranger psychological problem, than his career. An apostle of style, a master of epigram, a,. champion of correct observation, he composed, in the interest. of truth, a "Journal," which is a monument of inaccuracy.. 'By his own confession, he betrays confidences, he reveals the grossness and stupidity of his friends. Nor does he for a moment spare himself ; indeed, he is gibbeted on every page, a miracle of arrogance and self-consciousness. Yet he was a .man of taste and erudition. His studies of the last century are unequalled in modern literature. He was a collector of genius, and he did more than any other to reveal Japan to Europe, not only in his ceaseless quest of prints, but in such masterpieces of biography as " Hokusai" and a Outamoro." Yet he composed the " Journal," and one hopes, for the credit • of intelligence, that posterity will pronounce him a better historian of the eighteenth than of his own century. For, despite his protestation, Goncourt knew no realism save • romance, and was even forced to invent the world wherein he dived.
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