dies of
Parisian landscape, done after nature. It shows us the careful, laboured
work of a really artistic temperament; it betrays, here and there, the
spirit of acrimonious observation which is to count for so much with
Huysmans--in the crude malice of 'L'Extase,' for example, in the
notation of the 'richness of tone,' the 'superb colouring,' of an old
drunkard. And one sees already something of the novelty and the
precision of his description, the novelty and the unpleasantness of the
subjects which he chooses to describe, in this vividly exact picture of
the carcass of a cow hung up outside a butcher's shop: 'As in a
hothouse, a marvellous vegetation flourished in the carcass. Veins shot
out on every side like trails of bind-weed; dishevelled branch-work
extended itself along the body, an efflorescence of entrails unfurled
their violet-tinted corollas, and big clusters of fat stood out, a sharp
white, against the red medley of quivering flesh.'

In _Marthe: histoire d'une fille_, which followed in 1876, two years
later, Huysmans is almost as far from actual achievement as in _Le
Drageoir a Epices_, but the book, in its crude attempt to deal
realistically, and somewhat after the manner of Goncourt, with the life
of a prostitute of the lowest depths, marks a considerable advance upon
the somewhat casual experiments of his earlier manner. It is important
to remember that _Marthe_ preceded _La Fille Elisa_ and _Nana_. 'I write
what I see, what I feel, and what I have experienced,' says the brief
and defiant preface, 'and I write it as well as I can: that is all. This
explanation is not an excuse, it is simply the statement of the aim that
I pursue in art.' Explanation or excuse notwithstanding, the book was
forbidden to be sold in France. It is Naturalism in its earliest and
most pitiless stage--Naturalism which commits the error of evoking no
sort of interest in this unhappy creature who rises a little from her
native gutter, only to fall back more woefully into the gutter again.
Goncourt's Elisa at least interests us; Zola's Nana at all events
appeals to our senses. But Marthe is a mere document, like her story.
Notes have been taken--no doubt _sur le vif_--they have been strung
together, and here they are, with only an interesting brutality, a
curious sordidness to note, in these descriptions that do duty for
psychology and incident alike, in the general flatness of character, the
general dislocation of episode.

_L