Essays on Paul Bourget

It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your unoffending and dearest ones present.

Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like that one of yours to a lady for a small fault – or a large one. – [When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the Americans, “who can always get away with a few years’ trying to find out who their grandfathers were,”] he merely makes an allusion to an American foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in their name!

Snobbery… I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American character instead of a rare exception.

I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private engagements. At five o’clock on the day the causerie was to be given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to arrive at nine o’clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally to be found after their signature. This lady’s P. S. ran thus: “I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture.”

I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:

“Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement.”

Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York ‘chronique scandaleuse’, on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not! [But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.] – We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for we have a saying, “Who humiliates my mother includes his own.”

Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter, M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher quality.

Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent information about Balzac and those others. – [“Now the style of M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz’s ‘Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe’, and those books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Notre Dame de Paris’? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre – this kind-hearted, refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: ‘I wish M. Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris I read La Terre.’”] – All this in simple justice to you – and to me; for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.

And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew – the anecdote which closed my recent article – and consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing – nothing but error. When you say that I “retort by calling France a nation of bastards,” it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.

You told an anecdote. A funny one – I admit that. It hit a foible of our American aristocracy, and it stung me – I admit that; it stung me sharply. It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:

“He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?” That is, the American aristocrat’s grandfather.

Now that hits only a few of us, I grant – just the upper crust only – but it hits exceedingly hard.

I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your chapters I found this chance:

“In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul.”

You see? Your “higher Parisian” class – not everybody, not the nation, but only the top crust of the Nation – applies to debauchery all the powers of its soul.

I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me – but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in paragraph eleven of your Reply. – [So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like M. Paul Bourget’s book. So long as he makes light fun of the great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]

For example: See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:

“I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because whenever he can’t strike up any other way to put in his time, he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather was.”

Hear the answer:

“I reckon a Frenchman’s got his little standby for a dull time, too; because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can’t find out who his father was.”

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women – a remark unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark Twain’s ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to you.

If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French “chestnut,” I might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each other. “Ah, hold your tongue,” says one, “you ain’t got no father.”

“Ain’t got no father!” replies the other; “I’ve got more fathers than you.”

Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because it had a point. It wouldn’t have hurt me if it hadn’t had point. You wouldn’t have wasted space on it if it hadn’t had point.

My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It wouldn’t have hurt you if it hadn’t had point. I judged from your remark about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.

Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.

I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.

We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of France:

“Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your grandfathers were?”

They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can trace their lineage back through centuries.

And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying:

“And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers were.” They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because they haven’t any difficulty in finding their fathers.

Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven’t any.

That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it. I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so. And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with another one – on the give-and-take principle, you know – which is American. I didn’t know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you didn’t tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again, and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I know you will forgive me.