In the second chapter Bouvard and Pécuchet get used to their new surroundings and try to find out how to survive in the country. There is no question of Pécuchet being left behind and he is invited to share Bouvard’s good fortune. Bouvard decides to wait until his retirement before moving to the country at Chavignolles. One day Bouvard is notified that he has inherited his uncle’s fortune-this uncle is actually Bouvard’s natural father. They are, however, quite different: Bouvard is a widower, he has curly hair, he is rotund and is quite sociable whereas Pécuchet is a bachelor, has black hair and is rather morose. They quickly become good friends, meeting each other at lunch or after work to go for a walk, sharing meals and conversation. ‘The same with me, I work in an office too.’ ‘My word, yes! Someone might take mine at the office.’ ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we both had the same idea, writing our names inside our headgear.’ When they came to the middle of the boulevard they both sat down at the same moment on the same seat.Įach took off his hat to mop his brow and put it beside him and the smaller man noticed, written inside his neighbour’s hat, Bouvard while the latter easily made out the word Pécuchet, in the cap belonging to the individual in the frock-coat. The smaller one, whose body was enveloped in a brown frock-coat, had a peaked cap on his bent head. The taller of the two, in a linen costume, walked with his hat pushed back, waistcoat undone and cravat in hand. One came from the Bastille, the other from the Jardin des Plantes. The meeting takes place on the first page of the book and has a Beckettian feel to it.
The two woodlice, Bouvard and Pécuchet, are single, middle-aged clerks who happen to meet and strike up a friendship one day in 1838. An earlier draft from 1863 exists which has what I feel is a better title, The Two Woodlice ( Les Deux Cloportes).
It was published posthumously in 1881 it was an unfinished work even though Flaubert had been working on it for nearly ten years. Of all of Flaubert’s works the one that most appealed to me was Bouvard and Pécuchet, a story about two clerks who embark on a mission to understand everything.
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