It was six years ago, in the days when the world was happy with the blessedness of a peace that seemed likely to endure, and when the occasional cloud on the political horizon was regarded as nothing more than a mirage, that the writer and a friend—the latter one of the firm of M. Maeterlinck’s American publishers—made a journey to the south of France for the purpose of paying their respects to the Belgian mystic in his Nice home. In London we had been advised by Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, whose admirable translations have done so much to make Maeterlinck’s name a household name to English-speaking readers. “Here is his latest letter,” said Mr. Teixeira. “It is dated from his villa in the Quartier des Beaumettes, which is the rising ground at the western end of the town. You will find him there; that is, if you succeed in finding him at all. For he is a very difficult man to find. That is one of his peculiarities.”
It was the night before the departure from Nice. Our time was limited. At its môle in the swarming harbor of Marseilles, the Sant Anna, which was to carry us on its roundabout, five thousand mile journey, with New York as the ultimate destination, was preparing for its leaving of the next day. We started on the quest. At the hotel they could tell us nothing. The driver of the fiacre engaged was no better informed. Surprised but undaunted we were soon winding slowly between high stone walls, up the beautiful Beaumettes slope. From villa to villa we travelled, to be met everywhere by puzzled, negative headshakes. “M. Maeterlinck? We do not know him. We have never heard of him. We do not think that he is of the Quartier. Perhaps if you enquire at the villa beyond you will learn something.” For two hours in the darkness sweet scented by the breath of the semi-tropical plants and flowers, we kept up the search. But it was in vain. Here indeed was a prophet unknown in his own country. What was the reason for the mystery? Was there a vast conspiracy of silence and pretended ignorance on the part of his neighbors? Were solitude and freedom from interruption so necessary to his being that the great man had sworn them to secrecy? Or had he draped himself in some mysterious veil, some figurative coat of invisible green, through which the eyes of those who dwelt in the Quartier des Beaumettes had never been able to see? We never found out. There was about the enigma something weird, something almost uncanny. We had been told to seek him in a mansion by the sea. We could hear the waves of the Mediterranean beating against the rocks below. But was it another ocean—an ocean of the Never, Never Land that had been meant?
It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived, whom you all may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
Is there a real Maeterlinck house? we asked ourselves. Or is his habitation of such dream stuff as the House of Usher? Is the land of Maeterlinck a material land, or is it somewhere “hard by the dim lake of Auber, in the misty mid-region of Weir: down by the dark tarn of Auber, in the Ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir?”