The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-01
THE FRENCH FEUlLLETON.
THE EQUIVALENT OF THE MAC
 ANNE RAGE

the Days of the CousuIate-Immenso
 Sums Paid to Dumas and Eugene Sue
 for the Rtght to Publish Their
 Works.
 The feuilleton may be roughly defined as that part of newspaper which is not news, or advertisement, or conl- nent on public affairs. Perhaps mag azine page" is the nearest English equivalent, since it is of the essence of the feuilleton that it should be a regu- lar feature with a special space allotted to it. Newspaper historians have not given it all the attention which it de- serves, or recognized it, as they should have, as the one good result of interfer- ence with the reasonable liberties of the press. Its French origin is sufficiently indicated by it's name, and it dates from the days of the consulate. That period was unpropitious to journalistic enter prise. A reaction against the license of the revolution had set in. No fewer than thirty papers had been suppressed by the directorate. The consulate be- gan it's career by further reducing their number until only thirteen were left, and these thirteen were forbidden to meddIe with politics otherwise than by echoing official communications. It was difficult, in the circumstances, to make 8 newspaper interesting, and the editor of the Journal des Debats invented the feuilleton to meet the difficulty. His principal contributor was a certain Geoffray, known to history as "the father of the feuilleton, whose writings served double purpose. In the first place, they made the paper readable, and in the second place they served as a medium for the expressions which 1t was not permissible to utter directly.
 Ostensibly the feuilleton consisted of dramatic musical criticism, varied by acrostics and notes on cookery and the fashions Actually it offered criti- cism, more or less yelled, of whatecer was nuppermost in the public mind. A dissection of play by Voltaire fur nished an excuse for an attack on the principles of the revolution. The plum der of foreign art galleries by French generals was dealt with in the guise of a review of new edition of Cicero's orations against Verres. A paragraph on a new mode in hats led up to a panegyric of the Roman Catholic rell- gion, the "tonsured heads of priests" supplying the connecting link. And so forth. The father of the feuilleton Was indeed, accused of venality for introduc- ing puff of somebody's mustard i'll much the same manner in which later journalist compared the sheen on the river at Henley to the gloss on some body's silk hats; but he was a power in France, and the most popular journal ist of his time. His name is still re- membered, though his writings, judged by modern standards, seem no more than moderately good.
 As the press regained it's freedom, 5 the feui1leton lost it's original raison d'etre. It had become, however, too popular to be sacrificed, and the next step in its history is marked by the en- largement of its scope by the introduc- tion first of short stories, and then Of serial stories. The exact date of the innovation cannot be fixed, but the golden age of the roman-feuilleton was in the reign of Louis Philippe. The idea had not yet been established itself that the masses prefer bad work to good; bu tbe best stories of the best novelists were eagerly .impeted fer by rival newspapers, and bought up at prices which might excite the envy of the most successful English authors of the present day. The captains of the in- dustry were Eugene Sue and Alexan- dre Dumas, and their triumphs were prodigious. Sues Mysteries of Paris" was put up to auction and knocked down to the highest bidder. The sum paid was four thousand pounds, and the mere announcement of it's appear ance gained twenty thousand new sub- scribers to the paper which had pur- chased it; and the demand received a further stimulus when the author was publicly denounced in the chamber of deputies for dragging his readers through the sewers of Parisian life.''
 Dumas 1t is true, only got G1,330 for the serial rights of Monte Cristo" but his subsequent contracts were much more profitable At one and the same time he had contract with the Presse and Constitutionnel, which brought him in sixtyfive thousand francs year, and 8 contract to supply the Steele with one hundred thousand lines a year at a franc and a half per line. It meant a steady income, from serial rights alone, of eighty-six hundred pounds. Du- mas, however, was the last of the great feUil1etonists who have also been great men of letters. In this, as in other departments of human life, the principle of the specialization of func- ton has operated; and the writers of newspaper serials have become a sep arate class, who have little more to do with literature than the reporters of the police courts. The change is gene- rally attributed to the spread of educa- tion among the working classes. It dates, at any rate, from the intuitive perception of the real tastes of the working classes by Emile Richebourg, the great feuilletonist of the Petit Jour- nal.
 Historians of French literature as rule omit this writer's name, or at most only mention 1t casually. Nevertheless his success, measured by any other standard than that of the critic, has probably been greater than that of any other writer in any country or in any age. He was the one writer who knew, with unerring certainty, exactly what sort of stories the masses wanted to :. IL