Ten Novels And Their Authors by W. Somerset Maugham

Author:W. Somerset Maugham [Maugham, W. Somerset]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409058427
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Now I must hark back. When the two friends returned from the East, Maxime du Camp settled in Paris and bought an interest in the Revue de Paris. He came to Croisset to urge Flaubert and Bouilhet to write for him. After Flaubert’s death, du Camp published two stout volumes of reminiscences which he called Souvenirs Littéraires. All who have written about Flaubert have made free use of them, and it seems ungrateful that they should have treated their author with contumely. In this book du Camp wrote: ‘Authors are divided into two classes: those for whom literature is a means, those for whom literature is an end. I belonged, I have always belonged, to the former category; I have never asked from literature more than the right to love it and to cultivate it as best I could.’ The class of literary men to which Maxime du Camp was satisfied to belong has always been a large one. These are the men who have literary inclinations, a love of literature, and often talent, taste, culture and facility; but no gift of creation. In their youth they are apt to write accomplished verse or an indifferent novel, but after a while they settle down to what they find comes more easily to them. They review books, or become editors of literary magazines; write prefaces to the selected works of dead authors, biographies of eminent persons, essays on literary subjects; and in the end, like du Camp, their reminiscences. They perform a useful function in the world of letters, and since they often write with elegance, their productions are generally pleasant to read. There is no reason to regard them with the scorn with which Flaubert came to regard du Camp.

People have said, I think unjustly, that du Camp was jealous of Flaubert. In his reminiscences he wrote: ‘Never has the thought come to me of so exalting myself as to compare myself with Flaubert, and never have I allowed myself to dispute his superiority.’ No man could say fairer than that. As lads in the Latin Quarter, when Flaubert was reading law, they had been intimate; they had eaten in the same inexpensive restaurants, and interminably talked of literary subjects in the same cafés. Later, on their travels in the Near East they had been sea-sick together in the Mediterranean, got drunk together in Cairo and whored together when they had the opportunity. Flaubert was not easy to get on with, for he was impatient of contradiction, irritable and overbearing. For all that, du Camp felt a sincere affection for him and thought highly of him as a writer; but he knew the man too well to be unaware of his weaknesses; it is not in human nature that he should have looked upon the boon-companion of his youth with the veneration with which he was regarded by his fanatical admirers. For this the poor wretch has been unmercifully abused.

Du Camp thought that his old friend made a mistake in

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