Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/573

 12 s. ix. DEC. io,i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 471 -who reads French as I read English, but who does not speak it ... charming, cordial, very well informed. My pupils are very well brought up children, who teach me English while I teach them French, which is exactly what I want. How long shall I remain here ? Three or six months, according to my progress in speaking and understanding. Then I shall seriously set about earning my living in this country, where my mother, I hope, will join me. I have no distractions and seek none. Much reading, walks with the pupils (not in rank and file, nothing of that sort here) across magnificent meadows, full of sheep, &c. It is astonishing how well I have become morally and physically in these eight days. . . . My address is : M. P. Verlaine, at M. W. Andrews, Stickney Grammar School, Boston, Lincolnshire. My village is Stickney, two or three miles from Boston, but the address is as above. . . . Thus [adds M. Lepelletier], he lived, peacefully employed in regular work in the homely boarding- school. He wrote to me comparatively little during his time there. More than once he declared himself completely absorbed in his occu- pations. He allowed his muse to slumber. They were months of contemplation and spiritual and material abstinence. He remained a year and a, half with M. Andrews. Ennui and the desire to see his mother again caused him to leave the Stickney establishment. His mother came to join him at Arras. But later he returned to England and settled at Boston, intending to live by giving private lessons. But whether from lack of pupils or of introductions he did not suc- ceed, and sought for another school to which to attach himself. He was soon entered as " a professor of French " in an establish- ment directed by M. Remington at Bourne- mouth where several of the poems in numbered xiii. and xv. in the complete works. In 1878, having returned to France, he became professor in an ecclesiastical college at Rethel. Verlaine [comments M. Lepelletier] was, doubt- less, a rather unusual professor, and his lessons were certainly stamped by an originality and depth not to be found in those of either his pre- decessors or successors. It would be matter for astonishment if something from his teaching did not remain with his various pupils at Stickney, Bournemouth, and, more particularly, Rethel. Indeed, in 1897, the old boys of the College of Notre Dame organized a banquet in Paris in honour of their illustrious professor. On the menu was a bust of the poet sur- rounded by Fame, with the town of Rethel and its college detached in a nimbus of glory ; and at the conclusion of the banquet a eulogy on Verlaine was delivered by one of the organizers, M. Jean Bourguignon, of the Revue d'Ardenne et d'Argonne. Your present correspondent was one of the happy few who once heard Paul Ver- laine lecture at Mr. B. H. Blackwell's in Broad Street, Oxford. I cannot recollect the date, but suppose it was somewhere i must confess that the exiguous and in- j frequent " French " vouchsafed to public I school boys on " the classical side " in the i early eighties left me wholly unprepared of the poet's discourse. However, I knew something of his poems ; and the presence of Verlaine in the flesh, with " the Chinese " formation of the features so apparent in j his portraits, was an unforgettable ex- In 'The Poets' Corner' (1904) there is an admirable caricature by the incom- parable Max entitled : ' Paul Verlaine i (Usher in Private School at Bournemouth, Verlaine was a schoolmaster at Stickney shortly after his release from prison. He taught French, Latin and drawing, his only qualification for the post of drawing master being that he had some gift for caricature. He gave his lessons in English, ! of whicb he knew about as much as his pupils ! knew of French. His Head was a young map named Andrews, whom he described j as " charming, friendly, and very learned," pupils, for he said that they were " indus- ! trious," but he had only been a week at the I school when he wrote the letter from which ! these details are taken. He read enor- ! mously, and took long walks with the boys " through magnificent meadows, full of sheep," to the great benefit of his health. He remained at the school a year and a half and wrote no poetry. He must have liked Lincolnshire* for, after a visit to France, he returned to Boston, hoping for private pupils but getting none. So he accepted another I appointment in a school at Bournemouth. I In ' Sagesse ' is a poem called ' L'eclabousse- viously named ' Paysage en Lincolnshire.' Whom ought we to admire Veclaine, ' the conscientious scjioomaster, absorbed in I his duties, who wrote no poetry, or Ver- laine the drunkard, the debauchee, the i hopelessly disreputable person, who pro- ! duced such admirable verse ? T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. The Authors' Club, Whitehall Court, S.W.
 * Sagesse ' were written, in particular those
 * in the nineties of last century. But I
 * to cope with the intricacies and nuances
 * perience.
 * 1877-1878).' A. R. BAYLEY.
 * and he seems to have thought well of his
 * ment des haies,' which Verlaine Jiad pre-