ANATOLE FRANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20075, 16 April 1927, Page 19

ANATOLE FRANCE

AN INTIMATE STUDY. BIOGRAPHY BY HIS SECRETARY. AI. Brousson, who was for eight years secretary and intimate companion of Analolo Jc ranee, kept a record ot tuo emiiicn author's sayings, and has given the world the pleasure ui reading them in "Anatole Jt ranco .Himself: A lioswelliau Record.” At dinner one day the Master, us Jirouston and others culled him. challenged his secretary with noting down oveiytnmg. The answer was, T share a banquet lit lor kings; it is only charity to picli up the crumbs for the poor who are outside—for posterity.” Brousson was doing lor Anatolo Trance what Tlonanet did for Voltaire. The Master demurred at first, hut flnaly agreed, on condition that nothing was to oe published during his lifetime. "You will not have long to wait. When 1 am under the sod make me say whatever you will. Now it would be indiscretion ; then it will bo erudition.” Brousson observed the wishes of the Master, and when the volume appeared it showed a trying old man, impish, ironical, caustic and egotistical, and sworn 100 of Mrs Grundy. When the secretary first saw the Alaster he was at his desk, wore a dressing gown, felt slippers and a silk skull cap, and held in his hand a drawing and reading glass. Turning to Brousson fie asked him if he had boon liberated from religious beliefs. ‘T say that to you just as I would say, ‘Have you a, good digestion? Is your liver all right.' People aro born churchy or unchurchy, just as they are born with a tendency to arterio-sclerosis, cancer or consumption. Not all the preaching or all the proofs make any difference, y. . . Anatomists will, I trust, one day discover the cause and seat of the religious spirit.” The secretary arrived one morning to find him still in bed, complaining of sleeplessness and of o touch of fever. “I spent my time reading Tacitus and Casanova. If it goes on like this I shall soon be fit for the undertaker.” His letters had just been brought to him, and lay on the eiderdown quilt. As he sipped his chocolate, he rummaged among the letters, pamphlets, newspapers and books. Throwing the books on the floor, ho told Brousson to take them to the bath. The room and the bath wore too small for the Master, and were made the receptacle for all the books showered on him. “When the bath is full a secondhand bookseller comes and empties it. We havo fixed a price. Whatever the authors may hovers© or prose—it is 50 francs a bath.” When he came to the letters ho told the secretary to throw all that rubbish into the fire. ‘lnto the fire _ Into the fire! I tell you —unless you insist on replying to all those bores. After all. that’s your affair.” , After some time be leaped out of bed with youthful agility, and was helped into trousers made with huge feet attached to them, such as Balzac used to wear indoors. Then a flannel dressing gown was donned, and n basketful of caps brought for him to choose which he would wear. The collection was immense, and he tried on many of tlicm before he chose one of a red-currant colour. He was at work on Joan of Arc, and the servant entered dragging a sort of mattress after her. He turned to Brousson and said, ‘‘That is the manuscript of Joan of Arc. There must he well over a hundredweight of it. All that rubbish is yours. Burn it, tear it to pieces, bluepencil it. I don’t want to look at it. This maid is too much for me. You don t know where to get hold of her. She may have been a saint, but she was certainly a joker. . . . I bad shoved all those papers into the garret along with the mice.” When Mio secretary extricated a mass of note books, done up with surety pins, he found letters, envelopes, cards, newspaper cuttings, and tradesmen a bills, all written over on the back with hasty notes, dates, and references. His private conversation was lull ot intellectual confidences, and each of them waa almost entirely a soliloquy. Anything served as starting point. He astounded the listeners by the credence he lent to the silliest tales. At first he spluttered; then came a limpid gush, with quotations, epigrams, and analogies. Once launched ho was pitiless to his listeners. At the end of one of his conversations, lasting several hours at a stretch, the secretary was utterly worn out. He could talk tx lon„ time on an umbrella he bought in Rome. Its virtue was that it could not bo lost. ••Since I lose it three times a week, ami invariably give 2 f. when it is brought back to me. bow much is my fairy umbrella worth since 1 bought it under the shade of the Pantheon six years age? I have no head for mathematics—alas that it should be so.” , , , On the subject of Napoleon be had some illuminating anecdotes. “My friend, Xavier de Ricard, once told me a very significant fact about his grandfather, who was at Waterloo. He was a lad of barely 17, for Napoleon, owing to lack ot men, combed even the for soldiers. During the battle the Emperor wanted to mount his horse. He was suffering that day from hemorrhoids, in incommodity to which several historians have attributed the loss of the day. I rom what docs not the fate of empires depend! Cleopatra’s nose may be the finger of God! The Emperor then wants to mount. He calls a soldier to help him into the saddle, and young de Ricard, drunk with joy and pride stoops forma a stirrup with his hands, and hoists up the Emperor with such enthusiasm—that ho goes right over the other side of his horse. Napoleon falls to earth like a sack of potatoes, and, rising, pale in the fact, shouts: 'lmbecile! Idiot! You shall be shot!” The pool- schoolboy fob lows the Emperor. Things go from had to worse for France. But all the boy things about is when is be to be shot? “At the end of the day Napoleon recognises him witli a smile, pats him with his fevered hand on the check covered with the down of youth. ‘My boy/ he says, ‘ never forget that in the day of defeat you helped your Emperor into the saddle!’ You perceive the dodge? Out of a caricature ho makes an emblem of heroism.” Anatole France admits that Napoleon was not without good sense, but says he was a buffoon and a sick man. He was s person who never loved anyone but himself. At St. Helena he was dying of boredom “ at not being able to govern, pardon, blow up Ministers, issue proclamations, impose taxes and foil conspiracies.” Ho imagined himself always Emperor. When Clemenccau was made Prime Minister, Anatole succeeded him on the “Neuo Freie Presse ” of Vienna. Ho was to get 800 fan article. Every week a messenger called for copy, but it was never ready. The man was treated to wine, and Anatole called for three French newspapers. What is the chief event of the week? “Whatever you choose to make it.” The scissors work, striking passages are cut out, the leading articles are gutted. “ What’s the good of changing anything?” remarks Anatole. “It will only be spoilt in the translation.” The man was in a hurry. “ Give him more wine.” He will miss the train. “ Give him another glass.” The servant appears, saying the man is going. Ho doesn’t want to get the sack. “He is ns full as an omnibus.” Anatole signs the article. "What a pity,” he says. “Such a pood article! And that barrel of wine will go and drop it in the gutter and lose it !” He held Dickens to be not inferior to Daudet because of the social importance of his work. Daudet lacked depth. Anatole France thought his own best were those that had no success, “Histoiry Comiquo ” ami “Jeanne d’Arc,” and bis poorest books those that everyone prised, "Thais” and “Lc Lys Rouge.”