LA REVUE BLANCHE
ALTHOUGH I collaborated unremittingly with the Revue Blanche (where for a long time the writing of book reports fell to me), I never mingled much with the group of its colleagues and am sorry to-day to have only caught glances of various remarkable personalities among them. There is doubtless not a single painter, or writer of real value, recognized to-day, who does not owe the brothers Natanson and Félix Fénéon, unerring and subtle pilot of the ship, an ample tribute of gratitude. The Revue Blanche quickly became, if I may say so paradoxically, a rallying point for divergences, where all the innovators, those unsubmissive to the stereotyped, to academics, to the restraints of outworn orthodoxies, were assured of finding a warm welcome. And not only a welcome. The Revue took it upon itself to sustain them to defend them against the attacks of scandalized Philistines, and slowly, tenaciously, to impose them on the attention and consideration of the public. Whence its extraordinary importance in the literary and artistic history of our times.
But as far as I know, there was not, strictly speaking, any salon of the Revue Blanche, where its collaborators were assured of meeting each other weekly as those of the Mercure, around Vallette and Rachilde. Simple offices, a sort of editor’s room, where every day and at any hour, all meetings were possible. And that is how, one evening, as I was going to carry my copy to the editor’s office, I passed Valloton to whom Thadée introduced me. He was only passing by, too. The Mercure had just published Livre des Masques in which Remy de Gourmont had grouped his presentations of the most noteworthy authors of the period; and each one was preceded by a wood engraving done by Valloton. The scrupulous and worthy Swiss painter, not always being able to refer to the model, was sometimes inspired by photographs (as in my case). Before holding out his hand to me, he considered me for a few minutes, then: “Heavens, my dear Gide, I would never have recognized you from my portrait.”
And then Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard, Bonnard, Roussel, among the painters, and among the men of letters, Mirabeau, Madrus, Paul Adam, Jarry, Charles-Louis Philippe and so many others still who were discovered, launched, protected and sustained by Fénéon, I met elsewhere.
Even of Fénéon, there is nothing left for me to say, after the masterly portrait that Jean Paulhan recently traced of him.
Of the brothers Natanson, Thadée is the one I knew best; that is to say, a little less accidentally and fleetingly than his elder brother, Alexandre, or the middle one, Alfred; but the thick beard he wore, like Tristan Bernard, put up a screen against the effusions that the smiling amenity of his face would have invited. I doubt if that beard did not half conceal a simple kindness. Nevertheless, he was sensitive to everything, curious about everything, prepared for the echo, hearing nothing with indifference. Equally in love with letters and art, admirably trained by Fénéon and by his natural instinct, his mind and heart open to all generous causes. The Revue Blanche, at his invitation or following him, willingly “took its stand,” as one says to-day. Without being exactly a partisan, it easily took on a reddish tint, and its collaborators often assumed leadership.
Courageous Revue Blanche! How we need you to-day!
October 1946