MEMOIRS, CONVERSATIONS AND DIARIES
529
have a national, historical life of their own; a schoolboy would know
them any place. But this man who hates to read and to write does
not then, as an American might expect, speak of women or sports,
but of his feelings of dizziness and fatigue after the first performance
of Jarry's
Ubu Hoi!
If
women are mentioned at all, it is hardly what
we mean when we say "they talked about women." Instead Valery
remembers Heine's witticism: "All women who write have one eye on
the page and another on some person, with the exception of the
Countess of Hahn who has only one eye."
In France not only literary people but the civic powers display
a ready courtesy and appreciation of artistic citizens which to their
English and American partners must appear almost idolatrous. Our
artists
openly
wish such recognition only when they are in a sick
mood of persecution or drunkenly blowing their own horns in a way
they will regret the next morning. Wandering about Paris, foreigners
of a literary mind think, "The Avenue Victor Hugo, that you might
expect ... but the
rue Ap'ollinaire,
and so soon!" Regretfully we
remember those W.ashington Square ladies who tried in vain to get
a corner named after Henry James.
It is very difficult for the English and Americans to compose a
respectable
hommage,
to spend a lifetime or even a few prime years
on private memoirs, even comfortably to keep a journal, a diary.
For these activities the French have a nearly manic facility and energy,
but when we grind away at this industry it is as if we were trying
to make perfume out of tobacco juice. Every sort of bruising
st~mble
lies in wait; you observe one law of social morality only to break
another. No matter where one turns the ground of possibility weakens
and the writer sinks into an indiscretion at the best, nearly a crime at
the worst. Reverence, which the French display without stint, seeing
it a privilege, a mark of grace, to serve, to draw near, to be a witness,
seems to us to impugn honesty and self-respect.
If
we cannot do this
for the Virgin, the Saints, without an exotic act of the will, how
shall we be expected to do it for a mere author of secular dramas?
Art is a profession, not a shrine. And even if one does not hesitate
to make a fool of himself, there are others to consider. By immoderate
praise, rash compliments, one may seriously offend the modesty and
reasonable expectations of the great person, who will be thrown
