At our very first meeting I noticed that he had no venom in him and no exclusions. He was of the race of the great masters, easily moved to enthusiasm, without a particle of envy in his composition. He accepted life as it was, lived it to the fullest, and had few regrets. The only trace of bitterness I ever saw in him came to the surface when an American millionaire offered him ten thousand dollars for a portrait-head, provided he would finish it in a week.
'I explained to him,' said Rodin, relating the incident, 'that in such a short time I could do nothing more than a likeness. I should not be able to understand the soul of him, much less find out how best to suggest it through his features; but he declared that a likeness was all he wanted, and so'-and he threw up his hand-'ma foi, I said, 'Yes.'' He swung round a moment later as if the thought had stung him: 'Fifty thousand francs in a week. Ah, had I had those fifty thousand in a year when I did my 'man with the broken nose,'
I'd have done a dozen types that now-'
There was an inexpressible sadness in his voice, and well there might be. 'A dozen types,' I said to myself, 'all swallowed up and lost 'in the vague womb of uncreated night.' '
Rodin died during the World War, leaving twenty or thirty great portraits of his contemporaries, from Henley and Shaw to Rochefort, Hugo and Balzac, to say nothing of a dozen groups and figures that can never be forgotten. His Thinker is finer than the Medician figure of Michelangelo; his Baiser, his Nymph and Satyr, his Succube, are all examples of bronze turned into flesh by virtue of an incomparable craftsmanship and the urge of an astonishing sensuality that could lend even to marble the pulsing thrills of life.
I can still see a little female figure, perhaps half-life size, that stood for some years in the center of the salon in his little villa at Meudon. I christened it La Parisienne, and he adopted the name at once joyfully, and indeed it might have stood as a personification of the gay capital-the only city in the world where artists feel at home. There was a certain perversity in its frank beauty that was exquisitely characteristic. The hips were slight, the limbs slight, too, with something of the divine awkwardness of girlhood; but the breasts stood out round and firm, defiantly provocative; the nose, too, was tip-tilted, cheeky; the face, one would swear, smiling with a gay challenge.
Madame Rodin, I remember, regaled us with some petits fours that were very good, and some desperate coffee which made me wonder why it was not called chicory honestly, as it should have been. The little old woman served the Master like a servant at once and mother for half a century; then, conscious of his immense debt to her loving care, and anxious to make tardy amends, Rodin married her. I think so much of her humble devotion that I do not believe the new dignity affected her much: yet I may be mistaken m this, for she died a month or so afterwards, and a little later Rodin, as if unable to bear the separation after so many years of companionship, followed her into the silent land.
I remember meeting Rostand in Paris in 1898. He was then at the height of his vogue. Cyrano de Bergerac had been brought out by Madame Bernhardt in 1897, when he was just 27 years of age. There have been few such triumphs: the play ran 400 nights in Paris and nearly as long in Berlin in Fulda's translation. Petersburg and Madrid, Belgrade even, went crazy over it, and dozens of companies played it all over the United States.
Rostand met me like a prince might meet a small unknown boy. I have never seen any Frenchman put on such airs. He was a little over average height and dressed with a touch of eccentricity all in black; a big black satin stock, showing only a narrow white edge of collar, seemed to hold up his head, and he held it very high. His face was pale; his features regular; his dark eyes rather large and long-a handsome face with an air of haughty disdain- the French word morgue exactly expressed it. Though Marcel Schwob (who introduced me) spoke of me as a master and mentioned that my stories had appeared in La Revue des Deux Mondes, Rostand contented himself with a slight bow, while his eyebrows lifted with an air of patient inattention. I had prepared a compliment, but I kept it to myself and turned aside abruptly. I didn't think much of Cyrano, and Rostand's other work seemed to me negligible, while the airs he gave himself were inexcusable in so young a man. No great man ever plays grand seigneur without some extraordinary good reason.
Nothing was talked about but his plays; he was asked about his method of work. He gave ordinary facts with the air of a God letting new truths drop from Sinai. It seemed that like most of us the period of gestation in him was long, the parturition hurried. 'I read and think a great deal,' he said, 'till it's all clear and then write incessantly.' A well bred murmur of admiration greeted the oracle. It was quite certain that no really great man could have won such popularity so early. I went away as soon as I decently could.
Rostand was born rich; success came at twenty with his first book Les Musardies, and his wealth enabled him to screen himself off from anything harsh or true, spoiled in fact a great theatrical talent.
Once later I was destined to meet him. I had taken Oscar Wilde to dine at Maire's restaurant, intending to go afterwards to Antoine's theatre close by.
Rostand was already at table when we entered. I hardly knew whether to bow to him or not. To my surprise he rose and bowed more than politely — cordially.
Thus encouraged, I went over to him and shot off the compliment I had prepared months before. He laughed delightedly, and when I introduced Oscar, he showed a kindly human side I had scarcely expected. During the dinner he kept up an intermittent conversation from table to table, and was really charming, attributing the success of his play mainly to the incomparable acting.
Oscar took the ball on the hop, and told of seeing Coquelin at a dress rehearsal. The great actor, it appeared, was doubtful whether he should add to his already prominent nose; 'It is mine and Cyrano's,' he exclaimed, 'why alter it?'
'They may say,' interjected Oscar with an air of deep meditation, 'that you play the part so well because it is your own story; I think I'd increase the nose.'
'You're right,' replied Coquelin gravely. 'I must remain the artist, the artist always, above my creation.'
Oscar told the story superbly, mimicking air and manner and throwing into high relief the actor's vanity: 'My creation.'
Rostand enjoyed the tale ingenuously, and the talk turning on noses, I could not help reciting the witty remark made about Baron Hirsch. Some one said:
'You'd hardly believe he was a Jew were it not for his nose.' 'True,' replied the listener, 'God forgives and the world forgets, but the nose remains.'
Suddenly we found it was time to go if we would not lose part of the play, and then Rostand told us that he also wanted to see Foil de Carotte (Carrots!), I think it was, with Madame Nau in the title part, so we turned down the boulevard together and went to our seats like old friends.
On reflection, Rostand seemed to me a richly endowed romantic nature, dwarfed by wealth and wanting the spur of desperate incentive. But he came at the psychological moment. The second generation since the great defeat was growing up and full of the old Gallic vanity and the courage which was resolved to act and not to talk. The French youths all took up athletics, went in for boxing, even; left realism for romance and began to affirm, instead of denying. The romance of daring was in the air and Rostand gave it a voice. In almost everything he was a herald of the new time; his family life was very happy; in fine, in spite of surface faults, he was a good representative of the new France. It is almost symbolical to me that he should have been born in 1870, in the year of disaster, and died in 1919, in the assurance of victory.
I have written a good deal about Meredith and tried to give a true picture of him as one of the greatest writers of the time and a charming personality.
Shortly after I took over the Saturday Review, he came up to London to undergo an operation, and I met him again and was of course as cordial as I could be, but I could never forgive him for having refused his name to the petition in favor of Oscar Wilde. Up to that time, I used to go down to Boxhill to spend some hours with him nearly every week. Afterwards I only met him on rare occasion by chance. His operation seemed to have weakened him a good deal, for afterwards he took to riding about in a little carriage which he drove himself, and almost ceased to walk. I excused myself for not seeing him more often by telling him that I spent fully six months of every year in the south of France, whereas he preferred Boxhill and the Sussex Downs.
It was on one of these visits to Nice that I got to know Maeterlinck and Georgette Le Blanc whom I regarded as his wife. Maeterlinck was an interesting personality, but I never got much out of him beyond what any one could get from his books. He never seemed able to reveal new sides of himself in talk.
I remember he asked me once why I didn't review his translation of the Macbeth, which he had sent to me. I told him I would if he liked, but I didn't think his knowledge of English was sufficient; however, I promised to do my best. Later, in London, remembering the promise, I picked up his translation; I looked at one line in it: 'After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,' and I found Maeterlinck had translated it: 'Apres les convulsions fievreuses de la vie il
