CAUSERIE.
THE GONCOURTS : A TEMPESTUOUS PREMlilRE AT THE ODEON.
Paris, January otk, THERE are few more interesting episodes in the annals of modern French literature than the collaboraiiuii, or literary partnership, of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. The following passage, which occurs in the Preface of the Journal des Goncourt, gives the synthesis of the life and work of the two brothers : — ' This Journal/ writes M. E. de Goncourt, ' is our confession of every evening ; the confession of two lives " unseparated " in pleasure, labour, trouble; of twin thoughts, of two minds receiving from their contact with men and things impressions so similar, so identical, so homogeneous, that their confession may be considered as the expression of a single me and a single /.' Or as Theodore de Banville has said in the follow- ing lines of a short ode addressed to the two brothers: — ' Avec amour, freres, vos deux pensees Marchent d'un pas egal, Tun a I'autre enlacees,' It was in 1851, just after the Coup d'Etat, that Edmond and Jules de Goncourt brought out their first work — 'En 18...;' a rather incomprehensible collec- tion of detached, rambling notes and impressions, this, their debut in literature, was a failure. For twenty years the two literary Siamese twins worked assidu- ously, producing novels, memoirs, and works on art and society in the eighteenth century. Their ambition was to depict men and things with realistic accuracy just as they saw them; they were, in fact, with Flau- bert, the founders of the ' Naturalist ' school of litera- ture ; in art they were the forerunners of ' the Impressionists ; ' and they invented the term ' human document ' long before M. Zola and his ' human docu- ments ' created such a stir in literature. The vivid precision with which they noted the physiological and psychological working of human passions, and more particularly that of love, was perhaps too anatomical in style to be pleasing, and their love of strange new woi'ds and antitheses of their own invention scared the quiet bourgeois reader, and prevented their ever attain- ing the popularity they so assiduously pursued. The author of Protraits intimes may be said to have dis- covered and revealed to us French society during the latter half of the eighteenth century, that society which, notwithstanding its sins and foibles, was pro- bably the most delightful, artistic, and literary epoch of modern times. To the artistic student of that delightful eighteenth century there can be no greater intellectual treat than the perusal of the above-mentioned volumes before a visit to Versailles and Trianon, and modern pastellists would do well to read what the Goncourts have said with regard to Latour and La Rosalba before visiting the pastel gallery at the Louvre or making an artistic pilgrimage to the admirable Latour collection at St. Quentin. The eighteenth-century series were followed by the equally interesting volumes Histoire de Marie AntoineUe and La Societe fian^aise pendant la Revolution et le Directoire. It must be added that the Goncourts were great amateurs of curios and bric-a-brac, and that their influ- ence was great in bringing into fashion Louis xvth upholstery and artistic furniture ; they were also great admirers of Japanese art, and the collection of old engravings, books, and bibelots, which fills their quiet cottage at Auteuil, is one of the most curious and valuable private collections in Paris. Like all French writers the Goncourts were smitten with the ambition of writing for the stage, which they thought offered special opportunities for putting into practice their theories on the ' naturalistic ' develop- ment of art. So they wrote Henriette Marechal, and thanks to the personal influence of the Princess Mathilde, the Emperor's cousin, the drama was ' re- ceived ' by the literaiy Sanhedrim of the Comedie Fran^aise — the Comite de Lecture. Now, at that time (December 1865), the fact that a play, a picture, or a book owed anything to official protection was enough to raise against it the ire of ' young France ' and the anger of the opposition press ; thus the work was damned beforehand. The Premiere of Henriette Marechal will ever be memorable in theatrical annals as one of the most tempestuous ever witnessed at the Theatre-Fran9ais. The new play deserved its fiite, for its outrageousness was only equalled by its dulness.
This somewhat embittered them against the suc- cess of certain of their more fortunate litei'ary confreres, and led them to adopt a form of literary pessimism quite unsuited to the taste of the French readers. It has been said that a novel is a mirror held up by the author for society to see itself in, but the picture reflected in the glass need not be always one of physical and moral degradation. The Goncourts unfortunately could see but little of the bright side of life, and the mirror they held up to our gaze but too often reflected faces distorted with passion, or sad and gloomy scenes of Parisian low life. Yet, whatever fault the critic might find with the subject they treated, the style was always good. Never did two writers identify themselves more conscientiously with their work; they began by accumulating a store of documentary evidence and impressions relating to the subject they intended to treat; then the two literary partners would set to work with heart and soul to produce a picture of
