ANATOLE FRANCE

[29 Oct. ’08]

I obtained the new book of Anatole France, “L’Ile des Pingouins,” the day after publication, and my copy was marked “eighteenth edition.”  But in French publishing the word “edition” may mean anything.  There is a sort of legend among the simple that it means five hundred copies.  The better informed, however, are aware that it often means less.  Thus, in the case of the later novels of Emile Zola, an edition meant two hundred copies.  This was chiefly to save the self-love of his publishers, who did not care to admit that the idol of a capricious populace had fallen off its pedestal.  The vast fiction was created that Zola sold as well as ever!  One Paris firm, the “Societe du Mercure de France,” which in the domain of pure letters has probably issued in the last dozen years more good books than any other house in the world, has, with astounding courage, adopted the practice of numbering every copy of a book.  Thus my copy of its “L’Esprit de Barbey d’Aurevilly” (an exceedingly diverting volume) is numbered 1424.  I prefer this to advertisements of “second large edition,” etc.  One knows where one is.  But I fear the example of the Mercure de France is not likely to be honestly imitated.

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If Anatole France’s “editions” consist of five hundred copies I am glad.  For an immediate sale of nine thousand copies is fairly remarkable when the article sold consists of nothing more solid than irony.  But I am inclined to think that they do not consist of five hundred copies.  There is less enthusiasm—­that is to say, less genuine enthusiasm—­for Anatole France than there used to be.  The majority, of course, could never appreciate him, and would only buy him under the threat of being disdained by the minority, whose sole weapon is scorn.  And the minority has been seriously thinking about Anatole France, and coming to the conclusion that, though a genius, he is not the only genius that ever existed.  (Stendhal is at present the god of the minority of the race which the Westminister Gazette will persist in referring to as “our French neighbours.”  In some circles it is now a lapse from taste to read anything but Stendhal.) Anatole France’s last two works of imagination did not brilliantly impose themselves on the intellect of his country.  “L’Histoire Comique” showed once again his complete inability to construct a novel, and it appeared to be irresponsibly extravagant in its sensuality.  And “Sur la Pierre Blanche” was inferior Wells.  The minority has waited a long time for something large, original, and arresting; and it has not had it.  The author was under no compulsion to write his history of Joan of Arc, which bears little relation to his epoch, and which one is justified in dismissing as the elegant pastime of a savant.  If in Anatole France the savant has not lately flourished to the detriment of the fighting