Henri de Régnier is still a comparatively young man ; although perhaps I should qualify that, as poetry seems to be, for some strange reason, a young man’s job, and say that he is only on the edge of middle age, having just passed his fifty-firts birthday. For Henri-François-Joseph de Régnier was born on the twenty-eight of December, 1864.

The Régniers are an old aristocratic family, and Henri de Régnier is the product of a race, if ever a man was. The lives and exploits of his ancestors seem like a page out of one of his own seventeenth century novels. And the polish and reserve which characterize all jis books have as certainly descended to him, as has his cold and somewhat haughty expression, and his exceedingly delicate features. In 1585, a certain Crespin de Régnier was a Seigneur of Vigneux in Thiérache, and as captain of a company of fifty men-at-arms, he served under the Duc of Bouillon and Marshal de Balagny in the wars of the Ligue. In 1589, this gentleman married Yolaine de Fay d’Athies, a daughter of Charles de Fay d’Athies, one of the Hundred Gentlemen of the King’s Household. The grandson of Crespin, Charles de Régnier, also had the title, and seems beside to have been an equerry at the Court. In the eighteenth century, François de Régnier was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Regiment of Touraine, and Brigadier in the King’s army, and a Chevalier of Saint Louis. (Le Bon Plaisir, one of Henri de Régnier’s novels, which deals with this period, is dedicated to him.) In the eighteenth century also, there is a Gabriel-François de Régnier, who was Brigadier of Light Horse ine the King’s Guard ; and his son, François de Régnier, who was Captain in the Regiment of Royal Dragoons. Both these men were Chevaliers of Saint Louis. When the Revolution came, François de Régnier emigrated and served in the Army of the Princes. His son (the grandfather of the poet) returned to France in 1820, and was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The poet’s father, Henri-Charles de Régnier, held various posts under the government, among others Inspector of Customs at Honfleur, and Receiver at Paris ; and (and this is an odd thing) he was the boyhood companion of Gustave Flaubert.

On his mother’s side, Henri de Régnier’s lineage is no less distinguished, his mother being descended from a certain Yves de Bard, who lived in the sixteenth century. The great-grandson of this Yves de Bard married, in 1662, Marie de Saumaise de Chassans, who was great-grandniece of a celebrated savant, Claude de Saumaise, and of Charlotte de Saumaise, who became Comtesse de Brégy, and was lady-in-waiting to Anne of Austria. This lady, although only a many-times-granddaunt of Henri de Régnier, seems to have counted for something in his inheritance, as she wrote « Letters » and « Poems », and was a précieuse of distinction. The De Bard family continued, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, accruing to themselves lands and surnames, and the great-great-grandfather of the poet, Bénigne du Bard de Chassans, was a Counsellor of the Parliament of Dijon.

I have dwelt so long upon these fatiguing genealogical details, because no one can really understand Henri de Régnier out of his frame – that frame of noble, honourable, virile, cultivated soldiers, courtiers, and gentlemen, which surrounds him on all sides, and which he, himself, seems to be so atavistically conscious of. One of his novels, Le Passé Vivant, deals with the strong, almost terrible, impulsion of the past. And objective as all Henri de Régnier’s work is, I cannot help thinking that in Le Passé Vivant we have an acknowledment of a condition of which he is perfectly conscious in himself, although, of course, in a lesser degree than he portrayed it in his characters. But it is not only in Le Passé Vivant that we feel the importunateness of the Past ; it vibrates like a muffled organpoint through all his work.

Yet I must be careful not to give the impression that Régnier is merely the result and echo of dead generations. So many people are that ; and here, in America, in spite of the generations being still so few, we see it eating through the present like a disease. This old French, decadent aristocracy, as we are wont to consider it, seems to maintain itself with extraordinary ease and success. After four hundred years, not of steady rising, but (much more difficult problem) continued arisen, this family has produced one of the greatest poets and novelists which its country has known. Seven volumes of poetry, fifteen volumes of novels and stories (and all, mind you, works of the very firts rank), one play, and three volumes of essays, is his tally up to date. And the man is only fifty-one ! Why ! No stevedore could work so hard ! It is colossal. And this man is a scion of an old aristocratic family !

Until he was seven years old, Henri de Régnier lived at Honfleur. In one of his stories, Le Trèfle Blanc, he has given some of his early recollections. « This time of my life, » he says, « has remained singularly present to my memory, and I feel it still in a quite particular way. It is as though it were in suspense within me, and forms an indissoluble whole. » He remembers the minutest details. For instance, he went with his mother to stay with his grandfather who was dying. Being left much to himself, he wandered about and initiated himself into all the mysteries of the old house. He tells of « the walls scaling ; » of « the building of the canvas of an old portrait, the cracks in the console, a sliver of the parquet floor which gave under the foot, all the imperceptible nothings which I have never forgotten, all the noises of life and silence to which I was attentive. »

In 1871, Henri-Charles de Régnier, the poet’s father, was appointed Receiver at Paris. And the family moved there. Three years later, in 1874, Henri entered the Collège Stanislas, and seems to have written his first poem in 1879. Fifteen years old is not young to attempt writing, and we may feel at ease in the knowledge that Régnier was not an infant phenomenon. There is a tale that one of his professors, catching him writing a poem, at once confiscated it. Schoolmasters would seem to be the same brilliant, sympathetic lot all over the world. But, thank Heaven, our minds do get fed somehow, in spite of the schools. In Régnier’s case, there were the quais, with their rows of green boxes full of books – delightful, heterogeneous masses of books, classified only by their state of dilapidation. Trees blowing, blue river, spots of bright sunshine, and books ! Going to school and coming back, Régnier read them, any of them, any of them that happened. There was a reading-room in the rue de Sèvres where he went also, and again read everything : Hugo, Musset, Flaubert, the tragedies of the eighteenth century, and Voltaire’s plays. He says now that in those days he liked bad poetry better than good, and perhaps he did. But all nourished him, and helped him over that most dangerous period for a possible writer – his school-days.

Amy Lowell, Six French Poets – Studies in contemporary literature, [1915], New York, The Macmillan Company, 1920, p. 150-155.

[Malgré les complots et les intrigues, les vieilles bicyclettes exhumées et les mauvais abbés, Son Éminence le Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Préfet de la Congregatio de causis sanctorum au Vatican, annoncera dès le prochain épisode la béatification de notre Serviteur de Dieu, plein de mansuétude : Monsieur V. G.]

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