11.5.
When we finally settled in the rue de Varenne “The House of Mirth,” then appearing in the “Revue de Paris,” was attracting attention in its French dress, partly because few modern English and American novels had as yet been translated, but chiefly because it depicted a society utterly unknown to French readers. The success of the book was so great that translations of my short stories (I had as yet written but two novels) were in great demand in the principal French reviews, and to this I owe an interesting glimpse of the Parisian life of letters. Those were the days when the “Revue de Paris,” edited by that remarkable man, Louis Ganderax, rivalled (if it did not out-rival) the “Revue des Deux Mondes” in interest and importance, and I was lucky enough to be made welcome in the editorial groups of both reviews, and to be much invited out in those agreeable circles.
Oddly enough, it was an old American friend of my husband’s who enlarged my range in this direction. Archibald Coolidge (future Librarian of Harvard) was giving the Hyde Lectures that winter at the Sorbonne, and as soon as he found we were in Paris he decided that I must be made known to his friends in the University. So indefatigable was this kindly being in bringing to the house the most agreeable among his colleagues, as well as other acquaintances, that my husband and I christened him “the retriever.” It was thanks to him, I think, that I first met Monsieur Andre Chevrillon, the author of a number of delightful books on English literature, and two or three exceptionally sensitive records of travel in India and North Africa. All the Taine nephews and nieces inherited the great man’s English culture, spoke the language fluently, and were thoroughly versed in English literature; and it was Monsieur Chevrillon who first made not only Ruskin but Kipling known to French readers. It was in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of his house at Saint Cloud that I first met, among other interesting people, the Comte Robert d’Humieres, whose translations of Kipling rank with Scott Moncrieff’s of Proust. Robert d’Humieres was one of the most versatile of that alert and cultivated group; an admirable linguist, quick, well-read and responsive to new ideas, he combined great social gifts with a real love of letters. He wrote a brilliant little volume on the English in India, and another, equally remarkable, on contemporary England. He and his charming wife went often to England, and on one of their visits I gave them a letter for James. He asked them down to Lamb House, and a letter to me (published in Percy Lubbock’s edition of the Letters) records his delighted impression of the pair. Robert d’Humieres and I became great friends. He came very often to the rue de Varenne, and in 1914 he began a translation of my recently published novel, “The Custom of the Country.” I had had many offers to translate this book, but had always refused, as I thought it almost impossible to make a tale so intensely American intelligible to French readers. But Robert d’Humieres was perfectly fitted for the task, and judging from the first chapters his translation would have been masterly. The war sent him at once to the front; but in 1916 a bad attack of rheumatism obliged him to return to Paris, and he sent me word to come and see him. I found him, though very ill and worn, hard at work again on “The Custom of the Country”; but as soon as he was discharged he asked to go back to the trenches, and almost immediately fell in leading an attack. His broken-hearted wife died soon afterward.
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