Customers of the Good yellow Dog

the Customers of the Good yellow Dog is a novel of Pierre Mac Orlan published in 1926 with the editions “Arts and the book” in the collection “the joy of our children”.

Summary

We are in Brittany, on the coast of the Leon, in 1756. The young person Louis-Marie Benic, old 14 years, comes to lose his father. Only, without resources, he undertakes then outward journey with Brest, where Nicolas Benic was established, an uncle that he forever considering, in the capacity as tenant of a mysterious cabaret to the ensign of the “Good yellow Dog”.

The young man is well accommodated by the landlord who takes it with his service. But one evening, at the time of an interview of her uncle with an individual, obviously of most equivocal, answering “the Black” Bread nickname, Louis-Marie starts to doubt the probity of Nicolas Benic. Rightly: it will end up learning that the landlord has dependant part with a band of pirates established between France and England, bandages to which it is used at the same time of receiver and provider as sailors.

Not resisting the call of the adventure, Louis-Marie clandestinely embarks on the Brick band, which sets sail towards London. Quickly located, but accepted on the ship thanks to his audacity, with his physical force, and the friendship of Virmoutiers, escaped convict of which it made knowledge in Brest, the young man discovers original the pirates soon how proceed to sow panic at the crews of the ships which they approach: the men disguise themselves in skeletons, the ship east repaints in black and white and renamed the Dutchman Stealing . Virmoutiers, playing a funeral march on an organ, while one makes burn torches on the bridge, completes to give to the brig pirates the paces of a true ghost ship.

Louis-Marie realizes quickly that the real life of the pirates only resembles well little so that he imagined some. In particular, the brutal violence of his/her new companions, the cold massacres to which they deliver disgust it this painful existence. But it is too late to go into reverse.

One day, however, safety will come in an unexpected way: the men of Mathieu Miles have just captured a trading vessel beating French house, and are on the point of setting out again with their spoils when they see being profiled at the horizon the heavy silhouette of a Spanish war building. Miles orders with its men to bring back on the bridge of the Dutch Stealing the corpses of the crew of the French boat and to slip in the middle of them, counterfeiting deaths. The trick succeeds: the Spanish ship, which was on the point of giving the attack, passes in front of the brig and its crew, pale, contemplates the spectacle of desolation which the bridge of the pirate vessel offers by making force signs of cross.

All with the joy of the success of their stratagem, the pirates decide to spend the night to be feasted in the middle of the corpses brought back on the bridge of the Dutch stealing . But, suddenly, one of the corpses, that of an young woman, starts to move: she rises and, whereas the pirates are tétanisés of terror, she takes the bar of the brig and brings back it towards Brest, while the majority of the other corpses are raised in their turn. The pirates understand then, but too late, that they were played: the so-called corpses were in fact of the soldiers who, at the time of the attack given against their ship, counterfeited deaths. The pirates were taken with their own trap, turned over against them on the initiative of the Signet ring of Kergoez (the young girl which had been seized of the bar of the Dutch Stealing ).

The pirates, like Nicolas Benic, are considered in Brest, are condemned, and hung. Louis-Marie, that her youth, as well as the intervention of the Signet ring, saved cord, engages with the service of her new bienfaitrice. With its death, the latter leaves him in heritage enough money to enable him to found a counter of goods with Point-with-Clown.

Years later, Louis-Marie, married and father, the need tests to turn over on the spot of its youth. It embarks with his wife and her son for Brest, and is made, feverish, with the " Good Dog jaune". But the building disappeared, as well as the name of the cabaret of the memory of the inhabitants of the district. Youth of Louis-Marie, it remains nothing.

Elements of analysis

In the shade of Jim Hawkins

“All the novels of sea of Mac Orlan start again the history of Jim Hawkins”, remarked Jean-Yves Tadié. The convergence points between the Island with the treasure and the Customers of the Good yellow Dog are indeed revealing attraction force exerted on the work of Mac Orlan by the novel of the Scottish writer. As for the Island with the treasure , the hero is a young boy of the XVIIIe century, attracted by the spirit of adventure and which tells, a posteriori, its own history. The ambivalence of the feelings which Jim Hawkins towards Length John Silver tests and, reciprocally, the ambiguous attitude of the latter towards Jim, find their during in the relations of Louis-Marie and Virmoutiers, if it is not that the latter plays near its protected young person, not only the role a Length John Silver, but also that of Doctor Livesey, role which in a last time will be reserved for the Signet ring. One could thus multiply the points of comparison between the two novels, of most obvious (the presence of pirates) with most secondary (thus of the cabaret as starting point of the adventure).

Customers of the Good yellow Dog and literature for youth

But it should however be noted that, for a share of them, these resemblances between the two novels are due also to the fact that they are one and the other of the works intended for youth, and by là-même subjected to certain particular constraints, of which they are exonerated only partly. In particular, the youth of the hero, the initiatory aspect of its tour whose least of the demonstrations is not confrontation with the Evil and its (pure) temptations, the final victory of the representatives of the order, are not as well indication of their proximity as of their membership common to a codified kind.

Thus, the novel of Mac Orlan does not derogate with use which wants that the history has a happy end, and who does not shock common morals: the malicious ones are punished, and the young hero will be rewarded to have made, even if tardily, the choice to join the camp of the order, personified by the Signet ring. The conclusion, in particular, which makes ravel on a rate/rhythm accelerated the adventures of the life of adult of Louis-Marie, introduces only one succession of happinesses, servants and professionals, hardly tarnished by the bracket melancholic person of the return to Brest, like confirming the accuracy of the choice of Louis-Marie.

This happy end , not very common in the romantic universe, readily pessimistic, of Pierre Mac Orlan, contrast curiously with the progressive darkening of the account, which culminates in blackness in the episode of the orgy of the pirates on the bridge of the Dutch Stealing (which goes until suggesting that the Miles captain is not free from inclinations nécrophiles). From this point of view, the “resurrection” of the young dead appears as a deus ex machina which in extremis comes to withdraw the novel of this blackness in which it was inserted to bring back it towards the light of a outcome altogether rather conventional. This romantic artifice, it should be noted, is not probability with any test: whatever its good will, the reader (at least the adult reader) tests difficulties of adhering to this reversal of situation, and of accepting the fact that sailors could make pretense be killed at the time of a combat without their adversaries, which transport their skins of one ship to the other, not realizing trickery. Did Mac Orlan want to point the fact here that it is only with back-plate that it was determined to give a reasonable conclusion to this scene, which in its attractive blackness evoked the best moments of the Roman Gothic English? Or is it necessary to see there the index of the difficulties of the author of yielding with the requirements of the literature intended for youth?

Inn of the “Good yellow Dog” to the sign of “the Anchor of Mercy”

If it has as an ancestor the Island with the Treasury , the Customers of the Good yellow Dog has as a direct descendant the Anchor of Mercy , novel published by Mac Orlan in 1941, and who presents with him such similarities that one can consider them, if not like two states different from the same work, at least like two variations around the same topic.

We will be satisfied here to put forward some similarities between the two novels.

the two heroes are Breton young people, who live at the 18th century, and who have same attraction for the life, presumedly adventurous, of the sailors. They carry almost identical first names (Louis-Marie Benic and Yves-Marie Morgat) and are the narrators of the account which puts them in scene.

They live with some steps one of the other (the shop of the father of Yves-Marie is located at the edge of the district of Kéravel, where the cabaret of the " is; Good Dog jaune".)

They bind both of friendship with a convict (Virmoutiers and Jean of Sorgue), who takes them under his protection.

They have as a mentor a surgeon of navy, or at least alleged such (it in what they also join the anonymous narrator of On board of the Star Matutine).

At the conclusion of their tour, the pirates will be hung, but especially two young people will be disappointed by the reality of the life of adventures, quite different from what they imagined.

the “home port” of their youth will be destroyed, and with him will disappear the material supports their memories. On this last point, the experiment of Yves-Marie Morgat and Louis-Marie Benic joined that of Mac Orlan itself, the disappearance of the “sentimental landscapes” of youth being one of the recurrent themes of its work.

Alternatives

The edition of 1926 of the Customers of the Good yellow Dog present with the final version some differences in details rather not very significant, except for one, which relates to the last lines of the text (excipit). It is noted that in the most recent version any element likely was gummed to go against the idea that the happiness of the narrator is without mixture…

Excipit of the edition of 1946 (recovery in the edition Folio junior)

“I ran rather than I did not walk. I found the small alleys of Kéravel and sudden my eyes sought a familiar decoration. The cabaret of the “Good Yellow Dog” did not exist any more. The old hovel had been shaven. With its place, there remained only some stones and ten piles on which women of the vicinity made dry their linen.
I entered a small cabaret to some steps of this sad door which gave on the bagne and where so many times I had seen appearing the close-cropped head of Virmoutiers.
I taken a bowlful of cider and I say to the owner: “You knew named Benic, which held a cabaret: “The good Yellow Dog”, at this place? ” And I showed finger the old site of the inn.
- “My faith not, Sir, it has been seven years that I am here, and at that time the house about which you speak to me did not exist already any more. ”
I paid my share and I moved to slow steps towards the residence where I had left my dear wife and my dear child.
Our stay in France comforted us the heart and the spirit. With the return, after an animated crossing, we were all quite happy to find Point-with-Clown, our old friends and our practices. I was not to deviate any more of the road which I had chosen after the death of Miss de Kergoez. ”

Excipit of the edition of 1926

Excipit of the Anchor of Mercy

The initially written conclusion still more brings closer the Customers to the Good Yellow Dog of the Anchor of Mercy and sound excipit disillusioned:

“ At that time, my father died and the Anchor of Mercy was sold via my notary, since I was only sons and that it could not be question which I continued this trade.
the old building was demolished by its new owners who built in the place a private mansion.
I was at sea on this date and I pus to collect our old sign, which was hidden with the rubbles and the debris of my youth, i.e. with the most alive substance of this past which enabled me to write these some pages where all my bitterness is not yet encloses. ”

Works quoted in this article

Pierre Mac Orlan, has edge of Star Matutine , Gallimard editions, coll Folio n°1483, Paris, 1983
Pierre Mac Orlan, the Anchor of Mercy , editions Emile-Paul Frères, Paris, 1941
Pierre Mac Orlan, the Customers of the Good yellow Dog , editions Arts and the book, coll " Joy of our enfants" , Paris, 1941
Pierre Mac Orlan, Customers of the Good yellow Dog , Gallimard editions, coll Folio junior n°494, Paris, 1997
Pierre Mac Orlan, abolished Images , editions Michel de Maule, 2005
Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth , Phébus editions, coll libretto, Paris, 1996 (foreword of André Breton)
Jean-Yves Tadié, the Novel of adventures , editions of the P.U.F., coll “writings”, Paris, 1982

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