A French Follower of Arthur Machen
By CUTHBERT WRIGHT
(1899-1948)
THE publishers Emile-Paul have done
well to reprint the first book of P.
J. Toulet, a poet and novelist now dead
who is notable by reason of his originality
and distinction and, particularly, by
his relations, literary and personal with
a contemporary Celtic writer who is the
subject of discussion.
I owe my discovery of Toulet to an
article in one of the numerous little
reviews that pulullate under the arcades
of the Odéon at Paris. The writer of
the article called attention to certain
marked resemblances which he
pretended existed between Toulet and the
author of "The Hill of Dreams." I have
always been sufficiently intrigued by
Mr. Machen's talent to track down to
the last extent the work of a writer who
not only translated "The Great God
Pan" into French, but whose own books
were said to resemble Machen's to a
degree that suggested plagairism. But
the result of the inquiry was an agreeable
disappointment. "Monsieur de
Paur," the novel most cited by the
writer, is certainly not "The Great God
Pan" in a French domino; it is, on the
the contrary, a disconcertingly original
work, deserving perhaps to be ranked
in that assembly of forgotten masterpieces
which is the subject of a literary
inquiry in France at the present
moment. The real connection between
the author of "Monsieur de Paur" and
Mr. Machen limits itself to the fact that
Toulet did actually translate "The Great
God Pan" after a visit to London in
1899, and that he has taken the liberty
of introducing certain tricks of manner
and even a certain atmosphere into the
English portions of "Monsieur de
Paur," which are to some degree, the
manner and atmosphere of Machen in
his early tales of fantasy and horror.
Apart from this, the two writers are as
different as possible.
The author whom Toulet really resembles
is Stendhal. The influence of the
great Beyle hovers like a presiding deity
over the style, the philosophy, the
morally exotic atmosphere of this first
novel, and on its title-page is inscribed
this quotation from Stendhal: "Is it
then so impossible in this century to
unite the honors of virtue with the
pleasures of vice?"
It does not seem so impossible to
Pierre-Benigne de Paur who begins life,
the cadet of a good family ruined by the
Revolution, and after a series of somewhat
mole-like adventures, becomes a
famous man of letters and a deputy.
All this portion of the book is a little
breviary of the successful climber,
untroubled by inconvenient convictions or
regrets. For it is always lightly
implicit in these pages of a perverse and
delicate satire that M. de Paur, crowned
by honors and esteemed of all, is in the
eyes of God and the discerning reader,
an egoist, a bit of a knave, a discreet
coward. And with all that, as the
Count de Mun remarked in a discourse
pronounced before the Academy in
1898, M. de Paur is an "honest man."
"There is nothing in the world so frightful
as the soul of an 'honest man,'"
said in a lucid moment the celebrated
reactionary Joseph de Maistre.
The coup d'état executed by
Louis-Napoleon gives Pierre-Benigne the post
of minister at the little German court of
Neuswabia, — a singular duchy where
half the inhabitants are mad and kept
in cages, the other half incurably
melancholy. The taciturn atmosphere
of the tiny capitol penetrates even into
the taverns, and the functionaries who
frequent the "Divus Augustus"
symmetrically seated in small groups chat in
low tones of things long past. "The
handsome girls who serve them have
never needed to defend themselves
against inquisitive hands, but brush
past the knees of the drinkers without
enthusiasm. At last, midnight sounds,
probably as a signal to other phantoms,
and sends those in the tavern home to
bed."
At the court of Neuswabia, M. de
Paur encounters the beautiful and
troubling Madame de Violetten whom
the writer of the article mentioned
above pretended was first cousin
the satanic Helen Vaughan in Machen's
story. She has eyes of a blue almost
black à propos of which the German
courtiers never failed to evoke her
name or rather that of her late husband,
"who was found hanging on the staircase
the morning of their wedding-night."
M. de Paur marries this enigmatic
beauty with her air of an old print by
Fragonard; they return together to
Paris, and there in a flurry of crinolines
and char-a-bancs and parties of
croquet at Compéigne, in the full sunset of the third Empire, Mme. de Paur
becomes the wonder of the town and for
a short period the bosom friend of the
exquisite Empress Eugénie. The pages
in which that picturesque epoch are
delicately described have an extraordinary
charm and may serve to gauge
the difference between this Stendhaliar
and Mr. Machen. All the Toulet satanism
is secondary and superimposed upon
a background which only a Frenchman
could properly evoke.
"Au printemps qui suivit, le crokett
état de mode: sur la pelouse vert pale
oú il nous retenait les toilettes éclatantes
et claires bouffaient sur des crino
lines et ressemblaient a des calices
renversés. Il y avait de toutes petites
ombrelles au bout de longs manches à
cassure, et des chapeaux de paille bossués
et débordantes de fleurs. Il y avait des
gens sur les doubles fauteuils d'osier,
à se dire des choses qu'on n'entendait
pas, des gens qu'il fallait appeler
plusieurs fois quand c'était leur tour de
jouer. Il y avait d'autres colloques,
entre diplomates ou politiques, et parmi
tout cela, se mèlant aux groupes,
donnant un conseil, prenant un maillet au
besoin, et plus semblables a des maitres
de maison qu'a des monarques, l'Empereur
aux yeux troubles, et l'Imperatrice
aux cheveux d'or."
It is in this same masterly fourth
chapter, at the moment when M. de
Paur divorces his wife at the request of
Napoleon III, that the Machen influence
is really manifest. At the trial, an
English agent furnishes a report on the
adventures of Mme. de Paur in a sinister
London suburb which might easily be
the Harlesden or Wormwood Scrubs of
Mr. Machen's wanderings. The curious
can easily see themselves the debt owed
to the English writer in the creation of
the peculiarly morbid atmosphere which
Toulet sought to introduce at this
juncture of his story.
The report is supposed to be written
in French, but in order to give it an
air of greater reality, three passages
are parenthesised in English. Turn to
"The Great God Pan," and one will
discover that each of the three are found
textually in the English story.
(1) "Ils secouaient la tête et
haussaient les sourcils, jugeant la comtesse
bizarre (People shook their heads and
raised their eyebrows and thought the
countess rather queer.")
(2) "J'éprouvai assez absurdement
que la maison avait la physionomie la
plus déplaisante que j'eusse jamais
observé. (I thought, absurdedly enough,
that the house had the most unpleasant
physiognomy I had ever observed.")
(3) Finally the end of "Monsieur de
Paur" has a touch unmistakably
Machenesque in its equivocation, the
reliance on the morbid imagination of
the reader to produce a certain "kick,"
if the expression is permissible. The
old diplomat expires in his charming
Napoleonic house overlooking the Parc
Monceau, surrounded by his servants to
whom he gives counsels of a paternal
virtue. "Never more," he says, "will
I see a white sun beating on the town,
powdering far away the Arc de
Triomphe beyond the deserted boulevards."
A priest, the Abbe N—, curate
at St. Augustin, comes to administer
the last sacraments....... "Hardly
three or four minutes had passed when
a cry was heard from the bedroom. We
rushed back, and found the Abbe N—
stretched unconscious at the foot of
the bed, while Pierre-Benigne, recumbent
in death, retained on his lips the
enigmatic vestige of a last smile."
One can say, in summing up, that
Toulet admired Machen, and introduced
into his own work, particularly into
"Monsieur de Paur," touches which
would not have appeared with quite the
same coloring had he never known and
read the English writer. But the
literary temperaments of the two men
are very different. Machen is romantic
and sombre, and he derives from an
almost purely English tradition.
Toulet, in his special fashion, is a light
writer, classic, Voltairian, very French.
His best work suggests a garden
designed by Lenôtre with studied
avenues and trimmed walks, gradually
widening to a prospect of dim woods
and harmonious waters. But one
seldom skirts the pale balustrades in
order to explore that wild and disquieting
Nature which environs the splendid
and delicate artifice of man. One is
content to examine curiously in the fine
sand of the alleys the trace of the cloven
hoof.
