The Literary Career in France
IN the preface of his recent novel, Pierre et Jean, that vigorous and exquisite artist, Guy de Maupassant, has noted some of the results of his seven years’ apprenticeship under Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert. Bouilhet, by dint of repeating that a hundred verses, and even less, suffice to make an artist’s reputation, if only they are irreproachable, and if they contain the essence of the talent and originality of a man even of the second order, convinced his pupil that continual work and profound technical knowledge may, in a day of lucidity and vigor, by the happy encounter of a subject in thorough harmony with all the tendencies of our mind, occasion the production of a work as perfect as we can achieve. Flaubert used to repeat Châteaubriand’s definition of talent as indefinite patience. If a man has any originality, he must first of all discover it; if he has none, he must acquire an originality. The least thing contains something unknown, which it is our business to discover. In order to describe a flaming fire and a tree on a plain, let us remain face to face with the fire and the tree, until, to our eyes, they no longer resemble any other fire or any other tree. Such was Flaubert’s recipe for becoming original. In the whole world, he would argue, there are no two things exactly alike, and, whatever the thing we wish to describe, there is only one word to express it, one verb to animate it, and one adjective to qualify it. This noun, this verb, and this adjective we must seek until we find them, and never be satisfied with approximations, nor fall back upon trickery, however felicitous, or upon linguistic clowneries, in order to avoid the difficulty.
These principles are precious and noble indeed ; but how many writers carry them into practice ? On the other hand, how many readers are sensitive to the movement, the construction, the expressive sonority, and significant rhythm of a phrase, to the zest of a precise epithet, to the vivacity and color of a qualifying adjective, to the magic of style ? How many appreciate the extreme difficulty of art ? " A man,” exclaims Maupas-
sant, in the preface referred to above, — “ a man must be very mad, very bold, very presumptuous, or very silly, to write at the present day. After so many masters, of such varied temperament and such manifold genius, what remains to be done that has not been done already; what remains to be said that has not been said ? Who amongst us can boast that he has written a page — nay, a single phrase — which may not be found somewhere almost identical ? When we read, we who are so saturated with French writing that our whole body gives us the impression of being a composition made with words, do we ever find a line, a single thought, which is not familiar, or of which we have not had at least a confused presentiment? The man who seeks only to amuse his public by hackneyed means writes confidently, in the candor of his mediocrity, works which are destined for the ignorant and leisured crowd. But those upon whom weighs the burden of all the centuries of past literature ; those whom nothing satisfies and everything disgusts, because they dream of something better ; those to whom everything seems already deflowered, and whose work always gives them the impression of a useless and common labor, come to judge the literary art to be a baffling and mysterious thing, which is scarcely revealed to us by a few pages of the greatest masters.”
Maupassant is not the first who has given utterance to this cry of despair. Flaubert’s correspondence is full of bitter wailing over the difficulties of the literary art. The journal of the Goncourt brothers abounds in notes of painful wrestling with language. Théophile Gautier used to devour dictionaries in search of words, and yet he remained immeasurably inferior to Fromentin in intensity of vision and penetrating descriptive power. Alphonse Daudet’s whole existence is wrapped up in the pursuit of the vivid literary expression of direct and personal observation of men and things. Balzac vainly pursued the magic charm of style by dint of innumerable corrections, erasures, and rewritings, but the terrible Sphinx destroyed the weary victim before he had succeeded in ravishing her secret.
In presence of these facts, and of a hundred others that might be cited, one is tempted to ask if the literary profession in France is one of inevitable misery, if it has no joys, if its profits at all compensate the pains which its pursuit seems to involve. The celebration, last year, of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the French Society of Authors called forth many documents and reflections concerning the literary man’s condition, one of which, Nos Gens de Lettres, by M. Frédéric Loliée, suggested to me the idea of reviewing the matter briefly, in the hope of drawing some conclusions which may be of interest to Anglo-Saxon writers and readers. In making this review, I shall use M. Loliée’s facts so far only as my own experience and research confirm them ; for this writer is evidently a young man, and, like most of the Frenchmen of his generation, he is of a sombre and pessimistic turn of mind. Let us, then, endeavor to ascertain what is the present condition of the literary profession in France ; what are its joys, its miseries, its conditions, and its profits.
An argument must necessarily begin with an incontestable proposition. I will, therefore, beg acceptance for the statement that, of all the revolutions which have been accomplished in France, the most complete is that which has transformed the condition of the man of letters. In the seventeenth century, the writer lived on the favors of the nobles and of the court. In the eighteenth century, the literary man began to advance towards independence ; the patronage of the great existed side by side with the commercial patronage of the booksellers, and Voltaire became the first millionaire of the pen. The emancipation of the writers progressed henceforward step for step with the emancipation of the people. Beaumarchais established the great principle of literary property ; and at the end of the century literary mercantilism was, to a certain extent, a reality. The Empire found literature exhausted by the troubles of the revolutionary epoch. In vain Napoleon tried, by means of pensions and sinecures, to revive letters. The only prose of that period bearing the stamp of genius is the prose of the Emperor’s proclamations, a branch of eloquence which the Titan created; for, as Victor Hugo has said, Napoleon was complete. “ He had in his brain the cube of human faculties ; he drew up codes like Justinian ; he dictated like Cæsar ; he made history, and he wrote it; his bulletins are Iliads.”
The return of the Bourbons, of a literary aristocracy, and of hopes of peace provoked an irresistible movement of literary regeneration. In his play of Chatterton, Alfred de Vigny proclaimed the superiority of reverie over action, and of indigent thought over proud luxury. Chatterton sounded the hour of resurrection and glory for the horde of Bohemian poets, and so the Romantic epoch began with a burst of enthusiasm which has been described in glowing and poetic terms by Théophile Gautier, Arsène Houssaye, and other members of the penniless cénacle of the Rue du Doyenné. The fire and frenzy of pure art had, it is true, sublime joys and ideal recompenses, but the booksellers would not buy its products, nor the newspapers its articles. Nevertheless, the situation became more clearly determined than it had ever been before by the division of humanity into two great classes, “ artists ” and " bourgeois; ” by the crystallization of the artistic spirit; by the declared pretensions of the artists to a supreme place in society; and by the opening of hostilities between the revolutionaries of letters and the self-constituted censors of the Institute, who for the first time discovered that they were the guardians of literary and artistic orthodoxy. Hence the battles which preceded the conquest of the stage by Hernani, and the ten years’ war which finally carried Victor Hugo triumphant into the French Academy. Under the July monarchy, the literary renaissance, begun by the romanticists, continued with leaders whose names were Lamartine, Hugo, Balzac, Dumas, Mérimée, SainteBeuve, Michelet, Stendhal, Méry, Gozlan. But politics being all the rage at this time, and material success being the ideal of the epoch of Louis Philippe, as Balzac has persistently demonstrated in his Comédie Humaine, the literary men also demanded their share of honors, and places, and riches. Therefore, in an official report dated 1836, Villemain wrote these typical words, which have almost become proverbial: “ Literature is a career which leads to everything, but often on the condition that a man abandons it; it is a pathway rather than a goal.” Thiers and Guizot offered striking proofs of the truth of this remark, and set examples which many Frenchmen have since followed with remarkable, although less brilliant, success ; for literature, or at any rate journalism, is still the favorite prelude of the political profession in modern France.
The generous disinterestedness of the heyday of Romanticism disappeared with the golden age of proud and impecunious Bohemianism. During the July monarchy, an apprenticeship of Bohemianism was still the dark vestibule of renown, but it was no longer considered meritorious to dwell long in this vestibule. The means of achieving golden success remained, however, difficult. An author of repute could publish only one or two novels a year ; the sale, being restricted to the circulating libraries, could not exceed 600 copies ; and the profits for the author were only a few hundred francs. George Sand and Balzac were delighted when their first editions were sold out before the end of the year ; while Jules Sandeau did not make more than 500 francs out of his charming novel Mademoiselle de la Seiglière.
In the year 1835, that great financier and journalist, Emile de Girardin, drew up the following table of the situation from statistics that were undoubtedly authentic. Excluding the poets, who do not count commercially, Girardin divided the authors into five categories : —
(1.) Those whose works were paid by the publishers at the rate of 3000 to 4000 francs a volume, and whose sales reached 2500 copies. These princes of letters were only two, Victor Hugo and Paul de Kock.
(2.) Those whose works were paid 1000 to 1200 francs a volume, and whose sales reached a maximum of 1200 copies. These authors were Alphonse Karr, the Bibliophile Jacob (Paul Lacroix), the Duchesse d’Abrantès, and La Contemporaine (Ida Saint-Edme), whose memoirs had great success.
(3.) Authors whose sales amounted to 600 or 900 copies, and whose prose was paid 500 to 800 francs a volume. These authors were twelve in number, and included Alfred de Musset.
(4.) Authors of whose works less than 500 copies were sold, and who were paid 10 to 300 francs a volume.
(5.) The mass of obscure authors.
The conclusion which Girardin drew from his examination of the case was that the tariff of 7½ francs a volume, then in vogue, was too dear, and that both authors and publishers would gain by a reduction. The suggestion was adopted, and the price was reduced until it reached the present figure of 3½ francs a volume, which continues to give satisfactory results.
The reign of Louis Philippe is all-important in the history of literary mercantilism, inasmuch as it saw the complete transformation of the literary man into a regular tradesman. Scribe, Bayard, Legouvé, Mélesville, and a score of other ingenious purveyors introduced the system of division of labor and collaboration into dramatic literature ; Alexandre Dumas applied the same system to the composition of romances; and Girardin by founding cheap newspapers, Véron by demonstrating the attractive power of the feuilleton novel, and Villemessant by creating the light press and the society chronique, provided at last for the literary men the means of finding a lucrative market for their wares.
The commercial success of many of the literary men of the reign of Louis Philippe, and the immense publicity given to their personalities and to the amount of their earnings, particularly in the case of Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue, had the effect of attracting into the career multitudes of incompetent men and women ; and as M. Loliée has remarked, this was the origin of the bands of Bohemians who struggled miserably under the Second Empire, and whose history found an epilogue in the bloody orgies of the Commune. In our own days, a similar phenomenon may be observed : the pecuniary successes of certain eminent novelists and journalists have lured scores of young men into an arena where many of them fall after a first attempt, and remain for the rest of their lives maimed, embittered, and déclassés.
To return to our rapid review : during the Second Empire, the political press was of course gagged, but the frivolous journals and light literature in general flourished exceedingly, while the sensual novel made its appearance, and proved to be just the thing for the materialist tastes of the epoch. Feydeau’s Fanny, published in 1858, met with immense success, whereas at the same time Balzac’s novels circulated very slowly, being too profound and not amusing enough for the mass of readers, who preferred Arsène Houssaye’s Grandes Dames, his Parisiennes, and his Courtisanes du Monde, which three works produced for their gay author the sum of 300,000 francs clear profit. The tastes of the Second Empire, it may be observed, were much the same as those of the present republic; the chief difference between the two periods is that the number of authors ready to flatter sensual tastes is greater than ever it was under the Empire. Paul Bourget and Emile Zola alike may protest as much as they please in the name of liberty of art. Of the two, Zola’s protestation is the more sincere ; but the simple fact remains that extreme notes, erotic details, and crudity of scenes and words attract attention and make a book sell.
The preliminary inclination of every young man or woman who has the misfortune to catch the scribbling mania is to write verse. A volume of verse forms an indispensable item in the training programme of a would-be man of letters ; he may not even have hopes of proving himself to be a poet, but he will still produce his volume of verse, if only for the sake of the literary gymnastics which such an effort implies. Now, for reasons which it is not necessary to discuss here, modern France appears to have only in a small degree the sense necessary for understanding poetry. A man exercising the profession of lyric poet, and living by his profession, is unknown ; the poet who wishes to avoid starvation must write prose, obtain a sinecure, or inherit wealth. See, for instance, the cases of Théodore de Banville, Leconte de Lisle, and Sully-Prudhomme. Prose has utterly dethroned verse ; the stage is rarely hospitable towards rhyme ; and, with very few exceptions, all the volumes of verse published by Lemerre are printed at the expense of the authors. The superhuman lyric effort which characterized the beginning of this century, and produced the genius of Hugo, Lamartine, and Musset, has not been renewed. Indeed, the triumph of these men gave birth to swarms of imitators, who put so much verse into the market at one time that the commodity became a drug, and poetry has never since been able to recover from the discredit into which it then fell. Even the poorest second-hand booksellers, who exhibit their merchandise along the parapets of the quays of the Seine, will not encumber their dusty boxes with volumes of verse. There are obscure periodicals kept up by private subscription for the benefit of poets ; there are literary cliques where verse reigns supreme ; there are poets who recite their verses in literary and even in fashionable salons ; the Parnassians still have their select public ; and the aspirations and essays of the Decadents and of the Symbolistes are watched with interest by those whose duty or pleasure it is to keep a lookout along the artistic horizon ; but for all practical purposes we may say that French newspapers and magazines look askance at verse, and that, commercially and pecuniarily, poetry does not count at the present day.
And in prose, what is the real state of affairs, and what is the condition of the literary man in modern Paris ? — which is equivalent to modem France, for the capital attracts irresistibly all eminent talent. There are three categories of successful writers, namely, dramatists, novelists, and polygraphes, or, as one might say, writers-of-all-work. The princes of the first two divisions, men like Dumas, Sardou, Augier, Dennery, Alphonse Daudet, Zola, Ohnet, Richebourg, and Montépin, are at the very top of the ladder, so far as commercial success is concerned. Their lot is enviable materially, and in some cases artistically : the reader will make the distinction for himself. Next after these men come the first-class writers-of-all-work, who are novelists, dramatists, literary and dramatic critics, chroniqueurs, political writers even, historians, essayists, — in short, brilliant and facile polygraphes, to use an accepted French term, — whose names you see at the foot of newspaper articles, in the index of reviews, on the covers of ephemeral books, on the playbills of theatres; men who are always on the lookout which way the wind is blowing, what the public wants to read, what is the topic of the day. Such a writer is the personification of the intellectual appetites of his epoch : his manifold interests, his wide appreciation, his varied powers of assimilation, and his command of the instruments of his craft put him in communication with so many different sections of the public that his pen and his name are always welcome. He simply has to utilize his talent with indefatigable industry and relentless discipline in order to gain regularly an income which will enable him to live in refined comfort, if not in luxury. A man like Henri Fouquier, for instance, or Jules Claretie, realizes the French, type of the writer-of-all-work ; and while the former receives a salary of 30,000 francs a year for writing two articles a week in a Parisian newspaper, the latter has won the prize of the post of administrator of the Comédie Française, and the crowning honor of a seat in the French Academy, where Fouquier is destined to follow him. It is the number and the talent of the essayists, chroniqueurs, critics, and general writers which render the Parisian press so interesting and so different from any other. I remember once meeting a distinguished and accomplished Frenchman in the reading-room of one of the London clubs, where he had been looking over the mountains of daily papers and weekly literary reviews. He was full of astonishment, as well he might be. “ How admirably informed they are ! ” he exclaimed, “ and how terribly wanting in talent! ” he added, in an altered tone. The French papers, on the contrary, are very deficient in information, but they are brimful of talent; nor is this state of affairs other than what we might naturally expect. An average intelligent Frenchman cares very little about news; he demands, rather, ideas, wit, suggestive presentation, talent.
But outside these lighter categories of literature, what do we find ? M. Loliée tells us that moralists have not much chance nowadays, and he examines the case of La Rochefoucauld, supposing that he were living in our times. The whole of the Maxims, he calculates, would furnish about enough copy for two feuilletons of a modern newspaper ; the author, being a titled nobleman, might obtain the ordinary price per line, which would give him about two hundred francs for the whole book. Thus a work which makes an author immortal would not produce enough to keep him a fortnight. This is a fallacious argument ; similar paradoxes may be sustained concerning all the classics, and
with the same conclusion, for literary mercantilism is of recent origin. M. de la Rochefoucauld, if he were living nowadays, and if he were still afflicted with the mania of emitting maxims, apothegms, and moral generalizations, would doubtless give a gay turn to them, develop certain maxims by means of short stories, and write for La Vie Parisienne, on whose staff he would find several people of his own rank. In her way Gyp is a great moralist. Of course it is quite true that periodical publications cannot offer very warm hospitality to philosophers who write grave treatises on the model of those of Aristotle, nor can the philologist or he who deciphers Hittite inscriptions hope for more than a passing but respectful salute from the general public. For the benefit of such are there not professorships, learned foundations, government pensions, and academic prizes or endowments ? The same, too, is the case with historians. The critic Scherer recently remarked that France had never had “ a more remarkable historical school than she now has, and never was the public less capable of appreciating its labors. History was formerly read by all respectable people ; now it seems to be a mere erudite specialty.” Certainly there have been in this century commercially successful historians. The author of the Consulate and the Empire sold his nineteen volumes for nearly a million of francs to a joint-stock company; but his name was Adolph Thiers, and his subject the campaigns of Napoleon. Lamartine sold his Histoire des Girondins for 240,000 francs. Louis Blanc, that honey-mouthed deceiver, who wrote in his Organization of Labor this phrase: “Not only is it absurd to declare the writer proprietor of his work, but it is absurd to offer him a material retribution by way of recompense,” — Louis Blanc made a contract in 1846 for a general history of the Revolution for the sum of 500,000 francs. In our own days, Henri Martin’s History of France has had an immense success as padding for patriotic bookcases. But these instances are accidents, and such a success as, for example, Green’s History of the English People is unknown in France. The historian must win roof and table as a professor before he can begin to make researches and to write profound books.
The great demand is for light literature, and particularly fiction, and, thanks to the admirable organization of the Authors’ Society and of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers, dramatists, novelists, and writers-of-all-work obtain the maximum revenue from their prose. The dramatic career is the most fascinating and the most rapidly remunerative. The profits of the stage are great, and the financial interests of the writers are carefully protected by their society, which has its agents in every theatre and in every town, charged with collecting the author’s percentage on the receipts. How tempting is the prospect of a hundred performances, and even of a thousand ; and how your Sardou pities a poor author like Lesage, whose Turcaret, a masterpiece, had a run of only seven nights ! But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Paris boasted only about 7000 or 8000 people who went regularly to the theatre ; and an immense success could draw only some 20,000 additional spectators from the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Even in 1847, a grand success on the stage meant only about forty performances and receipts of 2000 francs a night. M. Loliée quotes from the accounts of the Comédie Française the total amount of authors’ fees paid during the year 1848, namely, 27,000 francs, or about one third of the amount paid lately to Emile Augier for one piece, Les Fourchambault. For eleven performances of Marion Delorme and Hernani, Victor Hugo received 817 francs by way of author’s fees, and Alfred de Musset headed the list with 4773 francs for 145 performances of various comédies, which gives an average of 32 francs for each piece played.
To-day, a new piece by Dumas or Pailleron represented at the Comédie Francaise will produce 100,000 francs of author’s fees in less than a year, although the piece is never played more than three times a week. At any of the Parisian theatres, a piece, if it runs well, will easily reach one hundred or one hundred and fifty performances, on the gross receipts of which the author takes a fee of twelve to fifteen per cent., according to tariffs regulated by the Dramatic Authors’ Society; and, besides this fee, an author may have a retaining premium ; then he has a certain number of author’s tickets to dispose of every day, the right of selling his piece for foreign countries and the provinces, and finally the sale of his manuscript to a publisher, all of which helps to make a handsome total.
Often you will hear people say that the great thing is not to write a piece, but to get a piece played. There is some truth in half of this statement. Theatrical managers are traders and speculators ; they want a piece which will hold the bill for six or eight months, if not for a whole year. The competition of other theatres, circuses, and concert halls is so sharp, and the expenses of a theatre are so heavy, that a manager must have his house continually full in order to make any profit. Nevertheless, it is a misrepresentation to say that the theatre is closed irrevocably to young talent, and that managers will not risk a new piece unless it is signed by a name that covers largely their responsibility. The fact is that long runs have discouraged production ; men have grown tired of waiting years for a chance to get a piece played; the prizes of the dramatic lottery are great, it is true, but the smaller and more frequent prizes of the lottery of forty years ago, when a theatre brought out a new piece every fortnight, were far more conducive to production. Lately the cry was raised, “ Place aux jeunes! ” and the theatrical managers were hauled over the coals, and accused of refusing to play the works of unknown authors. On the strength of this cry and of this accusation, and with the aid of a number of subscribers, a Théâtre Libre was founded, with a view to producing the works of the young and middle-aged victims of managerial tyranny. But behold, now that the desired theatre exists, there are no victims to be found, and the Théâtre Libre has the greatest difficulty in finding pieces to play. We could not ask a clearer proof that the managers are not tyrants, and that the stage is not closed to young talent or to new talent, even in its most audacious manifestations : witness the Vaudeville playing Zola’s Renée. The fact, is that for various reasons young dramatic talent has become rare.
For the writer of fiction the great and most immediate source of income is the feuilleton, which is so important a feature in French newspapers and magazines. Every year the demand for fiction increases, and every year the space devoted by the newspapers to politics diminishes, except at rare intervals when some grave crisis occurs ; but even then the feuilleton can never be sacrificed to political matter. During the last presidential excitement, for instance, the circulation of the Petit Journal ran up beyond the round million ; but its political articles were neither longer nor more numerous than usual, and its two feuilleton novels occupied their allotted space, without rebate of a single line. These phenomena are perhaps to be attributed to the fact that the Frenchman will not take the trouble to attend to his civic duties ; he will not be continuously a citizen ; he is sick of politics, and will consent to pay serious attention to the affairs of the country only when persistent neglect has resulted in a crisis. During the past ten years, I have remarked this growing indifference of the
French in political matters, and sometimes it seems as if the day were coming when politics will be considered a mere affair of routine, a simple matter of bureaucracy, requiring the services of superior employees, but not of the intellectual élite of the nation. However that may be, there exists an insatiable demand for fiction, by which the writers profit in the following manner: first of all, a novel is published in a daily newspaper or in a periodical, which pays for the “ copy ” at rates varying from two francs down to fifteen centimes a line ; the novel is then published in the form of a book, and meanwhile a greater or less number of second and third rate journals republish it in feuilletons, paying at the rate of not less than five centimes, or say one cent, a line ; finally, some firm will republish the book in a popular illustrated edition. For the collection of dues in Paris and in the provinces, and for the prevention of infringement of copyright in foreign countries, the Authors’ Society has its agents always on the watch; and so, thanks to tariffs and combinations which have now become traditions of the trade, Daudet and Zola can make sure of earning 100,000 francs by a novel, and that too within the year. But the literary artists are not those whose earnings are most considerable. The profits of a writer like Montépin are far greater. For instance, last year the Petit Parisien agreed to pay for a feuilleton by this author at the rate of thirty cents a line, plus a percentage according to the increase of circulation which the publication of the work might give to the newspaper. The tariff was doubled by this arrangement, and Monteéin received payment at the rate of sixty cents a line, the highest price on record. After the novel had been published in the Petit Parisien, a publisher paid the author 60,000 francs for the right of republication in two-cent weekly illustrated installments, while another publisher bought the right of issue in book-form. Such success and such profits as these are unknown to the literary novelists; but Montépin will never enter the Academy, and his prose gives no employment to the critics.
Thus far we have been talking about the princes of the literary profession; but when we come to writers of the second and third rank the tale is different, although, thanks to the Authors’ Society, they enjoy a certain protection, and their lot is rendered more endurable than it might otherwise be. A writer of moderate talent may hope to receive at least thirty centimes a line for a novel which is accepted by a good Parisian journal, and the publication of a feuilleton will bring him in say from 1500 to perhaps 5000 francs. But suppose that the author cannot obtain a turn in the newspapers, and that he has to dispense with the feuilleton, and publish immediately in the form of a volume. In this case, he may get from 200 to 400 francs for an edition; for the best talents, after the masters, do not all obtain thirty centimes royalty per volume. The best possible conditions are sixty centimes royalty, one franc a volume being reserved for a master like Daudet. Remember, also, that a sale of 1500 copies is a considerable success for a secondrate author, and a sale of 5000 copies entitles a novelist to begin to assume the airs of a master. From these facts and figures it will be seen that the newspapers, the feuilletons, and the cheap popular publications are the great sources of revenue for the French novelists.
Thus once more we find that the newspaper is the great nursing mother of all kinds of literary talent in France, the stepping-stone to reputation and to the realization of all artistic ambitions. The newspaper develops, and employs, and often devours almost all the literary intelligence of France, except such as is devoted to pedagogy, to erudition, and to research. Naturally, the young men rush somewhat blindly into journalism, only to find that, although there are hundreds of newspapers, there are, nevertheless, more writers than can be employed. There is always room up at the top, but there is never any room down at the bottom, in the closely packed ranks of the army of miserable literary hacks, who toil at index-making, sermonwriting, articles for biographical dictionaries, compilations for fifth-rate publishers, and other nameless occupations, which produce only the wages of starvation in rusty broadcloth.
Voltaire said one day, " If there is a man of letters who maintains that his trade is not the most ridiculous of trades, the most dangerous, and the most miserable, I want to see him.” In more modern times, Théodore Barrière used to say, “ Literature is a fine branch to hang one’s self from.” These seem to be the conclusions of M. Loliée’s interesting social study, already referred to. The struggle for life in the overcrowded literary world of Paris is bitter enough, it is true, but the prize of success is something better than mere hollow triumph and barren laurels ; it is a prize whose commercial value will bear comparison with the gains of the so-called liberal professions, while its moral value is equivalent to that of all careers which give a man fame and the satisfaction of helping to form the tastes and opinions of his fellows. This nineteenth century in France has seen the complete and undisputed emancipation of the writer, and the creation of an aristocracy of letters which in its turn has, so to speak, legislated for the whole profession, and imposed upon the publishers and upon the public conditions of equity and respect. Thus it is not, properly speaking, the individuality of talent which has advanced in consideration and prestige ; it is rather the function of writing itself which has gained in independence and security. The distinguished author is an eminent social factor in France; he is a man whom the state and the nation delight to honor in all possible ways, it being the French idea that letters and art are a state thing, — a thing which the nation in a body produces, and which it is the duty of the fatherland to call forth, to encourage, and to reward. Such is the idea upon which the foundation of the Institute of France and its various academies is based, the object being the progress of knowledge and the general utility and glory of the republic. Modern individualism doubtless often rebels against being enrolled in the regiment of the Institute, but, nevertheless, literary men, as a class, profit by the prestige with which the existence of the French Academy has endowed their profession. We have, then, this capital fact: that an author’s pen gains him livelihood, liberty, and honors of the most rare description. The French, literary man is free to develop his artistic personality at his own risks and perils ; his fortunes depend upon the opinion, the esteem, and the gratitude of his contemporaries ; his rights, without exception, are recognized, consecrated by universal assent, and protected by the laws. He is master of his thought, uncontested proprietor of his work, and free disposer of the fruits of his industry.
For these benefits of a practical and commercial nature, the French writers are largely indebted to their two societies, the Société des Gens de Lettres and the Société des Auteurs Dramatiques et Compositeurs, which have singularly simplified the business part of an author’s life, the fructification of his work, the collection of his dues, the fixing of the equitable reward of his labor, and, in short, all his relations with those who serve as indispensable intermediaries between himself and the public. Thanks to these societies, and thanks to the united action of the class, men of letters may achieve, some by their brilliant faculties of imagination, popular favor, academic honor, and material opulence ; others, by their polemical skill, may attain eminent public distinctions ; while all together they form two most powerful corporations, each asserting itself by the prestige and activity of its members, and by its rich and effective association for protection and mutual aid.
The newspaper writers, who are often members of one or both of the above societies, have also their professional syndicates for the safeguard of their interests and for mutual aid ; and gradually, by united efforts and by the persistent pursuit of an ideal, they have obtained for the journalist a literary and social position which the obscure and anonymous scribblers of certain countries may well envy. Even the reporters of a French newspaper retain their individuality, and may become personages exercising very considerable influence. But here, too, the question of art comes in ; for, as I have already intimated, the French reader values facts, but he takes greater joy in ideas, and in bright and incisive speculations starting from the slightest basis of reality. The Parisian reader especially refuses absolutely to be bored ; he is in the habit of living in an atmosphere of ideas, of rapid and suggestive conversation, of breezy and intelligently skeptical discussion. The reporters, therefore, must be keyed up to his diapason, and the presentation of their facts must be carefully studied with a view to facile, rapid, and pleasurable assimilation. The examination of the French press would demand more space than I can beg for here. It is sufficient for our argument to note that a first-class French journalist can gain some 50,000 francs a year with less labor, greater liberty, and far more satisfaction and glory than a man who would earn the same sum by writing in the columns of the London Times, to quote an instance for the sake of comparison.
Let us return now to the question of mercantilism and art, which prompted us to undertake this brief review of the literary career in contemporary France.
The relatively happy condition of the literary man nowadays is due precisely to the fact that his occupation has become a trade, a regularly organized industry, a business which needs to be followed as steadily as any other business, and even more so. (I am speaking of France, of course, for evidently in aristocratic England literature is scarcely recognized as a legitimate career. The literary man and the newspaper writer are still rather ashamed of their occupation ; their place in society is not clearly defined, — indeed, society is inclined to think that they have none. In the newspaper offices, the writers are editorial employees rather than men of letters, having a personality and a name ; and the fiction of the impersonal editorial “ we ” still prevails in all the ponderous dullness of its word-spinning hypocrisy.) Now the question arises, Has this business organization of the literary profession been prejudicial to literary art ? Has not art been sacrificed to the tricks of the trade, owing to the fact that the public must be pleased, tickled, and excited by any and every means ? Is not modern French literature to a large extent an industrial product, and not an art product ?
Art and industry are terms difficult to conciliate. Industry means continuous production subordinated to the laws of supply and demand. A work of art. to quote the definition of a delicate analyst, Paul Bourget, — “awork of art is the realization, thanks to certain forms, of an interior and solitary ideal; the confession, with words or with marble, with sounds or with colors, of a vibrating and personal sensitiveness ; the revelation of a ‘ nature,’ according to Goethe’s energetic expression.” Evidently there is a theoretical antagonism between literary art and literary industry, and nothing is keener than the contempt in which artists like Daudet, Goncourt, and Maupassant hold writers like Sardou and Ohnet. Doubtless there are moments when Sardou and Ohnet feel that all their millions cannot compensate for the literary esteem which the artists and critics refuse to accord to them. The same may also be the case with men like Verne, Montépin, Richebourg, Belot, Boisgobey, Malot, and a score of other most successful writers, who gain plenty of money, but who, from a literary point of view, simply do not exist, — ils n’existent pas. The French critic, being a man of letters, a personality, an artist, would not demean his pen by reviewing a work by Montépin or Belot; whereas a story by Daudet, a preface by Maupassant, or a brilliant début by a young man of individual talent will arouse all the critics and chroniqueurs in France, and fill the papers with columns of luminous and original discussion.
Far from being prejudicial to literary art, it seems to me that the regular organization of industrial production has had the result of placing the literary artists on a higher pedestal of respect. In reality, there is no question of antagonism or even of rivalry. The artists produce literature, the others produce reading matter, and both have their reward, their public, and their share of glory or of notoriety, which they must hasten to enjoy; for art has never said its last word, and criticism will never have finished its task. Within the past ten years, have we not seen the growth and apogee of the naturalist school, whose chiefs are now writing their memoirs and the history of their battles (Alphonse Daudet, Trente Ans de Paris) ? But the naturalists have not succeeded in formulating a definitive æsthetic ; younger men are coming to the front, with new ideals, new canons, and new impressions. Flaubert is no longer a “realist,” but the poet of the Tentation de Saint-Antoine ; Goncourt’s novels are placed below his historical and critical work, in the estimation of the rising young literary circles ; Zola is being classed as a poet and a social philosopher, and not as a copyist of reality; Daudet is the delicate analyst and anecdotical historian of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Thus criticism has already separated this group of artists, whose label of “ naturalists ” has been torn off long ago, — a fact which is still unknown only in the more remote and obnubilated zones of culture.
The young literary men, during the preliminary period of struggling, complain constantly of the non-recognition of the artist, and of the all-invading success of the commercial literary man. As the public increases, the production of commonplace reading matter must increase also ; for the artistic sense is not innate in man, and still less in woman, who is perhaps the more greedy reader. In pictorial art, likewise, the mediocre must ever preponderate: in point of view of number, there will always be more people who will frankly prefer a German chromo-lithograph to a picture by Rembrandt; and even amongst relatively enlightened people, there are ninety-nine who will gush over Tintoretto for one who will feel the distinction and charm of Carpaccio. So are we constituted, and such is our destiny, that the superior ideal is visible only to the few; and this explains why the mediocre can be candid and happy, and why Georges Ohnet can preserve his serenity, while Guy de Maupassant works in anguish and torment. The point which ought to console the literary man is that both these authors can live, and that the artist can command the means of enduring his anguish in conditions not only of comfort, but of luxury. The literary career, thanks precisely to its mercantile development, is not a lottery of misery and glory alone: there are also hundreds and hundreds of minor prizes for intelligent and tenacious mediocrity, and the drawing of these prizes takes place in the fairest and freest conditions. The struggle for life in literature is hard, it is true, and the wrestlers are many; but a man cannot hope to obtain at a slight cost the right to live outside of all apparent servitude, which is one of the great charms of the literary life, when that career is attended by the minimum amount of success that makes the game worth the candle.
Theodore Child .