BOOK REVIEWS
THE MEMOIRS OF MONSIEUR DE CHARLUS
Les Pas Effacés. Mémoires de Robert de Montesquiou. Three Volumes. Emile-Paul. Paris. 25 francs.
ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU, to whom Le Secret de Tolède was dedicated by Maurice Barrès in the words:
"AU COMTE ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU
au Poète
à l'inventeur de tant d'objets et de figures rares,
à l'un des premiers apologistes du Greco,
et qui lui-même,
trouvera, quelque jour, son inventeur et son apologiste,
Hommage amical de son admirateur et voisin."
died two years ago. He was the author of some thirty books the value of which was in his opinion gravely underestimated by his contemporaries. Posterity, he was confident, would judge them at their true worth. Nothing is more probable. But if the poet is likely soon to be forgotten, the man, by a chance which does not befall many equally remarkable beings, seems bound for the immortality which his extravagant character deserves. A nobleman and an aesthete, his pride and insolence attained a fine excess which the most robust figures in Comedy have never surpassed. In spite of this it seemed that after his death oblivion must close upon him as upon so many another writer of minor verse, and patron of the arts. But his destiny brought him into touch with the only contemporary writer whose genius is comparable with that of Ben Jonson and Molière. Already as a young man Montesquiou had been, it was said, the original of des Esseintes in A Rebours. Certainly the book described many details in his apartment, but Huysmans founded the character of his hero, not so much on a personal knowl-
