Walter Lionel George

“ There is not in the works of Anatole France a line devoted to love. Whether in The Red Lily or in The Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche, or in any of the episodes, “love” is either light and false and lying, or coarse and brutal, or limited by the passing efflorescence of a beauty that must die. He seems, like every other Frenchman I can think of, unable to understand what the Anglo-Saxon means by idealism in love, by that idealism so often made absurd by sentiment, but yet delightful, and distinguished from the impulse of a stag in rut. ”

“ The answer, which is not evident to everybody, is that the act of love is symbolic and that a husband, taken as a social base, is not comparable with a lover taken for love.6 That is true enough, but where fault must be found with the Gallic view is that there is not a single phrase in the book to show that Dechartre, represented as in the throes of extreme love, wishes to detach his mistress from her husband. He never suggests that he wants her to live with him always, that he wants her society, her presence, the subtle delight of hearing her walk in the room above. ”

“ He hates war because it is not good business for the soul of man; I do not think he is much upset by slaughter or starvation, for humanity must die somehow, but he knows that a war makes vile those who survive. ”

“ That is what he dreams as he sleeps on the white stone, the species of man evolving into another race possibly fine, possibly vile, but yet worth dreaming of because, as Mr Wells says, man is not final, and so long as a thing is not final it has the charm of a closed bud that conceals a flower the colour of which we do not know. Anatole France does not say whether the flower will burst forth gorgeous red or virginal white; it will be what it will be, and so best, for whatever its colour and its form it will be that thing which he loves in his quiet, smiling, sober way, the flower of life. ”

“ When the lovers meet in the beautiful Florentine pavilion one is never sure that theirs is a love feast: at any moment it may turn into an essay on the glazes of Botticelli. Anatole France must at one time have been conscious of this, for in one of his books, Histoire Comique, he made a great effort to tell the story of a little actress who threw over her actor lover for a young diplomat, and found after the suicide of the actor that never more could she come together with her new lover because in their tenderest moments she was haunted by the bloody spectre of the dead man. ”

“ This is just the straggling story of Bonnard, the old professor, who observes the world, interested in women, Benedictine chronicles, the Arc de Triomphe, cats and the love affairs of fourteenth-century queens. The old gentleman watches over the granddaughter of one whom he loved but never married. He behaves quite quixotically, protects her against a schoolmistress who ill treats her; at last he kidnaps her to make her happy, and all ends well in spite of a little tragedy when the girl marries and old Bonnard sells his books to give her a dowry. ”

“ That is poetry, though, as I have suggested before now, Anatole France, in spite of his great love of the beautiful, is too critical, too humorous, has too much detachment to be written down a poet. He loves the poets, notably Racine, and one does not quite see why. But he is not a poet because, I think, he is too remote; the blood of the earth does not flow in his veins, and it may be that if he were closely questioned he would confess that he thinks life very useful to literature. ”

“ But his theology is so intermingled with his human interests that at bottom he is a pagan; he loves beauty so well that he discovers it even in faith, and it is evident that he would have found much pleasure in the rites of the ancient Greeks. In his celebrated novel, Thais, he hails pagan beauty as he holds up for our contemptuous sympathy the sorrow of Paphnutius, the monk of Arsinoe. ”

“ Great things can be done by little men, done clumsily, cruelly, and yet somehow done.87 That is more or less what Anatole France shows in this book; the verdict of the people is not for him the voice of God, but this does not imply that the voice of the aristocrat is any more divine. He cannot help seeing that the democracy is ignorant, prejudiced, greedy, coarse-minded, and yet at the same time he finds in it the seeds of generosity and of that justice so much more costly than the mercy now and then vouchsafed with a fine gesture by those who dominate man. ”

“ I detest the word “spirituality,” and I hardly know what I miss in this French view of love that Anatole France holds, but I miss it. This view is not exactly: “One woman is as good as another,” but it certainly is: “One woman is as good as another if she is good-looking.” It is all flesh, and116 æsthetics, which do redeem the flesh, do not redeem it fully. The French heroine, beloved of Anatole France’s heroes, is merely Galatea animate; she is just the beautiful woman descended from her pedestal at the call of her chosen lover. ”

“ Anatole France is not exactly a literary man. He is not a literary man in the sense of Flaubert or Turgenev, for he is not content with being the god in the machine, he is always allowing you to see him guiding it; indeed in most of his work he is the god in the car. That is probably why Anatole France has never adopted classical form. He appreciates it, and in the many critical articles he has written he has praised just those people whose form was perfect ... but it is the sick man, not the robust man admires health. ”

“ Gallio is not joyous, for he has no illusions; he knows that “men will die, will kill every enemy,” that “human laws are daughters of anger and fear.” And he has official troubles, for the Jews are always indulging in religious wrangles, refusing to have images of the emperor in their temples. This gets Gallio into trouble, and he thinks it absurd, for “one should honour all religions, think them all holy.” But the wrangles of the Jews are forced on him, and he despairs of making them understand that they must manage their own silly business, that he is interested only in law and order. ”

“ This does not mean that Anatole France is throwing over any ideas; he is merely being more or less influenced by one side of his own self. His love of humanity has always made it difficult for him to enjoy the fruit he raised to his mouth if it occurred to him just then that other mouths might go hungry. ”

“ And that infamous one is not only the Catholic religion but religion itself. I do not want to raise an argument as to what is religion: in the sense in which Anatole France attacks it it is a precise faith in some creative and conscious spirit which manifests itself, not only in this world, but in some conceptive other world. Of that Anatole France will hear nothing. He can do without it; he is strong enough to stand alone, and to meet death “as one about to seek a great perhaps.” ”

“ The true Anatole France which hides under the sentimental old gentlemen, so cynical and so human, born so cold and to-day so young, is the irreverent, jolly, blasphemous Frenchman of the Middle Ages. I have said this often and quoted much in support because I want to make the English understand what is so difficult for them to understand: the Gaul and his joviality.120 Still I cannot resist quoting a story from Penguin Island, which I am compelled to condense:
There was once a king and he had a beautiful queen. ”

“ It is not easy to understand Anatole France because, like other men, he is neither good nor evil; he is merely what he is. I do not ask anyone to forgive him because he loved much, nor to try and understand, if that is the only way of forgiving him. ”

“ And so the book wanders on with the opinions of Bergeret, happy, like Æsop, in the freedom of his mind, in spite of the narrowness of his home, conscious that the State is honoured so long as it taxes the poor, and that the republic is easiest to live under because it does not govern much, that revolutions help none save the flourishing and the ambitious. ”

“ People like Captain Victor, Tudesco, bombastic, ebullient, Falstaffian people, move in our midst. Their creator is always poking fun at them; persistently he erects Aunt Sallies and then throws bouquets at them. He teases them because he loves them. It should be observed, however, and I do not want to be ill-natured about it, that Anatole France never pokes fun at the characters that embody his own personality.104 Bergeret, the other nice old gentlemen, Vence, Dechartre, are never absurd; they are amiable, scholarly, tender, generous, and have a strong sense of humour. ”

“ Anatole France advances few opinions, digresses not often; he tells the story simply and allows us to draw our own conclusions. Apart from the historical references, the book is as simple as Renan’s Life of Jesus, and as damaging. Anatole France is happiest when painting pictures of the enthusiastic mobs, swearing the oaths of men-at-arms and singing songs with the ribald women, painting pictures of the towns in the wars of the Middle Ages. At times, however, he cannot restrain himself, must discuss a side issue that interests him, such as the worship of virtue and of virgins. ”

“ He loves this Catholicism which he detests because, after all, while spreading among the people brute ignorance, infamous asceticism, prejudices and an intolerance resulting in a cruelty foreign to the tiger, it somehow, through the Dark Ages, kept burning the flame of the arts. ”

“ On Sundays I go among the people, I mix with the crowd that flows in the streets, I plunge into groups of men, women and children, which form round street-singers or before the booths at fairs; I touch dirty coats and greasy bodices ”

“ The sensuality of Anatole France is like sap arising in the trees, like the moth circling about the candle; it is joyous, frank, unashamed; the world and all that is in it is its toy. In this country it has become disgusting to like good food; you must not even talk of food, it is not done (and the result is English food, the laughing-stock of the universe) . But listen to Anatole France on food in Histoire Comique:
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“The Castelnaudary stew contains the preserved thighs of geese, whitened beans, bacon and a little sausage. ”

“ Mr Wells would have more than a glimmering if, unfortunately, he did not hold deep convictions about right and wrong, a weakness to which, in spite of all appearances, Mr Shaw also succumbs; but Anatole France alone upholds the ancient tradition of Voltaire, of Defoe and Swift. His satire is always effective because it is always light, always pointed and always smiling. He has none of the bitterness of Swift and therefore he is the truer cynic, for true cynicism is not fierce; it is always genial. He never labours a point ”

“ SATIRIST AND CRITIC If Anatole France is to be remembered—that is, for a while, which is perhaps all a man can hope—it will be as a critic and as a satirist. Whether he will be remembered longer than his contemporaries, Tolstoy or Mr Shaw, I do not know. Though he has delighted us, the race of delights is short and pleasures have mutable faces ”

“ That conscience tells him that however much beauty he may extract from it, this world, filled with wars, with cruelties, with factories, with ugly houses and ugly clothes, with mean prejudices, is a world for which he is responsible because he is a man. ”