tion about it, the celebration not
only of an arrived artist, but of an idea close to the hearts and
minds of those present, and you had a sense, too, of what it must have
been like in that circle of, no doubt, a higher average of adherents,
in the drawing room of the genius Mallarme, who, from all accounts,
was as perfected in the art of conversation, as he was in expression
in art. When I read Miss Lowell's chapter on Henri de Regnier, I find
myself before the door of the Mallarme house in the rue de Rome,
probably the only American guest, on that Sunday morning in June, just
one given a privilege that could not mean as much as if I had been
more conversant with the delicacies of the language.

It was the occasion of the placing of a tablet of homage to the great
poet, at which ceremony Henri de Regnier himself was the chief
speaker: a tall, very aristocratic, very elegant looking Frenchman,
not any more to be called young, nor yet to be called old, but
conspicuously simple, dignified, dressed in a manner of a gentleman of
the first order, standing upon a chair, speaking, as one would
imagine, with a flow of words which were the epitome of music itself
to the ear. I had been invited by a poet well known in Paris, with
several volumes to his credit and by a young literary woman, both of
whom spoke English very creditably. After the ceremonies, which were
very brief, and at which Madame Mallarme herself was present, standing
near the speaker, de Regnier, the entire company repaired to a
restaurant near the Place Clichy, if I remember rightly. My hostess
named for me the various guests as they appeared, Madame Rachilde,
Reynaldo Hahn, Andre Gide, and a dozen other names less conspicuous,
perhaps, excepting one, Leon Dierx, who was an old man, and whose
death was announced about the city some days later. It was, needless
to say, a conspicuous company and the dinner went off very quietly,
allowing of course for the always feverish sound of the conversation
of many people talking in a not very large room.

But all these suggestions recall for me once more what such things
mean to a people like the French, or, let one say, Europeans as well.
I wonder what poetry or even painting will do, if they shall rise to
such a state in this country that we shall find our masters of
literature holding audience with this degree of interest like Fort, or
as did all the great masters of literature in Paris, hold forth in the
name of art,