Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot

‘Oh yes.’

‘And when he came to England?’

‘Yes, that too.’

‘And was she his fiancée?’

‘It’s hard to say. Pretty nearly, I’d guess. There are some references in both their letters, mostly jocular. Remarks about the little English governess trapping the famous French man of letters; what would she do if he were imprisoned for another outrage against public morals; that sort of thing.’

‘Well, well, well. And do we find out what she was like?’

‘What she was like? Oh, you mean to look at?’

‘Yes. There wasn’t… there wasn’t…’ He sensed my hope. ‘…a photograph?’

‘A photograph? Yes, several, as a matter of fact; from some Chelsea studio, printed on heavy card. He must have asked her to send him some. Is that of interest?’

‘It’s incredible. What did she look like?’

‘Pretty nice in an unmemorable sort of way. Dark hair, strong jaw, good nose. I didn’t look too closely; not really my type.’

‘And did they get on well together?’ I hardly knew what I wanted to ask any more. Flaubert’s English fiancée , I was thinking to myself. By Geoffrey Braithwaite.

‘Oh yes, they seemed to. They seemed very fond. He’d mastered quite a range of English endearments by the end.’

‘So he could manage the language?’

‘Oh yes, there are several long passages of English in his letters.’

‘And did he like London?’

‘He liked it. How could he not? It was his fiancée’s city of residence.’

Dear old Gustave, I murmured to myself; I felt quite tender towards him. Here, in this city, a century and a few years ago, with a compatriot of mine who had captured his heart. ‘Did he complain about the fog?’

‘Of course. He wrote something like, How do you manage to live with such fog? By the time a gentleman has recognised a lady as she comes at him out of the fog, it is already too late to raise his hat. I’m surprised the race doesn’t die out when such conditions make difficult the natural courtesies.’

Oh yes, that was the tone – elegant, teasing, slightly lubricious. ‘And what about the Great Exhibition? Does he go into detail about that? I bet he rather liked it.’

‘He did. Of course, that was a few years before they first met, but he does mention it in a sentimental fashion – wonders if he might unknowingly have passed her in the crowds. He thought it was a bit awful, but also really rather splendid. He seems to have looked at all the exhibits as if they were an enormous display of source material for him.’

‘And. Hmm.’ Well, why not. ‘I suppose he didn’t go to any brothels?’

Ed looked at me rather crossly. ‘Well, he was writing to his girl-friend, wasn’t he? He’d hardly be boasting about that.’

‘No, of course not.’ I felt chastened. I also felt exhilarated. My letters. My letters. Winterton was planning to let me publish them, wasn’t he?

‘So when can I see them? You did bring them with you?’

‘Oh no.’

‘You didn’t?’ Well, no doubt it was sensible to keep them all in a safe place. Travel has its dangers. Unless… unless there was something I hadn’t understood. Perhaps… did he want money? I suddenly realised I knew absolutely nothing about Ed Winterton, except that he was the owner of my copy of Turgenev’s Literary Reminiscences . ‘You didn’t even bring a single one with you?’

‘No. You see, I burnt them.’

‘You what?’

‘Yes, well, that’s what I mean by its being an odd story.’

‘It sounds like a criminal story at the moment.’

‘I was sure you’d understand,’ he said, much to my surprise; then smiled broadly. ‘I mean, you of all people. In fact, at first I decided not to tell anyone at all, but then I remembered you. I thought that one person in the business ought to be told. Just for the record.’

‘Go on.’ The man was a maniac, that much was plain. No wonder they’d kicked him out of his university. If only they’d done it years earlier.

‘Well, you see, they were full of fascinating stuff, the letters. Very long, a lot of them, full of reflections about other writers, public life, and so on. They were even more unbuttoned than his normal letters. Perhaps it was because he was sending them out of the country that he allowed himself such freedom.’ Did this criminal, this sham, this failure, this murderer, this bald pyromaniac know what he was doing to me? Very probably he did. ‘And her letters were really quite fine in their way too. Told her whole life story. Very revealing about Flaubert. Full of nostalgic descriptions of home life at Croisset. She obviously had a very good eye. Noticed things I shouldn’t think anyone else would have done.’

‘Go on,’ I waved grimly at the waiter. I wasn’t sure I could stay there much longer. I wanted to tell Winterton how really pleased I was that the British had burnt the White House to the ground.

‘No doubt you’re wondering why I destroyed the letters. I can see you’re kind of edgy about something. Well, in the very last communication between the two of them, he says that in the event of his death, her letters will be sent back to her, and she is to burn both sides of the correspondence.’

‘Did he give any reasons?’

‘No.’

This seemed strange, assuming that the maniac was telling the truth. But then Gustave did burn much of his correspondence with Du Camp. Perhaps some temporary pride in his family origins had asserted itself and he didn’t want the world to know that he had nearly married an English governess. Or perhaps he didn’t want us to know that his famous devotion to solitude and art had nearly been overthrown. But the world would know. I would tell it, one way or another.

‘So you see, of course, I didn’t have any alternative. I mean, if your business is writers, you have to behave towards them with integrity, don’t you? You have to do what they say, even if other people don’t.’ What a smug, moralising bastard he was. He wore ethics the way tarts wear make-up. And then he managed to mix into the same expression both the earlier shiftiness and the later smugness. ‘There was also something else in this last letter of his. A rather strange instruction on top of asking Miss Herbert to burn the correspondence. He said, If anyone ever asks you what my letters contained, or what my life was like, please lie to them. Or rather, since I cannot ask you of all people to lie, just tell them what it is you think they want to hear.’

I felt like Villiers de l’Isle-Adam: someone had lent me a fur overcoat and a repeating watch for a few days, then cruelly snatched them back. It was lucky that the waiter returned at that point. Besides, Winterton was not as stupid as all that: he had pushed his chair well back from the table and was playing with his fingernails. ‘The pity of it is,’ he said, as I tucked away my credit card, ‘that I probably now won’t be able to finance Mr Gosse. But I’m sure you’ll agree it’s been an interesting moral decision.’

I think the remark I then made was deeply unfair to Mr Gosse both as a writer and as a sexual being; but I do not see how I could have avoided it.

Gustave was the Bear. His sister Caroline was the Rat – ‘your dear rat’, ‘your faithful rat’ she signs herself; ‘little rat’, ‘Ah, rat, good rat, old rat’, ‘old rat, naughty old rat, good rat, poor old rat’ he addresses her – but Gustave was the Bear. When he was only twenty, people found him ‘an odd fellow, a bear, a young man out of the ordinary’; and even before his epileptic seizure and confinement at Croisset, the image had established itself: ‘I am a bear and I want to stay a bear in my den, in my lair, in my skin, in my old bear’s skin; I want to live quietly, far away from the bourgeois and the bourgeoises.’ After his attack, the beast confirmed itself: ‘I live alone, like a bear.’ (The word ‘alone’ in this sentence is best glossed as: ‘alone except for my parents, my sister, the servants, our dog, Caroline’s goat, and my regular visits from Alfred Le Poittevin’.)