Poet Forgets

Excursion trains chugged merrily last week, to fair Assisi, where once St. Francis preached the joy of a holy life in poverty. There were some on the excursion trains last week who cared not a bean for the first Franciscan. But all were ardent Fascists who pilgrimaged to see the poet-hero of Fascismo, famed Gabriele D'Annunzio. ...

The occasion would be historic. Poet D'Annunzio, who retired last summer to a hermit's existence in his exotic home at Gardonne would emerge, journey to Assisi, and plant a tree in honor of St. Francis. Quel tableau! . . .

The excursioners assembled, waited shuffling and uncertain near the appointed spot on Monte Subasio for an entire day. Gabriele D'Annunzio, the willful, the perverse, simply did not appear. . . .

No doubt he had forgotten the appointment, a poet's privilege, just as he seems to have forgotten that originally he promised to emerge from retirement on All Saints Day (Nov. 1, 1926). Only news scriveners and such still remember. In the orchideous, inscrutably furnished house of Poet D'Annunzio at Gardonne the world is easily forgotten.

When he sleeps it is beneath a satin coverlet with a portrait of himself as a naked leper at the head of his bed. The very furniture is orchideous, inscrutable. There is a walled garden with very narrow gates, for Signor D'Annunzio hates fat men or women. Sometimes, so Gabriele D'Annunzio says, the shade of Franz Liszt enters and plays his certainly not mechanical piano until the poet is in an ecstasy. Sometimes, instead, come very charming women. Signorina Marie Melato, popular actress, was entertained at Gardonne while the pilgrims waited at Assisi last week, and later she accompanied Signor D'Annunzio to Trasimeno where they were the guests of the Marchioness Guglielmi.