The Nabob, Volume 1 | Page 7

strive for beauty of form, and would
be ashamed of the fortuitous scaffolding that satisfies the British
story-tellers. A eulogist of Dickens, Mr. George Gissing, has recently
remarked acutely that "Daudet has a great advantage in his mastery of
construction. Where, as in 'Fromont and Risler,' he constructs too well,
that is to say, on the stage model, we see what a gain it was to him to
have before his eyes the Paris stage of the Second Empire, instead of
that of London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens emulated
the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British playwrights, Daudet
was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier.
But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the
heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely
presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps
because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in
that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that

Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so
useful in the theatre and not requisite in the library. In "The Nabob," for
example, it is the "long arm of coincidence" that brings Paul de Géry to
the inn on the Riviera, and to the very next room therein at the exact
moment when Jenkins catches up with the fleeing Félicia.
Yet these lapses into the arbitrary are infrequent after all; and as
"Fromont and Risler" was followed first by one and then by another
novel, the evil influence of theatrical conventionalism disappears.
Daudet occasionally permits himself an underplot; but he acts always
on the principle he once formulated to his son: "every book is an
organism; if it has not its organs in place, it dies, and its corpse is a
scandal." Sometimes, as in "Fromont and Risler," he starts at the
moment when the plot thickens, returning soon to make clear the
antecedents of the characters first shown in action; and sometimes, as
in "Sapho," he begins right at the beginning and goes straight through
to the end. But, whatever his method, there is never any doubt as to the
theme; and the essential unity is always apparent. This severity of
design in no way limits the variety of the successive acts of his drama.
While a novel of Balzac's is often no more than an analysis of character,
and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human endeavor, a
novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with the sweep and
certainty of a master-hand,--portraits, landscapes with figures, marines,
battlepieces pieces, bits of genre, views of Paris. And the views of
Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them also. Mr. Henry
James has noted that "The Nabob" is "full of episodes which are above
all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The author has drawn
up a list of the Parisian solemnities, and painted the portrait, or given a
summary, of each of them. The opening day at the Salon, a funeral at
Père la Chaise, a debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the première of a
new play at a favorite theatre, furnish him with so many opportunities
for his gymnastics of observation." And "The Nabob" is only a little
more richly decorated than the "Immortal," and "Numa Roumestan,"
and "Kings in Exile."
These pictures, these carefully wrought masterpieces of rendering are

not lugged in, each for its own sake; they are not outside of the
narrative; they are actually part of the substance of the story. Daudet
excels in describing, and every artist is prone to abound in the sense of
his superiority. As the French saying puts it, a man has always the
defects of his qualities; yet Daudet rarely obtrudes his descriptions, and
he generally uses them to explain character and to set off or bring out
the moods of his personages. They are so swift that I am tempted to call
them flash-lights; but photographic is just what they are not, for they
are artistic in their vigorous suppression of the unessentials; they are
never gray or cold or hard; they vibrate with color and tingle with
emotion.
And just as a painter keeps filling his sketch-books with graphic hints
for elaboration later, so Daudet was indefatigable in note-taking. He
explains his method in his paper of "Fromont and Risler;" how he had
for a score of years made a practice of jotting down in little note-books
not only his remarks and his thoughts, but also a rapid record of what
he had heard with his ears ever on the alert, and what he had seen with
those tireless eyes of his. Yet he never let the dust of