CHAPTER XXXII

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.