Essays on Paul Bourget

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Essays on Paul Bourget


He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have
told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of
the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is
not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
himself.

In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
that protects her?

It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to
M. Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that
a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room
for the corruptor."

Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column--three
columns--and with artillery.

"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"--that fact.

And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not
retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I
am honest and not trying to deceive any one.

1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer
in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created
by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished
adultery with death.

2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.

If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing
Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.

1. This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the
beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during
all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.

2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
been thought of.

Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare--what
is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000?
They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy
divorce law to protect them.

Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for
it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an error. I remember
that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings about American social facts
and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way
was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure--by the
natural processes of animal decay--of the phosphorus contained in them.

This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs;
and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that
the locusts do like that in Egypt.

Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important
contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard
it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a
detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.

These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that
the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly
flat.

As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes."

Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement
--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement,
coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life,
"almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He
has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes--
mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature,"
furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in
literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not
able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have
only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had
an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
side-tracked.

"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces
appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of
explaining--in a couple of columns--the process by which Easy-Divorce
conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an
empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS.
No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics
he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.

I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns,
but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was.
I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to
gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with
interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery
in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it.
I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.

Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute
it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and
resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so,
when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke
all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that
grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was
Consul-General--for the United States, of course; but we were very
intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that.
One day something offered the opening, and he said:

"Well, General, 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!"

I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
back at him as quick as a flash--"Right, your Excellency! But I reckon
a Frenchman's got his little stand-by 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!"

Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on!
He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:

"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it
said so good in my life before! Say it again."

So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and
then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it,
and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same.
In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those
dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of
a fresh sort of original way.

But I wish M. 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'.






A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max
O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
article. It is possible that the position assumed here--that
M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.]

You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may
say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would
have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it
lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that
it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I
have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack
of practice in dictating.

Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
a private dispute between friends, unasked.

Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one,
of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
representative. I asked some questions--asked them of myself.
I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all
devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of
guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one
page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and
our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain
results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show
the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of
slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary
workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them;
then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat--for certain reasons--that I
closed with an anecdote.

When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to
that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the
proof-sheets of the "reply" to come. I already knew, by the cablegram,
that the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew
it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at
liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in
view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your
matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No,
a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest.
Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No,
he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in
at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could
not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is
to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into
my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from
their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to
get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a
certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to
save yourself manual labor.

And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly
content.

Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.

Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is
for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily
concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of:
he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead
of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to
employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The
great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a
fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas
the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation
between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent
desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by
quoting example IV., section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for
Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will
assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets
of rules:

Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?

Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear
off I--

Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME.

Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.

Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If--

Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again,
and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.


You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours;
in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand.
I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your
doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of
nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your
disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe
statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and
come back at me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with
a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is
weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you
discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed
six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting
down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part,
I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native
opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country
struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a
foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to
impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing
way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to
deny and refute; I would do as much for you.

It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I
wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in
seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your
countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.


NOTICE.

Persons attempting to find a motive in
this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.


The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must
not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me
nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.
--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by
whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,
and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.

I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?']--It is a good answer.

It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which
we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute.
I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself
pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,
when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness
than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and
surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to
elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing
the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful
people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but
enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us?
She can teach us all the fine arts--and does. She throws open her
hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters
in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that
we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with
prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and
when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come
with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing
to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America
do? She charges a duty on French works of art!

I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue,
something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances
unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing
unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these
eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth
while:

Mark Twain is--

1. "Insulting."

2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st."

3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.

4. Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer."

5. Is "nasty."

6. Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners."

7. Has published a "nasty article."

8. Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than
his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."]

A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
America."

"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."

"When Mark Twain visits a garden . . . he goes in the far-away corner
where the soil is prepared."

"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the
Frenchwomen).

"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty."

"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.

"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a lesson
in politeness and good manners."

A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."--

These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very
young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name
them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and
arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think
that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly
strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your
proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:

"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as
personal."

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.