Flaubert's Day from Brown's 'Flaubert'

ACCUSTOMED AS a child to hearing that her uncle was preoccupied with

“La Bovary,” Flaubert’s niece Liline took the name to be a French word for

“work.” And that mysterious work was understood to dictate not only the

permissible volume of household noise but, in general, the rituals of daily

life at Croisset. Mme Flaubert might complain about it. She might even de-

clareat times that the goose quill from which her son could not long be

parted had sapped his humanity.* Still, she never failed to come and sit be-

side him, like a chamberlain at the prince’s petite lei/ée, when he summoned

her, as he did every morning soon after waking up, by tapping the wall that

separated their bedrooms.

Days were as unvaried as the notes of the cuckoo. Plaubert, a man of

nocturnal habits, usually awoke at 10 a.m. and announced the event with

his bell cord. Only then did people dare speak above a whisper. His valet,

N arcisse, straightaway brought him water, filled his pipe, drew the curtains,

and delivered the morning mail. Conversation with Mother, which took

place in clouds of tobacco smoke particularly noxious to the migraine suf-

ferer, preceded a very hot bath and a long, careful toilette involving the reg-

ular application of a tonic reputed to arrest hair loss. At 11 a.m. he entered

the dining room, where Mme Flaubert; Liline; her English governess, Is-

abel Hutton; and very often Uncle Parain would have gathered. Unable to

work well on a full stomach, he ate lightly, or what passed for such.in the

Flaubert household, meaning that his first meal consisted of eggs, vegeta-

bles, cheese or fruit, and a cup of cold chocolate. The family then lounged

on the terrace, unless foul weather kept them indoors, or climbed a steep

path through woods behind their espaliered kitchen garden to a glade

dubbed La Mercure after the statue of Mercury that once stood there.

Shaded by chestnut trees, near their hillside orchard, they would argue,

joke, gossip, and watch vessels sail up and down the river. Another site of

open-air refreshment was the eighteenth-century pavilion. After dinner,

which generally lasted from seven to nine, dusk often found them there,

looking out at moonlight flecking the water and fishermen casting their

hoop nets for eel.

In june 1852, Flaubert told Louise Colet that he worked from 1 p.m. to

1 a.m. A year later, when he assumed partial responsibility for Liline’s edu-

cation and gave her an hour or more of his time each day, he may not have

put pen to paper at his large round writing table until two o’clock or later.

The tutorial was important, no less to Flaubert, who in that familiar role

*Flaubert’s need to dissociate the enterprise of writing from what he regarded as mechani-

Cal tools was extreme. He hated not only metal nibs but also metal type and hated to visit

printing plants.