In the first week of last March I had the
good fortune to see Valery again in Paris after many years. I met him in the company of several young leaders of the resistance movement, and it was with pleasure that I noted once again how in France the younger generation will accord to great writers that instinctive veneration which we in this country reserve for cricketers, or newspaper proprietors, or millionaires. He had an astounding memory for names and faces and past events. He told me how, when he visited London in the 'nineties, he had refused to be introduced to Oscar Wilde, since he was incensed that so great a literary talent should prostitute itself to what was clearly but a passing aesthetic mood. His hero at the time was Meredith. He obtained an introduction from Edmund Gosse, and was invited to visit the patriarch at Box Hill. He took the train one June afternoon to Leatherhead, and was shown by a passing milkman the way to Meredith's cottage. As he climbed the hill he could see a group of people gathered upon the verandah, and as he approached them shyly the old man himself detached himself from the group and hurried down to meet him. When they were a few yards apart Meredith began to shout greetings to him in truly execrable French, and in so doing he tripped over a tussock and fell prone at Valery's feet. " This magnificent, Apollonian old man," continued Valery, " lay there upon his back, gazing up at me through the bracken and the heather, and continuing in his strange French to utter phrases of courtesy and welcome. I was entranced."
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