614
PARTISAN REVIEW
named Pecuchet, a man he respected, played an important part
in
his financial life in 1875; the point of delicacy was settled by M.
Pecuchet's death.
Once in their life together, .after many frustrations, at a moment
when they are nervous and depressed, Bouvard and Pecuchet find
that they can't stand the sight of each other; this is natural and
transitory, and it but serves to emphasize the fulness and constancy
of their devotion to each other. Their manner of life, we must recog–
nize, has gre.at charm. They are much harassed, much frustrated by
practical as well as by intellectual matters, but their housekeeping,
which is omnipresent in the story, is a pleasure to read about. Even
when the economy falls quite to pieces and becomes sordid, it never
quite belies the rich common poetry of their first meal, their first
evening, their first morning in their own home. From their establish–
ment we derive the pleasure which is afforded by the living arrange–
ments of
Robinson Crusoe
or
The Swiss Family Robinson,
or Boffin's
Bower, or Sherlock Holmes's rooms in Baker Street. Their enterprises
are based on innocence and a pleasant sufficiency: they have a good
deal in common with the respected author of "Speculations on the
Source of the Hempstead Ponds, with some Observations on the
Theory of Tittlebats," for
Mr.
Pickwick, another superannuated bour–
geois bachelor, was devoted to the life of the mind, and his scientific
adventures, although more primitive than those of Bouvard and
Pe–
cuchet, are alike in kind. They have affinity with Tom Sawyer–
they are consciously boyish in their dreams of glory, in their dreams
of love; for a moment, in their hydrotherapeutic phase, they have
their Jackson's Island and are seen naked as Red Indians and glee–
fully splashing each other from their adjoining baths. Their life, de–
spite its disappointments, is a kind of idyl, and it approaches the
pastoral convention-there is no reason not to think of them as two
shepherds tending their woolly flocks of ideas. Who would not want
to read Bouvard's "Lament for Pecuchet," or, for the matter of that,
Pecuchet's "Elegy for Bouvard," whichever came first; .and whose
heart would not be wrung by the event either poem recorded and
the loneliness of the survivor at the double copying desk, the con–
trivance of which had been the last ingenuity of the two friends?
Had they lived alone and pursued their studies and projects
alone, it is possible that imbecility might have descended upon the
