MY DEAR "MAURICE"--I was often in France before you were born or when you
were but a little child. When I went for the first or second time Mallarme
had just written: "All our age is full of the trembling of the veil of the
temple." One met everywhere young men of letters who talked of magic. A
distinguished English man of letters asked me to call with him on
Stanislas de Gaeta because he did not dare go alone to that mysterious
house. I met from time to time with the German poet Doukenday, a grave
Swede whom I only discovered after years to have been Strindberg, then
looking for the philosopher's stone in a lodging near the Luxembourg; and
one day in the chambers of Stuart Merrill the poet, I spoke with a young
Arabic scholar who displayed a large, roughly-made gold ring which had
grown to the shape of his finger. Its gold had no hardening alloy, he
said, because it was made by his master, a Jewish Rabbi, of alchemical
gold. My critical mind--was it friend or enemy?--mocked, and yet I was
delighted. Paris was as legendary as Connaught. This new pride, that of
the adept, was added to the pride of the artist. Villiers de L'Isle Adam,
the haughtiest of men, had but lately died. I had read his _Axel_ slowly
and laboriously as one reads a sacred book--my French was very bad--and
had applauded it upon the stage. As I could not follow the spoken words, I
was not bored even where Axel and the Commander discussed philosophy for a
half-hour instead of beginning their duel. If I felt impatient it was only
that they delayed the coming of the adept Janus, for I hoped to recognise
the moment when Axel cries: "I know that lamp, it was burning before
Solomon"; or that other when he cries: "As for living, our servants will
do that for us."
The movement of letters had been haughty even before Magic had touched it.
Rimbaud had sung: "Am I an old maid that I should fear the embrace of
death?" And everywhere in Paris and in London young men boasted of the
garret, and claimed to have no need of what the crowd values.
Last summer you, who were at the age I was when first I heard of Mallarme
and of Verlaine, spoke much of the French poets young men and women read
to-day. Claudel I already somewhat knew, but you read to me for the first
time from Jammes a dialogue between a poet and a bird, that made us cry,
and a whole volume of Peguy's _Mystere de la Charite de Jeanne d'Arc_.
Nothing remained the same but the preoccupation with religion, for these
poets submitted everything to the Pope, and all, even Claudel, a proud
oratorical man, affirmed that they saw the world with the eyes of
vine-dressers and charcoal-burners. It was no longer the soul, self-moving
and self-teaching--the magical soul--but Mother France and Mother Church.
Have not my thoughts run through a like round, though I have not found my
tradition in the Catholic Church, which was not the church of my
childhood, but where the tradition is, as I believe, more universal and
more ancient?