This reticence is superb, and one of its practical results has been
the remarkable physical vigor of this man who is after all no longer
young. One should see him in his country home. M. de Blowitz went up
and down the north coast of France, hunting for an eyry. He found it
on the wooded top of one of the side slopes of the thousand and one
ravines in which fishermen along that coast had fixed their cabins, at
the small hamlet of _Les Petites Dalles_. Like Alphonse Karr at
Etretat, he made the fame of this spot. Your guide-book will tell you
the fact. "M. de Blowitz, correspondent of the English newspaper the
'Times,' has a villa here." I defy you to find any other distinction
special to this place. The high Normandy coast is always charming, but
it is equally so at a hundred other points. And of what charm there is
here simply as village, M. Blowitz's presence would seem to threaten
the partial extinction. For this very presence is rendering the spot
famous and crowded. Sit in the afternoon listening to the three
violins that provide the music, and, taking your absinthe on one of
those hard benches within the narrow limits of the space there called
Casino, you will run the risk of overhearing a conversation like
this:
"This is your first summer here?"
"Yes, came last night. I am tired of Pau, and thought I could bury
myself here. But there's too much world."
"Yes, but what a world it is!"
"Oh, I don't mind that! They say there's enough society in the villas.
Since de Blowitz built the _Lampottes_ and has brought his friends
down, there are some people _tres bien de la meilleure societe_ on the
cliffs. That's the place up there, the house with the flag above all
the others. I walked up there this morning. He has a tennis court.
Looking up the gravel walk, I saw him sitting on the veranda. That's
M. Ernest Daudet's place just under him in the trees--_mais voila_;
there he is."
Towards three o'clock in the afternoon, indeed, almost daily, M. de
Blowitz has an amiable habit. He walks down with members of his
family, and the guests who are staying with him, to the pretty
bathing-cabins, in front of which stretches an improvised awning, and,
picturesque in his colored flannels, he sits himself down with a cigar
to watch the bathers. He, the most distinguished of European critics,
is here and now the object of many curious and admiring observations.
He holds here a little court on the shingle beach. Brightly dressed
women gather to him from every point of the compass; while he who has
his emissaries in every quarter of the world, and whose subtle
influence is felt at each episode of the European movement, gives
himself up with pardonable indulgence--under the ample umbrella--to
the pretty trifles of glib women's charm and chatter. Before he has
enjoyed enough, and obedient to one of those harmless devices in which
well-taught men of the world often indulge, he retires from this
charmed and, as I can affirm, charming circle, and climbs to the great
villa on the cliff. There are letters to be written and telegrams to
be sent to Paris, and perhaps an article meditated during the
afternoon.
[Illustration: M. DE BLOWITZ IN HIS STUDY.]
The doors of the _Lampottes_ are wide open upon the great veranda, and
the winds of the channel enter there, warmed from blowing over the
upland grass. The life within is the ideally tranquil existence of an
English country gentleman. Where did this cosmopolite, who really has
no English roots, learn the system? For the hospitality of England can
scarcely be translated with full flavor into any other idiom. The
_schloss_ of Germany or of the Tyrol, the _chateau_ of France, have
never, within my experience of lazy summers, afforded just the same
delightful background as the country house of England. Yet to the
_Lampottes_ the peculiar air has somehow been conjured. All the
country round about this house is Norman, and therefore English--that
is, dense, rich, familiar--so that the English illusion is complete.
But no reader of M. de Blowitz's correspondence in the "Times" would
ever have thought of placing the author in these surroundings. The
_raconteur_ of the reminiscences in "Harper's Magazine" must appeal to
the American reader as a sort of bustling incarnation of the
ubiquitous telegraph, unwearied, and knowing not even in his dreams
the first soothing tremor of the sound of the word "rest." On the
contrary, M. de Blowitz rests frequently and smiles quietly. Large
himself, he likes large air, large rooms, large landscapes, large and
general ideas. And what contributes to all this more than rest, which
gives time to think? It is a generous and natural temper, and that is
why the great doors from the veranda are open to the channel winds.
Although M. de Blowitz wears in his buttonhole, in bright contrast to
the famous flowing tie, the rosette of the French Legion of Honor, he
is not in race a Frenchman; yet he is sufficiently French in two
conspicuous characteristics. The French strike me as being, with the
Americans, the most naturally intelligent people on the western part
of the planet. But the Frenchman is also _bon enfant_, and for the
moment I do not stop to consider that he always remains _enfant_. To
be intelligent and _bon enfant_ at once is to promise all kinds of
successes in life, and to be both is to make success charming. M. de
Blowitz is both. He has been, therefore, a charming success. The
nature of this success defies analysis, but as a result can be
described.