XI
A VISIT AT RODIN’S
MOST people are not acquainted with the temple of art at Meudon, which the great sculptor, Auguste Rodin, has built near his house. The temple is situated at the top of a little hill, and the outlook embraces one of the most beautiful prospects around Paris.
The view to be obtained from Flammarion’s observatory at Juvisy made a great impression on me. The view, however, which one has from Meudon, though it is less sublime, stirs one more perceptibly. Juvisy simply impresses through its atmosphere of grandeur, its calm, its suggestion of the past.
At Meudon, on the other hand, everything seems to aspire towards a new life, towards new times. One feels oneself leap for joy, like the dog that precedes one in quest of the master of the house. This is the impression that you get when you reach the gate, after having walked along an avenue that is not very wide and is lined with newly-planted trees. You arrive at a fence, a very ordinary fence, that incloses nothing and which is there, I fancy, only to prevent wandering animals from getting in and those of the household from getting out. The moment you draw the latch, which causes a bell to resound in the distance, a dog rushes wildly from the house and gives you a most joyous welcome. Then Rodin appears in his turn. In his rather unwieldy body and his features, which are a trifle heavy, great kindliness and sweetness of disposition are evident. He walks slowly. His gestures are kindly, his voice kindly. Everything about him breathes kindliness.
He receives you by extending both hands, very simply and with a friendly smile. Sometimes a movement of the eyes and some words to which you pay no great attention may hint that the moment has perhaps not been well chosen for a visit, but his instinctive good nature gets the upper hand. He places himself by your side and shows you the path that leads to the top of the hill.
The panorama seems so extraordinary that you pause to take it in.
The temple stands at your right, the landscape spreads itself before your feet, and if you turn your glance to the left you note a forest of ancient trees.
Then we look at Rodin. He breathes deeply in silence while he admires the landscape. He surveys everything with such an air of tender interest that you realise he is passionately attached to this spot.
His temple, too, is wonderful, so wonderful that this accessory easily becomes the central feature in the landscape.
Rodin opens the temple door gently and then in a friendly way bids you enter. There truly silence is golden. Words are powerless. We know that we are unable to express in words some of our sensations, unless as a preliminary we have experienced them profoundly.
One ought to see Rodin at Meudon to appreciate him at his true value. One should see the man, his surroundings and his work, to understand the breadth and depth of his personality.
The visit of which I am writing occurred in April, 1902. I had taken with me a well-known scholar—he has since died under tragic circumstances, having been run over by a carriage—and his wife, who was not less scholarly than he. They had never been at Meudon before, and they were not acquainted with Rodin. They were just as simple as the master himself. When I introduced them not a word passed. They grasped each others’ hands, and looked at each other. Then, when we left, they grasped each others’ hands again, and held them for some little time. That was all.
Yet, no, that was not all. In the looks they exchanged there was a world of intelligence, appreciation, comprehension. Rodin, with his peculiar figure, his long beard, and his eyes that gaze right through you, was matched, as regards simplicity, by this husband and wife. The former, brown, tall, and thin, the latter, slight and blonde, had alike a single aim, that of not making themselves conspicuous.
In the temple there was silence—a silence profound, admiring, almost religious, the effect of which I should like to be able to reproduce.
Rodin led us to a work of which he was particularly fond. Motionless and mute, the two visitors looked at the masterpiece before them. Rodin in his turn looked at them, fondling the marble and awaiting from them some sign of approbation or of comprehension, a word, a movement of the head or the hand.
Thus, from work to work, from room to room—for there are three studios in Rodin’s temple—we made our way, slowly, silently, our artistic pilgrimage taking on something of the significance of a communion.
In the two hours we passed in the temple hardly ten words were spoken.
When the inspection of the three studios was finished, a gentleman and a lady walking across the garden came towards us, and Rodin, in a very simple way, mentioned the names of M. and Mme. Carrière, the great painter and his wife. M. Carrière and his wife are also as free from ostentation as Rodin himself and the pair of scholars who accompanied me.
We left. In the carriage that took us back I asked my friends if they could describe their impressions, their sensations. They replied in the negative. Yet on their faces there were evidences of great happiness, and I knew they had appreciated and understood Rodin. These two people are known throughout the world. They are the greatest chemists of our day, peers of the celebrated Berthelot. Since then the husband, like Berthelot, has gone to his last rest and the wife carries on their common activities. I would give a good deal to be able adequately to express the admiration I feel for her, but out of deference to her own desire for simplicity and self-effacement I must not even mention her name.
So far as I myself am concerned, I may say that Rodin is, like the great master, Anatole France, one of the men in France who have impressed me most strongly.
Anatole France has been so kind as to say some things about me at the beginning of this volume—words exquisitely expressed, and of which, although far too laudatory, I am naturally very proud.
I am not less proud of Rodin’s good opinion. This opinion I have noted in a letter the great sculptor wrote to one of my friends. Not for reasons of vanity do I reproduce it here, but because of the simplicity of its form and in grateful remembrance of the great pleasure it caused me.
“Mme. Loie Fuller, whom I have admired for a number of years, is, to my mind, a woman of genius, with all the resources of talent,” so wrote the master from Meudon on January 19, 1908.
“All the cities in which she has appeared, including Paris, are under obligations to her for the purest emotions. She has reawakened the spirit of antiquity, showing the Tanagra figurines in action. Her talent will always be imitated, from now on, and her creation will be reattempted over and over again, for she has re-created effects and light and background, all things which will be studied continually, and whose initial value I have understood.
“She has even been able, by her brilliant reproduction, to make us understand the Far East.
“I fall far below what I ought to say about this great personality; my language is inept for that, but my artistic heart is grateful to her.”
Less grateful, certainly, than I am to the man who wrote these lines. I am, nevertheless, happy to have been able to bring together on the same page the names of two masters of form who have influenced me profoundly and whom I revere affectionately.