PREFACE

Paul Bourget was born in the cathedral city of Amiens about fifty years ago, but there are a number of other interesting things to say about him. Like so many famous authors, he began, in 1873, with verse. Probably the verse did not bring him the instant fame that we all desire with our first book, for he soon turned to prose, which of course as Saltus has hinted, is more difficult. Again, it is probable that verse and prose are not really so very far apart, but are related, as an angel is related to a saint, or a lovely sister to her handsome but very masculine brother. Essays followed Bourget’s lyrics, then a triumphal procession of novels and travels, till, in 1904, he became a poet again by wearing the blue and gold costume of the French Academy.

For about ten years now the writings of Paul Bourget have had great success in London’s capitol, Mayfair, among a certain set or circle of ladies whose minds are as carefully tended as are their beautiful bodies. They have read him, even as they have read Anatole France and Marcel Prévost, because of notes of distinction in the writings, the lack of discord, the evidences of balanced, graceful, 4well-valeted life. Bourget belongs to the group of writers who are sometimes termed Salon-writers. I imagine it is a German classification; it brings before the vision one writing with a gold pen using a silver standish upon a table of sycamore. Perhaps if we say in English “the kid-glove school” the phrase will describe, if it does not please. This note of refinement in style, distinction in utterance, is certainly represented best in France by Bourget, in Italy by D’Annunzio, in Holland by Couperus, in America by Saltus. Of course other countries have claims too. There has been very little written about Bourget in English, not because he writes French, but because he writes. In a conte charmingly named A Bouquet of Illusions Bourget himself is one of the characters, the protagonist part in fact. The conte is written by Saltus and is worthy of both novelists.
G. F. MONKSHOOD.
London,
1908.