Gustave Flaubert : Childhood Letters

Sketch of Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) when

a child, drawn by his brother Achille Flaubert.

Gustave Flaubert

Selected Letters

To ERNEST CHEVALIER

[March 31, 1832]

Dauntless One:

You know I told you in one of my letters that we were not having any more theatre, but just the last few days we’ve been busy on the billiard table again, I have about 30 plays and there are many which Caroline and I act together. But if you come at Easter you’ll be a good boy and stay at least a week. You’ll hear me recite my catechism. You’d start out from your house on Sunday at six o’clock after vespers, you’d be at Rouen by eleven, and you’d leave us with great regret the next Saturday afternoon. Your father is better. I am writing a poem called A Mother which is as good as The Death of Louis XVI. I am also doing several plays, among others one called The Ignorant Antiquary which makes fun of stupid antiquaries and another which is called Preparations to Receive the King, a farce.

You know there is a pupil in old Langlois’s class named Alexis, called by everybody Jesus. The other day he almost fell into the trench. At the moment he was placing his façade on the hole the boards broke and if someone hadn’t caught hold of him he’d have fallen into old Langlois’s excrement. Adieu.

Answer quickly at the first opportunity.

Rouen, this 31 of March I832.

To ERNEST CHEVALIER

Rouen, this Friday August 14, 1835

Dear Ernest

It is with much pleasure that I can now tell you with certainty that we’ll soon be coming to see you — I have papa’s word. Then you will owe us a return visit, and I hope you will adopt the good habit of coming to spend a week with us. It’s about two weeks since I finished my Frédégonde, I’ve even recopied an act and a half. I have another drama in mind. Gourgaud is assign¬ ing me narrative compositions.

Since you saw me I’ve read Catherine Howard and La Tour de Nesle. I’ve also read the works of Beaumarchais: that’s the place to find new ideas. Now I am entirely absorbed in the plays of old Shakespeare, I am reading Othello, and then I am going to take with me for my trip the History of Scotland in three volumes by W. Scott, then I’ll read Voltaire. I am working like a demon, getting up at half past three in the morning.

I see with indignation that dramatic censorship is going to be re-established and freedom of the press abolished! Yes, this law will pass, for the representatives of the people are nothing but a filthy heap of sold-out wretches. They see only their own inter¬ ests, their natural bent is toward baseness, their honor is a stupid pride, their soul a heap of mud; but some day, a day which will come before long, the people will unloose the third revolution: heads will fall, blood will run in rivers. Now they are depriving the man of letters of his conscience, his artist’s conscience. Yes, our century is rich in bloody peripeties. Adieu, au revoir — let us devote ourselves always to Art which greater than peoples, crowns, and kings is always there, enthroned on high in our inspiration, wearing its divine diadem

To ERNEST CHEVALIER

Rouen, Thursday, September 13, 1838

Your remarks on Victor Hugo contain as much truth as they do lack of originality. Modern criticism now generally accepts that antithesis of body and soul so profoundly expounded in all the works of the great author of Notre-Dame. This man has been much attacked because he is great and arouses envy. People were at first astonished, and then they blushed, to see before them a genius as immense as any of those whom they’d been admiring for centuries; for human pride doesn’t enjoy paying its respects to laurels that are still green. Is not V. Hugo as great a man as Racine, Calderon, Lope de Vega, and many another long admired ?

I am still reading Rabelais, and have also taken up Montaigne. I even propose to make a special philosophical and literary study of these two later. Together they mark the taking-off point, as I see it, of French literature and the French spirit.

Really I profoundly value only two men, Rabelais and Byron, the only two who have written in a spirit of malice toward the human race and with the intention of laughing in its face. What a tremendous position a man occupies who places himself in such relation to the world !

No, the view of the sea is not conducive to gaiety or the making of quips, though I have smoked considerably and eaten pantagruelistically of fish stew, brill, lettuce, sausages, onions, bunions, radishes, turnips, beets, sheep, pigs, lambs, and larks.

By now I have come to look on the world as a spectacle, and to laugh at it. What is the world to me ? I shall ask little of it. I’ll let myself float on the current of my heart and my imagination, and if anyone shouts too loudly perhaps I shall turn like Pho- cion, and say “What is that cawing of crows ?’’

To ERNEST CHEVALIER

Rouen, November 30, 1838

You see that I’m answering you quite promptly — a pleasure for me, even more than a duty owed to friendship. Your letter, like all letters from those we love, gave me great pleasure. For a long time I have been thinking of you and imagining how you look walking in Paris, cigar in mouth, etc.; so I greatly enjoyed getting details about your daily life; I assure you there weren’t too many of them.

You do well to see much of Alfred; the more time you spend with him, the greater treasures you’ll discover in him. He is an inexhaustible mine of good feelings, generosities, and grandeur. And he entirely reciprocates the friendship you feel for him. Why am I not with you, dear friends! What a fine trinity we should make! How I look forward to joining you! We’ll have some good times, the three of us, philosophizing and pantagruelizing.

You tell me that you have come to a definitive belief in a creative force (God, fatality, etc.) and that having done so you expect to spend some agreeable moments. To tell you the truth, I cannot imagine what will be agreeable about them. When you have seen the dagger that’s to pierce your heart, the rope that’s to strangle you, when you’re ill and learn the name of your illness — I cannot imagine what consolation you have achieved. Try to attain belief in a universal design, in morality, in the duties of man, in the future life; try to believe in the integrity of statesmen, in the chastity of whores, in the goodness of man, in the happiness of life, in the truth of all possible lies. Then you’ll be happy, and able to call yourself a believer and three-quarters a fool; but in the meantime continue to be intelligent, a skeptic and a drinker.

You have read Rousseau, you say? What a man! I recommend especially his Confessions. It’s in them that he bares his soul. Poor Rousseau, so calumnied because thy heart was nobler than that of other men, thy pages dissolve me in delectations and amorous reveries!

Continue your style of life, dear Ernest, it could not be better. And I, what am I doing? I am still the same, facetious rather than gay, distended rather than great. I am writing speeches for old Magnier, historical studies for Chéruel, and smoking pipes for my own pleasure. As far as living arrangements are concerned, I have never been so well off as this year: I no longer suffer any of the annoyance of the college, I am quiet and peaceful. As for writing, I am doing none of it or almost none; I content myself with drawing up outlines, creating scenes, dreaming of disjointed, imaginary situations in which I picture myself and live intensely. It’s a strange world, my mind !

I have read Ruy Blas; all in all it is a fine work, apart from a few blemishes and the fourth act which, though comic and amusing, lacks high and true comedy; not that I want to attack the grotesque element in drama. There are two or three scenes, and the last act, which are sublime; have you seen Frédérick in this play? What’s your opinion of him?

Tell Alfred to hurry and write me, and that I’ll answer him immediately.

Farewell, dear Ernest, keep well. My best to Pagnerre and Alfred. . . .

The last three or four days I have been debating, in old Magnier’s class, with one of the Abbé Eudes’ pupils. There were two debates, especially, in which I was magnificent. All the pupils in my row were impressed by the uproar I made. I began by saying that I was well known as a priest-hater, and every day there’s a new round. I invent the most absurd rubbish about the Abbé Eudes and about Julien; the poor church mouse looks stricken; the other day he was sweating.

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