The Prince of Wales passed through Paris and stayed there a night that winter and dined at the Embassy, and we had to wear special coats and be careful they had the right number of buttons on them.
I got to know a good many French people, and some of those who had been famous in the days of the Second Empire: Madame de Galliffet and Madame de Pourtalès. Madame de Pourtalès had grey hair, but time, which had taken away much from her and stamped her with his pitiless seal, had not taken, and was destined never to take, away the undefinable authority that alone great beauty possesses, and never loses, nor her radiant smile, which would suddenly make her look young.
Once at a party at Paris many years after this, at the Jaucourts’ house, I again saw Madame de Pourtalès. It was not long before she died. Her hair was, or seemed to be, quite white, and that evening the room was rather dim and lit from the ceiling; her face was powdered and she appeared quite transfigured; the whiteness of her hair and the effect of the light made her face look quite young. You were conscious only of dazzling shoulders, a peerless skin, soft shining eyes, and a magical smile. She put out everyone else in a room. She looked like the photographs of herself taken when she was a young woman. One saw what she must have been, and everybody who was there agreed that here was an instance of the undefinable, undying persistence of great beauty that just when you think it is dead, suddenly blooms afresh and gives you a glimpse of its own past.
Reggie Lister told me that he had once asked Madame de Pourtalès what was the greatest compliment that had ever been paid her. She said it was this. Once in summer she had been going out to dinner in Paris. It was rather late in the summer, and a breathless evening, she was sitting in her open carriage, dressed for dinner, waiting for someone in the clear daylight. It was so hot she had only a tulle veil round her shoulders. While she was waiting a workman passed the carriage, and when he saw her he stood and gaped in silence; at last he said: “Christi! que tu es belle!”
I had already written some short parodies of four French authors which I wished to get published. A friend of mine sent them to Henri de Régnier and asked his advice. His opinion was extremely favourable. He said, and I quote his words, so that he may bear the responsibility for my publishing such a thing in Paris: “J’ai lu les amusants pastiches de M. Baring. Bourget, Renan, Loti ou France pourraient avoir écrit chacun des pages qui soient moins eux.” “Il faut pour avoir fait cela une science bien délicate de la langue française. Conseillez donc à Monsieur Baring de faire imprimer une petite plaquette. Elle representerait à elle seule de gros livres, ce qui sera délicieux.” I sent the parodies to Lemerre and he accepted them, and they were published in Paris by his firm. The pamphlet was called Hildesheim, and the small edition was soon sold out. The little book was well received by the French, and I got a good deal of fun out of it.
Another literary adventure I had at this time was a correspondence I started in the Saturday Review. Max Beerbohm, in an article on a French translation of Hamlet, said something about the French language being lacking in suggestiveness and mystery. I wrote a letter saying that the French language was as suggestive to a Frenchman as the English language was to an Englishman, upon which a professor wrote to say that the French language was only a bastard language, and that when a Frenchman wrote of a girl as being beaucoup belle he was talking pidgin-Latin. Many people then wrote to point out that the professor was talking pidgin-French, and a certain H. B. joined in the fray, quoting the “Chanson de Roland,” and saying that an Englishman who used the phrase beaucoup belle in France would be treated with the courtesy due to strangers, but a Frenchman would be preparing for himself an unhappy manhood and a friendless old age. It was a terrible comment, he added, on the modern system of primary education. The controversy then, as nearly always happens, wandered into the channel of a side-issue, where it went on merrily bubbling for several weeks.
English people used to stream through Paris all the year round. One was constantly asked out to dinner, both by them and by the French. One night I dined with Admiral Maxse, and the other guest was M. Clemenceau. M. Clemenceau was in those days conducting a violent campaign for Dreyfus in the Press, and was a thorn in the flesh of the Government. I was severely reproved for dining with him the next day. I knew a few Frenchmen of letters: M. Henri de Régnier, Melchior de Vogüé, André Chevrillon, Edouard Rod, Madame Darmesteter.
I remember at one of Anatole France’s receptions (I only attended very few, as in those days a foreigner felt uncomfortable in circles where the Dreyfus case was being discussed—it was too much of a family affair) Anatole France talked of Æschylus. He said the texts we possess of Æschylus are shortened, abbreviated forms of the plays, almost, speaking with exaggeration, like the libretto of an opera founded on a well-known drama, almost as if we only possessed an operatic libretto of Hamlet or Faust, but he added: “Pourtant ceux qui ont admiré Aschyle ne sont point des imbéciles.”
But literature was rarely discussed anywhere in those days, as L’affaire dominated everything and excluded all other topics.
In August came the Rennes trial, and the excitement reached its climax. Galliffet was minister of war, and I heard him make his first speech in the Chamber. “Assassin!” shouted the left. “C’est moi, Messieurs,” said Galliffet, and waited till they had finished. During the month of August, he used to dine every night at the “Cercle de l’Union.” The club was quite deserted. I used often to sit at his table.