and makes new ones, some of them not of the most edifying description, for Arnoux introduces him to a certain Mademoiselle Rosanette, with whom Frederic in his lazy, irresolute manner proceeds also to fall in love, though he never ceases to regard Madame Arnoux with the old timid adoration. Thenceforward the book is a chronicle of the history of all these persons, and of many others whom we have not mentioned. The central figure is still Frederic and his irresolute philanderings with Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, the auburn Louise Roque, and Madame Dambreuse, who at last admits him as amant en titre, and after her husband’s death wishes to marry him. He is always going to do something, but never does it, and his usual mental attitude is typically represented in a scene where he is on the point of indulging his tender emotions, but reflects that “somebody may come,” and so doesn’t.
There is not a character of the scores which figure in the book that is not in itself a masterpiece. The feminine but somewhat colourless virtues of Madame Arnoux, the amiable vulgarity and matter-of-fact caprice of Rosanette, the calculting coldness of Madame Dambreuse, the feather-headed oddities of Arnoux, who really loves his wife while he is ruining himself on her rival, and who loves art too much to make profit, and profit too much to be an artist, the slangy romanticism of the journalist Hussonet, the crazes of the dauber Pellerin, the amateur politician Regimbart, the honest clerk Dussardier, the fatuous aristocrat De Cisy, the model man Martinon, who “always presents himself in three-quarter profile, and looks as neat as a piece of Sèvres china,” the vulgar lawyer Deslauriers—are all admirable. But most admirable of all is Frederic himself, good-hearted, not destitute of talent and culture, but unstable as water, given to look at all sides of a question, and so to take none, and subjected to all sorts of humiliations and dissappointments at the hands of men less gifted in every way than himself. Nor is the scenery worthy of less praise. The interiors throughout are perfect. The descriptions of a visit to the Alhambra—in the Champs Élysées, not in Granada—of the fancy ball in Rosanette’s apartments, and, above all, of the revolution of 1848, of which Frederic is in his external way a spectator, yield to few things of the kind. But the greatest attraction of the book is the profusion of observation and knowledge of the intricacies of action and conduct which it displays, and which I do not hesitate to say is not excelled in the work of any contemporary writer.
To what, then, are we to attribute the comparative unpopularity of the book, which in some ten years passed through but four editions, while work far inferior could count reappearances by fifties? I can only recur to my original explanation—the explanation suggested by the author himself—that of an unpleasant nervous impression. The reader of L’éducation Setimentale does actually journey from Dan to Beersheba, and finds that all is barren. The book comes to no particular end, but years and years after its active story ceases Frederic meets first his early love, Madame Arnoux, and then his early fried, Deslauriers. Madame Arnoux comes nominally to restore to him a sum of money which he has long ago lent her husband, but really to make a tacit confession of that regret respecting which Mademoiselle de Lespinasse and a good many other people have wondered whether it is not worse than remorse. Deslauriers and Moreau, as they review their lives, decide that the mere schoolboy follies of their early youth are perhaps the happiest times they have known, and so the curtain falls on a “set grey life and apathetic end.”
Now the novel-reader does not like this. He probably knows in his secret heart that this setness and apathy are the actual end of an enormous number of lives. But he is not accustomed to have the fact thus sharply brought before him. The accepted laws of novel-writing require a dénouement, tragic it may be, arbitrary and insufficient it may be, even to the extent of the traditional marriage bells, but still a dénouement of some sort. The passionless review of folly and weakness which L’Éducation Sentimentale contains is too cold-blooded for most people to accept. They would rather have downright satire, even of the red-hot brand of Swift, than this cool depicting of failure and impotence. To a certain extent no doubt this is a question of taste and not arguable; to a certain extent, also, it is one proper to be argued, but not to be argued here. I should only say that to me it appears that Flaubert’s process is a perfectly allowable one, and that the result certainly gives me pleasure. If the last remark should appear egotistical, I can only say in excuse that I know no other test of the pleasure-giving properties of a novel, or for that matter of anything else, than it effects on oneself.