DISCOVERY 



327 



Anglo-Saxon. The sixteen and seventeen year old 

 heroines of Francis Jammes' studies in sex-psychology 

 [Clara EUebeuse and Alma'ide in the Roman du Licvre 

 (The Hare's Story)] appear extraordinarily precocious 

 to an English reader. At an age when an English girl 

 would be playing hockey and tennis, training as a girl- 

 guide, studying for examinations, and giving but a very 

 small percentage of her time to the cultivation of the 

 emotions, these Frcnchchildren are breaking their hearts, 

 or at least having experiences that vitally affect their 

 mental and moral development. Francis Jammes 

 deplores the artificial and restricted outlook that allows 

 children to grow up so ignorant of the resources of the 

 outer world, as well as of their own nature. He almost 

 joins hands with the psycho-analysts in his appeal for 

 truth and a free outlet for the natural instincts. 



The popular opinion in England is that the French 

 have only one theme in literature, just as they have 

 only one joke — the theme and the joke being sex. 

 Until quite recently the " yellow-back " stood as a 

 symbol of the world, the flesh, and the devil ; of late 

 there has come a change, and every French publisher's 

 list contains a fair proportion of titles marked " a 

 mettre entre toutes les mains" — a fact which indicates, 

 not an access of Puritanism, but a widening of the field 

 of interest to include all the phenomena of human 

 experience. The psychology of passion does still 

 occupy a very important place. Henri de Regnier, 

 Marcelle Tinayre, Henri Bordeaux, continue to produce 

 love-stories which are eagerly devoured by the French 

 public. The Prix de la Vie Heureuse was awarded last 

 3'ear to M. Andre Corthis for his love-story Pour Moi 

 Seule {For Myself Alone). In L'Avetitiire de Therese 

 Beauchamp (Therese Beauchamp's Adventure). Francis 

 de Miomandre has produced an original and striking 

 variation of the theme known in France as Elle, Lui el 

 V Autre, and in England as " a triangle story." Andre 

 Gide, in La Symphonic pastorale (The Pastoral Sym- 

 phony), has drawn a touching picture of the awakening 

 of love in a young blind girl. 



In ninety-nine out of a hundred of these books, love 

 in its highest sense, as that which can only desire the 

 well-being of the beloved, is conspicuously absent. Yet 

 one or two of the younger French authors are beginning 

 to discover something more in the relation of the sexes 

 than the selfish desire for physical and mental enjoy- 

 ment. The idea that the mariage de convenance is 

 immoral is entirely novel, and it is left to a Catholic 

 mystic, Francis Jammes, to propound it (Roman du 

 Lievre, p. 204). The fact that a revolution in the con- 

 ventional attitude of the French towards marriage 

 has even begun points to a spiritualising process, which 

 can be seen in the numerous studies of rehgious psy- 

 chology that are becoming increasingly popular in 

 France. Such a book as Estaunie's L'Empreinte (The 



/»i/»'t'ss), anti-clerical, anti-Roman, is intensely religious 

 in essence. Estaunie is seeking for reality beneath all 

 the outward manifestations of faith and piety. His 

 hero, a student at a theological seminary, is almost the 

 counterpart of Ernest Renan in his early days at 

 Saint Sulpice. There is the same natural zest for 

 spiritual things, the same trust in the Church and the 

 priests, the same shattering of that trust, and, alas ! the 

 same incapacity to remould the life that has had so 

 powerful a seal set upon it as the Jesuit up-bringing. 

 Renan consoled himself mentiilly by turning to 

 scholarship, and spiritually by a vague Deism which 

 left him the poetry of religion without its rational 

 basis. Leonard in L'Empreinte is a deeper thinker, 

 and believes that there is no alternative. Either the 

 whole Catholic Faith or — nothing. Less courageous 

 than Renan, he drifts back to the monastery, knowing 

 full well that he is compromising and thus throwing 

 away his last chance of finding truth. 



Another young man, the hero of L'Epreuve du Fils 

 (The Proving of a Son) , is likewise on the quest for truth. 

 He too is a seminary priest, and finds his ardent faith 

 and hope fail him when he is sent out into the world 

 on his first " cure." But he learns in time the secret 

 of his malady, which to some of us seems to be also 

 at the bottom of Renan's and of Leonard's failure — 

 God will not reveal Himself to those who want Him 

 for themselves ; only in giving can spiritual good be 

 acquired. 



The significant fact about these two books and others 

 of the same kind is that the French are concerning 

 themselves less with theological disputes and questions 

 of outward form, than with the spiritual principles that 

 are the basis of religious belief and practice. They are 

 out not for realism, but for reality, and are approaching 

 it from the side of orthodoxy as well as from that of 

 dissent. The age of cynicism, represented by Anatole 

 France, seems to be yielding to an age of faith — not 

 necessarily religious faith, but faith in some ideal of 

 human conduct, enthusiasm for some cause wider than 

 the good of the individual. 



That intense love which every Frenchman has for 

 the land, the actual soil of France, is a subject which is 

 very frequently treated in contemporary fiction. 

 Guillaumin's Vie d'ttn Simple(The Life of a Simple Man), 

 Perochon's Nine, and other novels are epics of the 

 soil, showing the Frenchman at his best and as he 

 is rarely seen by English eyes. These simple. God- 

 fearing, hard-working farmers and landowners are as 

 different from the Parisian dandy (so dear to second- 

 rate novelists) as the London clubman, say, of 

 Thackeray's novels is from our owti country squires 

 and yeomen. They are the true Frenchmen, and to 

 that same type belong the boys who fight out their 

 religious beUefs in the teeth of tyrannical opposition. 



