The Nabob Read online

  Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

  THE NABOB

  by Alphonse Daudet

  Translated By W. Blaydes

  INTRODUCTION

  Daudet once remarked that England was the last of foreign countries towelcome his novels, and that he was surprised at the fact, since forhim, as for the typical Englishman, the intimacy of home life had greatsignificance. However long he may have taken to win Anglo-Saxon hearts,there is no question that he finally won them more completely than anyother contemporary French novelist was able to do, and that when buta few years since the news came that death had released him from hissufferings, thousands of men and women, both in England and in America,felt that they had lost a real friend. Just at the present moment onedoes not hear or read a great deal about him, but a similar lull incriticism follows the deaths of most celebrities of whatever kind, andit can scarcely be doubted that Daudet is every day making new friends,while it is as sure as anything of the sort can be that it is death, notestrangement, that has lessened the number of his former admirers.

  "Admirers"? The word is much too cold. "Lovers" would serve better, butis perhaps too expansive to be used of a self-contained race. "Friends"is more appropriate because heartier, for hearty the relations betweenDaudet and his Anglo-Saxon readers certainly were. Whether it was thatsome of us saw in him that hitherto unguessed-at phenomenon, a FrenchDickens--not an imitator, indeed, but a kindred spirit--or that othersfound in him a refined, a volatilized "Mark Twain," with a flavour ofCervantes, or that still others welcomed him as a writer of naturalisticfiction that did not revolt, or finally that most of us enjoyed himbecause whatever he wrote was as steeped in the radiance of his ownexquisitely charming personality as a picture of Corot's is in the lightof the sun itself--whatever may have been the reason, Alphonse Daudetcould count before he died thousands of genuine friends in England andAmerica who were loyal to him in spite of the declining power shown inhis latest books, in spite even of the strain which _Sapho_ laid upontheir Puritan consciences.

  It is likely that a majority of these friends were won by the two greatTartarin books and by the chief novels, _Fromont_, _Jack_, _The Nabob_,_Kings in Exile_, and _Numa_, aided by the artistic sketches and shortstories contained in _Letters from my Mill_ and _Monday Tales (Contesdu Lundi)_. The strong but overwrought _Evangelist_, _Sapho_--which ofcourse belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not fromthe insular point of view--and the books of Daudet's decadence, _TheImmortal_, and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gainedhim many. His delightful essays in autobiography, whether in fiction,_Le Petit Chose (Little What's-his-Name)_, or in _Thirty Years of Paris_and _Souvenirs of a Man of Letters_, doubtless sealed more friendshipsthan they made; but they can be almost as safely recommended as the morenotable novels to readers who have yet to make Daudet's acquaintance.

  For the man and his career are as unaffectedly charming as his style,and more of a piece than his elaborate works of fiction. A sunnyProvencal childhood is clouded by family misfortunes; then comes a yearof wretched slavery as usher in a provincial school; then the inevitablejourney to Paris with a brain full of verses and dreams, and thebeginning of a life of Bohemian nonchalance, to which we Anglo-Saxonshave little that is comparable outside the career of Oliver Goldsmith.But poor Goldsmith had his pride wounded by the editorial tyranny of aMrs. Griffiths. Daudet, by a merely pretty poem about a youth andmaiden making love under a plum-tree, won the protection of the EmpressEugenie, and through her of the Duke de Morny, the prop of the SecondEmpire. His life now reads like a fairy-tale inserted by some jocularelf into that book of dolors entitled _The Lives of Men of Genius_.A _protege_ of a potentate not usually lavish of his favours, and avaletudinarian, he is allowed to flit to Algiers and Corsica, to enjoyhis beloved Provence in company with Mistral, to write for the theatres,and to continue to play the Bohemian. Then the death of Morny seems toturn the idyl into a tragedy, but only for a moment. Daudet's delicate,nervous beauty made his friend Zola think of an Arabian horse, butthe poet had also the spirit of such a high-bred steed. Years ofconscientious literary labour followed, cheered by marriage with a womanof genius capable of supplementing him in his weakest points, and thenthe war with Prussia and its attendant horrors gave him the larger anddeeper view of life and the intensified patriotism--in short, the finalstimulus he needed. From the date of his first great success--_Fromont,Jr., and Risler, Sr._--glory and wealth flowed in upon him, whileenvy scarcely touched him, so unspoiled was he and so continuously andeminently lovable. One seemed to see in his career a reflection of hisluminous nature, a revised myth of the golden touch, a new version ofthe fairy-tale of the fair mouth dropping pearls. Then, as though grownweary of the idyllic romance she was composing, Fortune donned thetragic robes of Nemesis. Years of pain followed, which could not abatethe spirits or disturb the geniality of the sufferer, but did somewhatabate the power and disturb the serenity of his work. Then came theinevitable end of all life dramas, whether comic or romantic or tragic,and friends who had known him stood round his grave and listened sadlyto the touching words in which Emile Zola expressed not merely his owngrief but that of many thousands throughout the civilized world. Herewas a life more winsome, more appealing, more complete than any creationof the genius of the man that lived it--a life which, whether we know itin detail or not, explains in part the fascination Daudet exerts upon usand the conviction we cherish that, whatever ravages time may make amonghis books, the memory of their writer will not fade from the hearts ofmen. Many Frenchmen have conquered the world's mind by the power orthe subtlety of their genius; few have won its heart through thecatholicity, the broad sympathy of their genius. Daudet is one of thesefew; indeed, he is almost if not quite the only European writer who hasof late achieved such a triumph, for Tolstoi has stern critics as wellas steadfast devotees, and has won most of his disciples as moralist andreformer. But we must turn from Daudet the man to Daudet the author of_The Nabob_ and other memorable novels.

  If this were a general essay and not an introduction, it would be properto say something of Daudet's early attempts as poet and dramatist. Hereit need only be remarked that it is almost a commonplace to insist thateven in his later novels he never entirely ceased to see the outer worldwith the eyes of a poet, to delight in colour and movement, to seizeevery opportunity to indulge in vivid description couched in a stylemore swift and brilliant than normal prose aspires to. This bentfor description, together with the tendency to episodic rather thansustained composition and the comparative weakness of his characterdrawing--features of his work shortly to be discussed--partly explainshis failure, save in one or two instances, to score a real triumphwith his plays, but does not explain his singular lack of sympathy withactors. Nor was he able to win great success with his first bookof importance, _Le Petit Chose_, delightful as that mixture ofautobiography and romance must prove to any sympathetic reader. He wasessentially a romanticist and a poet cast upon an age of naturalismand prose, and he needed years of training and such experience as thePrussian invasion gave him to adjust himself to his life-work. Suchadjustment was not needed for _Tartarin de Tarascon_, begun shortlyafter _Le Petit Chose_, because subtle humour of the kind lavished inthat inimitable creation and in its sequels, while implying observation,does not necessarily imply any marked departure from the romantic andpoetic points of view.

  The training Daudet required for his novels he got from the sketchesand short stories that occupied him during the late sixties and earlyseventies. Here again little in the way of comment need be given, andthat little can express the general verdict that the art displayedin these miniature productions is not far short of perfect. The twoprincipal collections, _Lettres de mon Moulin_ and _Contes du Lundi_,together with _Artists' Wives (Les Femmes d'Artistes)_ a
nd parts atleast of _Robert Helmont_, would almost of themselves suffice to putDaudet high in the ranks of the writers who charm without leaving uponone's mind the slightest suspicion that they are weak. It is truethat Daudet's stories do not attain the tremendous impressiveness thatBalzac's occasionally do, as, for example, in _La Grande Breteche_,nor has his clear-cut art the almost disconcerting firmness, thesurgeon-like quality of Maupassant's; but the author of the ironical_Elixir of Father Gaucher_ and of the pathetic _Last Class_, to name noothers, could certainly claim with Musset that his glass was his own,and had no reason to concede its smallness.

  As we have seen, the production of _Fromont jeune et Risler aine_marked the beginning of Daudet's more than twenty years of successfulnovel-writing. His first elaborate study of Parisian life, while itindicated no advance of the art of fiction, deserved its popularitybecause, in spite of the many criticisms to which it was open, it was athoroughly readable and often a moving book. One character, Delobelle,the played-out actor who is still a hero to his pathetic wife anddaughter, was constructed on effective lines--was a personage worthy ofDickens. The vile heroine, Sidonie, was bad enough to excite disgustedinterest, but, as Mr. Henry James pointed out later, she was noteffective to the extent her creator doubtless hoped. She paled besideValerie Marneffe, though, to be sure, Daudet knew better than to attemptto depict any such queen of vice. Yet, after all, it is mainly thecompelling power of vile heroines that makes them tolerable, and neitherSidonie nor the web of intrigue she wove can fairly be said to becharacterized by extraordinary strength. But the public was and isinterested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and moneyit brought him. His next book, _Jack_, was not so popular. Still, itshowed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that biastowards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet's besetting weakness,was too plainly visible. Its author took to his heart a book which thegeneral reader found too long and perhaps overpathetic. Some of us,while recognising its faults, will share in part Daudet's predilectionfor it--not so much because of the strong and early study made of theartisan class, or of the mordantly satirical exposure of D'Argentonand his literary "dead-beats" (_rates_), or of any other of the specialfeatures of a story that is crowded with them, as because the ill-fatedhero, the product of genuine emotions on Daudet's part, excites cognateand equally genuine emotions in us. We cannot watch the throbbingengines of a great steamship without seeing Jack at work among them. Butthe fine, pathetic _Jack_ brings us to the finer, more pathetic _Nabob_.

  Whether _The Nabob_ is Daudet's greatest novel is a question that may bepostponed, but it may be safely asserted that there are good reasons whyit should have been chosen to represent Daudet in the present series.It has been immensely popular, and thus does not illustrate merely thetaste of an inner circle of its author's admirers. It is not so subtlea study of character as _Numa Roumestan_, nor is it a drama the scene ofwhich is set somewhat in a corner removed from the world's scrutiny andfull comprehension, as is more or less the case with _Kings in Exile_.It is comparatively unamenable to the moral, or, if one will, thepuritanical, objections so naturally brought against _Sapho_. Itobviously represents Daudet's powers better than any novel written afterhis health was permanently wrecked, and as obviously represents fictionmore adequately than either of the Tartarin masterpieces, which belongrather to the literature of humour. Besides, it is probably the mostbroadly effective of all Daudet's novels; it is fuller of strikingscenes; and as a picture of life in the picturesque Second Empire it isof unique importance.

  Perhaps to many readers this last reason will seem the best of all.However much we may moralize about its baseness and hollowness, whetherwith the Hugo of _Les Chatiments_ we scorn and vituperate its charlatanhead or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola's_Debacle_, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the SecondEmpire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism andsplendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness andhaughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves theeyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck,have for us a fascination almost as great as they had for the gay andaudacious men and women who in them courted fortune and chased pleasurefrom the morrow of the _Coup d'Etat_ to the eve of Sedan. A nearlyequal fascination is exerted upon us by a book which is the best sort ofhistorical novel, since it is the product of its author's observation,not of his reading--a story that sets vividly before us the politicalcorruption, the financial recklessness, the social turmoil, the publicostentation, the private squalor, that led to the downfall of an empireand almost to that of a people.

  Daudet drew on his experiences, and on the notes he was alwaysaccumulating, more strenuously than he should have done. He assuresus that he laboured over _The Nabob_ for eight months, mainly in hisbed-room, sometimes working eighteen consecutive hours, often wakingfrom restless sleep with a sentence on his lips. Yet, such is the ironyof literary history, the novel is loosely enough put together to havebeen written, one might suppose, in bursts of inspiration or else moreor less methodically--almost with the intention, as Mr. James has noted,of including every striking phase of Parisian life. For it is a seriesof brilliant, effective episodes and scenes, not a closely knit drama.Jenkins's visit to Monpavon at his toilet, the _dejeuner_ at theNabob's, the inspection of the OEuvre de Bethleem--which would havedelighted Dickens--the collapse of the fetes of the Bey, the Nabob'sthrashing Moessard, the death of Mora, Felicia's attempt to escape thefuneral of the duke, the interview between the Nabob and Hemerlingue,the baiting in the Chamber, the suicide of that supreme man of tone,Monpavon, the Nabob's apoplectic seizure in the theatre--these and manyother scenes and episodes, together with descriptions and touches, standout in our memories more distinctly and impressively than the charactersdo--perhaps more so than does the central motive, the outrageousexploitation of the naive hero. For from the beginning of his career tothe end Daudet's eye, like that of a genuine but not supereminent poet,was chiefly attracted by colour, movement, effective pose--in otherwords, by the surfaces of things. One may almost say that he was more ofa landscape engineer than of an architect and builder, although one mustat once add that he could and did erect solid structures. But thereader at least helps greatly to lay the foundations, for, to drop themetaphor, Daudet relied largely on suggestion, contenting himself withthe belief that a capable imagination could fill up the gaps he leftin plot and character analysis. Thus, for example, he indicated andsuggested rather than detailed the way in which Hemerlingue finallytriumphed over the Nabob, Jansoulet. To use another figure, he drew thespider, the fly, and a few strands of the web. The Balzac whose bustlooked satirically down upon the two adventurers in Pere la Chaise wouldprobably have given us the whole web. This is not quite to say thatDaudet is plausible, Balzac inevitable; but rather that we strollwith the former master and follow submissively in the footsteps of thelatter. Yet a caveat is needed, for the intense interest we take in thecharacters of a novel like _The Nabob_ scarcely suggests strolling.

  For although Daudet, in spite of his abounding sympathy, which is onereason of his great attractiveness, cannot fairly be said to be a greatcharacter creator, he had sufficient flexibility and force of genius toset in action interesting personages. Part of the early success of _TheNabob_ was due to this fact, although the brilliant description of theSecond Empire and the introduction of exotic elements, the Tunisian andCorsican episodes and characters, counted, probably, for not a little.Readers insisted upon seeing in the book this person and that more orless thinly disguised. The Irish adventurer-physician, Jenkins, wassupposed to be modelled upon a popular Dr. Olliffe; the arsenic pillswere derived from another source, as was also the goat's-milk hospitalfor infants. Felicia Ruys was thought by some to be Sarah Bernhardt,and originals were easily provided for Monpavon and the other leadingfigures. But Daudet confessed to only two important originals, and ifone does not take an author's word in such matters one soon finds one'sself in a maze of conjectures
and contradictions.

  The two characters drawn from life in a special sense--for Daudet, likemost other writers of fiction, had human life in general constantlybefore him--are Jansoulet and Mora, precisely the most effectivepersonages in the book, and scarcely surpassed in the whole range ofDaudet's fiction. The Nabob was Francois Bravay, who rose from povertyto wealth by devious transactions in the Orient, and came to grief inParis, much as Jansoulet did. He survived the Empire, and his relativesare said to have been incensed at the treatment given him in the novel,an attitude on their part which is explicable but scarcely justifiable,since Daudet's sympathy for his hero could not well have been greater,and since the adventurer had already attained a notoriety that was notlikely to be completely forgotten. Whether Daudet was as much at libertyto make free with the character of his benefactor Morny is anothermatter. He himself thought that he was, and he was a man of delicatesensitiveness. Probably he was right in claiming that the natural sonof Queen Hortense, the intrepid soldier, the author of the _Coupd'Etat_ that set his weaker half-brother on the throne, the dandy, thelibertine, the leader of fashion, the cynical statesman--in short, the"Richelieu-Brummel" who drew the eyes of all Europe upon himself,would not have been in the least disconcerted could he have known thatthirteen years after his death the public would be discussing him as theprototype of the Mora of his young _protege's_ masterpiece. In fact,it is easy to agree with those critics who think that Daudet's kindlynature caused him to soften many features of Morny's unlovely character.Mora does not, indeed, win our love or our esteem, but we confess him tohave been in every respect an exceptional man, and there is not a pagein which he appears that is not intensely interesting. He must be anunimpressionable reader who soon forgets the death-room scenes, thedestruction of the compromising letters, the spectacular funeral.

  Of the other characters there is little space to speak here. Nearly allhave their good points, as might be expected of the creator of his twofellow Provencals, Numa and Tartarin, the latter being probably theonly really cosmopolitan figure in recent literature; but some, like theHemerlingues, verge upon mere sketches; others, like Jansoulet's obesewife, upon caricatures. The old mother is excellently done, however, andMonpavon, especially in his suicide, is nothing short of a triumph ofart. It is the more or less romantic or sentimental personages that givethe critic most qualms. Daudet seems to have introduced them--De Gery,the Joyeuse family, and the rest--as a concession to popular taste, andon this score was probably justified. A fair case may also be madeout for the use of idyllic scenes as a foil to the tragical, forthe Shakespearian critics have no monopoly of the overworked plea,"justification by contrast." Nor could a French analogue of Dickenseasily resist the temptation to give us a fatuous Passajon, anebullient Pere Joyeuse--who seems to have been partly modelled on areal person--an exemplary "Bonne Maman," a struggling but eventuallytriumphant Andre Maranne. The home-lover Daudet also felt the necessityof showing that Paris could set the Joyeuse household, sunny in itspoverty, over against the stately elegance of the Mora palace, the wallsof which listened at one and the same moment to the music of a ball andthe death-rattle of its haughty owner. But when all is said, it remainsclear that _The Nabob_ is open to the charge that applies to all thegreater novels save _Sapho_--the charge that it exhibits a somewhatinharmonious mixture of sentimentalism and naturalism. Against thischarge, which perhaps applies most forcibly to that otherwise almostperfect work of art, _Numa Roumestan_, Daudet defended himself,but rather weakly. Nor does Mr. Henry James, who in the case of thelast-named novel comes to his help against Zola, much mend matters. Butthe fault, if fault it be, is venial, especially in a friend, though notstrictly a coworker, of Zola's.

  Naturally an elaborate novel like _The Nabob_ lends itself indefinitelyto minute comment, but we must be sparing of it. Still it is worth whileto call attention to the skill with which, from the opening page, theinterest of the reader is controlled; indeed, to the remarkable artdisplayed in the whole first chapter devoted to the morning rounds ofDr. Jenkins. The note of romantic extravagance is on the whole avoideduntil the Nabob brings out his check-book, when the money flies witha speed for which, one fancies, Daudet could have found littlejustification this side of Timon of Athens. In the description of the_Caisse Territoriale_ given by Passajon this note is relieved by adelicate irony, but seems still somewhat incongruous. One turns morewillingly to the description of Jansoulet's sitting down to play_ecarte_ with Mora, to the story of how he gorged himself with theduke's putative mushrooms, and to similar episodes and touches. In thematter of effective and ironically turned situations few novelscan compare with this; indeed, it almost seems as if Daudet made aninordinate use of them. Think of the poor Nabob reading the announcementof the cross bestowed on Jenkins, and of the absurd populace mistakinghim for the ungrateful Bey! As for great dramatic moments, there is atleast one that no reader can forget--the moment when Jansoulet, in themidst of the speech on which his fate depends, catches sight of his oldmother's face and forbears to clear himself of calumny at the expense ofhis wretched elder brother. The situation may not bear close analysis,but who wishes to analyze? Or who, indeed, wishes to indulge in furthercomment after the scene has risen to his mind?

  _The Nabob_ was followed by _Kings in Exile_; then came _Numa Roumestan_and _The Evangelist_; then, on the eve of Daudet's breakdown, _Sapho_;and the greatest of his humorous masterpieces, _Tartarin in the Alps_.It is not yet certain what rank is to be given to these books. Perhapsthe adventures of the mountain-climbing hero of the Midi, combinedwith his previous exploits as a slayer of lions--his experiences as acolonist in _Port-Tarascon_ need scarcely be considered--will prove, inthe lapse of years, to be the most solid foundation of that fame whicheven envious Time will hardly begrudge Daudet. As for _Kings in Exile_,it is difficult to see how even the art with which the tragedy of QueenFrederique's life is unfolded or the growing power of characterizationdisplayed in her, in the loyal Merault, in the facile, decadentChristian, can make up for the lack of broadly human appeal in thegeneral subject-matter of a book which was so sympathetically writtenas to appeal alike to Legitimists and to Republicans. Good as _Kingsin Exile_ is, it is not so effective a book as _The Nabob_, nor sucha unique and marvellous work of art as _Numa Roumestan_, due allowancebeing made for the intrusion of sentimentality into the latter. Daudetthought _Numa_ the "least incomplete" of his works; it is certainlyinclusive enough, since some critics are struck by the tragic relationssubsisting between the virtuous discreet Northern wife and the peccable,expansive Southern husband, while others see in the latter the hero ofa comedy of manners almost worthy of Moliere. If _Numa_ represents thehighest achievement of Daudet in dramatic fiction or else in the artof characterization, _The Evangelist_ proved that his genius was notat home in those fields. Instead of marking an ordered advance, thisoverwrought study of Protestant bigotry marked not so much a halt, or aretreat, as a violent swerving to one side. Yet in a way this swervinginto the devious orbit of the novel of intense purpose helped Daudet inhis progress towards naturalism, and imparted something of stability tohis methods of work. _Sapho_, which appeared next, was the first of hisnovels that left little to be desired in the way of artistic unity andcumulative power. If such a study of the _femme collante_, the mistresswho cannot be shaken off--or rather of the man whom she ruins, for itis Gaussin, not Sapho, that is the main subject of Daudet's acuteanalysis--was to be written at all, it had to be written with a resoluteart such as Daudet applied to it. It is not then surprising thatContinental critics rank _Sapho_ as its author's greatest production; itis more in order to wonder what Daudet might not have done in this lineof work had his health remained unimpaired. The later novels, in whichhe came near to joining forces with the naturalists and hence to losingsome of the vogue his eclecticism gave him, need not detain us.

  And now, in conclusion, how can we best characterize briefly thisfascinating, versatile genius, the most delightful humorist of his time,one of the most artistic story-tellers, one of the
greatest novelists?It is impossible to classify him, for he was more than a humorist, henearly outgrew romance, he never accepted unreservedly the canons ofnaturalism. He obviously does not belong to the small class of thesupreme writers of fiction, for he has no consistent or at leastprofound philosophy of life. He is a true poet, yet for the main he hasexpressed himself not in verse, but in prose, and in a form of prosethat is being so extensively cultivated that its permanence is dailybrought more and more into question. What is Daudet, and what will hebe to posterity? Some admirers have already answered the first question,perhaps as satisfactorily as it can be answered, by saying, "Daudet issimply Daudet." As for the second question, a whole school of critics isinclined to answer it and all similar queries with the curt statement,"That concerns posterity, not us." If, however, less evasive answers areinsisted upon, let the following utterance, which might conceivably bemore indefinite and oracular, suffice: Alphonse Daudet is one ofthose rare writers who combine greatness with a charm so intimate andappealing that some of us would not, if we could, have their greatnessincreased.

  W. P. TRENT.