I wouldn't mind so much, were it
not incontestable that at the end of the century I shall be dead.
MALLARME, BAZIN, SWINBURNE
[_17 Dec. '08_]
The Mrs. Humphry Ward of France, M. Rene Bazin, has visited these shores,
and has been interviewed. In comparing him to Mrs. Humphry Ward, I am
unfair to the lady in one sense and too generous in another. M. Bazin
writes perhaps slightly better than Mrs. Humphry Ward, but not much. _Per
contra_, he is a finished master of the art of self-advertisement, whereas
the public demeanour of Mrs. Humphry Ward is entirely beyond reproach. M.
Bazin did not get through his interview without giving some precise
statistical information as to the vast sale of his novels. I suppose that
M. Bazin, Academician and apostle of literary correctitude, is just the
type of official mediocrity that the Alliance Francaise was fated to
invite to London as representative of French letters. My only objection to
the activities of M. Bazin is that, not content with a golden popularity,
he cannot refrain from sneering at genuine artists. Thus, to the
interviewer, he referred to Stephane Mallarme as a "fumiste." No English
word will render exactly this French slang; it may be roughly translated
a practical joker with a trace of fraud.
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