Back home

Sunday, February 5th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I am now settled down again in Paris. I had five days in Putney and London and practically negotiated the sale of plays to Harrison and to Legge, had one talkative evening at the flat, and came over here on Friday. The first thing I noticed on landing in France was the thin and exiguous 'feel' of the folded French newspaper compared to the English.

I went down to see Mme Debraux on Saturday evening and found her if anything rather more fine than before; then I dined at the Chat Blanc with the Montparnasse crowd. I lunched with Kelly on Sunday in his new studio up in the heavens; had tea at the Cornilliers. 

I feel 'at home'. Why is it, I ask myself, that Paris seems so much more agreeable than London. Well of course I have many friends here, not least Schwob who I admire greatly, but I have as many in London. It is I think a matter of the 'culture' of the place. Here the relationship between the sexes is much more relaxed; London is both actually and metaphorically corseted! I find opportunities for a little adventure much easier to find here. A marvellous place for a single man with an artistic disposition and a growing reputation. An analogy might be of coming home from business, divesting oneself of professional garments, donning a lounging suit, and throwing oneself into a favourite armchair for an evening of relaxation. Delicious.

By the way, Schwob is very ill and I fear it may be serious. I regard him as the most learned man in my experience, and my literary Godfather.

Captivated

Thursday, December 15tth., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I dined at Schwob's. Moreno had returned. She was dressed in black with gold jewellery, and was more captivating than ever. I immediately forgot her capriciousness and my small grievances against her. She still remains without any pose; and she still constantly says things of the most extraordinary penetration and delicacy. I think I may be in love, or at least in lust! Interesting though that however fascinating a woman may be intellectually, it is the physical attractiveness that makes the difference between comradeship and captivation. For me it is something about the eyes; they must be dark and inviting. Schwob is a lucky man.

Raphael, the Paris correspondent of the Referee and the Sketch was invited to meet me. A pronouncedly Jewish face. Very polite and pleasant. We went in Moreno's car to the Bouffes to see du Bois's "Rabelais". The house was not half full. Moreno left at 10, creeping silently out of the box, and then having a noisy accident with the door, because she had a reciting engagement at Versailles. At the end of the second act Schwob said he couldn't stand any more. I couldn't either, and as Raphael had already seen the piece we left. Raphael and I sat in a cafe in the Place Blanche till 12.30 or more talking about London journalism and serializing.

A day in Paris

Monday, November 14th., 4, Rue de Calais, Paris.

I spent the whole of yesterday en ville. I went to Ullman's Sunday morning reception at his studio, and found some magnificent pictures, and much praise of my books. I particularly enjoyed a watercolour, in muted tones, of a river scene; just the sort of thing I would like to produce myself, but far in advance of my ability. Ullman is an American but lives more or less permanently in Paris. Ten years younger than me but already gaining a significant reputation. He is a very versatile artist - portraits, landscapes, figurative and impressionist. I expect he is not really appreciated in America.

At 6 o'clock I left. I went to the Cafe D'Orsay, and had a vermouth-cassis, and then I walked all the way by the Seine to Schwob's. He was alone and the chinese servant had been ill and looked sickly. Moreno was away on tour. We were intensely glad to see each other and shook hands with both left and right hands. He was much better and his interest in books had revived. Books were all over the place and he had got a lot of new ones. Ting watched over us while we dined, and Schwob gave me the history of his transactions as to plays with David Belasco. Then he asked if I cared to go out as the carriage was at his disposal. The carriage proved to be a magnificent De Dion cab, and I suppose it belongs to Moreno. We whirled off to La Scala. It was hot and crowded.



Schwob said that he enjoyed music halls and frequented them, and he certainly enjoyed this. Some of the items were very good. He has the habit, which one finds in all sorts of people, of mildly but constantly insisting that a thing is good, as if to convince himself. If I began by saying that a thing was not good, he at once agreed. His taste, though extremely fine, is capricious; it is at the mercy of his feelings.

He whirled me home in about two minutes. I tremendously enjoyed the evening. He was absolutely charming, and his English is so good and sure, and he looked so plaintive and in need of moral support, with his small figure and his pale face, and his loose clothes, and his hat that is always too large for him. Yet I don't know anyone who could be more independent and pugnacious, morally, than Schwob. I have never seen him so, but I know that he would be so if occasion arose.

A significant purchase

Tuesday, March 1st., Rue de Calais, Paris.

I bought a new copy of "La Grande Encyclopedie", bound in cloth, 31 volumes for 290 francs, yesterday morning. It can be bought through Le Journal for about 400 francs. It seems a good thing and I read 'in' it yesterday. I found however nothing under the head of 'Cotgrave'; I wanted the date of the first edition of his dictionary. Schwob, on whom I called yesterday afternoon, praised it highly. He mentioned specially such articles as "Aristotle" by Boutroux, as being the very finest of their kind. I looked up this and it certainly impressed me. Brunetiere's article on "style" is admirable; also Remy de Gourmont's on "Aretino". 

Schwob was in bed, and had been there for a month. We discussed the war, and Dickens. He stood up for Dickens, and said that, for style, the opening of "Hard Times" is one of the finest things in English. Of course I disagreed. He said that Dickens's ghost story "The Signalman", was plagiarised from something in Defoe's essay on apparitions, but much improved. He told me about the dinner to Edmund Gosse. Said Gosse was charming but pedantic.
For more on "The Signalman" see 'Uncanny things'

Parisian evenings

Friday, April 15th., Rue de Calais, Paris.

Last week Moreno sent me an urgent note to go and dine with them. Schwob dined in his bed and we dined at a table at the foot thereof, while the chinaman waited; a singular arrangement!
See also 'Parisian Life' - September 28th. http://earnoldbennett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/parisian-life.html
Herz the impresario, had asked Moreno and Coquelin Cadet to do a season in London together, but he wanted a short play, half in French and half in English, to begin the bill, and he wanted it written specially for her and C.C. She asked me whether I would write it if Herz arranged terms with me. I said I would. Both Moreno and Schwob, with their curious sanguine temperaments, seemed to regard the affair as an absolute certainty, but I think it is far from that. Herz hasn't even got a theatre in London yet.

A couple of days later I took Moreno and her precious 'griffon belge', Flip, in a cab to the Gaite Theatre where we saw Henri Herz, and discussed the proposed play. The matter seemed to be arranged subject to Herz getting a London theatre. I liked Herz. He seemed straight and rather English in affairs of business.

Today I dined at the Schwobs again. Moreno expressed her entire satisfaction with the scenario of the play. Schwob was talking a lot about his voyage in the South Seas, on Captain Crawshay's steamer. He said Crawshay was a terrific swearer, with very conventional and proper ideas, and he could only read one author - Washington Irving. He could not understand the craze for R. L. Stevenson. He admitted Stevenson was a man of parts, but stated that his books were impossible.

I spent the afternoon in the Bois, searching for ideas for the book, and I really did find some which contented me.

The Bois de Boulogne is a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine It was created between 1852 and 1858 during the reign of the Emperor Louis Napoleon.

It was beautifully warm, indeed hot; but close and oppressive towards evening. Paris is at its best on these oppressive evenings, when all the cafes are full of crowded languor. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey by bus and steamer to Schwobs. The voyage from the Quai Voltaire to the Ile St. Louis, just before seven o'clock, was extremely impressive. It seemed to me as good as the Thames at its best.

Byways of literature

Tuesday, November 29th., Paris.

Dinner at Mrs. Devereux's last night. Schwob there. (See 'Parisian Life' - September 27th.) We talked a good deal about Meredith, and Schwob showed an extraordinary knowledge of the byways of English literature. He said Meredith was certainly the son of a tailor and quoted a passage from "Peter Simple" where two characters go to "Meredith the tailor", and he said this was George's father. It appears that Meredith now talks in aloud voice, but continually interrupts the conversation by talking to himself, mere senility of course, a 'softening of the brain'. He has 'ataxy' or something of one leg and limps and always tells any visitor that he had the misfortune to hurt his ankle that very morning. Schwob heard this from Oscar Wilde and didn't believe it. However, when Schwob called on Meredith, sure enough he had hurt his leg that very morning. Schwob's enthusiasm for Meredith's last book was magnificent. He looked ill, but he was in his best form, and speaking beautiful English.

George Meredith (1828-1909) was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form that has led to his being considered an important precursor of English Modernist novels. Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England. His father inherited a seemingly prosperous Portsmouth naval outfitters and tailor shop from Meredith's grandfather. Meredith was sent to private schools and quickly learned to say nothing of his family's position, instead encouraging the assumption that he was of the gentry. Meredith remained secretive about his origins all his life, and much is unknown about his childhood because of his unwillingness to disclose details of this period. As he entered his early twenties, Meredith began writing poetry, influenced in particular by John Keats and Lord Tennyson. Meredith's lifetime of reticence about his early years carried over into a stolid refusal to discuss his first marriage, which was a failure. He lived alone or with male friends for years, but married again in 1864, and settled at Box Hill, Surrey, where he lived the rest of his life. As a part-time reader for Chapman and Hall publishers, Meredith was able to observe literary trends and to employ them in his early novels. Once he despaired of reaching a large audience, Meredith began to write primarily to please himself and the small circle of admirers who had defended and praised his works from the first. It was then that he found his works more popular than at any other time in his career. Meredith was most concerned with writing psychological novels that portrayed the tangled motivations of individuals and explored the disparity between the public and private aspects of self. At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters. In the years since, his critical reputation has undergone several reassessments, although he has never enjoyed the resurgence in general popularity enjoyed by such Victorian novelists as Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. However, as has been true throughout the history of commentary on Meredith, there remains a dedicated group of admirers who contend, with J. B. Priestley, that Meredith's difficult style, requiring as it does the full and undivided attention of the reader, paved the way for the public acceptance of much subsequent serious fiction, helping to shape "the modern attitude towards fiction and the modern novel itself."

Mrs. Devereux had been to hear the trial of a crime passionel. A man had cut his wife's throat with a razor from ear to ear, but, through some fortunate movement of the woman, had only severed the skin. "A close shave!" said Schwob at once. I could see that he was extremely pleased with this really admirable comment. He beamed after he had said it.

On Monday I was trying to find a leading idea for the concert scene in "Sacred and Profane Love", but could not. I read late, and dreamed about the scene all night, and got it all mixed up, and generally wasted a vast amount of energy with no result at all. Today I continued to search after that idea with no success. I stayed late at Mrs. Devereux's and then read a lot afterwards, and I didn't go to bed till nearly two. I dreamed of the chapter all night and woke up at 6.30 after which I didn't go to sleep again. Today, I received the "Fantasia" of Chopin from Tertia. This is the clou of the chapter if only I can make it so. (see 'Love in Liverpool' - September 19th.)

Parisian views

Sunday, October 4th., Paris.

I walked up to Sacre Coeur, and took the funicular up to the portals of the church. Environs of church: memento shop, image shop, church accessory shop. Tickets for entrance to crypt, belfry, and tower. The horrible unfinished look of the front, with aged hoardings and scaffolding. I was not much impressed by the interior. Mass was just finishing. I noticed a small-boy-acolyte, dressed up and murmuring at the altar. Concentration of lights etc. round about main altar. Sparse congregation. Woman collecting at door, and regularly shaking her bag at two-second intervals. Meanly dressed clerks taking holy water at door and crossing themselves. Curious effect, both interior and exterior, of church being built of large blocks of stone; it looked as if these stones were imitation stones in wallpaper, like the old-fashioned wallpaper in halls of small houses in England. The effect of the dome was goodish, akin to that of St. Paul's, but marred by the new yellowish-cream tint of the masonry.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica (French: Basilique du Sacré-Cœur), is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Paris, France. A popular landmark, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the supposed excesses of the Second Empire and socialist Paris Commune of 1871, crowning its most rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ. The Sacré-Cœur Basilica was designed by Paul Abadie. Construction began in 1875 and was finished in 1914. It was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919.

I then came out and surveyed Paris from the front. I could distinguish most of the landmarks - Notre Dame, Pantheon, Invalides, Gare de Lyon, St. Sulpice, and Louvre. Never before had I had such a just idea of the immense size of the Louvre. I could also see the Opera, (that centre of Paris qui s'amuse) with its green roof (? copper). And it looked so small and square and ordinary. And I thought of the world-famed boulevards and resorts lying hidden round about there. And I thought: Is that all it is? For a moment it seemed impossible to me that, as a result of a series of complicated conventions merely, that collocation of stones, etc. (paving stones and building stones) could really be what it is - a synonym and symbol for all that is luxurious, frivolous, gay, viscious, and artistic. I thought: "Really, Paris is not Paris after all; it is only a collocation of stones." The idea, though obvious enough, was very striking for a minute or two.

View from Sacre Coeur

In the afternoon Schwob called unexpectedly. We went up to the Moulin de la Galette, which he said was the last genuine bal of the lower classes left in Paris, and even that genuine only on Sunday afternoons.

Renoir: Bal du Moulin de la Galette

The Moulin de la Galette is a windmill and associated businesses situated near the top of the district of Montmartre in Paris. Since the 17th century the windmill has been known for more than just its milling capabilities. Nineteenth century owners and millers, the Debray family, made a brown bread,galette, which became popular and thus the name of the windmill and its businesses, which have included a famous guinguette and restaurant. In the 19th century, Le Moulin de la Galette, represented diversion for Parisians seeking entertainment, a glass of wine and bread made from flour ground by the windmill. Artists, such as Renoir, van Gogh, and Pissarro have immortalized Le Moulin de la Galette.

Schwob said that in the evenings it was the resort of whores like other bals. A tremendous climb (we had a difficulty in getting a driver to take us). Inside: stuffy. All the walls seemed to be covered with trellis work on which creepers grew very sparsely. Crowded dancing hall, with a sort of aisle for drinking on either side. The monde ouvrier was certainly there, dancing clumsily and perspiringly, and colliding with itself. Not nearly so graceful as the Bal Bullier. Band very brassy. Schwob said there were plenty of scoundrels - maquereaux, thieves, apaches, till-robbers etc. but I doubt it. The company looked innocent on the whole, though I thought I saw a few wrong 'uns (men). Afterwards we climbed up into the garden, and I saw the old wooden windmill (with its date 1295) garlanded with electric light apparatus.

A solitary gendarme up there was glad to talk to Schwob. He began by saying that the weather was turning colder; he did not disguise that he was bored, but 'On est tranquille,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. he was a rather cynical philosopher, and referred slightingly to the clients of the moulin, and dashed the respectability of the women with a single grimace. But when the cakewalk began he descended part of the stairs to get a glimpse of it.

Much the same view of Paris here as at Sacre Coeur but better. One could see Mont Valerien, a 'frowning height', and one had also glimpses over the hill of Montmartre to the north - of factory chimneys and then hills.

All this part of Montmartre (north of the boulevard exterieur, that is to say) had a character of its own. It was like a place by itself, a self-contained village. Not many cabs got up into those steep picturesque streets, nor omnibuses. Schwob said it was 'old Paris'.

Montmartre is talked about by Parisians the way New Yorkers talk about the Village: It's not what it used to be, It's like Disneyland, the artists can't afford to live here anymore,too many tourists etc. There is some truth these opinions, but there are two ways of approaching this incredibly unique village within the metropolis. The first is to follow the herd instinct and stampede your way up the famous hill, take a picture of yourself on the steps of the basilica, buy an overpriced crepe at the Place du Tertre, get conned into having your portrait sketched, and walk back down clutching newly bought key-rings, postcards, gaudy T-shirts feeling a little mystified about what all the fuss is about.

http://www.aparisguide.com/montmartre/index.html

Parisian life

Monday, September 28th., Paris

Illustration of the sans-gene of Montmartre. As I was sitting on the terrace of the Cafe de la Place Blanche, a voiture drove up containing two men, two women and a white puppy. One of the men was clearly an actor or singer of some sort, he had the face and especially the mouth; one of the women, aged perhaps 25, short, getting plump, and dressed with a certain rough style, especially as to the chic hat and the jupon, was evidently his petite amie; the other woman was a servant, nu-tete and wearing a white apron; the other man had no striking characteristic. The two men and the petitie amie got out and sat near me. the driver turned away.

La Place Blanche 1911

"Ou allez-vous?" the petite amie shouted curtly in a hoarse, vulgar voice. Whereupon the driver gave a shout of laughter and the servant, who was nursing the puppy, laughed too. "Oh! Il tourne," murmured the petite amie, grimly enjoying the joke at her expense. The driver was only turning round to a quiet corner where he might wait without impeding the traffic. Having drawn up his vehicle he got down and sat in the carriage and produced a coloured comic paper, and shared his amusement over it with the servant. From time to time, the petite amie from her table shouted remarks to the servant.

Afterwards I dined with the Schwobs.

Marcel Schwob was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867. He studied Gothic grammar under Ferdinand de Saussure at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1893-4, and later earned a doctorate in classic philology and oriental languages. In 1884 he discovered Robert Louis Stevenson, who became one of his models, and whom he translated into French. He was a true symbolist, with a diverse and an innovatory style. He is the author of six collections of short stories: Cœur double ("Double Heart", 1891), Le Roi au masque d’or ("The King in the Golden Mask", 1892), Mimes(1893), Le Livre de Monelle ("The Book of Monelle", 1894), La Croisade des Enfants ("The Children's Crusade", 1896), and Vies imaginaires ("Imaginary Lives", 1896). Alfred Vallette, director of the leading young review, the Mercure de France, thought he was "one of the keenest minds of our time", in 1892. Marcel Schwob worked on Oscar Wilde's play Salome, which was written in French to avoid a British law forbidding the depiction of Bible characters on stage. Wilde struggled with his French, and the play was proof-read and corrected by Marcel Schwob for its first performance, in Paris in 1896.  His work pictures the Greco-Latin culture and the most scandalous characteristics of the romantic period. His stories catch the macabre, sadistic and the terrifying aspects in human beings and life. He became sick in 1894 with a chronic incurable intestinal disorder. He also suffered from recurring illnesses that were generally diagnosed as influenza or pneumonia and received intestinal surgery several times. In the last ten years of his life he seemed to have aged prematurely. In 1900, in England, he married the actress Marguerite Moreno, whom he had met in 1895. His health was rapidly deteriorating, and in 1901 he travelled to Samoa, like his hero Stevenson, in search of a cure. On his return to Paris he lived the life of a recluse until his death in 1905. He died of pneumonia while his wife was away on tour.

First night of Jean Aicard's drama in verse, "La Legende du Coeur", at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt in which Mme. Schwob plays the hero-troubadour.

Marguerite Moreno (1871–1948) born Lucie Marie Marguerite Monceau was a French stage and film actress. The French writer Marcel Schwob, who was madly in love with her, wrote in 1895: "I am at Marguerite Moréno's complete disposal. She is allowed to do everything she wants with me and that includes killing me". 

Schwob ill and very pale and extremely gloomy and depressed. neither of them could eat and each grumbled at the other for not eating. Before dinner Schwob had described to me the fearful depression of spirit accompanied by inability to work, which has held him for several months. Every morning he got up feeling, "Well, another day and I can do nothing, I have nothing to look forward to, no future." And, speaking of my novel, "Leonora", he said: "You have got hold of the greatest of all themes, the agony of the older geberation in watching the rise of the younger." Yet he is probably not 40. In talking of Kipling's literary power, he said that an artist could not do as he liked with his imagination; it would not stand improper treatment, undue fatigue etc. in youth; and that a man who wrote many short stories early in life was bound to decay prematurely. He said that he himself was going through this experience.