Essays on Paul Bourget

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


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 shorted, 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 Ovation--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.