Mérimée in His Letters

THERE is an interest belonging to Mérimée’s personality as well as to his literary work. In Taine’s brief memoir are to be found a few lines descriptive of the appearance and manner of the author of La Double Méprise, Colomba, and Carmen which bring him very distinctly before us ; so that in reading the volumes of his correspondence, to which this biographical sketch is prefixed, we have always present to the mind’s eye the man himself, “tall, erect, pale,” who, “ except for his smile, had an English air, — at least that cold and distant manner which repels in advance all familiarity ; ” who even among intimates was never otherwise than impassive, calm-voiced, without glow or sparkle. It is a manner that some men affect, and one may perhaps be inclined to suspect Mérimée, who had it so perfectly, of a partial affectation, until one hears him speak for himself in the Letters that follow, and which belong to such an extended period of his life. Men sometimes reveal themselves most openly when least aware of it, and it happened so with Mérimée in these communications, intended only for her to whom they were addressed. Not that he had need to conceal aught of his life and character from the world’s eye ; and if there had been anything to conceal he would have disdained to cover it, as one soon comes to know. He was not frank, but he had the sincerity that is born of a deep pride.

We read the correspondence, given to the world after his death, for the sake of the self-sketched portrait of the writer it contains, to the interest of which is added the spice of an ungratified curiosity concerning the recipient of the letters and the relation of the two. Mérimée’s feeling for his correspondent appears in the beginning hardly more than a sentiment, gentle and refined, — a matter of the head as much as of the heart; and though with some fluctuations, some rising tidal waves of emotion, the lover seems never to find too great difficulty in keeping it within bounds. So far, at least, as shows here, there is nothing like an outspoken fervency of passion. Doubtless there was more in it than any demonstration here proves, for it was the man’s nature to detest the display of any kind of feeling. It all ended, as Taine says, in a true and lasting friendship ; the tone of gallantry and sentiment of the earlier letters changes almost imperceptibly to one of gentle familiarity and friendly confidence. Little or nothing is discoverable about the unknown friend: the reader is permitted to approach her only at a respectful distance, the correspondence having probably been revised for that purpose. If we did not know its true character, we might easily take the letters of the first quarter of the initial volume for an admirably composed fiction ; they are so polished, graceful,— just what they should be for the opening chapters of a romance. Coming from Mérimée, they could not fail of a charming style; the finished man of letters shows throughout the whole correspondence. They are always in one strain, embellished with a number of light and pleasing variations. Each letter resembling as it does the preceding, the wonder is how unwearied we find ourselves with the repeated theme ; how gratified with the little details of his life and work which the writer records for us; how charmed with the brief glimpses into his mind, the occasional reflections and aphorisms he indulges in. He has the art of never saying too much, of touching and letting go, of never being tiresome. We are amused from time to time with satirical descriptions of persons and things he meets in the world. In a letter from London he tells of a visit to the newly-built House of Commons, which he calls a frightful monstrosity, and adds, You have no idea what may be done with a complete want of taste and two million pounds sterling. " And in another: “ I begin to have enough of this country. I am tired of perpendicular architecture, and the equally perpendicular manners of the natives. ... I gave a half-crown to a black-coated person who showed me the cathedral, and then asked of him the address of a gentleman to whom I had a letter from the dean. He found it was himself to whom the letter was addressed. We both looked foolish; but he kept the money.” Mérimée is always as ready to mock at what seems to be pretension in himself as in another. He tells his friend that on the 14th of March his fate will be decided, meaning the question of his election to the French Academy. “ In the mean time, I conscientiously make visits. I find people very civil, accustomed to their parts, and taking them very seriously. I do my best to take mine gravely also, but it is difficult. Does it not seem to you ridiculous to say to a man, ‘ Monsieur, I think myself one of the forty cleverest men in France. I am as good as you,’ and such-like facetiæ? I have to translate that into terms variously polite, according to the persons.” After Mérimée has attained the academic dignity, he is present at a banquet at Caen, at which his health is proposed, with allusion to his titles to honor as senator, man of letters, and savant. “ There was only the table between us, and I had a great desire to throw a plate of rum jelly at his head.

While he was speaking I meditated my reply, and could not find a word. When he ceased I comprehended that it was absolutely necessary to speak, and I began a phrase without knowing how I should go on. I talked in that way for five or six minutes, with great self-possession, and with very little idea of what I was saying. I am assured that I was extremely eloquent.” He laughs at the gemÜthlich Germans, who made a lion of him at Vienna. “ I was as amiable as possible. I wrote sublime thoughts in albums, and made sketches; in a word, I was perfectly ridiculous.” Once in a while this smiling satirist changes his tone to one of undisguised contempt for his species. We should prefer not to take him quite at his word when he says, “ There is nothing I despise, and even detest, so much as humanity in general. Nevertheless, I should like to be rich enough to avoid the sight of individual sufferings.” Such remarks,-to be just, are rare with him ; if not genially benevolent, or humorously tolerant, he is at least sufficiently gentle mannered. There is nothing in him of the bitterness of a selfishness that finds itself matched against a selfish world. We have every disposition to credit him when he says, “It rarely happens to me to sacrifice others to myself, and when it does happen I experience all possible remorse.” Nor is it an overweening self-esteem that prompts his satire or feeds his contempt for the intelligence of the mass of men. We should indeed take a little conceit for a healthy sign in him: but Mérimée has absolutely no vanity, personal or literary; only a pride, far from ostentatious, yet unable at all times to avoid self-betrayal.

To his refinement of thought and sentiment he added an extreme fastidiousness of personal liking and habit. Yet in spite of the drawbacks to such society, his curiosity led him, as he tells us, to seek the companionship of the muleteers of Spain. He admired the Andalusian peasantry for their grace, and commended their native tact. On the other hand, his expressions of distaste for his provincial countrymen are frequent; he is infinitely wearied by the necessity of official intercourse with them. In one letter he remarks that he has lately been introduced to some hitherto unknown members of his family, living in the provinces, and adds that he does not like relatives. “ One is obliged to be familiar with persons one has never seen, because they happen to be children of one’s grandfather.” In all things and at all times Mérimée shows the temper of a social and intellectual aristocrat.

Some traits of his remind us of Frédéric Chopin. A certain air of distinction belonged to the composer and the man of letters alike in their individual characters and in their artistic and literary products. No single word is so descriptive of Chopin’s music — or so it seems to the amateur — as “ elegance,” that quality of combined delicacy and brilliance, which is not the superficial veneer of a cheap and common substance, but the admirably adorned dress in which a master presents his original conceptions. One feels sure that no one has ever played Chopin’s music as he himself played it, with his “ fingers of steel shod in velvet.” We fancy that the musician may have concealed a tenderer nature than Mérimée’s behind the mask of his gravely courteous reserve ; but with more of difference, perhaps, than of resemblance, there was something common to the two men. In both there was a fund of melancholy, infecting their lives : in Chopin, a more gently pensive strain, native to his disposition and lodged there in retirement: in Mérimée, a morbid affection, from which he might possibly have freed himself if he could have found the will for vigorous effort. This melancholy was so constantly recurrent that he seems hardly ever to have risen from under the pressure of it. “ Je me trouve bien triste aujourd’hui; ” “ Je m’ennuie horriblement il y a deux jours,” — such phrases appear upon every other page of the correspondence. He employs English idioms, and says that he is out of spirits and in the grip of the blue devils.

But it is not from lack of occupation that he is thus besieged. He is always traveling from place to place, in pursuance of his historical researches, or commissioned by some learned society as archæological investigator; he is writing official documents or engaged in the composition of his fictions, for all which variety of labor he assumes little importance : it is his métier, and every man must have one. He likes poring over ancient and precious relics, Etruscan gems, this, that, and the other antiquarian curiosity, as well as anything in life, but even this not too well; while meetings with fellow archæologists are apt to prove a weariness to the spirit, and the exchange of compliments with them the undergoing of a mild martyrdom. There is ever a fatal tendency to ennui. In short, Mérimée is not a happy man; he seems not to know what it is to enjoy fully or to care deeply for many things or for one thing. Much of this incapacity for taking a frank interest or pleasure in life we are glad to attribute to a low physical condition. He often speaks of his maladies, though without querulousness or self-pity. “ Je souffre beaucoup ; ” “ Le froid qu’il fait me désespère; ” “ Je ne dors plus du tout, et je suis d’une humeur de chien,” —■ expressions like these occur as frequently as the ventings of his melancholy humor ; and in the later letters the signs of increasingly acute nervous disorder become abundant, as also of the lung difficulty which ultimately caused his death.

We cannot fail to perceive, however, another reason for Mérimée’s joylessness than this obvious one of his frail health. The deeper, underlying cause was his lack of faith, — by which is not meant simply a definite religious belief. In a passage of one of the letters he says, “ Vous me demandez si je crois à I'âme. Pas trop. Cependant, en réfléchissant à certaines choses, je trouve un argument en faveur de cette hypothèse, le voici: Comment deux substances inanimées pourraient-elles donner et recevoir une sensation par une réunion que serait insipide sans l’idée qu’on y attache? Voilà une phrase bien pédantesque pour dire que lorsque deux gens qui s’aiment s’embrassent ils sentent autre chose que lorsqu’on baise le satin le plus doux. Mais l’argument a son valeur.” We take such words, of course, only as seriously as Mérimée means them. But if not a materialist, he had felt the infection of the least curable of moral diseases, indifferentism. Speaking of an attack of illness which seemed about to lead him into the kingdom of shades, he adds that he experienced some " ennui ” at the idea of entering an unknown world ; “ mais ce qui me semblait encore plus ennuyeux c’était de faire de la résistance. C’est par cette résignation brute, je crois, qu’on quittc ce monde non pas parceque le mal vous accable, mais parcequ’on est devenu indifferent à tout et qu’on ne se défend plus.” Such expressions in Mérimée’s mouth are quite sincere, and his indifference was a more permanent condition than with most of us, who experience it, as a rule, only for endurable periods.

It is not fair to take passing expressions too literally, yet we cannot but see some meaning in the frequent recurrence of such as the following : " J’ai grand besoin de vous pour prendre la vie en patience. Je trouve qu’elle devient tous les jours plus ennuyeuse. Le monde est par trop bête.” To understand Mérimée, it is not enough, as I have said, to note the fact that he was not a good Catholic or a good Protestant. In contrast with him we cannot avoid thinking of Shelley, refusing adherence to the creed of Christendom, yet not without faiths that were a refuge to him from any such overcoming depression. Shelley was in many respects a man as little fitted for life in this every-day world as any that has found himself in it; nevertheless, he contrived to live therein without giving himself or the world over to despair. He had a religion ; he believed, that is, in the real existence of spiritual ideas, which in his verse may appear to some readers as the emptiest abstractions, — the ideas of beauty, truth, and love. It was because of his faith in and pure devotion to these high-placed ideals that he found courage to live among men with whom, in general, he had small sympathy, in a world which he thought was moving on altogether wrong lines. It is not so out of joint as Shelley fancied it, and there have been men of the purest ideals who have been able to discern amid all that is amiss in the actual order of the universe the slow working out of a righteous idea. To be in harmony with this ideal order of righteousness, and yet to accommodate ourselves to the imperfection of the actual, is the problem for each man. Mérimée, as Taine says, could not give away his heart to anything, could not devote himself wholly. The critical spirit in him, which made clear to him the imperfection of all earthly achievement, would not let him work without an arrière pensée on the futility of such expense of energy. This variously accomplished gentleman found no thorough satisfaction in his chosen pursuits; nothing in life that made him really reconciled to it, but only resigned, tant bien que mal. It isa mood of mind, a view of existence, that comes at times to any thinking person: but few of us are content to let it stay with us ; we get rid of it in one way or another. A genuine and stable affection often saves from it, or is the cure of it. Unfortunately, it did not happen so with Mérimée. It was with him, at least in a measure, as it is with other men,— what begins by disgusting us with life ends by endearing it to us. Cares and anxieties make precious our times of peace, and pain and suffering our intervals of ease; and we even come to think that we have not properly appreciated joys that were once within our grasp.

In the letters of the second volume, comprised between 1857 and 1870, we see that, as the years go on, his health fails more and more. He discusses the political situation in France and in Italy with very pronounced expressions of opinion on men and measures. He shows a livelier interest in the affairs of the Academy, and speaks much oftener and more frankly of his own literary compositions. His physical sufferings are at times pitiable, and he pretends no stoicism in the endurance of them. There is something really pathetic in this brief bulletin he sends his friend : “ Chère amie, j’attendais pour vous écrire que je fusse guéri, ou du moins un peu moins souffrant ; mais malgré le beau temps, malgré tous les soins possibles, je suis toujours de même, e’est à dire fort mal. Je ne puis m’habituer a cette vie do souffrance, et je ne trouve en moi ni courage ni résignation.”

Many of the letters are dated from Cannes, where it was necessary for him to pass the winter months of every year. Others bear the date of Compiègne or Biarritz, where he is frequently invited to attend the empress. He does not like court life over well, but becomes wonted to it, and always praises the kindliness of “ la châtelaine la plus gracieuse du monde.” At Cannes he reads and writes as his health permits, botanizes, sketches, and pets a favorite owl. At times he travels, and recounts his journeys for his friend, and advises her about her own itineraries. If she is absent from Paris, he tells her the latest social on dit, and whether or not crinoline is still worn. He talks of the books he reads, suggests others to his correspondent, and does not omit to be severe and satirical on contemporary writers : “ Have you read Renan’s Vie de Jésus? Probably not. It amounts to little, and yet to a good deal. It is the blow of an axe at the edifice of Catholicism. The author is so terrified at his own audacity in denying the divinity that he falls into hymns of admiration and adoration, and has no philosophical sense left to judge of doctrine. Nevertheless, it is interesting.” “ Have you read Victor Hugo’s speech? What a pity that a fellow who has imagination should not have an atom of common sense, nor the modesty to refrain from uttering platitudes unworthy of a reasonable man ! . . . Have you read his last volume of verse ? Tell me if you see any difference between it and his former poems. Has he suddenly turned fool, or has he always been one ? The latter, to my way of thinking.” Writing from England, he says, “ People here are so different from us that it is hard to understand how, at ten hours’ distance, unfeathered bipeds can resemble Parisian ones so little. Mr. Gladstone I did not find entertaining, but interesting. There is in him the child, the statesman, and the enthusiast.” In 1865 he writes from Paris, “Another person, M. de Bismarck, pleased me very much. He is a big German, very courteous, and not naïf. He has an air of being entirely without gemüth, but full of brains. He has made a conquest of me.” The later letters are full of discontent with the course of political affairs, and, since things do not go as to his mind they should, Mérimée expresses unmeasured contempt for the stupidity of mankind. The last letter, dated from Cannes, September 23, 1870, was written two hours before his death, which he knew was impending, though ignorant of how suddenly it was to come. He begs his friend to take from among his books Madame de Sévigné’s Letters and a Shakespeare as a memento of him. “ Dear friend, I am very ill; so ill that it is a hard matter to write. Yet I am a trifle better. I hope soon to write to you more at length. Adieu. Je vous embrasse.”

Taine sums up his account of Mérimée’s career in the words, “ For fear of being duped, he was distrustful of life, of love, in science, in art, and he was the dupe of his distrust.” That is an extremely pointed and expressive phrasing of the truth. The biographer ends, however, with the saying, “ We are always the dupes of something, and perhaps it is best to resign ourselves in the beginning.” That, too, is cleverly put, but we object to it that it is not true. We almost suspect Taine of adding it as much by way of a rounded period to his sketch as from sincere conviction. It is so much the vogue among clever Frenchmen to dispense with a superfluity of convictions that we are sometimes tempted to judge hastily that they have none at all.

It often happens that the moral of the lives of estimable, and even in some respects admirable, men is as well worth finding as the more patent one of lives openly vicious, which has become a commonplace to our ears. We judge of Mérimée from the record of his own hand, bearing in mind at the same time that it is but a partial record. Taking him as he appears in the Letters to an Unknown, it is difficult not to regard his as une vie manquée ; it seems to us that he was miscalled Prosper, if the name were taken as significant of a success very well worth having, or one that satisfied himself.

Maria Louise Henry.