PRIEST AT WORK Flaubert: A Biography, by Philip Spencer (Faber &

Faber, 25s.). Reviewed by Clare Simon A LATER novelist than Flaubert has written: " As individuals we don't get off more lightly than any other individuals-we have to pay our bills, keep appointments, be Of appear to be as agreeable as possible . . . it is not easy for him [the writerj to concentrate on social questions." But it is precisely this obligation to society in every sort of craftsman-in this case, in Flaubert, who carved out a novel as though it were a piece of oak, so much every day that endears them to people who don't do the work but are nevertheless fond of reading about the workman.
Unless you're a writer yourself you don't take much interest in the tortuous trains of thought between the ragged idea and the finished phrase; it is enthralling to hear that Flaubert " was beset by the familiar weakness of those who feel strongly; a fundamental instability of temperament; as a result of which he was either very happy or in utter despair. thus spelling a quiet day. or otherwise, as the case might be, for those around him: his mother; Louise Colet, who was Flaubert's mistress over a period of years and had her own share of the artistic temperament: his companions. George Sand and Louis Bouilhet; his pupil. Maupassant.
A man who suffered from a nervous malady. who produced three pages of much-corrected prose every day for four and a half years. about the same characters: a man who once said threateningly. but with the twinkle of fundamentally genial reason: " If I ever take an active part in the world it will he is thinker and a dernorettser ": this is Flaubert as Philip Spencer has given him to us.
A delightful biography; clear. factual, the story of a man, his loves. his work and his friends. rather than the story of a soulwhich so many modern biographies seem to be.
Flaubert arrived at the end of his
life still striving. " His problem was the eternal one of the adequate communication of a vision " and because it was eternal. he never did Overcome II-in his °wit eyes.
We have called him a genius but Flaubert himself would not have used the word.