Flaubert's Parrot

Pyramid and finally saw that crack of gold shine from the purple velvet of the night? Astonishment, awe and a fierce glee came into my heart as I read those two words in Ed’s letter. No, not ‘Juliet Herbert’, the other two: first ‘fascinating’ and then ‘material’. And beyond glee, beyond hard work as well, was there something else? A shameful thought of an honorary degree somewhere?

Juliet Herbert is a great hole tied together with string. She became governess to Flaubert’s niece Caroline at some time in the mid-1850s, and remained at Croisset for a few undetermined years; then she returned to London. Flaubert wrote to her, and she to him; they visited one another every so often. Beyond this, we know nothing. Not a single letter to or from her has survived. We know almost nothing about her family. We do not even know what she looked like. No description of her survives, and none of Flaubert’s friends thought to mention her after his death, when most other women of importance in his life were being memorialised.

Biographers disagree about Juliet Herbert. For some, the shortage of evidence indicates that she was of small significance in Flaubert’s life; others conclude from this absence precisely the opposite, and assert that the tantalising governess was certainly one of the writer’s mistresses, possibly the Great Unknown Passion of his life, and perhaps even his fiancee. Hypothesis is spun directly from the temperament of the biographer. Can we deduce love for Juliet Herbert from the fact that Gustave called his greyhound Julio? Some can. It seems a little tendentious to me. And if we do, what do we then deduce from the fact that in various letters Gustave addresses his niece as ‘Loulou’, the name he later transfers to Felicite’s parrot? Or from the fact that George Sand had a ram called Gustave?

Flaubert’s one overt reference to Juliet Herbert comes in a letter to Bouilhet, written after the latter had visited Croisset:

Since I saw you excited by the governess, I too have become excited. At table, my eyes willingly followed the gentle slope of her breast. I believe she notices this for, five or six times per meal, she looks as if she had caught the sun. What a pretty comparison one could make between the slope of the breast and the glacis of a fortress. The cupids tumble about on it, as they storm the citadel. (To be said in our Sheikh’s voice) ‘Well, I certainly know what piece of artillery I’d be pointing in that direction.’

Should we jump to conclusions? Frankly, this is the kind of boastful, nudging stuff that Flaubert was always writing to his male friends. I find it unconvincing myself: true desire isn’t so easily diverted into metaphor. But then, all biographers secretly want to annex and channel the sex-lives of their subjects; you must make your judgment on me as well as on Flaubert.

Had Ed really discovered some Juliet Herbert material? I admit I began feeling possessive in advance. I imagined myself presenting it in one of the more important literary journals; perhaps I might let the TLS have it. ‘Juliet Herbert: A Mystery Solved, by Geoffrey Braithwaite’, illustrated with one of those photographs in which you can’t quite read the handwriting. I also began to worry at the thought of Ed blurting out his discovery on campus and guilelessly yielding up his cache to some ambitious Gallicist with an astronaut’s haircut.

But these were unworthy and, I hope, untypical feelings. Mostly, I was thrilled at the idea of discovering the secret of Gustave and Juliet’s relationship (what else could the word ‘fascinating’ mean in Ed’s letter?). I was also thrilled that the material might help me imagine even more exactly what Flaubert was like. The net was being pulled tighter. Would we find out, for instance, how the writer behaved in London?

This was of particular interest. Cultural exchange between England and France in the nineteenth century was at best pragmatic. French writers didn’t cross the Channel to discuss aesthetics with their English counterparts; they were either running from prosecution or looking for a job. Hugo and Zola came over as exiles; Verlaine and Mallarme came over as schoolmasters. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, chronically poor yet crazily practical, came over in search of an heiress. A Parisian marriage-broker had kitted him out for the expedition with a fur overcoat, a repeating alarm watch and a new set of false teeth, all to be paid for when the writer landed the heiress’s dowry. But Villiers, tirelessly accident-prone, botched the wooing. The heiress rejected him, the broker turned up to reclaim the coat and watch, and the discarded suitor was left adrift in London, full of teeth but penniless.

So what of Flaubert? We know little about his four trips to England. We know that the Great Exhibition of 1851 secured his unexpected approval – ‘a very fine thing, despite being admired by everyone’ – but his notes on this first visit amount to a mere seven pages: two on the British Museum, plus five on the Chinese and Indian sections at Crystal Palace. What were his first impressions of us? He must have told Juliet. Did we live up to our entries in his Dictionnaire des idees recues (ENGLISHMEN: All rich, ENGLISHWOMEN: Express surprise that they produce pretty children)?

And what of subsequent visits, when he had become author of the notorious Madame Bovary? Did he search out English writers? Did he search out English brothels? Did he cosily stay at home with Juliet, staring at her over dinner and then storming her fortress? Were they perhaps (I half-hoped so) merely friends? Was Flaubert’s English as hit-or-miss as it seems from his letters? Did he talk only Shakespearean? And did he complain much about the fog?

When I met Ed at the restaurant, he was looking even less successful than before. He told me about budget cuts, a cruel world, and his own lack of publications. I deduced, rather than heard, that he had been sacked. He explained the irony of his dismissal: it sprang from his devotion to his work, his unwillingness to do Gosse anything less than justice when presenting him to the world. Academic superiors had suggested that he cut corners. Well, he wouldn’t do so. He respected writing and writers too much for that. ‘I mean, don’t we owe these fellers something in return?’ he concluded.

Perhaps I offered slightly less than the expected sympathy. But then, can you alter the way luck flows? Just for once, it was flowing for me. I had ordered my dinner quickly, scarcely caring what I ate; Ed had pondered the menu as if he were Verlaine being bought his first square meal in months. Listening to Ed’s tedious lament for himself and watching him slowly consume whitebait at the same time had used up my patience; though it had not diminished my excitement.

‘Right,’ I said, as we started our main course, ‘Juliet Herbert.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘yes.’ I could see he might need prodding. ‘It’s an odd story.’

‘It would be.’

‘Yes.’ Ed seemed a little pained, almost embarrassed. ‘Well, I was over here about six months ago, tracking down one of Mr Gosse’s distant descendants. Not that I expected to find anything. It was just that, as far as I knew, nobody had ever talked to the lady in question, and I thought it was my… duty to see her. Perhaps some family legend I hadn’t accounted for had come down to her.’

‘And?’

‘And? Oh, it hadn’t. No, she wasn’t really of any help. It was a nice day, though. Kent.’ He looked pained again; he seemed to miss the mackintosh which the waiter had ruthlessly deprived him of. ‘Ah, but I see what you mean. What had come down to her was the letters. Now let me get this right; you’ll correct me, I hope. Juliet Herbert died 1909 or so? Yes. She had a cousin, woman cousin. Yes. Now, this woman found the letters and took them to Mr Gosse, asked him his opinion of their value. Mr Gosse thought he was being touched for money, so he said they were interesting but not worth anything. Whereupon this cousin apparently just handed them over to him and said, If they’re not worth anything, you take them. Which he did.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘There was a letter attached in Mr Gosse’s hand.’

‘And so?’

‘And so they came down to this lady. Kent. I’m afraid she asked me the same question. Were they worth anything? I regret I behaved in a rather immoral fashion. I told her they had been valuable when Gosse had examined them, but they weren’t any more. I said they were still quite interesting, but they weren’t worth much because half of them were written in French. Then I bought them off her for fifty pounds.’

‘Good God.’ No wonder he looked shifty.

‘Yes, it was rather bad, wasn’t it? I can’t really excuse myself; though the fact that Mr Gosse himself had lied when obtaining them did seem to blur the issue. It raises an interesting ethical point, don’t you think? The fact is, I was rather depressed at losing my job, and I thought I’d take them home and sell them and then be able to carry