Philosopher, Artist, Skeptic, Sage
The last of the sages, he Has been called. An old man in a grey dressing-gown and scarlet skullcap, with objects d’art, with his disciples about him, in his home on the Avenue du Bois, Anatole France expressed his opinions on life, people, literature, always with kindly irony, a gentle skepticism. It was thus that the people of France came to think of the author of Thais and The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard and The Red Lily and The Rotisserie of Queen Pédauque —a philosopher, an immortal symbol. Now, in the 80th year of his life, Anatole France is dead.
Jacques Anatole Thibault was born on the Quai Malaquais, brought up on the Quai Voltaire. “No one,” he wrote, “can be commonplace who has lived on the quais.” His father was a royalist, a bookseller, a devout Catholic. The father’s comrades in the guard of Charles X used to call him “le père France.” The name stuck to him and was inherited by the son who has made it famous.
With a book in one hand and a sword in the other, Anatole France served through the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; tried, aged 70, to enlist during the Great War. After the War, he was for a while a champion of communism, but later changed his mind.
At the time of the Dreyfus affair, France flung himself into the defense of the persecuted Jew with tremendous fervor, side by side with Emil Zola. Later, an Officer of the Legion of Honor, he hotly opposed the expulsion from that body of Victor Margueritte, author of La Garconne.
Shortly before his death, in order to encourage the old man, one of his physicians told him that there was nothing really the matter with him—he would be all right. “Then, said France with a feeble smile, “for goodness’ sake give me some sort of illness, so that it may end quicker!” Those were almost his last words.
His death marks the passing of one of the most dignified and distinguished figures in the world of letters. He was perhaps the best-known and most highly respected literary artist in the world at the time of his death. There is no one to take his place.
As Anatole France died, an audience at the Paris Opera was listening to the closing lines of a performance of Thais, France’s story set to Massenet’s music.
Dying as he did with the French Parliament not in session, M. France was not accorded a national funeral, though the simpler obsequies planned were to be paid for by the Government.