"What to make of the British?" is a question that puzzled Stendhal
throughout his whole life. In this new work, which is both a
biography and an exercise in cultural history, David Ellis brings
to bear on the issues it raises much new and unfamiliar
information.Italy is the foreign country with which Stendhal is
most commonly associated. The multiplicity of his Italian
connections makes it less surprising that so much has been written
about them, and so comparatively little about his consuming
interest in British culture. Yet this book makes a strong case for
believing that Britain mattered just as much to him, if not often
more, than Italy, especially as far as his interest in literature
and politics is concerned. In these days when Anglo-French
relations are about to enter a new phase, much of what is discussed
here remains surprisingly relevant.After the fall of Napoleon, and
the restoration of British links with the European continent,
Stendhal was by no means the only French writer who was anxious to
know more about this comparatively small island which had emerged
victorious from more than twenty years of warfare. How had the
wealth that had financed so many alliances against the French
Empire been generated and what were the consequences of rapid
industrialisation on the country's social fabric? More importantly,
how had it managed to be so effective and influential when power
was not in the hands of a single authority but divided between a
king and two houses of parliament? These were questions which
Stendhal felt were highly relevant, not only to the political
future of his own country but also to Europe in general. As a
writer, he was however also fascinated by Britain's literature,
both of the past and present. From the beginning of his literary
education, Shakespeare struck him as the most impressive dramatist
he had ever read and when he himself made a modest entry on the
literary scene, after Waterloo, the most famous poet in Europe was
Byron. Among many other matters, Ellis examines the significance of
Stendhal's meeting with Byron and the impact on him of the novels
of Scott, at a time when these two writers were dominating the
European scene. He describes the efforts Stendhal made to learn
enough English to be able to read in the original, not only both of
these contemporary writers but Shakespeare, Fielding as well as
many other British authors from the past. He shows how the
political ideas about Britain which Stendhal had developed during
the years of separation were modified by personal contacts, new
reading and the three trips he made across the Channel in the
1820s. That was the decade when he was also writing hundreds of
articles for publication in London journals and it is in these
years especially that Stendhal's own literary development is
intertwined with his numerous British contacts (who include
Hazlitt). At the end of his book, Ellis reflects on how far the
relationship was reciprocal. That is to say that it is one thing to
investigate what Stendhal thought of the British as well as what he
might have gained from them, which is the major part of this study;
and another to wonder what they could gain from him. Henry James
ended a review of the first biography of Stendhal to appear in
English by recommending his work to 'persons of "sensibility" whose
moral convictions have somewhat solidified'. Even without examining
whether James was justified in implicitly excluding himself from
the category he establishes here, it would seem evident enough that
his words are in need of the gloss Ellis provides. About sixty
years ago, The Red and the Black was a model for a number of
British novelists absorbed in the mechanics and difficulties of
social mobility and its author was sufficiently admired to justify
Aldous Huxley's description of Stendhal as 'the greatest novelist
outside Russia'. That he now takes his place, along with Balzac and
Flaubert, in the great triumvirate of 19th'realist' novelists makes
him by far the most important French writer to have grappled with
the difficulties of Anglo-French relations in the years after 1815
and a worthy object for this lively and entertaining study.
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