The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-13
WALKS M|LESFOR CONSC|ENCE'S SAKE French Poet Avoids Right
 Bank of River MORE spooNERIsMs
SPOONERIsMS
Author Confesses He Does Not Know What Passages in His Works Mean; Only God Knows.
 Orders Tomb

London. October 12-(Special )-As everybody knows. the left bank of the
 Seine, in Paris, is the home of the Bo-
 hemians of that gay capital. The Latin quarter is on the left bank, or rive eauche" as they call it, and no words are strong enough to express the dis dain of its artistic denizens for the
 rive droit," or opposite bank. where the
 business and social of Paris have their i abiding places.
 Few of the dwelers on Montparnasse,
 however. carry their prejudices as far
 as does a versifer who was pointed out to me recently at the "Closerie des Li- lacs," the literary cafe where Paul Fort the newly elected prince of poets, thrones 1t nightly. The writer In question. whose name is Paul Roinard, and who is fairly renowned boasts that for 10 years on end
 he never has. set foot on the despised right bank of the Seine. That bank, he says, stands to him for everything that is material, plutocratic, commercial, philistine, and for the sake of avoiding 1t
 NJ. Roinard has gone in for lot of un-
 necessary exercise.
 He has walked, in all probability, thou
 sands of miles in order to give it wide
 berth. He lives in the suburb of Cour-
 bevoie and every Tuesday he walks to the "Closerie des Lilacs' in order to take part in the weekly artistic gathering there. Now the Seine, just at Courbe-
 voie, takes wide bend, and M. Roinard, by making straight to his destination,
 would have a constitutional of only four
 miles But this would mean that he must t,a for Ina nf journey tread the accursed right bank and the poet will not so compromise with his conscience. Accordingly he follows the left bank of the river where it makes it's loop, and so at least trebles the length of his weekly pilgrimage. They say in Montparnasse that he starts at seven in the morning in order that he may occupy his favorite seat at the "Closerie des Iilacs" at half past eight at night. And yet this is supposed to be a materialistic age. 'All the talk" as Pepys would say, in the literary world of London is about George Meredith, whose letters In Scrib- ners everybody is reading. All agree that they are a delight and make up forI d lot that Meredith wrote of which no
 one could make head or tail. No one but the novelist himself, should have written, had we not just been assured by no less person than England's poet lau- reate that not even Meredith could eluci- date the meaning of some of his passages. It is a bit surprising, by the by, to dis cover that Alfred Austin and the author of "The Egoist' not only were friends, but apparently pretty intimate ones-so itimate, in fact, that Tennyson's sue cessor in the laureateship was constant visitor to Box Hill, Merediths home in Surrey. and occasionally guest there. Austin says it amused him once to hear | T mires lucidity more than I do, for.' says
 the poet laureate, T think every one will admit that he was frequently, both in verse and in prose, exasperatingly' ob- scure."
 "He had, 1t always seemed to me, |" Austin goes on, two ways of writing, the natural and the Meredthian. Every time I went to see him he began by talk ing to me in Meredithese, probably be-
 cause he had been writing it all morning.
 But. as I talked like the proverbial plain
 man, he soon did the same. without any detriment to the play of his mind and his
 Illuminating treatment of whatever sub ject we touched on.
 T have vivid recollection of his read
 ing to me from manuscript The Empty Purse But though I heard we'll enough, not only did I not understand in the least. but I had not the faintest conception of what it was about
 When it was published he sent me copy of the volume in which it ap pears. l read it to myself with the closest attention, but my failure to understand
 1t was as great as ever.
 q carried it with me to Dunley (Ad- mral Maxses home) on the occasion of my next visit, and from a sheer love of mischief the admirals elder daughter, who was personally much attached to Meredith, and of whom he was very fond, asked the admiral and two male friends who were uncompromisfng admirers of his poetry to be good enough to turn the advantage they had over us to good account and to explain to us The Empty | Purse Their failure was complete
 'Thereupon we suggested an explana- | tion at which, after infinite pains, we had arrived, but without any feeling of certitude that we were right.
 'I came down one morning 10 breakfast i rather early, and, it being Saturday, | took up a weekly paper and found in it | a sonnet by my host that sorely puzzled | me-
 At that moment Merediths charming l daughter, so good and devoted to her fa- | ther, came in, and 1 said, Papa Gas she | always called nim) will, l suppose, be down directly, and as you tell me you always understand what he writes, l want you to explain this to me-
 "She read, and hestated as to the meaning. But we must make 1t out be- | tween usr and I think we succeeded as to the first 12 lines. But the closing | couplet baffled us. When the author him | self came in and was appealed to- he shed | little if any more light on it, and ended | by saying It means something like that, | recalling to me what Jean Paul Richter | said in analogous circumstances, that once on d time two persons had known what an arraigned passage signifed- himself and Le bon Dieu. But now God alone knew"
 Americans by the thousand visit Mont. St. Michel, every year, there to explore the famous old monastery and feast on the renowned omeettes of Madame Poularde, and most of them tarry en route at St. Malo, the gay watering place on the Brittany coast whose grim past is recalled by the fortifications by which 1t is begirt. Chateaubriand, the father of French romanticism, is buried at St. Malo. and no true American sight seer fails to pay visit to his tomb, nameless. which, at tide, Is covered by the sea. Now Jules Lemaitre, in new work on the great egotist," as he calls Chateaubriand, tells how the author bar gained with the mayor of St. Malo for the grant of "a rock whereon to plant his tomb, which he stipulated was to be a l simple stone with cross, without a name, amidst the waves. 1.-The was bent" i says Chateaubriand's latest biographer, l Ion astonishing the world even when he could no. longer be by to enjoy the ef- l feet There was vanity in his very skele- | ton."
 Several new and funny "Spoonerisms