Chapitre III (suite 2)

Chateaubriand never mentions Florello; but the presumption is strong that he had heard of him and was acquainted with his sentimental adventures. The book must have been in the shops when he was living in Paris. It was the sort of book that he would be sure to read if he lighted on it, and to imitatefor youth is always imitative-if he read it. The resemblance between René and Florello is, at any rate, too striking for the coincidence to be readily accepted as accidental; and the probability is great that Florello is one of the " sources"-the sentimental source, in fact. The other sources-those from which Chateaubriand derived his descriptions and his adventures-were, as has been said, the writings of previous travellers. He owed a great deal to Charlevoix; he owed even more to William Bartram.

Bartram was a Quaker of Pennsylvania, a son of John Bartram, the founder of the first botanical garden in the United States, and himself the founder of the American Philosophical Society. He and his father were employed by Dr. Fothergill of London to collect plants in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. His Travels, published in Philadelphia, London, and Dublin, were translated into French. Chateaubriand admits that he knew them, and used them.' " A few extracts carefully translated" had, he says, found their way into his notes. With these extracts, he adds, are mingled his own " rectifications, reflections, additions, and descriptions." The whole is " so woven together that it is practically impossible to disentangle, or even to recognize, what belongs to Bartram »

But that is nonsense. Everything belongs to Bartram; nothing belongs to Chateaubriand-nothing, that is to say, except the flowing periods and the highly-coloured style. Wherever the descriptions are correct, they are taken bodily from Bartram-except in the few cases in which they are taken bodily from Charlevoix, or Jonathan Carver, or J. E. Bonnet, or Le Page du Pratz. Wherever the descriptions are correct, they can be identified as Bartram's or another's. Wherever the help of Bartram, or another, was not available, the descriptions are incorrect. There is nothing in Bartram about the scenery, or the flora and fauna, of the Mississippi. Hence the monkeys, parrots, and flamingoes which Chateaubriand professed to have seen on the banks of the Father of Waters. But Bartram had explored Florida thoroughly, and Chateaubriand was therefore able to pretend successfully that he had done the same. Whatever Bartram saw he says that he saw too; and this particular section of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe is neither more nor less than an elaborate paraphrase of Bartram.

Nor is that all. Even Atala was largely a paraphrase from Bartram. The romance alleged to have been composed "in the huts of the savages" is full of extracts from a work which the author cannot possibly have read until after his return to France.

Demonstrations of plagiarism by means of parallel columns are sometimes tiresome to follow; but that method of proof is hardly to be avoided in this case. Happily a few extracts will suffice.

Bartram

I was awakened in the morning early by the cheering converse of the wild turkey cocks.

The high forests ring with the noise . . . insomuch that the

Chateaubriand

I had not advanced a hundred yards into the wood when I perceived a flock of turkeys. .

In the evening they perch on the highest branches of the trees.

whole country is, for an hour or more, in a universal shout.

A little after sunrise their crowing gradually ceases, they quit their high lodging places, and alight on the earth, where, expanding their silver-bordered trains, they strut and dance about the coy female.

Bartram

The hibiscus coccineus grows ten or twelve feet high, branching regularly so as to form a sharp cone. These branches also divide again, and are embellished with large expanded crimson flowers, which can be seen at a great distance.

Bartram

evident remains of a large town of the ...

In the morning the noise of their cry rings through the lofty forest.

A little after sunrise their crowing ceases, and they descend and alight upon the ground.

Chateaubriand

We then observed a species of hibiscus. This enormous grass grows in low-lying and humid places to the height of ten or twelve feet, and terminates in an extremely sharp cone. The smooth leaves, divided a little, are embellished by beautiful crimson flowers, which can be seen at a great distance.

Chateaubriand

An unexpected spectacle met our gaze. We discovered an It was situated on an eminence Indian ruin. It was situated on near the banks of the lake. ..• On the site... stands a very pompous Indian monument, or conical pyramid of earth, from which runs in a straight line a grand avenue or Indian highway, through a magnificent grove of magnolias, live oaks, palms, and orange-trees, terminating at the verge of a large green level savanna. This island appears to have been well inhabited, as is evident from the quantities of fragments of Indian earthenware, bones of animals, and other remains.

an eminence near the banks of the lake. On the left we saw a pyramid of earth, from forty to forty-five feet high. From the pyramid another road ran through a magnificent grove of magnolias and live oaks, terminating in a savanna. Fragments of earthenware, and other utensils, were scattered about, mingled with fossils, shells, petrified plants, and the bones of animals..

What people had inhabited this island ?

4I

Bartram

Innumerable bands of fish are seen; the voracious crocodile, stretched along at full length, as the great trunk of a tree in size; the devouring drum-fish, inimical trout, and all the varieties of gilded, painted, bream; the barbed catfish, dreaded sting-ray, skate, and flounder, spotted bass, sheep's head, and omnivorous drum; all in their separate bands and communities, with free and unsuspicious intercourse performing their evolutions; there are no signs of enmity, no attempt to devour each other . . . suffering themselves to be gently lifted or borne up by the expanding fluid towards the surface, falling or floating like butterflies in the cerulean ether . . . you imagine the picture to be within a few inches of your eyes, and that you may without difficulty touch any one of the fish.

Chateaubriand

The crocodile, floating like the trunk of a tree, the trout, the pike, the perch, the flounder, the bass, the bream, the drum-fish, the gold fish, all one another's mortal enemies, swam together in the lake, seeming to have sworn a truce in order to enjoy the beauty of the enemy in common. The blue fluid took the hue of their changing colours.

The water was so clear that you would have thought you could touch the actors in this scene with your finger.

That is enough-perhaps it is too much-for any reader's patience; and, of course, if that were all, one would not make much ado about so little. It is, however, only a minute fraction of the indictment, presented as an example. The total number of extracts from Bartram which M. Bédier has discovered embedded in Chateaubriand is forty-seven, and even his list is not exhaustive. The extracts from Charlevoix are still more numerous, and those from Carver only a little less so. Many of them are considerably longer than those which it has been possible to quote here; and, when they are all struck out, very little indeed remains; and the obvious conclusion must be drawn: Chateaubriand's relation of his journey was a relation of a journey which he did not take. It is not even a work of imagination; it is a work of plagiarism.

Perhaps Chateaubriand got as far as Niagara; more probably he did not. His story that he fell over a precipice, broke his arm above the elbow, had it set by Indians, and had sufficiently recovered at the end of twelve days to "explore the Lakes of Canada," is not of the sort that commands ready credence. He may, again, have seen something of the Indians; but he certainly cannot have seen very much of them, for he idealizes them after the manner of James Fenimore Cooper, as " the men of Nature." Most likely the only rivers on whose waters he really floated were the Hudson and Delaware; most likely the only forests in whose fastnesses he lost himself were those in the immediate vicinity of New York. It would not have been necessary for him to go very far, in 1791, in order to meet savages and receive the impression of unutterable solitude.

He writes as a man who has received that impression and rejoiced in it. That was his pose throughout his life; and probably no such consistent pose is ever altogether insincere. It is far more likely to be the theatrical exaggeration of a natural tendency; and we must take that view of Chateaubriand's pose if we are to understand it aright.

Ennui, the disease of the age, devoured him; and he cultivated the malady instead of trying to cure it, admiring and exhibiting the symptoms, after the fashion of many an interesting " case." "I yawn my way through life," he said to M. de Marcellus¹; and, having used the phrase in conversation, he promptly put it in a book. He was half a savage, too-or liked to think so-" tameless, and swift, and proud"; and, when he had achieved ambition and stood on a pinnacle amid applause, the trammels of society and civilization galled him, and the consoling summons to the wilderness sounded in his ears. And he had penetrated the wilderness, though only a little way; and he knew that the pose would be much more effective if he could imagine-and make the world imagine-that he had really consorted with savages in their remotest wilds; and, with Bartram and Carver and Charlevoix to help him, it seemed an easy thing to do. He did it; he was sublime. It was quite a long while before he was found out and classed as " a sublime Tartarin," who falsely claimed that ennui had driven him further into the wilderness than any other man of equal sensibility.

1 Secretary of the Embassy in London when Chateaubriand was Ambassador there. ↩

If ennui drove him forth, however, though but a little way, it seems not less certain that ennui brought him back.

The alleged motive is, indeed, the sense of duty. Chateaubriand picked up an old newspaper in a remote farm-house, and read in it an account of Louis XVI's flight to Varennes-

"A sudden change was effected in my frame of mind. ... The clash of arms and the riotous noises of the world rang in my ears as I sat in the thatched cottage of a miller in the obscure and distant forest. I brought my travels to a sudden termination, saying to myself: 'Return to France.'"

Which may, or may not, be true. For, as Sainte-Beuve says, the human heart-and especially the poet's heart-is unstable, and tires quickly of the satisfaction of its supposed desires, and is always glad to abandon a pleasure which has been too long protracted-"above all when it is persuaded that the abandonment is an act of sacrifice »

In any case, however, and for whatever reason, Chateaubriand hurried home, and made his arrangements to join the army of Condé, then on the point of invading France. Honour, he felt, required it. A Breton nobleman could do no less. It was only a question of raising the necessary money for the ex-pedition; and, as the endowments of the Order of Malta, on which he had relied, had been confiscated by the nation, an alternative fiscal plan had to be found—

"This conjunction of circumstances was responsible for the most serious of all the events of my life. My relatives married me in order to furnish me with the means of going to get killed in defence of a cause to which I was indifferent."

The bride was Mile. de Lavigne, of an old Breton family. The bridegroom hardly knew her, and did not feel that he possessed "any of the qualifications of a husband »

" But Lucile was very fond of Mlle. de Lavigne, and thought that this marriage would make me independent. 'Very well,' I said. ' Have it your own way?' For, in my case, it is only the public man who has a will of iron. In my private capacity, I am at the mercy of any one who tries to influence me, and I would willingly enslave myself for a century to avoid worry for an hour."

And this is another of the stories which may, and also may not, be true; for Sainte-Beuve, on the authority of Viennet, tells quite a different story. Chateaubriand, he suggests, had "compromised" Mlle. de Lavigne; with the result that an angry uncle arrived with a priest and a pair of pistols, and insisted, with threats, that the marriage should take place there and then. That story, given his proud and sullen temper, would explain his instant desertion of his wife quite as well as his desire to fight the battles of a king for whom he felt no enthusiasm. It would also explain why he did not rejoin his wife-or arrange for her to rejoin himafter the fighting was over: an omission which assuredly needs more explanation than the Mémoires offer. But the proofs are inconclusive, and the mystery must remain unsolved¹.' All that is certain is that Chateaubriand started for the frontier immediately after his marriage, and did not see Madame de Chateaubriand again until several years had elapsed.

1 M. Biré, Chateaubriand's latest editor, throws doubt upon the story; but he offers no alternative explanation of Chateaubriand's reluctance to live with his wife. ↩

He fought at the siege of Thionville, and did enough for honour; but his recital of his adventures in that campaign need not detain us. We need not trouble ourselves to consider whether he speaks the truth when he tells us that he carried in his knapsack the manuscript of the romance which he professes to have "written in the huts of the savages." Presently he caught small-pox, yet managed, somehow or other, to drag himself back to Brussels, and to Ostend, whence he found his way to Jersey, where his uncle, M. de Bedée, and some of his cousins had taken refuge. He stayed with them, gradually recovering his health, for about four months. At the end of that time he took the packet for England, landing at Southampton in 1793 with thirty louis in his purse.

Chateaubriand in London-The Royal Literary Fund-Ill health-Visit to Suffolk-Charlotte Ives-A proposal of marriage-"I am a married man"-Return to London-Literary work-The Essai sur les Révolutions-Chateaubriand makes the acquaintance of Fontanes.

THE Terror raged in France, and many of Chateaubriand's relatives were numbered among its victims. His brother and his brother's wife were taken to the Place of the Guillotine in the same tumbril with his aged friend, M. de Malesherbes, " who defended Louis and could not speak, like a grey old rock dissolving into sudden waters."¹ His mother was imprisoned in Paris, and his wife and his sister Lucile were imprisoned at Rennes, until the events of Thermidor released them. And he meanwhile starved-or came very near to starving-in a Holborn garret.

Baylis the printer let him a furnished lodging at a guinea a month. He earned what he could by literary hack work-chiefly translation from the Latin and the French²—and began, at the same time, to write what he hoped might prove a " magnum opus," his Essai sur les Révolutions. The work was very hard, and the pay was very poor; his prospects were black, and his distress was deep. He dined, as long as he could afford to do so, at a shilling ordinary in a tavern.

2 So he says; but one doubts, for his English, as we shall see, was hardly up to the mark. ↩

Carlyle.

Presently he had to cut his dinner-money down to sixpence. There were days-several consecutive days-on which he had nothing to drink but water, and nothing to eat but bread. At the same time, his health was in a bad way, and he was spitting blood. He had, as he puts it, " his tomb-stone for a desk."

At the time when he wrote out these recollections of his terrible experiences, he was French Ambassador -" a magnificent Ambassador," he says-to the Court of Saint James's, and had just sat next to Canning, and heard his health proposed in flattering terms at the annual dinner of the Royal Literary Fund. The memories evoked, and the thought of the contrast between the present and the past, had moved him to tears and generosity. When the collection was made, writes his secretary, M. de Marcellus,¹ "he emptied both his purse and mine;" and when, after the feast was over, he and M. de Marcellus were driving home together, he lay back in the coupé and quoted " Sunt lacrimae rerum." If the Royal Literary Fund had been in existence in 1794, he reflected, he would have been a worthy object of its benevolence, and the almoner of the society might have done worse than pay his doctor's bill.

The fund did, as a matter of fact, exist in 1794, having been instituted in 1790; and its administrators were always willing to assist foreigners as well as Englishmen. At the very dinner which Chateaubriand attended, the secretary reported that the society had " discovered the venerable Bard of Iceland where he patiently reclined beneath the shed of poverty. • In 1794, however, it was still a very young and poor society; and very likely Chateaubriand, even if he had been aware of its existence, would have been too proud to apply to it for a grantjust as he was, he assures us, too proud to apply for the shilling a day which the British Government allotted, by way of "outdoor relief," to all French émigrés who needed it, preferring to wander, hungry, through the streets, lying under the trees in Kensington Gardens, or mournfully contemplating the monuments in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. " The bust of an unknown man like me," he reflected sadly in the great cathedral, "will never find a place among these illustrious effigies;" but his sighs and aspirations in the former resort were of a different order. " I wonder,' he writes, " whether any of the beautiful women there divined the invisible presence of René."

1 Afterwards Envoy Extraordinary to Madrid, and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Polignac's Administration. E _ 49 ↩

Presumably none of them did; there was no reason why any of them should. But Chateaubriand's first romance-the romance to which he owed at least a part of the inspiration of René-was nevertheless very near at hand, though not London, but Bungay in the County of Suffolk, was to be the scene of it.

One of his friends in London was Peltier, a journalist, afterwards charge d'affaires in London of the black king of Haiti, who paid him a good salary in bales of sugar, which he sold to the best advantage. Peltier, his story goes, came to him one day and showed him an advertisement in a Yarmouth newspaper. A committee of antiquaries, at whose head was the Vicar of Beccles¹, were preparing a history of the county. They wanted a Frenchman to help them to decipher some old French manuscripts in the Camden collection; they offered him two hundred guineas for his services. It was the very thing. Chateaubriand applied for the appointment and got it; and he and Peltier celebrated his good fortune with a banquet of roast beef, plum-pudding, and port wine.

1 Bence Sparrow. Chateaubriand, curiously enough, omits all mention of his name. ↩

This is what he tells us; but he does not tell us the truth. As he "made a romance" of histravels in America, so he " made a romance " of his visit to Suffolk.

The alleged advertisement in a Yarmouth paper is a figment, for the first Yarmouth paper-the Yarmouth Herald-did not begin to appear until 1804; and the files of the Norwich Mercury, in which it might conceivably have been published, have been searched for it in vain. No trace can be discovered of any such society of antiquaries as that which Chateaubriand refers to; and neither Wilton Rix, the historian of Beccles, nor Alfred Suckling, the historian of Suffolk, makes any reference to Chateaubriand's work in such a connection. Finally, there does not exist, and never has existed, any Camden collection of manuscripts; and the Cottonian collection, which more or less answers to Chateaubriand's description, was to be seen, not in Suffolk, but in London. The fact of the matter is that Chateaubriand was in Beccles, not as a savant, but as a school-master¹ and a private tutor.

1 Bence Sparrow was one of the school governors, E 2 ↩

He hated the recollection, and was ashamed of it. His contempt for the trade of a teacher of languages is expressed in more than one passage in his writings. He speaks of it in the Essai mentioned above as " unworthy of a superior person"; and he repeats the sentiment in the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe, where he tells of a certain relative of his, a poor but proud abbé, who was offered the post of tutor to the Duc de Bourbon and returned the haughty answer that the Prince de Condé, who had proposed the appointment to him, ought to know that a Chateaubriand might employ a tutor, but could not conceivably act as one. But the reason for his bitterness was that the iron had entered into his own soul. He had been a master in " Brightly's school"; he had given French lessons in the houses of neighbouring gentry; he had been known to his pupils as "Mons. Shatterbrains." The local traditions to this effect are quite conclusive¹.! There are, or were until lately, people still living who had known his pupils.

1 Still more conclusive is the following letter to a Dr. Davey of Beccles, which has lately been recovered :- "Greville Street, Holborn, no. 15, London, 16 Jan., 1797. « Dear Sir, "You could not fancy how many times I reproched myself with not writing to you, but if you knew how much burried in papers I am now printing, runing from booksellers to booksellers, cursing a thousand people that call upon me, you no doubt would excuse and pity me. The gentleman who shall deliver you this letter is a cousin of mine called M. Feron; he is gone to Beccles to occupy my place. should you be so kind to help him in many little things he may be a stranger to, you will oblige me very much. I myself shall soon return among you again. I am now very ill, but as I give up all sort of teaching, I shall be able, when at Beccles, to follow a regular course of physics, and I am not without hope that, by next summer, you will make of me one of the strongest man in England. "Excuse my french scribbling and receive the assurance of all the gratitude with which I remain, dear sir, your very very humble obedient servant, " CHATEAUBRIAND. "My cousin is lodged in my apartment at Butcher's." The letter, with all its faults of orthography preserved, was printed by M. Anatole Le Braz in the Revue de Paris of August 15, 1907, ↩

For a tutor, however, he was extremely well received. The bracing air of the east coast restored his shattered health, and, as he made himself agreeable, he was invited to many of the best houses. One house in which he was specially made welcome was that of Mr. Ives, the incumbent of Saint Margaret's, Iketshall, near Bungay-about five miles from Beccles

"a great Hellenist and mathematician," we read, "and one who drank in the old-fashioned English style¹." 1 Mr. Ives and his young French visitor used, in this old-fashioned English style, to sit for two hours over their wine, after dinner, talking of Homer and Sir Isaac Newton, and their foreign travels and the North-West Passage². Then, when they joined the ladies for tea in the drawing-room, Mr. Ives used to go to sleep in his arm-chair, and Mrs. Ives to busy herself with needle-work, while their daughter, Miss Charlotte Ives, whose tutor he was, sang, and Chateaubriand turned over the leaves of her music. Or else, when the music had lulled the elders to their slumbers, the young people talked in whispers, of France, of literature, of themselves, of one another.

1 There is a local tradition to the effect that he once drank against the Duke of Norfolk for a wager. Bottle after bottle of port disappeared, and when the Duke was under the table, the clergyman rose, rang the bell, and called for a tumbler of brandyand-water, "hot and stiff." Mr. Rider Haggard tells the story in his Farmer's Year. ↩

2 Mr. Ives had himself travelled in America, and it was probably in his library that Chateaubriand found the books of travel from which he borrowed freely, without acknowledgment, in his narrative of his own peregrinations. ↩

He had come to Beccles-and Bungay-under the assumed name of M. de Combourg¹.1 He had acknowledged his real name when found in tears over the news of his brother's execution. But he had said nothing about Madame de Chateaubriand then languishing in prison at Rennes. Nothing had happened to suggest the topic. No doubt it seemed irrelevant at a time when, as he says, he "felt the bashful charms of an attachment of the soul." And so, for a season, he fleeted the time carelessly.

1 The archives of Beccles contain a letter, published by M. Le Braz in the Revue de Paris, in which M. de Combourg "presents his compliments to Miss Sparrow" and proceeds to interpret the characters of a number of young ladies from their handwriting. ↩

The next thing was that Chateaubriand borrowed a horse and fell off it at Mr. Ives's door. He was taken in, and put to bed, and nursed; and nothing could have pleased him better: " If any one had told me that I was to spend the remainder of my days, unknown to the world, in the bosom of this solitary household, I should have died of joy." So he continued to say nothing about Madame Chateaubriand languishing in her prison, but accepted the good gifts which the gods bestowed; and then the situation developed according to the rules. Miss Charlotte Ives " changed her manner," after the way of maidens whose lovers are dilatory in declaration. " She became reserved; she ceased to offer me flowers for my button-hole; she would no longer sing to me. It was very puzzling," thought Chateaubriand. What could it all mean !

There was, indeed, no doubt whatever what it meant. Mrs. Ives understood, even if Chateaubriand, being young and inexperienced, did not. She understood, and she approved. She conferred with Mr. Ives, and Mr. Ives said that he was quite of her opinion. They would raise no obstacles, they agreed; the course of true love should run smoothly, so far as they were concerned, and, as the handsome young stranger seemed afraid to speak, he should be spoken to. So one day, when dinner was over, Mr. Ives, instead of passing the bottle, rose and left the room, and Miss Charlotte Ives followed him dutifully with drooped eyes; and Mrs. Ives and Chateaubriand were left tête-à-tête. He was expecting admonitions and reproaches-expecting to be told that he was a penniless adventurer who had presumed upon hospitality. But not at all. Mrs. Ives blushed, and then- "Sir,' she said, "you have seen my confusion. I do not know what may be your feelings towards Charlotte, but the eyes of a mother cannot be deceived. My daughter is certainly in love with you. Mr. Ives and I have talked the matter over. You suit us in every respect, and we believe that you will make our daughter happy. You are without a country; you have lost your relatives; your property has been sold. There is no reason, then, why you should return to France. While waiting to recover your inheritance, you shall live with us."

Chateaubriand wept. "I threw myself," he says, " at Mrs. Ives's feet, and covered her hands with my kisses and my tears." Mrs. Ives jumped to the conclusion that the tears were tears of joy. She sobbed responsively, and rose, and reached out her hand for the bell-rope, meaning to summon Charlotte and Mr. Ives to a tender scene of family rejoicing. And then-

" Stop, madam," I cried. "One moment, I beg of you. I am a married man." She fell in a faintingfit upon the floor.

And that was all, and it was on the floor that Chateaubriand left his hostess. He did not dash cold water in her face, nor call the servants, nor run for brandy or smelling-salts. He did not communicate with Mr. Ives; he did not even wait to pack his traps. He took "French leave"-departed, as the French say, à l'Anglaise-walked all the way from Bungay to Beccles, presumably in evening dress, and engaged a seat in the coach that was just starting for London, leaving his luggage behind him, and never even, so far as one knows, giving an address to which it could be forwarded.