Letters reveal Flaubert's English 'amitié amoureuse' (original) (raw)

A trove of letters from Gustave Flaubert discovered in the attic of a Home Counties farmhouse reveals a softer side to the famously cynical author of Madame Bovary.

The letters, written to English society hostess Gertrude Tennant, were discovered by author and biographer David Waller after he was invited to look at two chests of family papers in a house off the A3. "They hadn't been opened for the last 50 years," he said. "It was quite an amazing experience. I delved in and found a package labelled 'letters from distinguished persons: do not throw away'."

The package contained correspondence from Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Gladstone and Victor Hugo, as well as a bundle of 24 letters from Flaubert, including around a dozen which had never before been seen.

Tennant, then Gertrude Collier, met Flaubert as a 22-year-old on holiday with her family in 1842 in Trouville. "He had the charm of the utter unconsciousness of his physical and mental beauty," wrote Tennant of their first encounter. They stayed in touch when her family returned to their home as ex-pats in Paris; Flaubert was unhappily studying law, and would come to their flat to talk and read poetry and romantic novels. "I would love to prolong indefinitely … the declamation, exaltation, inspiration [of the hours spent with you]," he wrote in 1844 in a letter never previously known to have existed.

Tennant, in a lightly fictionalised story, reveals the two also shared a passionate kiss at the Paris opera during the period, although their friendship was, said Waller, more of an "amitié amoureuse", or passionate friendship. "It doesn't appear that they had an affair but it was deeper than a usual friendship," said Waller. "Flaubert was sex mad – he was writing a book about a prostitute when they met. Gertrude was a very respectable English girl who went on to become a real grande dame – she would never have had an affair."

They fell out of touch when she went to London to marry Charles Tennant, with their correspondence picking up again in 1857 when Flaubert sent her a copy of Madame Bovary. He wrote in the book that he was sending it to her "in homage to an unchanging affection … in memory of the beach at Trouville and our long readings at the Rond-Point of the Champs-Elysées". Tennant, however, was unimpressed.

"I will tell you straight that I am astonished," she wrote in reply. "[How could] you, with your imagination and admiration for everything that is beautiful … take pleasure in writing something so hideous as this book!" Thinking to influence him positively, she posted him a copy of George Eliot's Adam Bede suggesting he model his style on Eliot's, but Flaubert was uninterested in Victorian morality, and instead penned Salammbô, chock-full of orgies and blood.

The pair next met in 1876, reveals Waller, when Tennant, aged 56, travelled to Flaubert's apartment on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. She recalls approaching him as he sat in the living room with his back to her, placing her hand on his shoulder and saying "Gustave". He cried out "Madame Tennant … Gertrude, Gertrude! ... Oh mais vous me faïtes du bien, mais du bien!"

"After that there ensued a torrent of letters," said Waller," which were very poignant. He was writing Un Coeur Simple, the story from Trois Contes, when Gertrude turned up, and was very consciously delving into his youth and his past – the time when he knew Gertrude. My contention is that she helped influence that story – she certainly unleashed very nostalgic feelings of great affection."

"How is it possible for me to tell you how much pleasure your visit gave me," Flaubert wrote to Tennant. "In the long years since I have lived without knowing what had become of you, there is perhaps not a single day that has gone by without my thinking of you." "Do you know what I call you, deep down inside of me, when I think of you (which happens often)? I call you 'ma jeunesse'."

Although they continued to write to each other, they never met again. Flaubert died in 1880 aged 59, while Tennant lived until 1918, putting together the first collection of the author's correspondence together with his niece in the 1890s. She included "some of the respectable letters" he'd written to her in the collection, said Waller, but the rest have never been seen before they were published in his biography, The Magnificent Mrs Tennant, earlier this summer.