Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/157

 11 S. X. AUG. 22. 1914.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

151

PAULINE TARN.

(US. ix. 488.)

I AM able to supply some of the information required about the deceased poetess Pauline Tarn, having seen her almost continually from 1900 to 1907, when I had the honour of giving her some literary advice.

Pauline's mother was an American lady from Honolulu. Her father, John Tarn (1846-86), was of Scotch descent, and the youngest son of William Tarn of Homewood, Chislehurst, Kent. William had made a fortune as founder and director of a dry- goods store in London.

Born in England (1877), Pauline came to Paris when still a child with her mother, who took an appartemeni in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne during the winter, and travelled the rest of the year. Pauline was the eldest child ; a younger sister married a Mr. Alston. During a year or more Pauline was placed in a boarding-school at Fontainebleau ; she was proud to recall the fact that she had won there a first prize in French. She spoke French without any accent, quite like a French girl ; besides her native and her adoptive tongue, she also knew German and Italian. About 1897 she was presented at the Queen's Drawing -Room in London ; then she came to live in Paris with a companion (a French lady), and henceforth devoted herself entirely to litera- ture.

The best period of her short life extended from 1900 to 1906 ; then, especially in 1901-3, she wrote her finest verses. Fre- quent travels brought her to the United States, to the Sandwich Islands, to India, to Japan, to Egypt ; in Europe, to Spain, to Holland, to Bayreuth (she had a passion for music), to Italy, to Norway, to Constanti- nople, Athens, Smyrna, and more than once to Mitylene, where she took a house and lived for several weeks. All those experi- ences have left traces in her writings. Japan and India in particular had fascinated her, and she lived surrounded by Buddhas, by Japanese ivories, and by Chinese paintings and statuettes, which she preferred even to their Japanese derivates.

Pauline had a morbid taste for solitude, and a healthy disgust for every form of reclame and pushing. Besides some girls

and ladies to whom she was very much attached, she admitted to her society but a few writers of distinction : Ernest Charles, Ledrain, the poet Droin, the novelist Willy, &c. They admired her beauty (there exists a touching portrait of her by Levy-Dhurmer), but, more still, her kindness and simplicity. Loving art and music, rich, admirably gifted, she suffered, nevertheless, from incurable melancholy, partly due, no doubt, to her bad health and to the perpetual tension of her nerves, but also to a great sorrow which had struck her when about 23 the death of her beloved friend Violet Shilleto, an accomplished and beautiful girl, who died of consumption in Southern France. Since 1908 Pauline's health rapidly de- clined ; she neither ate nor slept. Three days before her death by starvation caused by an occlusion of the stomach, she was converted to Catholicism by Abbe Riviere. She lies buried in a fine mauso- leum in the cemetery of Passy. Some beautiful verses of her composition have been engraved on the tomb, within and without.

I think that your correspondent has not gone too far in expressing the opinion that many verses by Pauline Tarn rank among the finest in the French language. Like Swinburne, whom she admired and occa- sionally imitated, she sometimes allowed her musical genius to take the upper hand ; but in her best poems there is not more bril- liancy and harmony than intensity of vision and profoundness of thought. Her most remarkable volumes in verse are entitled 'Etudes et Preludes' (1901), ' Cendres et Poussieres' (1902), 'Evocations' (1903), 'A 1'heure des mains jointes ' (1906). Of her works in prose, no doubt the most interesting, which bears some characters of a confession, is entitled ' Une Femme m'ap- parut ' (1904). All these books appeared under the pseudonym Renee (or Rene) Vivien.

In a pamphlet published in 1911 (Charles Brun, ' Renee Vivien,' Paris, Sansot), I gave some information about the life and works of that charming woman ; your readers may also find there (pp. 33-6) a complete bib- liography of her writings and the list of a few interesting articles published after her death. I ought to have added an eloquent obituary notice by E. Ledrain, late Keeper of Oriental Antiquities in the Louvre (^Opinion, 27 Nov., 1909, p. 688). CHAKLES BRTTN, Professor in the Lyc6e at Chartres.