A FEW LITERARY MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY
If one decides to forget the past and the great thinkers who had made
the middle of last century so interesting in France, one can find great
pleasure in knowing some of the literary men of the present day in
Paris. They are always amusing, and perhaps the art of small talk is
practised by them more brilliantly than among their predecessors.
Anatole France, Octave Mirbeau, and Pierre Loti are among the foremost
novelists, and for those who have given themselves over to historical
studies the Marquis de Ségur is the most acceptable name. I must also
give grateful mention to such as Guy de Maupassant and Flaubert--the
great Flaubert, whom so many have tried to imitate, but whom few could
approach either as regards his talent or his thorough knowledge of the
French language.
The well known Octave Mirbeau began his literary career as the secretary
of Arthur Meyer, the director and present owner of the _Gaulois_. He has
a profound belief in his own work, and with some justice. He certainly
is clever, and the talent with which he describes in his novels what he
has not felt is such as one but seldom meets nowadays. His books are
remarkable, and they awake passionate interest in their readers, even
though they are so strong with realism that they repel many. They are
highly imaginative, and provoke not only curiosity but also the desire
to read them over again as soon as one has finished them.
From being quite unknown Octave Mirbeau has risen high in the literary
firmament of his country and his generation. He soon made his name,
gossip saying that he kept himself before his contemporaries by his
sharp criticisms of everybody and everything he did not like, or he
thought did not like him. He spared no one. Nevertheless he became
famous in Paris and throughout France. He succeeded, therefore, in
making his books popular.
M. Mirbeau began as a poor man; quickly, however, he earned for himself
a large fortune, partly through his books, partly through successful
operations on the Stock Exchange, and partly by marriage. M. Mirbeau
lives in clover in one of the finest apartments of the Avenue du Bois,
and on the lovely property which he possesses at Cormeilles-en-Vexin,
near Paris. He gives dinners now and then, and has always been upon
excellent terms with the wife to whom he owes so much of his worldly
goods. He likes to see at his hospitable hearth the people of whose
admiration he feels sure, and honoured me once with an invitation to
lunch when I least expected it, for we had never been very friendly
towards each other.
I shall never forget that lunch. There were only four of us, the host
and hostess, Rodin the sculptor, and myself. When I arrived I was
introduced in the study, where the first thing which struck my eyes was
the bust of Mirbeau himself on the mantelpiece. As I looked at it, after
having exchanged the first greetings with the people in the room, Madame
Mirbeau turned to me, and said in her softest accents--and she has a
delightfully soft voice: “You are looking at my husband’s bust; it is
the work of our great master here,” and she turned towards Rodin.
The latter raised himself slightly from the depths of the large
arm-chair in which he was ensconced beside the fire, and looking at me,
murmured dreamily: “Ah, it is not everybody’s bust I care to do, but
when one meets with a remarkable personality like our great writer here,
it is a pleasure for an artist to reproduce his features.”
He sighed as he spoke, and Mirbeau’s face lighted up as he said in his
turn: “I never hoped for such a reward for all my work as to be thought
worthy of the attention of our great master.”
And then Madame Mirbeau began again: “Ah, it is not often that two great
souls like our two great masters here present meet and think together.”
Lunch was announced, and Rodin rose, and directed his steps towards the
dining-room. Fearing that I might step before him, Mirbeau stopped me by
laying his hand upon my arm, saying as he did so: “Laissez passer le
maître, notre maître à tous!”
And this kind of thing went on during the whole meal. Rodin praised
Mirbeau, Mirbeau praised Rodin, and Madame Mirbeau praised both of them.
One heard nothing but “cher maître,” and “ce grand maître,” and “notre
grand maître”--I began to think that I had been invited to assist at the
canonisation of Rodin by Mirbeau, and of Mirbeau by Rodin, or of both by
Mirbeau’s wife.
Anatole France has a fluent and correct French diction, but whilst
admiring him, I cannot forget that there have been other great thinkers,
writers, and philosophers, not only in France but also in Europe. And
this is what his worshippers won’t admit. St. Simon will always provide
enjoyment for the people who wade through his pages; Renan’s works will
always remain a model of fine language, and of noble thoughts nobly
expressed; Thiers’s history of the Consulate and the Empire will always
be consulted by those who care for the past and all it has seen and
witnessed. I doubt very much whether the life of Jeanne d’Arc will ever
become a classic work.
Apart from this liking for the congenial atmosphere of praise, Anatole
France is a charming man, full of humour, amusing in the extreme, his
conversation sparkling with witty anecdotes and _bons mots_, which he
utters now and then when one least expects them. He has a wonderful
memory, and when all is said and done possesses a great deal of kindness
in his judgments, with a considerable indulgence towards his neighbours.
He has none of the sharpness of language of Mirbeau, and is more a
gentleman. His manner with women is a model of its kind; he treats them
with a chivalry which savours of the days of old, when men still died
for the ladies of their heart. M. Anatole France, taken on the whole, is
certainly a person worth knowing, and is one of the most charming men in
Paris at the present day.
I don’t think that I met Flaubert more than a couple of times, but he
left on my mind an impression that probably nothing will ever efface.
There was real genius in his face, and, in spite of a certain tendency
to grumble at everything and at everybody, he could be a charming
companion. He was the inventor of the Naturalistic school, and
unfortunately others tried to copy him, with the appalling result which
we who live in France have seen. But nothing could be more amusing than
to witness his rage when shown the distasteful manuscript of some
talentless young man, and being told that it was supposed to be an
imitation of his style. He used to burst into real fury, and declare
that if this was going to be the result of his arduous work, he would
rather throw in the fire all that he had ever written. Flaubert was not
devoid of ideals, and though he believed that novels ought to describe
life, he did not think that they must depict every phase of the
material side of it. He was a great genius, and what was allowed to him
would not be tolerated in others.
Pierre Loti is another genius in his way. In his charming, lovely books
each line breathes with a deep, real talent. Some of his descriptions
show us certain spots and places with such vividness that it is almost
possible to think one has seen them too. There are passages in “Mon
Frère Yves,” in “Désanchantées,” in “Le Pélerin d’Angkok,” and
especially in that delightful and profound work, “Le Livre de la Pitié
et de la Mort,” the like of which have perhaps never been written before
in the French language. But the man himself is anything but sympathetic.
He thinks far too much of his own genius, and his affectation jars on
the nerves. I have never been able to understand why the people who
write clever books should consider themselves as made of superior clay
to other mortals, and I feel inclined to laugh always whenever I see an
author affect habits, language, and general demeanour different from
those of common humanity simply on account of the tales which he has
composed, thanks to the intelligence and cleverness that Providence has
given to him, and which it might just as well have given to someone
else.
A man who did not think himself something extraordinary, and who,
perhaps, had more genius in his little finger than others in their whole
body, was Guy de Maupassant, that cruel observer of the human heart who
understood so well the feelings of his generation, and who was to die so
miserably, first losing that intellect which had made him such a strong
man and such a remarkable writer. There was a time when I often saw him,
and his death grieved me very much more than I could even have supposed.
Emile Augier and Jules Claretie belonged still to a generation where
self-praise was absent. The last-mentioned writer was perhaps one of the
greatest workers of his time. I often wondered at the activity which
allowed him to fulfil his duties as director of the Comédie Française,
to write the charming _feuilletons_ which the _Temps_ publish every
week, and to do all this apart from innumerable other things, among
which the composition of novels holds a place.
There have been many who grumbled in public at the manner in which
Claretie administered the Comédie Française, perhaps they would have
grumbled just as much if someone else had been in his place. The post
was not an easy one, for it required an amount of tact such as is not to
be found everywhere. But what cannot be denied is that he filled it like
the gentleman he was, and that he insisted on his staff behaving like
gentlemen and ladies so long as they remained under his control. He gave
to his theatre an air of dignity and of correctness which put it high
above any other in Paris.
Another man who could be classed in the same category as Jules Claretie
was the Vicomte de Vogué, also a member of the Academy, and a writer
imbued with the grand traditions of the seventeenth century when La
Rochefoucauld wrote his maxims and La Bruyère his philosophical
meditations on the foibles of mankind. M. de Vogué can be classed among
the best authors of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and his
books will always be read with pleasure when those of other authors will
be entirely forgotten.
There are just a few writers of the same style left among the ranks of
the French Academy, such as the Marquis de Ségur, whom I have already
mentioned, but unfortunately that learned assembly has deteriorated, and
has welcomed to its bosom literary men of a very inferior rank.
I will not put among them M. Paul Bourget, who, though his books have
sadly gone out of fashion, is an active, charming writer full of the
spirit of observation. I find myself thinking of him, however, as an
author who wanted to imitate Balzac, and who imagined that he had
written a sequel to the “Comédie Humaine,” whilst in reality he had only
described the comedy of a certain small circle of Parisian smart
society, which has already changed so much that one cannot recognise a
single known person among those he tried to describe so faithfully.
Marcel Prévost is also among the men I have often met, and I liked him
very much. He was modest; he did not always speak of his personal
perfections, and did not think that the fact of his having been elected
a member of the French Academy relieved him from study or from honest
hard work. He was also a delightful companion. Few men are living to-day
who are better informed as to the virtues or the vices of his
generation; he has a thorough knowledge of the human heart, he realises
the artificiality of the society among which he lives, and also its
follies, for which his indulgence is seldom lacking.
There is much earnestness in the talent of M. Marcel Prévost, far more
than in the sketches, for one can hardly call them anything else, of
Abel Hermant, who poses for the satirist of his time and of his
generation, and who forgets that one could often find much about himself
to satirise.
I will not do more than mention the modern playwrights such as Henri
Bataille, Alfred Capus, Henri Bernstein, Francis du Croisset, and so on.
They write in order to make money, and of course must compose dramatic
pieces which can bring it to them. They are more or less _cabotins_
themselves, owing to the influence of the many actors with whom their
whole life is spent, and they often mistake life for a comedy, which
unfortunately it is not, introducing drama when it is not needed. Still,
I hardly see how they could avoid it, living, as everybody does, in an
artificial atmosphere. The greatest actors in Paris indeed are those who
do not appear on the stage.
It is impossible to pass actresses by in silence; they rule Paris with a
rod of iron, and are given far more importance than the highest born.
Artists like Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane, Jane Hading, or the
“divine” Bartet, as she is called, of the Comédie Française, without
mentioning Cecile Sorel, who is something else besides an actress of
unrivalled talent, are all the objects of far more attention than a
queen would be should she appear in the circles in which these ladies
live. One looks up to them not only as clever, talented artists, but
also the supreme mistresses of fashion; as examples to be imitated by
all those who can do so; as the most fascinating, interesting women in
Paris. Their dresses, their hats, their jewels, carriages, and sumptuous
apartments are described in all the newspapers; their movements are
chronicled as if they were empresses.
Among all these fair, charming creatures, Madame Bartet is certainly the
most ladylike, not only in her person, but also in her tastes and quiet
refinement. She has been lucky enough to keep her youth at an age when
most other women have long ago forgotten that they ever had such a
possession, and her slight figure, her lovely complexion, despite her
more than fifty years, make her look always young and altogether
charming. Sarah Bernhardt is a great-grandmother, yet she also can play
the Dame aux Camélias without appearing ridiculous in the eyes of her
old admirers. She is perhaps the greatest actress that France has
produced since Rachel, but I cannot say that I ever found her
sympathetic. To my mind she screams far too much, and is not natural in
her conception of the many heroines which she represents. But she is so
charming as a woman of the world, so interesting in her intercourse,
that I am quite ready to say that it is I who have bad taste, and that
all she does is perfection itself.
Réjane is something quite different; there is more real passion in her
acting, though much less refinement. She is vulgar, and the heaviness of
her whole person adds to that first impression; but she knows how to
represent the different feelings of joy, despair, sorrow, anger and rage
that can shake a human creature. She is life itself whenever she appears
on the stage, not life seen through rose-coloured spectacles, but life
as we have unfortunately to live and to bear it.
Jeanne Granier is still a favourite with the Parisian public, though her
lovely voice has become worn, and her increasing stoutness has done away
with her former grace.
Jane Hading was also at one moment the rage, but she did not remain a
long time the fashion, though we still see her name on the programmes of
different theatres. She certainly played well, but tried too much to
imitate Sarah, which did not always agree with her style of beauty, to
which, let it be said _en passant_, she owed most of her successes
rather than to her talent, which was not that of a tragedienne by any
means.
As for Cecile Sorel, she is an exception among actresses, just as much
as she is an exception among women. She has often reminded me of the
Duchesse de Longueville and those other ladies of the time of the Fronde
who led men to victory or to death. Her beauty is something quite
extraordinary, more by its originality than by its perfection. She is
the incarnation of feminine charm, and clever in mind as well as
cultured and well-bred. Her whole demeanour is that of a _grande dame_.
And actors, you will ask me, actors such as Guitry, or Le Bargy or
Mounet Sully, what do you think of them? I think nothing, because I do
not know them. In my time one kissed the pretty fingers of a lovely
actress, but one did not invite actors to one’s house. I have kept to
this tradition, and do not regret it.