Henley was not a great man, but a very interesting one. He thought it his duty to edit every contribution sent him, and he did edit every word, every phrase, weighed every comma and colon, until the whole of his paper was steeped in his own style, so that it often seemed as if it were all written by one man.
My chief object, when I got a paper of my own, the Saturday Review, was the antipodes of his. I encouraged everybody to express himself as personally as possible, and the more he differed with me, as a rule, the more I liked his work. I do not see how one could have got Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, McColl, Chalmers Mitchell and Cunninghame Graham to do their best on any other terms.
What then was Henley's success? He got together a band of youthful admirers who wrote for him and afterwards became known as journalists. I don't remember one man of real ability in Henley's crowd; not one, so far as I recollect, made a great name for himself in the future. But success in the day and hour he had in abundance and admirers, such as the Right Hon. George Wyndham, who always called Henley a remarkable poet, mainly I used to think, because Henley's poetry, second rate as it was, was better than his own.
There was another figure whom I got to know very well in the nineties, an infinitely more gifted man than Henley in another art: Auguste Rodin. I have done a portrait of him, but here I wish to add a few more words.
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."