[_21 Jan. '09_]
Although we know in our hearts that the French Academy is a foolish
institution, designed and kept up for the encouragement of mediocrity,
correct syntax, and the _status quo_, we still, also in our hearts, admire
it and watch its mutations with the respect which we always give to
foreign phenomena and usually withold from phenomena British. The last
elected member is M. Francis Charmes. His sole title to be an Academician
is that he directs _La Revue des Deux Mondes_, which pays good prices to
Academic contributors. And this is, of course, a very good title. Even his
official "welcomer," M. Henry Houssaye, did not assert that M. Charmes had
ever written anything more important or less mortal than leaders and
paragraphs in the _Journal des Débats_. M. Henry Houssaye was himself once
a journalist. But he thought better of that, and became a historian. He
has written one or two volumes which, without being unreadable, have
achieved immense popularity. Stevenson used to delve in them for matter
suitable to his romances. The French Academy now contains pretty nearly
everything except first-class literary artists. Anatole France is a
first-class literary artist and an Academician; but he makes a point of
never going near the Academy. Perhaps the best writer among "devout"
Academicians is Maurice Barrès. Unhappily his comic-opera politics prove
that in attempting Parnassus he mistook his mountain. Primrose Hill would
have been more in his line. Still, he wrote "Le Jardin de Bérénice": a
novel which I am afraid to read again lest I should fail to recapture the
first fine careless rapture it gave me.
* * * * *
Personally, I think our British Academy is a far more brilliant affair
than the French. There is no nonsense about it. At least very little,
except Mr. Balfour. I believe, from inductive processes of thought, that
when Mr. Balfour gets into his room of a night he locks the door--and
smiles. Not the urbane smile that fascinates and undoes even Radical
journalists--quite another smile. Never could this private smile have been
more subtle than on the night of the day when he permitted himself to be
elected a member of the British Academy. Further, let it not be said that
our Academy excludes novelists and journalists. We novelists are ably
represented by Mr. Andrew Lang, author of "Prince Prigio" and part-author
of "The World's Desire." And we journalists have surely an adequate
spokesman in the person of the author of "Lost Leaders." Mr. Lang has also
dabbled in history.