m. clemenceau had a ready pen as well as a very bitter one, and he did not confine himself to articles on politics and sociology. besides la mêlée sociale, of which i have given some account in the previous chapter, he published the following books in order within eight years: le grand pan, a volume of descriptive essays; les plus forts, a novel; au fil des jours, and les embuscades de la vie, which were, in the main, collections of sketches and tales. at the same time he did a great deal of ordinary journalism, including his articles on the dreyfus case, which make in themselves four good-sized volumes.
le grand pan followed close upon la mêlée sociale, and came as a delightful surprise to m. clemenceau’s readers, a piece of pure literature. in this book he no longer writes as a citizen of paris, a man of the boulevards and pavements, but as one country-born and bred, knowing the hills and the sea. although he describes his own vendéen scenery with loving familiarity, making the “marais,” the “bocage” and the “plaine” live before us, he does not cling to them with the monotonous affection of some french writers, who are, as it were, dyed in their own local colour. without elaboration, without the detailed building-up of a scene which is the careful habit of some others, he conveys in two or three lines the feeling of a countryside and that elusive but immutable thing, the character of a landscape. this belongs really to the poet’s art, and gives, i cannot tell why, a deeper impression, a far more lasting pleasure than all the abundance and detail of prose. clemenceau’s neighbour, and almost fellow-countryman, renan, had this gift. all the grey waters of the rocky armorican shore seem[142] to sweep through the first lines of his essay on the celtic spirit; and the influence of renan is marked in le grand pan. the first article, which gives the book its title, sets the reader’s fancy sailing among the greek isles, steered by poetry and tradition, in the light of the golden and the silver age. clemenceau, like heine, mourns for the overthrow of the greek gods in the welter of quarrelling priesthoods and fierce asian ugliness that flooded the mediterranean world. “pan, pan is dead!” but in the renaissance—“the tumultuous pageant of art hurrying to meet the classic gods reborn”—he welcomes the magnificent restoration of the ancient and eternal powers. and he claims for the nineteenth century the honour of beholding another re-birth of the gods of nature in the development of science, and the labour that has brought some of the secrets of earth within our ken.
but science, as we know, has revealed the horrors as well as the wonders of earth. it troubles us; man has shed rivers of needless blood, but we shrink from recognising nature as she is, “red in tooth and claw.” it did not trouble the ancient greeks; their gods, developing from the rough deities of place or tribe into the embodiments of the natural forces of matter or of mind, were outside human ethic, although they were cast in human form. they might take the shape of mortals, but only euripides and a few other hypersensitive moralists thought of blaming the gods when, as often happened, they fell below the standards of human conduct. but we are creatures of another era; and man, criticising and even condemning the powers that rule his little day, has, for good or ill, reached out to a level that is above the gods, whose plaything he still remains.
and there is another change. man—some men, that is to say—have taken the animals into their protection and fellowship: and m. clemenceau is truly one of these. not only those charming, kindly essays, la main et la patte and les parents pauvres, in le grand pan, but the history of the two pigeons in the embuscades de la vie, and a hundred little[143] touches and incidents throughout clemenceau’s books show him to be a man of most generous sympathies, looking at animal life from a far higher and finer point of view than the majority of his countrymen.
there is much else in le grand pan that it would be pleasant to dwell upon: a delicate classic spirit, a certain ironic grace, humour and mockery, but everywhere and above all keen indignation at needless human suffering and a sympathy which is poles apart from sentiment, for human pain. m. clemenceau might well be called “a soldier of pity,” as, in one of the near eastern languages, the members of his first profession, the doctors, are termed. but i must pass on. le grand pan is, as it deserves to be, the best known of m. clemenceau’s books, and no one who has overlooked it can form a complete idea of this remarkable man.
it is said that anyone who has the power of setting down his impressions on paper can write at least one good novel, if he tries, for he will draw with varying degrees of truth or malice the individuals he has met, liked, or suffered from, and the main circumstances of his life. what a homeric novel m. clemenceau might have written if he had followed these lines! but les plus forts is unfortunately no such overflow of personal impressions and memories; it is merely what used to be called “a novel with a purpose.” that is to say, it is one of the many works of fiction which not only record the adventures of certain imaginary yet typical characters, but also contain severe criticism of contemporary social conditions and life. such novels were much more common in england during the nineteenth century than in france. in english fiction the sequence is unbroken from sandford and merton to the earlier works of mrs. humphry ward’s venerable pen. but in 1898 there were still not many french novels concerned with the serious discussion of social conditions, and m. clemenceau’s early work stands out among these for sincerity and simplicity of intent. however, in spite of the excellent irony of some passages—notably the description of the vicomtesse de fourchamps’[144] career—les plus forts is to modern readers a trifle tedious and a little naive. it is of the same calibre as mr. shaw’s two first novels, but less eccentric and not so amusing. m. clemenceau himself would probably write upon it “péché de jeunesse,” and pass on. yet it deserves more attention than that; for les plus forts unconsciously reveals the central weakness of its author’s criticism of modern life. the situation is a good one, although the actors are not so much characters as types.
henri de puymaufray, a ruined french gentleman, who has lost the world and found a kind of radicalism, and dominique harlé, a rich paper manufacturer, live side by side in the country as friendly enemies or, rather, close but inimical friends. their views of life are as the poles asunder, but for the purposes of the story they must be constantly meeting in conversational intimacy; and they have each an almost superhuman power of expressing themselves and their attitude towards the world they live in. the chief link between them is harlé’s supposed daughter and only child, claude, whose real father is puymaufray. both these elderly gentlemen are deeply concerned about claude’s future; each wishing, as parents and guardians often do, to make the child’s career the completion of their own ambitions and hopes. here harlé has the advantage; he knows what he wants, that is, money and power, and he means his daughter to have plenty of both. he is the ordinary capitalist, with a strain of politician and cabinet-maker, who ends by founding a popular journal that outdoes harmsworth in expressing the “lowest common factor of the mind.” society, the church, and a particularly offensive form of charity all serve him to increase his own power and the stability of his class. all is for the best in the best of bourgeois worlds. such is the theory of life which he puts before his supposed daughter, together with a prétendant who will carry out his aims. unhappily, puymaufray has nothing positive to set against this very solid and prosperous creed. he and deschars, the young traveller whom he wishes to give claude for a husband, can only talk pages of radicalism in which the words[145] “pity” and “love” would recur even more frequently if m. clemenceau’s fine sense of fitness did not prevail. what do they really want claude to do? the best they can offer her appears to be a life of retired and gentle philanthropy, inspired by a dim sense of human brotherhood, which might, under very favourable circumstances, deepen into a sort of socialist mood.
but “mere emotional socialism cuts no ice.” this has often been said, and means that a vague fraternal purpose and a perception of the deep injustice of our present social system, even when sharpened with the most destructive satire, will never change this world for the better, unless they lead up to some theory of construction that is based on economic facts. pity and brotherhood may move individuals to acts of benevolence, but they cannot alone recast the fabric of society, or even bring about fundamental collective reforms. besides, when young people are asked to give up certain definite things, such as money, pleasure and power, they must see something more than mere renouncement ahead. they must be shown the fiery vision of an immortal city whose foundations they may hope to build. clemenceau’s own knowledge of human nature works against his two heroes, and he says:
“deschars was the child of his time. he had gone about the world as a disinterested beholder, and he returned from voyaging without any keen desire for noble action. . . . perhaps, if he had been living and working for some great human object, deschars would have carried claude away by the very authority of his purpose, without a word. . . .”
and madame de fourchamps observes:
“it is very lucky for the poor that there are rich people to give them bread.”
to which claude replies:
“my father’s factory provides these workmen with a livelihood; where would they be without him?”
then, instead of a few plain words on labour-value, puymaufray can only reply:
[146]
“well, they give him something in exchange, don’t they?”
the old capitalist fallacies here uttered in their crudest form cannot be refuted by mere injunctions to pity and goodwill; and even the magnificent words liberty, equality, fraternity are no adequate reply. to the successful profiteer and all who acquiesce in his domination they mean: liberty of enterprise, equality of opportunity, and fraternity among exploiters. facts and the march of events alone can persuade dominique harlé and his like to use their ingenuity in serving their fellow-creatures, and not in profiting by them. and only collective action, guided by some knowledge of the direction in which our civilisation is tending, can hasten the march of events.
it is remarkable how greatly the “novel with a purpose” has developed during the last twenty years in england and, to a less extent, in france. the characters are creatures of their conditions; and it is these conditions, not the characters, that do the talking. some novels to-day are such careful and withal highly interesting guides to the sociology of england towards the end of the black industrial age that we cannot wonder if their authors take themselves too seriously as politicians and reformers. yet these works show, after all, the same defect as les plus forts, they have no constructive theory of life to set against the very well-defined, solid, and still apparently effective system which they criticise. all their most ironic descriptions, their most penetrating satire are negative, and, in the end, the utterances of men “wandering between two worlds, one dead, one powerless to be born.”
au fil des jours is an interesting collection of pieces in which the author has not made up his mind whether he will write short stories or articles upon social conditions. there is no harm in that; some people may even say that m. clemenceau has produced a new variety of readable matter; but, curiously enough, the substance of the story is often so telling that one[147] quarrels with the writer for not having put it into the best shape. take one of the pieces in au fil des jours—la roulotte. briefly, a weary old gipsy drives in a covered donkey-cart into a country hamlet, and stops by the riverside, where all the gossips are washing. he is received with hostile and watchful silence, because gipsies are always the scapegoats in a peasant district, and anything and everything that may be lost, stolen or strayed—even if it turns up again—is always laid to their account. in the night he dies, unnoticed; and, after some further time has passed, the villagers inspect his cart. finding him there, dead, with a very small grandson living, they fetch the local constable and the mayor. the arm of the law begins to function, the child is sent to the workhouse, the moribund donkey is “taken care of” by one of the villagers, and the dilapidated old cart, which only contained a few rags, is left by the riverside.
but the french peasant knows how to turn every little thing to profit: nothing is useless in his eyes. gradually handy fragments of the donkey-cart begin to disappear. bits of the iron fittings vanish, the tilt-props go, a shaft follows, one wheel after another slips away and is no more seen. in fact, the donkey-cart, as such, disappears from mortal sight. then, one fine day, a gipsy-woman comes swinging along the road, where she had followed the traces of the donkey-cart, and asks for news of her old father and her little boy. the authorities of the village tell her of the old gipsy’s death and burial: they do not require her to pay for his obsequies only because they see it would be no use. she goes to fetch the child from the workhouse, and then asks for the donkey and cart. the former, they tell her, died in the hands of the villager who “took care of him” (and sold his skin for a fair sum). she accepts this loss with resignation; but the cart, as she says, cannot have died: where is her father’s “roulotte“?—ah, well, nobody in the village knows anything about that! it was here, no doubt, since the old gipsy died in it—but since then——the law, once more represented by mayor and[148] constables, can only shrug its shoulders in the finest french manner and disclaim all responsibility for a vagabond’s goods. but the gipsy-woman persists: she begins even to clamour for her rights. “rights, indeed!” the village, hitherto indifferent, becomes hostile; and the old cry that meets the gipsy everywhere is raised, for someone on the edge of the crowd calls out, “thief!” it is a mere expression of disapproval, not a direct accusation, but the whole village takes it up joyfully: “thief! thief!” so the gipsy-woman, who, as it chanced, has stolen nothing, is hounded out of the commune with sticks and stones and objurgations by those who had themselves appropriated her old donkey-cart piecemeal. “a bit of rusty iron whizzed past her as she crossed the bridge. it may once have served as her donkey’s shoe.”
such is the tale: a sample of many in au fil des jours. irony and realism are not wanting, nor yet the grimly picturesque, but the reader is left thinking: “what a little gem this would be if it were told by maupassant, or some other master of the conte!” certainly m. clemenceau has something else to do than tell contes! but his literary material is so fine that it is his own fault if we expect the very best of him. as it is, he does not take the trouble to cut the story out clearly from the matrix of thought and memories which enfolded it in his own mind. the effect on the reader is, one might say, a little vague and murmurous, like some tale half-heard in a crowd.
it is a strange thing that the countryside, nature, the pure and never-failing spring of inspiration for poetry and human delight, should turn so different a countenance towards those who live with her, year out and year in, winning sustenance for us all from her broad and often ungenial breast. our mother earth is an iron taskmaster to the tillers of the soil grinding out their youth and strength, bowing their eyes to their labour, so that all her beauty passes them by unseen. either nature keeps her charms jealously for the untroubled mind and the leisured eye, or else all the beauty that we see in her is borrowed, a glamour lent by some immaterial force—[149] not ours, perhaps, but certainly not her own. be this as it may, in the embuscades de la vie m. clemenceau beholds and describes the careless, endless, natural beauty amid which the peasant-lives that he sketches for us are set; but these themselves are often as ugly as bare stone, and the men and women are hard and close-fisted with one another mainly because the earth is so grudging to them. these stories are the most clear-cut of all clemenceau’s essays in fiction. they are not exactly contes, either: they are the discoveries, one might say, of clemenceau in his ancestral character as the descendant of a line of doctors and landowners who worked for generations among the small bourgeois and the tillers of the soil. how he knows them! and—if french fiction is to be believed—how unchangeable they are! since the bourgeois gained his freedom in the great revolution by using the arm of the sans-culotte, what a grip he has kept upon his possession! and how much dearer to him his property is than anything else in the world! clemenceau does but take up the theme of balzac and others when he describes provincial france and its twin gods, money and the land—money which compels loveless marriages, envy, fawning, bitterness, perpetual small cheating or endless insect-like toil; and the land, in whose service men work themselves and their kindred to the bone, and grudge a pittance to old age.
the bourgeoisie and their customs vary with their nationality, but peasant life is much the same all over europe. clemenceau found similar traits of life and character in galicia to those of la vendée; and others will tell us that from ireland to russia, from the baltic to the black sea, the peasant and the small farmer conduct their lives upon the same lines: hard work, dependence upon the seasons, family authority, tribal feuds, and a meticulous social system of comment and convention, under which the individual finds himself far less free than in the unhampered, unnoticed life of the towns.
yet many of the “ambushes of life” are to be found in the cities; and about a third of these tales are laid in the towns[150] and among the well-to-do middle class. m. clemenceau’s satire plays freely upon the “marriage of convention,” by which two families agree, after a certain amount of haggling and mutual sharp practice, to bind two young strangers together in the closest of relationship, for time, and also, we are told, for eternity, in the interest of property alone. still, human nature adapts itself to anything, and even such marriages have their compensations, as our author lightly and ironically points out. being a genuine sociologist, he does not handle these tales of the bourgeoisie and their vagaries within what is, after all, an artificial and exclusive form of existence, as seriously as he does the great plain outlines of peasant life.
whether he writes of town or country, of fleur de froment and six sous, or of a ménage à trois; whether he calls up a greek courtesan to theorise about her profession, or describes a long-standing bitter, and motiveless peasant feud, his style is always fluent and charming, vivid with irony, and graceful with poetic thought. yet the defect as well as the merit of m. clemenceau’s fiction and essay-writing is just this admirable, unvarying ease and fluency. one feels that he writes with perfect unconsciousness, as the thoughts come into his head. and, after a while, the ungrateful reader is inclined to ask for some kind of selection in the feast before him, where all is good, very good, even, but nothing is excellent. like a far greater writer, clemenceau—on paper at least—“has no peaks in him.” his literature was an admirable “by-product” of his almost limitless capacities; his actions and not his writings are the achievements of his life.
