Maurice Maeterlinck and His Home at St. Wandrille.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 12, 20 March 1912, Page 2

Maurice Maeterlinck and His Home at St. Wandrille.

By

ALVAN F. SANBORN.

OMEWHAT more than a score of years ago a young Fleming of 24. Maurice Maeterlinck, who in his native city of Ghent had felt the attraction of the French capital, came up to Paris to seek his literaryfortune. His family name, which means “measurer of grain,” had been given in the 14th century to an ancestor, a bailiff at Renaix, near Ghent, who had won the gratitude of his neighbours by distributing grain among the poor during- a famine. Maurice had received his early education in a Jesuit school’, the atmosphere

of which was far from congenial, and where, except for displaying a precocious literary talent, he had proved himself but an indifferent student. He had subsequently studied law at the University of Ghent, out of deference to the wishes of his family: had been admitted to the bar. and had opened a law-office; but he had practised little, having devoted his time mainly to reading the poets, to writing poetry, and to cultivating literary friendships. "Maeterlinck and I.” says his poetfriend, Charles Van Lerberghe, "formed the habit, in college, of addressing our literary efforts to each other. They were subjected on either side to criticisms both lengthy and severe; and to this I attribute the fact that neither of us dreamed of sending them to the little reviews. Maeterlinck sent me verses, especially sonnets, in the manner of Heredia, but Flemish in colour: short stories, similar to those of De Maupassant: a comedy full of humour ami ironical observation, and other ventures. It is worth noting, however, that he never attempted a tragedy, never an epic poem, never anything florid and declamatory, and never anything languorously sentimental. Neither the rhetorical nor the elegiac had any hold on him. In Paris. Maeterlinck lodged nt 22 Rue de Seine, in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He speedily became intimate ■with some of the so-called Symbolists, to whose review, “La Pleiade, he became & contributor. He alee made the acquainl-

anee of a number of the better-know® poets of the older schools. This irresponsible Paris existence, in which conviviality doubtless had its due part, was cut short by circumstance* beyond Maeterlinck’s control. At the end of seven months he returned to Flanders, but he does not seem to have resumed, even desultorily, the practise of law'. Instead, be devoted himself zealously- to literary creation, passing his winters at Ghent and his summers at Oostacker. It was at the latter place, probably, that he came under the influence of the eccentric old man, from whom lie acquired th®

interest in Howers and bees, which bore fruit later in the unique books. "La Vie de I'Abeille’’ and "L'liitelligence dee Fleurs.’’ Two or three years after his return from Paris Maeterlinck published a fiveact tragedy. "La Prineesse Maleine, - * which evoked from Octave Mirbeau—a caustic spirit little given to flattery—such unprecedented praise that the author, like Byron, awoke one morning to find himself famous. "La Prineesse Maleine" was followed by a series of weird, fantastic, pessimist io dramas, which were the utterance of a troubled and profoundly melancholy soul straining to find its way in the dai-kness. With an art whose very silences were potent, they symbolized those vague and terrible aspects of the subconscious existence which have usually been considered impossible of expression. They were dramas of doubt, of restlessness, of gloom, of moral terror, of despair; nightmares, only the more horrible for their ineffable beauty of form: poetic representation, rhythmic without rhyme, of the mystery of life and the inexorableness of destiny. Their -cenes were laid in crumbling castles full of secret passages, forgotten dungeons, and subterranean pools, and surrounded by black, black, sunleaa 'forests or by bramblV-grown, weed-choked gardens strewn with broken and prostrate eta>>'"“ Their characters were half-

mad, half half-phantom kings, querns, iprinces, and princesses dominated by irresistible passions which made them mere puppets of Fate. In 1896, ten years after his first visit to Paris, Maeterlinck definitely abandoned Belgium for France. About the same time, stagnant pools, uncanny grottoes, foul birds of night, enchanted ■fountains, misty moonlight, charnelihouse odors, and all the other symbolic paraphernalia of terror practically disappeared from his writings. He had come under the spell of an interpreter of his plays—the radiant actress-singer, Georgette Leblanc, who was later to become Mme Maeterlinck. Under the wonder-working influence of love, he emerged from the chilling fogs of foreboding and despair into the pure white sunlight of comprehension of the laws of the universe, and was transformed Into a teacher, even an apostle, of cheerfulness, courage, and equanimity. The •ombre, pessimistic dramatist became a stimulating, heartening essayist, and an optimistic- philosopher. It was as if a Kuripides bad developed into a Plato, a*

if the author of "The Raven" had become the author of "The Over-Soul.” For more than a decade, Maeterlinck has consistently glorified the serene wisdom (sagesse) that is superior to destiny. The work, “La Sagesse et la Destinee.” in which he exhaustively expounded his new-found creed, he offered to Mms. Leblanc as a tribute of gratitude. and admiration, with the following graceful dedication:—”! dedicate to you this shook, which is, in effect, your work. There is a collaboration more lofty and more real than that of the pen; it is that of thought and example. 1 have not been obliged to imagine laboriously the resolutions and the 'actions of a wi e ideal, or to extract from my heart the moral of a beautiful reverie, necessarily * trifle vague. It has suflieed to listen to your words. It has suflieed that my eyes have followed you attentively. in life; they followed thus the movements, the gestures, the habits of Wisdom her•elf.”

The vogue of Maeterlinck's books in his second ui-anner—“Le Trenor des Humbles.” "lai .Sagesse et la Destinee,” “I* Double Jardin," "Le Temple Eu•eveli,” and those two remarkable interpretations of the phenomena of natural ■irtory—“La Vie de I’Abeille” and TLTutelligeuce de* Fleurs"— has been

even greater than that of his earlier works. MAETERLINCK'S NORMAX ABBEY. It was Maeterlinck’s ‘’good genius,” doubtless, who suggested to him a retreat in Normandy—for Mme. Maeterlinck is Norman by birth. For several years she and her husband had a country house in the hamlet of Gruehet-St.-Simon, near Dieppe. It was while taking an automobile ride from there that they discovered their present home, the <>ld abbey of St. Wandrille, which had been put upon the market because of its abandonment by its former occupants—a congregation of Benedictine monks who had refused to submit to the French law of 1901. The abbey, which was founded in the seventh century, first bore the name of Fontanelle, from a crystal-clear rivulet which traverses its enclosure and empties into the Seine, a mile or so below. Practically all the original building was destroyed by fire in the thirteenth century, and some of the later additions are now in ruins. They include a chapel of the eleventh century, dedicated to St. Saturnin, crypts containing tombs of the thirteenth century, a refectory of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, a cloister of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a section of the. transept of the large ’abbey church, dating from the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Th. principal gateway —a monumental affair inscribed "Fontanelle”—and the buildings used as a residence by the Maeterlincks, belong mainly to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A great part of the grounds is covered by a dense grove of venerable, rooktenanted trees, which keep the soil moist and the air cool even during the heat of midsummer. Under these trees haffburied fragments of moss-grown, ivytwined pillars, capitals, and arches abound on every hand. THE PERSONALITY OF MAETERLINCK. Maeterlinck is a tall, broad-shouldered man, rubicund of face, almost corpu'ent, and of phlegmatic mien. tn w ', he might pass for almost any t...., o a butcher, a baker, or a candlestickmaker—rather than for the highly imaginative and delicate 'artist he realty is. Nor is there anything in his casual conversation to differentiate him from the average member of society. During a visit I was recently privi.cged to pay him at St. Wandrille. 1 could not but remark a resemblance between Ilia placid, somewhut stolid physiognomy and the head of Uiu sleepy yellow bulldog. Golaud—-

named after the prince in “Pelleas et Melisande”—who remained as if riveted to the floor under his master's chair during our chat, and .who accompanied us gravely on our walk through the abbey grounds. If Maeterlinck's personal appearance accords not too ill with his later role of cheerful sage, it is almost impossible to think of this robust country gentleman as the author of such tragic allegories as “Alladine et Palornides,” “Pelleas et Melisande,” and "Lu Mort de Tintagiles." One recalls, however, the difficulty of seeing, in the bourgeois bust of Shakespeare in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon, the slightest hint of the genius that created “Hamlet” and “Lear.” It was something of a disappointment to find that the author of “La Vie do FAbeille" keeps no bees at St. Wandrille. “I have no bees here," he explained, “because I do not stay here in winter. Not being able to watch over them myself, I have been obliged to give them up. When I have turned them over to ■mercenaries, I have come back each spring to heartrending disasters—for it is in winter, especially, that the hive demands the careful ’and judicious attention of the good apiculturist.” At first, too, it was disillusionising to learn that the philosopher who wrote “Le Tresor des Humbles" takes very little interest in his rustic neighbours, and—as he frankly admits—has practically no intercourse with them. It should be said, by way of extenuation, that the Norman peasantry are notoriously suspicious and inhospitable toward those whom they regard as outsiders, particularly if the latter do not regularly go to mass, and that any newcomer Jrmong them, however well disposed, would find it exceedingly difficult to establish hearty and wholesome relations with them. To undertake the demolition of so formidable a social barrier is not a task that would be at all likely to appeal to a man like Maeterlinck. Anenf his first meeting with Mme. Maeterlinck, one of his friends says : “According to the testimony of his earliest literary comrades, Maurice Maeterlinck was still very Flemish —- that is to say, infinitely timid and a bit awkward —when he encountered for the first time, at the theatre, the ‘visage of his destiny'—l mean Mlle. Georgette Leblane. After they had been introduced, the young woman gracefully expressed to the author her unbounded admiration and sympathy. He, however, could find nothing to say in reply to the talented actress. Maurice Maeterlinck, you see, is not only the painter of the inexpressible; lie is also the man of the unexpressed." A MAN OF RETICENCE AND RESERVE. It is not to be expected, of course, that a renowned writer will deliver his innermost sentiments to every person lie meets. Maeterlinck's well-known lack of expansiveness, which has commonly been attributed to timidity, muy very well be due primarily to a reasoned and deliberate reticence. As he himself has said, “the frankest and most loyal man has the right to conceal from others the greatest part of what he feels.” Nevertheless, in spite of his grey hair, and in spite of the fame he has won. he has never ceased to be. in many respects, just a big overgrown boy. He is a boy, especially, in his unaffected love of vigorous sport. His college mates say that while he was at the law school he was “always on a bicycle or in a sail boat—a student such as one imagines the Yale or Harvard type to be.” Without stopping to discuss this incidental characterisation of American university life, we may ’add that nowadays Maeterlinck’s favourite amusements are )automobEing, roller-skating in one or other of the great empty halls of St. Wandrille, and fishing in the stream that flows through his back yard—if so august a residence may be sail! to have a back yard—whence he is almost always sure of drawing out trout enough for dinner.

Maeterlinck passes his Wiiiiein >.i thsouth of France, at la's Qua!re t hemins (“The Four Roads") near Grasse, in a house which once belonged to a family of the old Provencal nobility, and which stands in a garden containing four hectares of olive trees, grape vines, and rosea. Ho also has a quaint Paris domicile in the picturesque Pussy quarter: but it is rarely, indeed, that he remain* for any length of time in Pari*.