The introduction was so amusing and popular that the audience, bursting into prolonged laughter and merry acclamation, was won at once.
One November evening in Paris, in the year 1904, when the delegates of the Scandinavian Parliaments were invited to an entertainment at the residence of M. Delcassé, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, where an opportunity was given them to see something of upper-class society, including the Diplomatic Corps, with its elegant and beautifully dressed ladies, I went, instead of accompanying them to this attractive sight, to the Trocadéro, where on the same evening, at the invitation of the Socialist party, three of the foremost men of France were to address a large meeting.
The hall had long been filled; but a seat had been kindly reserved for me, which, being on the platform beside the speakers, enabled me at a glance to view the 6000 human beings who crowded the floor of the enormous and beautiful building, and its galleries to the very roof. The hall is built like a huge theatre with the stage on a level with the dress circle. The audience, which had arrived early, sat in eager expectation.
The three speakers were Francis de Pressensé, Jean Jaurès, and Anatole France — the most strictly upright politician, the most eloquent orator, and the greatest writer of the France of to-day.
Francis de Pressensé’s speech was distinguished by its simple, noble power. It was Huguenot oratory. He holds himself straight and still, speaks without a gesture, without an appeal to his audience, except that of his assertions to their sense of right. He communicates fact after fact and explains them. His command of language is so great that he has never to search for words, however quickly he speaks, and never mutilates a sentence, however hurriedly he flings it from him. In contrast to the usual custom of French orators, he makes not the slightest pause when he has said something particularly effective and applause breaks forth. He allows no time for the applause, but speaks on without a movement or a break, seemingly unconscious of it.
When the time came for Jaurès to speak, part of the platform was cleared, because he required its full length. The eloquence of the great Socialist is genuine Catholic eloquence. He recalls the most remarkable of the preachers in the churches of Naples. He, like them, is a Southern. And like them he requires a roomy stage, on which, whilst speaking, he can walk up and down, halt, and turn in all directions.
He has a voice like the trumpet of the Last Judgment. As soon as he opened his mouth its metallic clang made the windows in the roof of the hall ring. He does not use it with much skill, does not even moderate it to begin with, employs no crescendo or diminuendo, but is from the first to the last moment all ardour and passion. Hence even in a hall which holds 6000 persons his voice seems too strong, and not unfrequently produces a disturbing resonance. He would be heard better if he spared himself more.
He has the instincts of the actor. He charges, like a fighting ram, with bent head at an invisible enemy. Or he bends forwards with outstretched arms, and then with a jerk is erect again. Or he makes himself small, crouches down till he is almost sitting, and then suddenly starts up. He talks himself into a heat; in the end is bathed in perspiration. His style is emotional — the militant pathos of a man who loves his fellow men.
In his improvisations he is unable to keep himself in check. He goes on too long. Up and down, up and down in front of one marches the short, broadshouldered, strongly-built figure, large-limbed, thick-necked, with a round head and handsome bearded face. Beside him France and Pressensé looked like stag and horse beside a bull.
France did not really speak, but read, as he always does — perhaps because, as writer, he has too much tenderness for each sentence he has composed to deliver it up to the chance of the moment. His style, which does not permit of a word being omitted or transposed, is ironical; but the irony every here and there gives way to earnestness, which is the more effective from its rarity. And this style meets with approval; in all its subduedness it provokes laughter and carries conviction. He relates what has happened, interjects a point of interrogation — and his hearers smile; a point of exclamation — and they are compelled to reflect. He inserts a parenthesis, and between its curves one catches a glimpse of all the stupidity and insolence standing outside of them.
France spoke first of the state of matters produced by Bonaparte’s Concordat, of the fact that the State pays the clergy of three creeds, the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, but only of these three, although during the course of the nineteenth century the country has acquired far more Mohammedan subjects than it has Protestant or Jewish.
He said, with a playful allusion to the old story of the three rings, told by Boccaccio and employed by Lessing in Nathan der Wise:
“With us the Minister of Public Worship, like the father in the old Jewish parable, has three rings. He does not tell us which is the true one, and in this he is wise. But if he is to have more than one, why limit the number to three? Our Heavenly Father has given His sons more than three rings, and they are not able to discern which is the original, the true ring. Monsieur le Ministre, why have you not all your Heavenly Father’s rings? You pay the clergy of certain creeds and not those of others. You surely do not make yourself the judge of religious truth? You cannot maintain that the three religions are in possession of the truth, seeing that each of them vigorously condemns both the others?”
As every one is aware, the encroachments of the Roman Catholic Church have led to the urgent demand by the Republican party for separation of Church and State. France maintained that this separation must take place at once. But what are to be its conditions? He scoffed at the old cry: A free Church in a free State. This would be equivalent to an armed Church in a disarmed State. “We undoubtedly owe the Church liberty,” he said; “only not an absolute, theoretical liberty, which does not exist, but real liberty, a liberty which is bounded by all other liberties. You may be perfectly certain, however, that the Church will not be the least grateful to us for this. It will receive this liberty as an insult and mockery.”
France then proceeded to speak of the relations between Europe and Eastern Asia, and in doing so said: “The European Powers have accustomed themselves, whenever any breach of order occurs in the great Empire of China, to send out troops — either one Power independently or several in combination — which troops restore order by means of theft, violence, plunder, slaughter, and incendiarism, and pacify the country with guns and cannons.
“The unarmed Chinese do not defend themselves, or defend themselves badly. They are slaughtered with agreeable facility. They are polite and ceremonious, but we reproach them with a want of goodwill towards Europeans. Our complaint against them is of the same nature as Monsieur Duchaillu’s complaint of the gorilla.
“That gentleman shot a female gorilla. She died clasping her young one to her breast. He tore the young animal from its mother’s arms, and dragged it after him across Africa to sell it in Europe. But it gave him just cause of complaint. It was unsociable. It preferred dying of hunger to living in his society, and refused to take food. ‘I was,’ he writes, ‘unable to overcome its bad disposition.’
“We complain of the Chinese with as much right as M. Duchaillu complained of his gorilla.”
France went on to speak of the yellow danger for Europe, and demonstrated that it was not to be compared with the white danger for Asia. The yellow men have not sent Buddhist missionaries to Paris, London, and St. Petersburg. Neither has any yellow military expedition landed in France and demanded a strip of territory within which the yellow men are not to be subject to the laws of the country, but to a court composed of Mandarins have come to the conclusion that, things being bad at the best, the existing state of matters was probably as good as the untried — that this man should proclaim himself a son of the Revolution, side with the working man, acknowledge his belief in liberty, throw away his load and draw his sword — this is what moves a popular audience, this is what plain people can understand and can prize.
It has shown them that behind the autho
r there dwelt a man — behind the great author a brave man.
ANATOLE FRANCE by Winifred Stephens
FOR nearly half a century the name of Anatole France has stood in the estimation of the world for all that the most exquisite and most refined in the French language; he has exerted over the minds of his own and succeeding generations an intellectual influence second to none, and he has enjoyed a prestige comparable only to that of Voltaire. He is a devoted lover of the Muses, and if he professes no philosophy, no creed, it is because he has tried them all and discovered none that will unravel the master-knot of human fate. Nevertheless, in the course of this journey we call Life, this pilgrimage, the whence and whither of which are enveloped in obscurity, we shall find him a highly agreeable companion. He is never dictatorial and never in a hurry. He is, in fact, much given to loitering, and if a by-way tempts him, he will readily leave the high road to explore it. He will tell many a diverting story of saint and sinner, and many of folk who were neither the one nor the other, but a blend of both, like the majority of us. His polished, urbane discourse, rich with the spoils of Time, though always amusing and profitable, is not invariably what pious folk call “edifying.” In that respect he resembles Shakespeare, Rabelais and Sterne. He is prodigiously learned, but he will never bore you with a display of erudition. He is too great to be merely clever, too wise to be dogmatic. He is indulgent to all men, save the fanatics. Fanatics he detests, because they are the sworn enemies of Beauty, and in his eyes the only unpardonable sins are the sins against Beauty.
Anatole France sees life steadily, and sees it whole. With the insight of genius he can enter into the state of mind and speak with the tongue appropriate to all his characters, from the highest to the lowest — scholar, politician, priest, soldier, voluptuary, wanton, all the motley dramatis personæ that move across the stage of life.
Those who have come under the spell of Anatole France and are conscious of his peculiar charm, know instinctively that, when his voice is hushed, such accents will never fall upon their ears again. There will doubtless be born other writers whose work will be no less illumined by grace and beauty, but it will be a different grace, a different beauty. And the reason perhaps is that, in nearly all his writings, certainly in all those by which he will be chiefly held in memory, he gives utterance not so much to the mere results of some intellectual process, but rather to the dictates of his whole nature, heart and mind indissolubly interwoven, and, if the language he employs is the language of France, his voice is the voice of all humanity.
In an illuminating article recently published in the Quarterly Review, Mr. George Saintsbury, the greatest living English authority on French literature, says that to him “M. France has continued to appear as a new embodiment, Avatar, exponent, or anything else you please, of French style — as giving the quintessence thereof.” He adds that “almost always he is a Master of the Laugh; and Heaven only knows what Earth would do without Laughter.”
Looking back over the progress of Anatole France’s popularity with English-speaking readers, it is an interesting fact that from the outset The Bodley Head has stood sponsor to him in this country. His work was known only to comparatively few here till Maurice Baring published his fine survey of it in Volume V of the Yellow Book (April, 1895), and it was this same volume which contained a contribution from Anatole France’s own pen. Then followed various translations, culminating in the splendid Library Edition issued from The Bodley Head under the editorship first of the late Frederic Chapman and then of James Lewis May. The first volumes of this edition were issued in 1908, and the editors were fortunate in securing the services of an exceptionally brilliant group of translators, who succeeded so remarkably in rendering the spirit as well as the letter of their original that this series gradually established the reputation of Anatole France among English readers.
In 1923, encouraged by the success of the Library Edition, and feeling that there was still a wide public to whom that edition was inaccessible at seven shillings and sixpence, the publisher decided to embark upon a new and cheaper edition, at half a crown in cloth binding and five shillings in leather binding, and during that year several volumes at the lower prices were issued. This new edition has been an unqualified success. It is everywhere spoken of as a real service to the cause of literature, and it is introducing Anatole France’s work to thousands of new readers. Its attractive page, binding and appearance are earning it especial praise; and new volumes are being added regularly and will continue till the edition is complete.
On October 12th, 1924, Anatole France passed away in his 81st year. So numerous were the tributes which appeared in the English press that it is difficult to give an adequate idea of the impression Anatole France’s work has made upon the best literary minds of this country, but perhaps the following sentence from an article in the Evening Standard is the most apposite summing-up of Anatole France’s position: “He was not only the greatest name in French literature in our time, but he was perhaps the greatest name in European literature, for though other authors have been more widely read during the last generation, none has been more admired than he.”
The works of Anatole France are a liberal education; not to have read them is to be ignorant of a great figure, not only in modern letters, but in the whole history of literature.
The cemetery at Neuilly-sur-Seine, Île-de-France — France’s final resting place
France’s grave
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 485