The Vatard Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page A

gratifications, and prosaic carnality…The incidental characters are well sketched and the girl with the toothache is really comical. It’s a powerful book and I offer you my sincerest compliments on it. Now, do you want some advice from an older man? Well, I believe that Germinie Lacerteux, L’Assommoir and The Vatard Sisters have, at the present time, exhausted what I call rabble-literature and I would advise you to choose another social milieu for your next book, a more elevated sphere.
    ( Letter from Edmond de Goncourt to Huysmans , 24 March 1879)

    In his reply, Huysmans acknowledged the advice in such stiffly formal, not to say pompous terms, that it is difficult not to think he had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote it:

    As for the advice about “rabble-literature” which the author of La Fille Elisa wished to give to us young writers, we can only appreciate it and tell you how happy we are that the Goncourt Brothers, who we have so much admired and supported when their great talent was being disputed, have been kind enough to repay a little in paternity that which filial literary affection has dedicated to them.
    ( Letter from Huysmans to Edmond de Goncourt , 2 May 1879)

    Huysmans often took a slightly condescending tone when referring to Goncourt in his letters to close friends, but in this instance he seems to have heeded Goncourt’s advice, most notably when he came to write À rebours (1884) a few years later. Although the close public connection with Zola had paid off in terms of generating publicity for the book, Huysmans had no desire to be forever labelled as Zola’s disciple, or to have his books dismissed as sub-standard or diluted versions of Zola’s own. The Vatard Sisters was Huysmans’ last overtly working class novel and his next book did indeed shift its focus to a more elevated social sphere: En ménage (1881) dealt with the experiences of a character who was closely modelled on the author himself and who was recognisably from his own middle-class background.

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    It struck two in the morning.
    Céline played that silly joke on her sister that consists in placing your finger near the nose of someone who is falling sleeping and then suddenly waking them up. Désirée banged her left nostril against Céline’s index finger. ‘That’s so stupid!’ she cried.
    The women creased themselves laughing.
    ‘All right, ladies, a little quiet,’ ventured the female supervisor.
    Then, like a continual hum suddenly cut across by a flute-like laugh, two high voices, borne up by the whirring of the presses, blared out a patriotic song. The throats of the men, throats ravaged by trente-six , also thundered out, their raucous barks cutting through the shrill cries of the girls:

    He died, that soldier sto–ic,
    He died for the Re–pub–lic!

    ‘All right, ladies, a little quiet,’ ventured the female supervisor.
    The press howled and panted even louder, the trimmers screeched and the soft swish of wooden blades over paper could be heard; the sound of little cradles dropping down, throwing bundles onto the table reverberated around, interspersed by the quivering of the gas jets and the drone of the stove. Laughter burst out from one end of the workshop to the other, died down, then started up again in a slow rumble.
    ‘Ladies, ladies! a little quiet,’ ventured the female supervisor.
    Here, the sound of bad colds grumbling; there, nervous giggles being stifled with snorts; here and there, a hawking and clearing of throats cutting through the rising storm of noise.
    In one corner, a shrill peal of laughter skittered around, alone, dancing above the tumult. There was a moment’s respite. Then a cat in heat mewed loudly, and a voice on the edge of tears rose above everything:
    ‘Ladies, I’ve been patient with you all night!’
    The thunderclap of an enormous pile of paper falling over abruptly cut off the chorus of jeers directed at the woman. The paper didn’t land on anyone’s head. The