Part 8

An inevitable way, undoubtedly, to be assured of the insufficiency of Taine's method is to read Taine's books; and the first book of all, the "Essay on La Fontaine," is, I may insert the observation, as conclusive as the last in this respect. But in order to obtain the conviction that what the critic can get to know of the environing conditions of any product, human or other, does not explain that product, one needs not go to Taine's books; one has only to apply it to the things and people one knows best. The result will be unsatisfactory. The critic will find a thousand elements in that particular product's individuality thus left unexplained; in a word, the theory is one natural, no doubt, to the Olympians, who see all things; but impracticable for men who, even at their best, see only very little. Apply it to yourself; apply it to your friends. Apply it to the person of whom I am going to speak, to M. de Blowitz, the Paris correspondent of an English newspaper, the "Times." The act will result in a failure, a scientific failure, whatever the artistic success. Yet M. de Blowitz is a very remarkable human fact; and that a philosophic or critical method cannot be applied to him with triumph, for both him and the method--is this not of itself a consideration extraordinary enough to vitiate the whole method? A much more important thing to know than what determined this or that product, whether it be the Book of Judges, or the Panama trial, or M. Taine, or M. de Blowitz, is what they themselves determined; what followed, because of their existence; and though this be reasoning in a dizzy circle, I cling to the remark as a not unapt way to introduce my subject. A chief reason why M. de Blowitz is worth considering is, that he is and always has been a producer himself, a fact pregnant with a thousand others, rather than the resultant of many vague facts that have gone before. Most of us must be content with being, comparatively speaking, only results. M. de Blowitz, prodigious result as he is, is even more striking as initiator, as himself the creator of a special environment, as himself in his own way a "final cause."

Cosmopolite in a world becoming rapidly no larger than the tiniest of the asteroids, M. de Blowitz is one of those who have most contributed to this planetary shrinkage. His career is a continual and entertaining illustration of the truth that tact can render even tolerance successful. For he is the most amiable, the most tolerant of men, and yet he has blazed a wide path through the woodland of warring interests in which every man who seeks to succeed runs risk, not only of losing his way, but of setting all the other denizens of the forest against him. Ordinarily, success implies that a man is a man of only one idea. What Frenchman said: "Truth is a wedge that makes its way only by being struck"? I have forgotten. At all events, isn't the remark nine times out of ten true? But M. de Blowitz could apply for the honor of being the proverbial exception. His workshop is full of wedges, and a more impatient man would have used up all of them long ago, after having hammered the battered tops into a condition of splay disfigurement. M. de Blowitz does not do this. He knew and knows a better way. He can afford to wait. He likes to wait. He has the good and amiable heart of a man who, like Odysseus, has seen many men and countries, and knows that all things--I include even people who are "bores"--have a point of view that may be rendered interesting. Himself one of the most individualized of contemporary institutions, his own career is a standing argument against the sacredness of the idea of institutions. Yet, though he has inevitably learned how relative things in general are, he himself appeals to his friends as unusually self-contained and absolute. Diplomatist among diplomatists, he is more powerful than any of them, because he works in the interest of the whole rather than in that of a part. Loyal absolutely to the "Times," which, to its accidental honor, has entangled him, the "Times" is, at its best, only the accidental projection, a kind of chronic double, of himself. His letters are kind attentions which have the air of a continual favor. Though better recompensed than favors sometimes are, and though, whatever their contents, they will be read by everybody, this is not only because what the author writes is important, but because he does not write when he has nothing to say.

M. DE BLOWITZ AT HIS SUMMER HOME.

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.

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.

THE BEGINNING OF A CAREER.

It is now more than twenty years since a young man appeared before the enthusiast, Laurence Oliphant, then correspondent of the English "Times," and rendered himself so indispensable to Oliphant that the latter, with the quixotic temper peculiar to him, felt it, I believe, a moral duty to abdicate. This young man had already so distinguished himself at Marseilles, during Communal riots there, as to attract the attention and merit the gratitude of Thiers. Justly rating his powers as a diplomatist, and knowing himself to be an indefatigable worker, he conceived the notion of becoming a sort of general self-accredited representative to every European Court, and of inducing the "Times" to afford him an organ of communication with his diplomatic rivals everywhere. The "Times" is the secluded pool into which England loves to gaze when it plays the _role_ of Narcissus. And when Narcissus-England admires itself therein, that is, once a day the year round, it not only sees the healthy, beaming, determined visage of John Bull, but notes with approval his quiet expression of patience and caution, his willingness to wait. The "Times" kept M. de Blowitz waiting for some time before it found him as relatively indispensable as he really was, and always has been since; but finally the moment came when M. de Blowitz, seated before his desk, could feel himself more than the equal of his diplomatist _confreres_. Statesman he was not, nor ambassador; for these words imply limitations, a condition of responsibility to this or that state. But diplomatist he was, and in this entire class of men he was the most powerful of all; for he found himself in the position of critic, unattached, of the European movement, owing allegiance to no country, although sought out by the representatives of all. What position save that of the Pope afforded a more enviable outlook? The chances were undoubtedly all on the side of his playing the great _role_ which the happy coincidence of an unusually exciting time in Europe, and his own activity, tact and perception, combined to create for him. He has himself lately been telling us in an American magazine some of the episodes in which he played his part. I will not dilute the flavor of the original by any individual essence of my own. The reminiscences are accessible and are not to be imitated. But to the reader of them one fact above all others will be evident: M. de Blowitz was and is a diplomatist of the first order. Seek to explain the eternal hatred felt towards him by a Prince Bismarck on any other ground. The attempt is impossible.

IDEALS OF A GREAT JOURNALIST.

Whatever M. de Blowitz's loyalty to the "Times," he has been loyal above all to his own ideal. This ideal has always been to get at the most political truth possible as a condition of exerting an individual influence on European states in the interest of European peace. To me, individually, this ideal seems rather too generous. Everybody now-a-days wants to take a part in affairs, when only to look on is surely the one wise part to take. But generous M. de Blowitz is, and he is demonstrating now, in a series of "recollections," that his ideal can be carried out in a striking way. I do not deny for a moment that the point is proven. I doubt very much, however, if any other similar series of facts will ever be marshalled to the same end. But all the more reason for being belongs, just for this cause, to the "Blowitziana."

The "Blowitziana"! This, however, is just what some of us feel more inspired, than at liberty, to give. I recall here, over this paper, too many things at once; and all the impressions, seeing M. de Blowitz as I do continually, fortunately lack perspective. But to note this and that about him seems in a way as much a duty as a pleasure, for I remember well that my original notion of this remarkable man was widely different from that which began to form in my mind once I knew him. I don't think that people who hear about him, people who read his name in the newspapers, the average citizen of the world who doesn't know him personally, have quite the right idea about him. During the last twenty years he has obtained a reputation for being the most persistent ferreter of news in existence; but in many minds there is distrust whenever, over his signature, some unexpected revelation comes to change the key in the European concert. Perhaps an unlooked-for document is published, interrupting the plans of European statesmen, bringing to nothing all their most elaborate scheming; and on the morrow, by some official source, comes a denial that any such document was ever dreamed of. It is obviously impracticable for M. de Blowitz to give his proofs, and this or that unthinking reader, used to a thousand irresponsible writers who care only for what is sensational, and who never verify their information, hurriedly relegates the disclosure of the "Times" correspondent to the same category. This is natural enough, of course. But let there be no mistake. The revelation was worthy of the name; of this you may be sure. M. de Blowitz has done all that he intended to do. He has nipped in the bud this or that diplomatic scheme; he has anticipated some subsequent further revelation; or it may be he has laid the net for some other and less wary diplomatist. The diplomatists themselves are not so incredulous. They listen to what M. de Blowitz is saying with a more respectful attention, and, thinking discretion the better part of valor, they usually end in bringing their mite to his universal diplomatic bureau. Upon his discretion they know they can count.

Here is a fact in point. Breakfasting once in Paris with an amiable lady and a very distinguished diplomatist who was also a poet, the conversation fell on the subject of M. de Blowitz and Count Munster who had recently been the object of a long-resounding letter in the "Times." The diplomatist who sat opposite me spoke freely of the Munster episode, which was then entertaining the whole of Europe, save the person most concerned.

"M. de Blowitz," said he, "is our only peer. But there should be honor even among thieves. He has 'cooked Count Munster's goose.'"

"Yes," I replied, "but with fuel of Count Munster's own providing."

"Quite so," he continued; "but of course we are paid to deny just such things as this. And I have heard of licensed jesters, but the world has come to a pretty pass if we are to be at the mercy of licensed truth-tellers. What will become, this side of the Orient, of our profession?"

"I agree with you," interrupted our host; "but what does it matter so only diplomacy may be the bay-leaves of poets, and you may have time to take the world into your confidence in verse?"

This estimate, implied in the ambassador's somewhat cynical words, has always been shared by all M. de Blowitz's _confreres_. It would be more than amusing, it would be curiously instructive, to corroborate this anecdote by comparison with the hundred others that tremble in the ink of my pen. But fortunately it is many years before "Blowitziana" will be written, while now there are Hawaii and Panama and the Papal ambassador to the United States to occupy our attention. Yet because of the existence of just this assurance in the foreign offices of all the European powers, it seems necessary to set the average reader on his guard against a natural error. What it all comes to is this--M. Jules Simon has said it--"Newspapers are better served than kings and peoples."

Everybody has been recently talking of an extraordinary scheme of M. de Blowitz for the reformation of journalism. That article, crackling with anathema against the ignorance and irresponsibility of most modern journalism, and warm with generous and high notions of what constitutes the duty and privilege of the journalist, had about it a surprising flavor of detachment and idealism which recalled the famous Utopian schemes familiar in the pedantic idiom of scholars. It was a dream, a warning--a vision of a kind of journalistic "City of God." But the air of that city is, after all, the air of the world in which M. de Blowitz, the most surprisingly unprofessional of men, seems eternally to live.

Not that he is always an idealist. He was not, for instance, when, jumping the wall at Versailles after a dinner to the Shah of Persia, he outwitted every journalist in the palace garden, and, as he says, "made five enemies in a single well-employed evening." No, even the most ubiquitous of American reporters would admit that he may be practical enough when need be. But after all, and above all, he is an idealist, marked by a distinguished imagination and an amiable and generous sympathy. No journalistic tag is on him. He is simply a gentleman with the widest interests and uncommon capacities who succeeded in convincing the "Times" (this, of itself, is surely by way of being a _vrai coup de maitre_), and then every other intelligent observer, of his power and usefulness. He has his own philanthropic ends, for the propagation of which it pleases him to have so esteemed a medium as the "Times."

IN HIS PARIS HOME.

The people who come to see him--the deputies, the ministers, the ambassadors, the writers, the artists, the simple _gens du monde_--come more often not to his office, but to his warm and hospitable home. Here, in one of the streets that wind about the Star Arch at the head of the Champs Elysees, he receives all the world, rather as the charming gentleman than the historic journalist de Blowitz. The centre--I must add the admired centre--of a devoted family circle, he discourses at his dinner-table of the serious events of the day, volubly, picturesquely, and with conviction. Yet he is always ready to listen, and even to alter his opinions at a moment's notice, though that notice must be good. While he himself makes the coffee, the talk becomes less exacting and more general. Often he tells you of his pictures, and points out to you the panels set into the wall of the room, works of his friends, great canvases by M. Clairin or Mme. Sarah Bernhardt; and one, a sunny view of the Norman house on the cliff, by M. Duphot. After dinner in the private study, with its high walls covered with paintings and souvenirs and autograph photographs of the greatest names of France, you smoke in the arms of your easy-chair, the wood fire burning brightly in an ample chimney; while your host, propped by divan cushions, and with one leg curled under him, drops grandly into pleasant reminiscences. One has visions of Bagdad. After an hour like this, you wonder when M. de Blowitz works. But he has been working all the time. He has been thinking in one half of a very capacious brain and talking from another. The chances are that he will have planned a column article for the "Times" newspaper, left you for a half hour to rummage in his books while he dictates the article, telephoned for his carriage to await him at nine o'clock in the court below, and asked you to accompany him to the opera--all before he has finished his cigar. But then the cigar is a remarkably good one, and knows not, as is the case with ambassadorial nicotine, the protective customs of France.

Life means to M. de Blowitz a mental activity and alertness that never sleep. Yet he is always amiable, tolerating everything except stupidity. He is a journalist by "natural selection." But that, in the Europe of his time, and given the accidents of his fortune, made him the diplomatist that he has been and is. He can keep a secret as well as tell one. I repeat, he disproves that masterly theory of Taine, who drove facts like wild horses into a corral in order, having lassoed them, to tame them to his own uses; for, like Taine himself, he has made his own _milieu_, created his own series of facts, far more truly even than he is himself the striking and delightful resultant of others that have gone before.

ON THE TRACK OF THE REVIEWER.

A TRUE STORY OF REVENGE, CONNECTED WITH THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF "JANE EYRE."

BY DOCTOR WILLIAM WRIGHT.

The Bronte novels were first read and admired in the Ballynaskeagh manse. This statement I am able to make with fulness of knowledge. "Jane Eyre" was read, cried over, laughed over, argued over, condemned, exalted, by the Reverend David McKee, his brilliant children and numerous pupils, before the author was known publicly in England, or a single review of the work had appeared.

The Reverend W. J. McCracken, an old pupil of the Ballynaskeagh manse, writes me on this point:

"You have no doubt heard Mr. McKee's[2] opinion as to the source of Charlotte's genius. When Charlotte Bronte published one of her books, there was always an early copy sent to the uncles and aunts in Ballynaskeagh. As they had little taste for such literature, the book was sent straight over to our dear old friend Mr. McKee. If it pleased him, the Brontes would be in raptures with their niece, and triumphantly say to their neighbors, 'Mr. McKee thinks her very _cliver_.'

"I well remember Mr. McKee reading one of Charlotte's novels, and, in his own inimitable way, making the remark: 'She is just her Uncle Jamie over the world. Just Jamie's strong, powerful, direct way of putting a thing.'"