At Mallarme's, the Tuesday evenings were replete
with poetry. Some young poets, there not by chance,
had the intention and hope to obtain one glance
at his daughter Genevieve's swift, white-stockinged feet.
Starward
[jlc]
Author's Notes/Comments:
I cannot now cite the source (and will gladly do so, if someone will tell me) of this anecdote, which I read at college in the late spring, 1979. On Tuesday evening's, the great French Poet, Mallarme, held "open house" for discussions of poetry. This was attended by some of the great names in French literature (both of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Mallarme's daughter, Genevieve, was exquisitely beautiful (and the single picture I have found proves that). One poet, the source I cannot cite, mentioned that, late into the evenings, Genevieve would serve coffee to the guests---almost gliding through the parlor, her stockinged feet not easily glimpsed in the low light and beneath her skirt's long hem, but certainly worth the effort to see. The poet, and I now believe it was Paul Claudel (later in life, France's ambassador to the United States), did not record the brand or flavor of the coffee, nor the subject under discussion among all those poets in Mallarme's invited circle, but he certainly had a very good impression of Genevieve Mallarme's stockinged feet. And for that I applaud him.
