By1910, Paul-Jean Toulet was already in poor physical condition. Drugs, alcohol, and a rudderless existence had taken their toll. By some means or other Jacques Dyssord became aware of a former lover from his heyday in Béarn, Marie Vergon, daughter of a hotelier from Guéthary. According to Martinez, he wrote to her about his sad state, having learned of the feelings she still had for Toulet. Was she the Faustine of whom Toulet often sings in his verse, of whom Curnonsky said she was the only love of his life? Be that as it may, when Marie answered the call and came to Paris, she got a rude reception: Toulet informed her he didn’t want a woman in his apartment; but she stayed, and took on the thankless burden of nursing, cleaning, cooking, and in the evenings, she slept in a rented room. Toulet had her eat in the kitchen and whenever he had a visitor, he introduced her as his maid - although Dyssord recounts that on the last occasion he saw Toulet in Paris, “a guardian angel” was watching by his bedside, and she was introduced simply as “Mlle Marie.” She spoke to Dyssord of Béarn and the Basque country - the country Toulet had loved so much was being restored in some fashion to him at the very moment when all his courage was perhaps about to desert him as his condition progressively deteriorated. Marie's willpower and determination bore fruit six years later, on June 12, 1916, when she married her husband.
When Toulet’s poor health, and the parlous
state of his finances, propelled his departure from Paris in July 1912, his
friends were taken by surprise. Émile Henriot wrote in October asking when he
planned to return, and exclaimed that the bar de la Paix was being quarantined
by his friends as punishment for his absence. When Jean-Louis Forain learned
that his friend was permanently holed up in the countryside, the famous
caricaturist remarked: "Too bad for us. But so much better for
him."
Debussy wrote in January 1913:
“You must believe me if I say, standing
before the holly bushes that melancholically border my window, that I am not
yet used to this departure of yours, which resembled a flight from everything,
and more! I never told you what I thought the hurt feelings and wounded
sensitivity appeared to be hiding, because these are private moments when
advice, as well as consolations, are of little use; they can even seem
indiscreet or hypocritical!
To have the right to tell someone they are
not on the right path, you must be able to offer them, immediately, the means
to get out of it, with the conviction that you are not deceiving yourself…It’s
quite delicate! Especially for you, in that it is further complicated by a
health condition that you have managed with difficulty, often imposing
contradictory regimens.
Through a disconcerting dualism, you have a
taste for the world, while your mind secretly retains a more delicate taste for
solitude…one could be embarrassed, at least! I'm afraid that voluntary exile in
Saint-Loubès only satisfies one side of the question.”
(Debussy had in fact offered some advice in a
note dated March 1911: “Dear Friend, very sincerely, I am pained to see you
so often ill. And despite my loathing of all advice, allow my friendship to beg
you pay a little more attention to the barbaric and fanciful way in which you
treat your miserable body. Don’t hold it against me and believe in the
friendship of your Claude Debussy.” And again in July 1912: “Contempt
for one's poor, perishable body is a heroic and beautiful thing. However, don't
you think you've taken this double virtue to extremes?”
So Toulet moved to La Rafette, home of his cousins and his sister, where he stayed for four years. The house entered the family through his aunt Amélie. Toulet’s mother Marie-Emma Loustau-Lalanne was the 13th child of Pierre Loustau-Lalanne. There was a 14th, a daughter called Amélie. She married a Mauritian, Aristide Chaline. They left Mauritius to settle in France, and after a brief stay in Pau bought le chateau La Rafette at Saint-Loubès.
La Rafette is a fine house, with a
pepper-pot tower. There are a ground floor and a first floor, and a spacious
mansard roof space. This gentleman’s dwelling, built in 1840 on the site of the
old Barbezières chateau, was sold to Aristide Chaline by the inheritors of the
last marquis.
This is where the Chaline family lived with
their three children, and a niece, Jeanne Toulet, Toulet’s sister.
Jeanne Toulet and one of her first
cousins, Anne-Marie Chaline, married 2 brothers, Maurice-Henri and Gaston-Henri
de la Blanchetai respectively. Anne-Marie had no children. Jeanne had 6, who
inherited the chateau. The eldest of the 5 surviving children (Marc died while
still in his infancy) was Pierre, who as P. de Luz became a historian. His
works include biographies of Henry V of France, and of Isabelle II of Spain,
and a multi-volume History of the Popes. When Toulet sold Haget, La Rafette
became for him the family homestead. He was henceforth considered, like his
sister, a child of the house.
Saint-Loubès itself, as described by La Vie Parisienne in March 1906, was “a rather mediocre small town; and what it has best are its wines and its cemetery. The latter forms a charming landscape, situated as it is among the vineyards, on a slope, at the foot of a tall, pointed steeple, which seems to be thrust toward the sky.” At Saint-Loubès Toulet worked when his health permitted. He had his room in the attic, facing north. He was happy enough here, although irritated by the squeak of the weathervane and the squawk of the peacock beneath his windows. From the depths of his Chinese bed he read novels, exhibition catalogues, reviews, argued with cousin Mauricia, who looked after him, along with his sister Jeanne. They looked after him and fed him while he wrote and polished his Contrerimes, relieved of the need to earn a living. (There seems to be no record of Marie Vergon being part of the establishment just then, despite her Paris sojourn - perhaps she returned to Guéthary.) Even though he complained about the indifference of his friends, of Curnonsky who no longer writes to him, he is not forgotten. (He revealed in a 1910 will that he owed Curnonsky 200,000 francs, around 700,00 euros today. There is no record of Curnonsky being reimbursed, so it’s understandable that he might have felt somewhat aggrieved!) The young writers that surrounded him in Paris make him their rôle model. It was only after his departure from Paris that his fame began to grow. He unwittingly became the leader of the Parisian school of Fantaisistes, which included Carco, Vérane, Pellerin, Derème… People were talking about him. Not loudly, but they were talking about him. Meanwhile, Toulet was sorting through his papers, organizing his texts.
COPLES
Tant de travail, docteur, pour découvrir
enfin
Que l’Être se nourrit, et meurt de pourriture ?
Ah ! cesse, à tes fourneaux, d’avilir la nature :
Ce n’est que songe et fleurs dont nos âmes ont faim.
Contrerime VIII
Dans le silencieux automne
D' un jour mol et soyeux,
Je t' écoute en fermant les yeux,
Voisine monotone.
Ces gammes de tes doigts hardis,
C' était déjà des gammes
Quand n' étaient pas encor des dames
Mes cousines, jadis ;
Et qu' aux toits noirs de la Rafette,
Où grince un fer changeant,
Les abeilles d' or et d' argent
Mettaient l' aurore en fête.
In the
silent autumn
Of a soft
and silky day,
Eyes
closed, I hear you play
A
monotonous run.
You
rehearse with quick fingers
The scales
that my cousins
Would
perform by the dozen -
The memory
lingers.
On the
black roofs of La Rafette
Where the
weathervane squeals
The gold
and silver bees
Put the
dawn en fête.
Contrerime XIV
Le coucou chante au bois qui dort.
L' aurore est rouge encore,
Et le vieux paon qu' Iris décore
Jette au loin son cri d' or.
Les colombes de ma cousine
Pleurent comme une enfant.
Le dindon roue en s' esclaffant :
Il court à la cuisine.
The cuckoo
sings in the sleeping brake
Dawn red
are still the skies,
The old
peacock whom Iris dyes
Shouts far
his golden crake.
My cousin's
flock of pigeons
Moan like
children sobbing
The turkey
flaps about gobbling,
Running to
the kitchen.
From La Rafette he sent some short poems to Auguste Pujolle, director and founder of the monthly review Burdigala (Roman name for Bordeaux, it lasted from 1912 to July1914).
Ces frissons dont Zephir a moiré la
prairie,
Ou si quelque déesse invisible a passé,
Ainsi passa Camille, ainsi courait Marie:
Cherches-tu sur les fleurs leur méandre
effacé?
Aurélien Coulanges was a Marseilles pawnbroker. He was also the editor of a revue, Les Marches de Provence. Francis Carco was responsible for arranging that he publish a series of collections of poetry under the general title of “Collection des Cinq”, the five putative authors being Carco, Tristan Derème, Jean Pellerin, Jean-Marc Bernard, and Toulet, who had been using the repose of La Rafette to assemble from diverse sources, whether published or scribbled in notebooks, his contrerimes, dixains, and sundry verse, and put them in order. He was acquiring a coterie of admirers, and imitators. So he collected material from Les Marges, Le Divan, La Grande-Revue, and decided on the title Contrerimes, a collection that will eventually do more for Toulet’s literary reputation than all his works in prose. But there was a hiccup.
Coulanges ceased to
publish the volumes after those of Carco and Derème appeared. He declined to
return Toulet’s manuscript, despite the best efforts of Carco, Derème and
Martineau. Weak sales halted further publication and Coulanges retired to his
pawnshop. Toulet’s manuscript was never recovered – perhaps it will turn up
someday.
Meanwhile, Henri Martineau was putting together an edition of the Divan, the literary magazine he founded in 1909, entirely devoted to Toulet, with contributions from, among others, Toulet himself, Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, Edmond Jaloux, Henry de Bruchard, Henri Clouard, Eugène Marsan, Jacques Boulenger, Émile Henriot, Jean-Marc Bernard, François Fosca, Jean Pellerin, Martineau, and Pierre de la Blanchetai, Toulet’s nephew. Toulet anticipated the edition with pleasure, writing to Henriot, “Thank you for the delicate things and other lies you've heaped upon me. I suppose flattery is the poetics of the genre, but at first I had the feeling that you were all playing a "high-class joke" on me.” The issue was published in July-August 1914. And on August 3rd, Germany declared war. An attempt by Martineau to get up a subscription for the publication of the Contrerimes fell victim to more urgent concerns.
On August 3rd,
1914, two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declared war on France.
Toulet, at La Rafette, was deeply shaken, having as he did a profound, almost
chauvinistic love for France – hence his sympathy for Action Francaise. He made
some futile attempts to enlist with the military administration of Bordeaux, or
at least to be useful, but would never have been accepted on grounds of poor
health. He asked Émile Henriot, who had volunteered for the 31st
Dragoons, if he knew anyone in the war ministry. He importuned Jacques Boulenger, who
wrote that Toulet had little insight into the impotence of a mere corporal or
sub-lieutenant. And again, to Henriot, in September 1914, “We must need
paperpushers who are a bit multilingual, even at the borders. And I’d like to
be sent there, as long as I did not have to walk a lot.” He fantasised of being
engaged in some HQ, in the kitchens, even as a pianist, writing to a friend:
“For me, who dreamed of enlisting, unless they give me a seated post, or a
carriage like Marshal Saxe, I am reduced to watching the trains go by. …If I
were certain of the Dardanelles or Syria, I would enlist immediately. Perhaps
there are some romantic and witty generals who would stoop to anything to have
me under their command. How I would love them if only I knew their names. Mind
you, although I'm quite well, I'm not suited to cold countries.”
He wrote in jest in
November to his nephew, Pierre de la Blanchetai, who was at the depot in Niort,
and never saw action: “When you take prisoners, you must cut off all the
buttons on their trousers. They'll be forced to hold them with one hand, and it
will become impossible for them to run! You only have to try it.” (Louis
Pergaud’s La Guerre des boutons had been published in 1912.)
Martinez takes this as
evidence of Toulet’s lack of appreciation of the reality of war. But in fact
many of Toulet’s letters to his nephew take on a facetious aspect, such as his
advice to avoid fighting with Spanish chairs - Pierre had got his fingers pinched
in one - and what was far more dangerous, Spanish doctors. Boulenger makes the
point that non-combatants, sheltered from the reality of trench warfare, simply
lacked the ability to imagine the horror of a soldier’s lot. If indeed Toulet
had been more of a novelist, if he had had a more vivid insight into human
beings, he would not have believed for a second the accounts in the newspapers
of that time, and he would not have spoken of joining the General Staff.
But there is no doubt that the deaths of friends such as Jean-Marc Bernard, and Henry de Bruchard profoundly affected him. Henry de Bruchard had enlisted as a volunteer in the 126th Infantry Regiment in Brive but was soon discharged due to a heart condition. On February 6, 1915, while walking along the Rue Linois in Paris, he collapsed and died. His body was transported to his hometown, where he was buried in the Sainte-Eulalie cemetery on February 11. Toulet wrote this epitaph :
Ici repose Henry de Bruchard ; si la
cendre
Dormait, d’un si beau feu. Trahi dans son
propos,
France, il tomba, le jour qu’il ne te put
défendre ;
Comme un fer suspendu, qu’outrage le repos.
Jean-Marc Bernard, after three attempts, and despite his poor eyesight, enlisted in the infantry at the beginning of the conflict; he was killed by a mortar shell at the front, near Carency in Artois, in July 1915. His poem, De Profundis, is often taken up in commemorative events.
After the war, In February 1920, Toulet wrote to Francis Éon: “One finds there, especially in your war memoirs, a moving clarity. How I envy you for having gone, and - not for having saved your skin, but for having enriched your memory - for having returned; I, who returned, despite my dreams, before I had even been there, and, as my front line, was condemned to bed; where I continue to spend half a life tormented by poor health.” But it’s a rare letter from La Rafette in which he does not refer to his poor health. He was frequently confined to bed, where he tried to work. Opium was now difficult to find; laudanum and ether filled the gaps. Sometimes instead of the laudanum, that he took on a sugar lump, to recover a little of the euphoria that his dear opium gave him, he was brought a solution of water and tincture of saffron.
In autumn 1915 an improvement in his health allowed him a final trip to Avignon, where he spent two months in a friend’s house, Toulouse and Pau. He was in Avignon to prepare an article on the museum. In his notes on art he emphasized local colour and wished to see more examples of the School of Avignon which attained its apogee under the Popes. Martinez believes he went to Arles in November, and was inspired to write En Arles. It was certainly possible to reach Arles from Avignon, whether by road or by riverboat. The cemetery inspired both Gauguin and Van Gogh to paint it, and if Toulet did indeed visit Les Alyscamps, in late 1915, it would have been the most significant visit he had ever made, given the importance of those most quoted lines for which he is most remembered.
Dans Arles, où sont les Aliscams,
Quand l’ombre est rouge, sous les roses,
Et clair le temps,
Prends garde à la douceur des choses.
Lorsque tu sens battre sans cause
Ton cœur trop lourd ;
Et que se taisent les colombes :
Parle tout bas, si c’est d’amour,
Au bord des tombes.
Toulet wrote from Hyères to Tristan Derème, while the latter was kicking his heels in an artillery barracks in Toulouse, asking him to act as guide for him and his carer, (who wasn’t named – was it Marie Vergon?) having written previously on 3rd January. He says that he would be happy to meet him – and to bring him a copy of Quichotte.
Travelling by train,
Toulet arrived late one evening, towards midnight. It was February, 1916.
Derème described him as being extremely tired, tall, thin and bony. He
described his is gaze as being deep and kind – the gaze a faithful hound has
when being caressed, and has trust.
Derème accompanied
Toulet, who said he was exhausted, to his hotel. But once he lay down, he was
transformed – no longer the same man. His eyes sparkled – they were witty,
mocking, sometimes fierce, and he, who had barely spoken a moment before, now
launched into a thousand speeches and a thousand epigrams, and played with a
small Chinese porcelain bell, while tugging at his beard.
Toulet spent three or
four days in Toulouse. He stayed in bed until six in the evening. Derème would
visit him in the morning, and in late afternoon. He goes on to describe the
situation: “He was cheerful and pleasant, one minute binding bouquets of memories,
then suddenly shooting barbs. Then he would dress, but once up his energy
dissipated. When we sortied out, I would
give him my arm. He mocked his frailty, braving and scorning his misfortune.
At times he would have
a laugh. One evening in the rue Lafayette he spotted some anchovies in a window
display. He wanted to buy one – just one. The fishmonger said it wasn’t
customary. Toulet began to get irritated, claiming that he had but a small appetite.
He got his way and bought one anchovy for two pennies. It was presented to him
on a cardboard plate which he refused to have wrapped, and he carried it with
him like a waiter carries a plate. The little fish shone whenever we passed
under a Gaslamp, and in this wise we entered a restaurant. Toulet ate nothing –
not even his anchovy!
It was on this
evening, smiling still despite his melancholy, he inscribed on a copy of Nane
that he gave me, ‘To Tristan Derème, my nourishing father, his grateful and
replete Toulet.’”
One afternoon he went
out alone, took a cab, and in a couple of hours had explored all the antique
shops, where he took great pleasure in viewing the paintings and trinkets.
Toulet left Toulouse,
and a few days later wrote to Derème from Baigts (par Montfort-en-Chalosse),
Landes, on the route back home, where he had relations, and where he had spent
some time in 2015. He must have stayed there a while, because he wrote again
from Baigts, letters dated March 9th and April 7th. He
wrote later from La Rafette, and in October 1916 from Guéthary.
1916 found him sicker than ever. His family married him to Marie Vergon in the La Rafette chapel, on June 12, 1916. Her patience has finally paid off. She wanted to mind Toulet; she got her wish, although she knew she was simply taking on the thankless role of caregiver. The broken man she married bore little resemblance to the dashing young man she used to know. And who considered that to be married was to have a halter round the neck.
Pour une dame
imaginaire
Aux yeux couleur du temps,
J'ai rimé longtemps, bien longtemps :
J'en étais poitrinaire.
Quand vint un jour où, tout à coup,
Nous rimâmes ensemble.
Rien que d'y penser, il me semble
Que j'ai la corde au cou.
And Paul-Jean wrote this extraordinary letter to Madame Debussy …
“…I suppose
Claude reads the Communiqués, and I hope your health has improved. Mine, not at
all. I was very ill for two more years, so ill I couldn’t write: I was sick.
Then I felt better and wanted to get involved (in a bourgeois way, in the
Secretariats). But it didn’t take off—as frivolous people used to say before
the war—and I relapsed. At which point, my family, tired of caring for me,
married me off: there just happened to be a sort of chapel or oratory at La
Rafette that had never been used for that purpose, and an unoccupied Jesuit
priest. Everyone seemed pleased; the weather was very pleasant for June; and
the ladies wept quite decently at the little sermon given for the occasion.
Even I, despite my horror of ceremonies, wouldn't have said much, if I hadn't
been so directly involved, and if I hadn't been made to get up at one of those
hours one wouldn't even want to die at..."
After which he decided to settle in Guéthary. Toulet: “a small village in the heart of the Basque Country, which I chose because it’s by the sea: you can even see a little bit of it from my balcony… My cottage is called Etcheberria, which means New House, a name full of originality, especially when you know that it’s almost as dilapidated by age as the Emperor of Austria.”
This is Martineau:
“He lived in
Guéthary, that charming seaside village, clean and white, set in full light on
its cliff like, as some have said, a scattered laundry….All those who visited
him in his final resting place will never forget Etcheberria, the small house
in the center of the village, jealously guarded behind green shutters,
half-hidden amidst thickets of trees, their only protrusion its light-colored
tiled roof. On the ground floor, an office opened to the left of the front
door. Among a few old pieces of furniture, one could see the large, unusual
armchair "du bailli de Suffren," made of teak, and a dark display
case crammed with precious volumes. …Above the study, on the first floor, was
his bedroom, where one was certain to find him at any hour, obliged as he was
by illness to spend most of his days in bed. It was there that Toulet received
his close friends in a familiar manner. A great clutter. Books, pamphlets,
newspapers, papers everywhere. The colourful curtains were almost always drawn,
and, in the dim light, whoever entered could at first make out only the bronze
mounts of a massive antique chest of drawers, a gleaming Japanese bowl, the red
and gold flash of the three round lacquer boxes that adorned the mantelpiece,
or the phosphorescent eyes of the black cat Ubu Reine, curled up as usual at
her master's feet, or the luminous circle of a cigarette.”
When he can go out it
is to the café de Madrid to drink a port. His great pleasure was to receive
some old and faithful friends: Paul Valéry, Charles Derenne, Maurice Rostand,
Frantz Toussaint, Alphonse Métérié, Henri Martineau. The Polish-born sculptor Swiecinski
came over to chat often to his neighbour. He had built a villa overlooking the
ocean in an incomparable site.
Toulet worked as much as his health allowed, though there were also long periods when he was unable to write a single word. He had collected three short stories, previously published in periodicals, which made up Comme une Fantaisie (1918). He completely rewrote La Jeune Fille Verte, which was published in 1920. He had had time to finalize the Contes de Béhanzigue, which appeared only a few days after his death, and worked on Les Trois Impostures. He gave the go-ahead for printing the Contrerimes, which in no way prevented him from revising them further.
In the spring of 1918
Debussy died after a long battle with colorectal cancer, nine years after
diagnosis. That put paid to any possibility of the long-mooted collaboration on
setting As You Like It to music. Toulet
wrote to René Philippon bemoaning his poverty. He was bored, invented unlikely
enterprises. Marie was little mentioned in his correspondence. She was more - or
less - than a partner; she was his nurse. Paul Valéry paid him a visit -Toulet remarked
on La Jeune Parque: “It’s very beautiful, a little pointlessly
obscure.” (When, in 1917, he finally broke his 'great silence' with the
publication of La Jeune Parque, Valéry was forty-six years of age, only
four years younger than Toulet. His poem Le Cimetière Marin, was
published in 1922. The first two lines are reminiscent of
Toulet:
Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes,
Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes;
Confined to bed, Toulet read a great deal, especially art books, specialized journals, and museum and auction catalogues. He owned a substantial collection of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, but for a long time he had wanted to complete it. He entrusted this task, one after another, to all his friends. A few weeks before his death, these much-desired volumes finally arrived, procured by his publishers, Emile-Paul Frères. It was a very keen pleasure for him, one of his last. He pored over collections of engravings and reproductions of paintings. He annotated much of this and remembered the rest. To amuse himself, he translated from Greek, Latin, and Italian. He had undertaken a French translation, with annotations, of Horace's Voyage to Brindisi (Satires V, Book I). When he was too tired, or to combat insomnia, he was fond of works as diverse as English adventure novels and the works of Paul Féval.
In 1920, ill as he was, he still was making plans. On 15th August – feast of the Assumption – he wrote to René Philippon: Je pense toujours, avec l’aide de la Providence, être à Paris vers le 15 septembre. Jacques Dyssord commented wryly that the one time he trusted his affairs to providence, she let him down.
At mid-day on
September 6th 1920, Toulet suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. Martineau
was recalled in haste – he had left the previous evening for
Coulonges-sur-l’Autize. In a book by his bedside that he was reading the night
before, a draft of a new poem was discovered scribbled on a piece of paper he
was using as a bookmark.
Ce n’est pas drôle de mourir
Et d’aimer tant de choses
La nuit bleue et les matins roses
Le verger plein de glaïeuls roses
(L’amour prompt)
Les fruits lents à mûrir.
Ni que tourne en fumée
Mainte chose jadis aimée
Tant de sources tarir
Voir tant d’amour tarir…
Gave aux ondes trop fraîches
Au retoure cuellait des pêches
Enfance, cœur léger.
Toulet, ever the pragmatist, distrusted eulogies. He had warned his survivors: "Death is like photographers: it always flatters you a little.". The religious service took place on the 8th September in Guéthary church which stands, grey and white, outside and above the village, in order to be seen from afar, from the sea, by the fishermen that use it as a landmark and enrich it with their ex-votos. The obsequies took place without great ceremony, although Henry Martineau and Francis de Miomandre were moved to silence, unable to speak. The mortal remains of Paul-Jean Toulet were confided to the little cemetery whose circled tombs huddle against the church’s shade like chicks under the mother’s wings. Swiecinski’s medallion adorns his tomb.
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