He took me one morning to Low Mass at Notre Dame des Victoires. I had never attended a Low Mass before in my life. It impressed me greatly. I had imagined Catholic services were always long, complicated, and overlaid with ritual. A Low Mass, I found, was short, extremely simple, and somehow or other made me think of the catacombs and the meetings of the Early Christians. One felt one was looking on at something extremely ancient. The behaviour of the congregation, and the expression on their faces impressed me too. To them it was evidently real.
We worked together at some poems I had written, and Reggie arranged to have a small pamphlet of them privately printed for me, at the Cambridge University Press, which was done that Christmas.
When we got back to London, he sent me this epitaph, which is translated from the Latin, and is to be found at Rome in the Church of St. John Lateran, the date being about 1600:
“Ci-gît Robert Pechom, anglais, catholique, qui après la rupture de l’Angleterre avec l’église, a quitté l’Angleterre ne pouvant y vivre sans la foi et qui, venu à Rome y est mort ne pouvant y vivre sans patrie.”
The next year saw the opening of the Exhibition. On the 17th of March, I went with Reggie Lister to the first night of _L’Aiglon_. It was a momentous first night. All the most notable people in the literary and social world of Paris were there: Anatole France, Jules Lemaître, Halévy, Sardou, Robert de Montesquiou, Albert Vandal, Henry Houssaye, Paul Hervieu, Coquelin, Madame Greffuhle. The excitement was tense. Sarah had a tremendous reception. When she spoke the line, which occurs in the first scene, “Je n’aime pas beaucoup que la France soit neutre,” there was a roar of applause, but this, one felt, was political rather than artistic enthusiasm. The first quiet dialogue between the Duke and the courtiers held the audience, and we felt that Sarah’s calm and biting irony portended great reserves held in store, and when the scene of the history lesson followed, which Sarah played with an increasing accelerando and crescendo, and when she came to the lines:
“Il suit l’ennemi; sent qu’il l’a dans la main; Un soir il dit au camp: ‘Demain!’ Le lendemain, Il dit en galopant sur le front de bandière: ‘Soldats, il faut finir par un coup de tonnerre!’ Il va, tachant de gris l’état-major vermeil; L’armée est une mer; il attend le soleil; Il le voit se lever du haut d’un promontoire; Et, d’un sourire, il met ce soleil dans l’histoire!”[8]