“Among Loti’s collection of priceless treasures, rifled from every corner of the East, Antoine sought in vain for somewhere to place his hat! Finally, he hooked it on to an Eastern idol, and their talk began. In a few moments, however, there was a pause, for the astonished dramatist caught sight of the offending headgear suspended, as he supposed, in mid-air. However, a closer look revealed that it was resting upon a thin stream of water. The Eastern idol was a fountain!”
The captain expressed his surprise that I should not only be so familiar with Loti’s work, but that I could really know anything intimately of his private life, “seeing how the Frenchman disliked my own country.”
“My dear sir,” I replied, “if we are to find our friends to-day only among those who love England, we should be limited indeed. You and your charming daughter, par exemple, are you precisely admirers of the British Government?...
“To me, Art is first, and the rest—nowhere! I care not whether the genius first saw daylight in Paris, in New York, or in Timbuctoo. I have more friends out of England than in England. Like Kipling’s cat, ‘all places are alike to me.’ I only ask that your land be warm; and with all peoples who do not rob me I am ready and eager to be good friends. To ‘guard the frontiers’ in Art would be to bring back the Dark Ages. The most sincere love of one’s own country should never teach one to be disdainful of les autres.”
“You are going to Nationalist Turkey,” he replied, “you will find yourself right up against Chauvinism all the time.”
“I don’t believe it. Forgive me, I really think you exaggerate. And besides—with my strong sympathies for the Turks!—I have always found Orientals the most broad-minded men.”
Then I brought back the talk to Pierre Loti. “Why do you say that he dislikes England so much?” I asked. “He does object to golf near the Pyramids; he is a little sarcastic about ‘Messrs. Thos. Cook & Co., Egypt, Ltd.,’ forgetting what it means to travel without them; he dislikes our Government for its pro-Greek policy and its injustice towards the Turks. As an Englishwoman I agree. And, like him, too, I regard New York as the nearest earthly approach to hell! We certainly do not hate America; only its noise, its materialism, and its advertising.
“I knew Pierre Loti best, perhaps, at his charming Basque home in Hendaye—thanks to my friendship with his heroines, Melek and Zeyneb. I know, at one time, he resented what seemed to him our Edward VII.’s ‘interference’ in French affairs. But that master of diplomats never gave his advice unasked; and, when he was told of the great Frenchman’s hostility, Pierre Loti was promptly invited to Windsor, and they became the best of friends. Would he were with us now, that he might but talk with the Ministers of both nations!
“After Windsor, Loti, I’m sure, would have spared his sarcasm. ‘There is one thing left now,’ he once declared. ‘We must appeal to H.M. Edward VII. He only can do what he likes in France!’ The French Admiralty had just refused him permission to carry away from one of their ships the table on which he had written the ‘Désenchantées.’”
The captain, it seemed, was ready to waive this point.