The Nabob. Alphonse Daudet
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Daudet could have found little justification this side of Timon of Athens. In the description of the Caisse Territoriale given by Passajon this note is relieved by a delicate irony, but seems still somewhat incongruous. One turns more willingly to the description of Jansoulet’s sitting down to play ecarte with Mora, to the story of how he gorged himself with the duke’s putative mushrooms, and to similar episodes and touches. In the matter of effective and ironically turned situations few novels can compare with this; indeed, it almost seems as if Daudet made an inordinate use of them. Think of the poor Nabob reading the announcement of the cross bestowed on Jenkins, and of the absurd populace mistaking him for the ungrateful Bey! As for great dramatic moments, there is at least one that no reader can forget—the moment when Jansoulet, in the midst of the speech on which his fate depends, catches sight of his old mother’s face and forbears to clear himself of calumny at the expense of his wretched elder brother. The situation may not bear close analysis, but who wishes to analyze? Or who, indeed, wishes to indulge in further comment 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. Perhaps the adventures of the mountain-climbing hero of the Midi, combined with his previous exploits as a slayer of lions—his experiences as a colonist in Port-Tarascon need scarcely be considered—will prove, in the lapse of years, to be the most solid foundation of that fame which even 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 Queen Frederique’s life is unfolded or the growing power of characterization displayed in her, in the loyal Merault, in the facile, decadent Christian, can make up for the lack of broadly human appeal in the general subject-matter of a book which was so sympathetically written as to appeal alike to Legitimists and to Republicans. Good as Kings in Exile is, it is not so effective a book as The Nabob, nor such a unique and marvellous work of art as Numa Roumestan, due allowance being made for the intrusion of sentimentality into the latter. Daudet thought Numa the “least incomplete” of his works; it is certainly inclusive enough, since some critics are struck by the tragic relations subsisting between the virtuous discreet Northern wife and the peccable, expansive Southern husband, while others see in the latter the hero of a comedy of manners almost worthy of Moliere. If Numa represents the highest achievement of Daudet in dramatic fiction or else in the art of characterization, The Evangelist proved that his genius was not at home in those fields. Instead of marking an ordered advance, this overwrought study of Protestant bigotry marked not so much a halt, or a retreat, as a violent swerving to one side. Yet in a way this swerving into the devious orbit of the novel of intense purpose helped Daudet in his progress towards naturalism, and imparted something of stability to his methods of work. Sapho, which appeared next, was the first of his novels that left little to be desired in the way of artistic unity and cumulative power. If such a study of the femme collante, the mistress who cannot be shaken off—or rather of the man whom she ruins, for it is Gaussin, not Sapho, that is the main subject of Daudet’s acute analysis—was to be written at all, it had to be written with a resolute art such as Daudet applied to it. It is not then surprising that Continental critics rank Sapho as its author’s greatest production; it is more in order to wonder what Daudet might not have done in this line of work had his health remained unimpaired. The later novels, in which he came near to joining forces with the naturalists and hence to losing some of the vogue his eclecticism gave him, need not detain us.
And now, in conclusion, how can we best characterize briefly this fascinating, 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, he nearly outgrew romance, he never accepted unreservedly the canons of naturalism. He obviously does not belong to the small class of the supreme writers of fiction, for he has no consistent or at least profound philosophy of life. He is a true poet, yet for the main he has expressed himself not in verse, but in prose, and in a form of prose that is being so extensively cultivated that its permanence is daily brought more and more into question. What is Daudet, and what will he be to posterity? Some admirers have already answered the first question, perhaps as satisfactorily as it can be answered, by saying, “Daudet is simply Daudet.” As for the second question, a whole school of critics is inclined to answer it and all similar queries with the curt statement, “That concerns posterity, not us.” If, however, less evasive answers are insisted upon, let the following utterance, which might conceivably be more indefinite and oracular, suffice: Alphonse Daudet is one of those rare writers who combine greatness with a charm so intimate and appealing that some of us would not, if we could, have their greatness increased.
W. P. TRENT.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Alphonse Daudet was born at Nimes on the 13th of May, 1840. He was the younger son of a rich and enthusiastically Royalist silk-manufacturer of that town, the novelist, Ernest Daudet (born 1837), being his elder brother. In their childhood, the father, Vincent Daudet, suffered reverses, and had to settle with his family, in reduced circumstances, at Lyons. Alphonse, in 1856, obtained a post as usher in a school at Alais, in the Gard, where he was extremely unhappy. All these painful early experiences are told very pathetically in “Le Petit Chose.” On the 1st of November, 1857, Alphonse fled from the horrors of his life at Alais, and joined his brother Ernest, who had just secured a post in the service of the Duc de Morny in Paris. Alphonse determined to live by his pen, and presently obtained introductions to the “Figaro.” His early volumes of verse, “Les Amoureuses” of 1858 and “La Double Conversion” of 1861, attracted some favourable notice. In this latter year his difficulties ceased, for he had the good fortune to become one of the secretaries of the Duc de Morny, a post which he held for four years, until the popularity of his writings rendered him independent. To the generosity of his patron, moreover, he owed the opportunity of visiting Italy and the East. His first novel, “Le Chaperon Rouge,” 1863, was not very remarkable, and Daudet turned to the stage. His principal dramatic efforts of this period were “Le Dernier Idole,” 1862, and “L’OEillet Blanc,” 1865. Alphonse Daudet’s earliest important work, however, was “Le Petit Chose,” 1868, a very pathetic autobiography of the first eighteen years of his life, over which he cast a thin veil of romance. After the death of the Duc de Morny, Daudet retired to Provence, leasing a ruined mill at Fortvielle, in the valley of the Rhone; from this romantic solitude, among the pines and green oaks, he sent forth those exquisite studies of Provencal life, the “Lettres de mon Moulin.” After the war, Daudet reappeared in Paris, greatly strengthened and ripened by his hermit-existence in the heart of Provence. He produced one masterpiece after another. He had studied with laughter and joy the mirthful side of southern exaggeration, and he created a figure in which its peculiar qualities should be displayed, as it were, in excelsis. This study resulted, in 1872, in “The Prodigious Feats of Tartarin of Tarascon,” one of the most purely delightful works of humour in the French language. Alphonse Daudet now, armed with his cahiers, his little green-backed books of notes, set out to be a great historian of French manners in the second half of the nineteenth century. His first important novel, “Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine,” 1874, enjoyed a notable success; it was followed in 1876 by “Jack,” in 1878 by “Le Nabob,” in 1879 by “Les Rois en Exil,” in 1881 by “Numa Roumestan,” in 1883 by “L’Evangeliste,” and in 1884 by “Sapho.” These are the seven great romances of modern French life on which the reputation of Alphonse Daudet as a novelist is mainly built. They placed him, for the moment at all events, near the head of contemporary European literature. By this time, however, a physical malady, which Charcot was the first to locate in the spinal cord, had begun to exhaust the novelist’s powers. This disease, which took the form of what was supposed to be neuralgia in 1881, racked him with pain during the sixteen remaining years of his life, and gradually destroyed his powers of locomotion. It spared the functions of the brain, but it cannot be denied that after 1884