The biographies of some great men of letters are little different from their bibliographies. For many years this would seem to have been true in the case of Anatole France, for the man of public import—apart from his literary productions—came not into being until fifty-three years after his physical birth.

Every book-lover who goes to Paris must visit the banks of the Seine and revel among the riches of that vast exhibition of old books, art objects, rare prints, and fascinating what-not, which for generations have been the despair and the admiration of collectors. Over an old-book mart on the Quai Malaquis, Jacques Anatole Thibault—now everywhere known as Anatole France—was born April 16, 1844. From that day to this he has never left as a residence that Paris whose every paving-block he knows, as he himself says, and whose every stone he loves. Year by year he has increasingly stood as a type of Parisian literary life and thought.

His father was one of the prosperous booksellers of the Seine banks—meditative, thoughtful, and even a maker of verses. He brought with him from Anjou in western France all of the Vendéean’s passion for monarchism and clericalism. Just how this harmonizes with the assertion of one of our author’s biographers that the elder Thibault was of Jewish blood, I do not pretend to say, but the statement may pass on its face value. Certain it is that the father was concerned that Anatole should be educated under the auspices of clerical teachers, the priests of the old Collège Stanislas, and his son’s early mastery of the classics and attainments in literary style amply justified the choice. Indeed, the clerical schools of the period did more to establish French letters than has since proven to be the case under the public schools of present-day France.

Growing up in this bookish atmosphere, rich tokens of the past all about him, inheriting his father’s scholarly tastes, trained under the rigid system of classicists, and in the school that developed Paul Bourget and François Coppée, Anatole France needed only one more element to bring out in him the varied temperament his life and works exhibit—the inspiration of the refined and tender mother whose love for romantic fairy-tales charmed into being the first fancy-creations of her gifted boy.

In 1868 M. France produced his first book—a study of Alfred de Vigny. This made no great sensation, but his first volume of poems—many French literary men, like Daudet, Maupassant, and Bourget, have opened their literary careers with essays at verse—was published in 1873, Les Poèmes dorés.

About this time M. France became reader for the publisher Lemerre, and under his auspices brought out various of the thirty-some volumes which stand to his credit. In 1876 he became an attaché of the Senate library. Later, he was known as a regular contributor to Le Temps and other Parisian journals, much of this review material being now accessible in book-form.

That part of M. France’s work which covers the first twenty years of his writing, ending with 1896, has largely fixed his place in the average opinion, for two reasons: those years witnessed his largest and most popular production, including nearly all of his novels and stories; and, in consequence, the preponderance of published critical estimates cover only those two decades.

The “first” Anatole France, then, must be considered almost as a separate being, so far as we regard his spirit; his literary style, however, changed scarcely at all with time. Classical training was reflected in a passion for the Greek magic of words, Latin harmony of phrasing, and the hedonistic philosophy; there was not even the suggestion of his later direct appeal to reason and “the rights of man.” His personal tone—for much of his writing is personal and even autobiographical—was pessimistic, though untinged with bitterness; and here again there was little to forecast his vigorous appeal for a social better day. No thought of social uplift, no ray of hope, appeared in his treatment of Thaïs, a study of the Egypt of the Ptolemies; The Red Lily, a picture of present-day Florence; The Opinions of M. Jérome Coignard, the modernization of sentiments exploited in Rabelais, “Wilhelm Meister,” “Gil Blas,” and Montaigne; The Garden of Epicurus, wherein the shades of great thinkers, from Plato to Schopenhauer, hold converse, “while an Esquimaux refutes Bossuet, a Polynesian develops his theory of the soul, and Cicero and Cousin agree in their estimate of a future life.” In a word, the M. France of those days viewed life as a spectacle, with dispassionate yet pitying irony. Convinced, with the Preacher, that all is vanity, this dilettante proposed no remedies for its ills, and was even frankly skeptical that any such saving medicine existed. This is Anatole France as most readers know him—the Anatole France who “died” fifteen years ago, leaving only the stylist and the keen observer to identify him with the decidedly living man of to-day.

Two important events in the life of our author took place respectively in 1896 and 1897. In the former year he was elected on the first ballot to a seat in the French Academy—the seat occupied by Ferdinand de Lesseps, and on the occasion of his séance de réception M. France delivered a tactful and altogether admirable eulogy upon the unfortunate genius whom he succeeded.

This distinction coming after more than fifty years of life would have been enough to mark an epoch in his career, but one year later he issued L’Orme du Mail, a series of notable comments upon contemporary literary and social life. This may be regarded as the outgrowth of the social, political, and literary notes which he had been contributing to the newspapers, and which have been gathered in several volumes, forming probably the most brilliant commentary upon things French which is available to-day.

Doubtless this daily observation of the current trend gave birth to a new man, for now Anatole France is no longer the satirical and lightly ironical dilettante making excursions into the field of speculation, but a robust devotee of the rights of the people. His powerful arraignments of the social and political condition of the French common-people are not the only proofs of a new birth in M. France. Trenchant, witty, and apostolic as are his social sermons—for now and then a sermon may ring true to its word-origin and be a thrust—they were not so amazing and, happily, not so significant, as his brave championship of the cause of Captain Dreyfus when there were few who dared to lift voice against rampant militarism and a prejudiced, Jew-baiting military tribunal.

From this courageous stand it was only a single step to a propagandum to abolish the many abuses which he feels weigh heavily upon the masses—war, plutocracy, clericalism, militarism. I have said that it was only a single step, yet it represents a long journey for the son of a monarchist, a boy educated by priests, the smiling literary experimenter, the speculative pupil of Rénan, to have mounted the Socialistic rostrum and produced anti-military and anti-clerical papers of no doubtful sound. Such is M. France to-day; and though he still fails not in his literary appeal to the intellectuals, the cry that deeply stirs his being is that of the proletariat in need of intelligent, vigorous leadership. Whether or not one agrees with his propagandum, one cannot ignore its significance.

Anatole France has attained distinction in several literary forms. His early poems are not of sufficient merit to make him famous, but they consist of a piquant combination—humor, history, and philosophy. His critical introductions to delightful editions of famous books are charmingly done and sufficiently discriminating. His tractates on questions of the times are earnest, direct, and vigorous. But it is to his novels and stories that we must look to find his most characteristic writings.

To the English reader, his best-known novel is The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), which was crowned by the Academy. Like all of M. France’s novels, it is practically plotless—a fictional framework for the skeptical observations and good-natured ironies of the old philosopher, whose name gives the book its title. A second novel of distinction, if novel it may be called, is The Book of Friendship (le Livre de Mon Ami). It is made up of two parts—The Book of Peter and The Book of Suzanne. The former owes its interest not alone to charm of style, childlikeness of recital, and subtle beauty, but also to its autobiographical character—which M. France has frankly admitted. Three other works immediately rise up for comparison when one reads this keen, sympathetic, and understanding story—Dickens’s David Copperfield, Daudet’s Little What’s-His-Name (le Petit Chose), and Loti’s The Story of a Child; and the very fact of such inevitable comparisons may sufficiently suggest its ingenuous charm, its pseudo-naïvete, and its mingled humor and pathos. No Frenchman, except Victor Hugo, quite entered into child-life as did M. France in this notable compound of fiction and fact, and I am not forgetting either Alphonse Daudet or Gustav Droz in making this assertion.

The inheritance of his mother’s love for fantasy is beautifully illustrated in M. France’s Abeille, a fairy story of perhaps twenty-thousand words. The author’s name will vouch for its style; the simple outline will show the pretty framework for the fictional conception.

La Duchesse des Clarides brings up her daughter Abeille, together with Georges, the only son of la Comtesse Blanchelande, who at her death had confided him to the care of her friend.

The two children one day set out secretly to find the distant lake which they have seen from the high tower of the castle of Clarides. The lake is the home of the Ondines, and the woods surrounding it the realm of the Gnomes. Georges, seeking water and food for Abeille, is seized by the Ondines. Abeille, waiting for Georges’ return, falls asleep, to be wakened by the Gnomes, who carry her to their King Loc. They keep Abeille in order to teach her the wisdom and secrets of their race and they make her their Princess. Loc loves Abeille and offers her all the treasures of his kingdom if she will become his wife. She refuses, asking only to be sent back to her mother, whom she is allowed to see each night in a dream, as her mother also sees her. Loc finally learns that Abeille loves Georges, but that he has disappeared. The Gnome king discovers that the youth is with the Ondines, held prisoner because he wishes to leave the Ondine queen—who also loves him—in order to seek Abeille. Loc magnanimously rescues Georges and sends him to Clarides, but still cannot bring himself to free Abeille. The youth learns of the fate of Abeille from his mother and his serving man, and goes to the Gnome kingdom to rescue her.

Loc cannot keep Abeille longer because of a law allowing mortals, prisoners of the Gnomes, to return to the world after seven years, so he betroths Georges and Abeille and gives them rich gifts, among which is a magic ring having power to bring Abeille and Georges at any time to visit the Gnome realm, where they will be always welcome.

In the volumes, Mother-of-Pearl (L’Etui de Nacre) and St. Clara’s Well (Le Puits de Sainte-Claire), we find our author’s best short-story work.

As has been noted in previous introductory papers of this series, there is a marked tendency among French writers of little fictions to affect the sketch form, and in this field they have wrought with great delicacy and spirit. It is hardly to be expected of a writer whose novels give so much play to epigram, philosophy, dialogue, and witty comment, that he should seek to tell his shorter stories with the compression of a Maupassant and the plot-structure of a Mérimée. But other qualities of the first-rate story-teller he does display—his narration is lively and witty, and his climaxes are satisfying.

Only two of his short-stories can be given attention in this limited space, both found in the first-named volume, and one of them reproduced here in translation.

“The Procurator of Judea” tells in the author’s leisurely, pellucid style how L. Ælius Lamia, after eighteen years of exile by Tiberius Cæsar, returns to Rome. During his years of sojourn in Asia, here and there, he has met Pontius Pilate. Now they meet again, and the physical bulk of the story is taken up by their reminiscences. Just when that seems to be all, they fall to discussing the charms of Judæan women, when Lamia recalls with especial warmth a dancing girl.

“‘Some months after,’” he goes on, “‘I lost sight of her. I learned by chance that she had attached herself to a small company of men and women who were followers of a young Galilean thaumaturgist. His name was Jesus; he came from Nazareth, and he was crucified for some crime, I don’t know what. Pontius, do you remember anything about the man?’

“Pontius Pilate contracted his brows, and his hand rose to his forehead in the attitude of one who probes the deeps of memory. Then after a silence of some seconds—

“‘Jesus?’ he murmured. ‘Jesus of Nazareth? I cannot call him to mind.’”

This dramatic episode, which exists only for its climax, is no more poignant than the pathos of that simple-hearted juggler-monk who imitated the Widow, in that he gave all that he had.