December 6, 1017 
LAND & WATER 
iM!a\aii trade Intwcen Sudan and Hgypi, and then, 
tlirougJi the building of a branch to tiio Red Sea and the 
cieation of a modern ^x)rt, a new gatewa\' between Sudan 
and the outer world was opened up, and traffic was still 
furtlier increased. Wiodes' " Cape-to-Cairo " was beginning 
to realise his dream of " picking up business all the way." 
The building of a great bridge across tlie Bliie Nile a( 
Kiiartoum made ix)ssible the continuation of the trunk line 
Capeward to Wad Medani and Sennar. from which latter jwint 
a 250-mile branch line was opened shortly before the out- 
break of the war to El Obeid, the capital of the province ol 
Kordofan. Even this latest ^00 miles of line was expected, 
in the language of the General Manager, to " justify itself on 
comincrci^il grounds independently of the very important 
strategic considerations which demanded its construction." 
The Sudan .system had just over a thousand miles of line 
in iqo6, and nearly twice that lengtli in iQii, while something 
over 200 miles a year were afided from tlie latter date up to 
th(^ beginning of the war. At that time projected extensions 
were to o])en up the country to the east of the Blue Nile by 
a line from Sennar to the Red Sea, link up tlie Takkar Delta 
with a line from Port Sudan to Suakini. and push tlic mam 
trunk on south toward U.ganda and the beckoning finger of 
the " north-bound " extension of the " Cape-to-Cairo " beyortd 
Lake Tanganyika. 
The Sudanese programme called for carrying the rail-head 
to Gondokoro, just over the border of Uganda, as rapidly 
as possible. Uganda was then to take up construction, 
probably building the main line to l.ake Albert^ with a 
branch to the outlet of ^'ict(Jria Xyanza. where connection 
coulfl be established with the railway from ^Mombasa. The 
main trunk from Victoria -syanza or Lake Albert may take 
any of several routes, but tjiis will hardly bo decided upon 
until the war, with the re-delimitation of African frontiers 
whicli must follow it, has been fought to a finish. The direct 
and natural route for the line is the one Rhodes originally had 
in mind through what was tlien German East Africa. It is 
devoutl\- to be wished that nothing may occur which will 
render it necessary to follow any other. If that hope is full- 
filled one may ultimately look forward to " seeing red " 
from the windows of the Cape-to-Cairo express throughout the 
whole 0.000 miles of its run. 
Auguste Rodin 
By Arthur Symons 
1. 
IMl-T Auguste Rodin in Paris, 1S2 rue dc I'Universite, 
ill .Ahiy, i>S02. The last time that I saw him was at a 
dinner given in Old Burlington Street in IQ07. No one 
who has seen him can ever forget his singular appearance. 
There before me stood a giant of genius, with the timidit\' of 
the colossus ; \nth a face in which strength struggled with 
passion ; with veiled blue eyes that dilafed like the eves of a 
parrot when he spoke of anything that interested him'deeply. 
He made few gestures ; only when he sat, with his great 
hands folded on his knees, the gestures he made were for a 
purpose, never for an effect. I was struck by liis quietness, 
his simplicity, a certain caution which comes from a suspicion 
that he is not being taken simply enough. When he talked 
of books or of his art or of nature there was always the same 
frcshne.s,s and profundity. 
It was in Meiidon, in IQ03, that Rodin spoke to me about 
Gustave Moreau. He said Moieau was a man of sci(;nce, one 
of a generation which was taught tii study art in the galleries, 
and not from nature. He was a great combiner. He took 
colour from Delacroix, his figures from the antique. He 
was not a genius, not a creator, not the great artist some' have 
called him, but he belongs to the second rank. His greatest 
defect was that the figures which should be the principal part 
of the composition were uninteresting ; the detail and the 
surroundings took up most of his interest. II etait froid an 
/and, said Rodin. u 
He spoke to me of Stephane MallarmiS^s conversation and 
his way of writing — full of foreshortening — "many people 
don't understand foreshortening." Ccrtainlv Niallarme, 
whom I met later, used in his later work this artistic heresv. 
Imagine his poem written down, at least composed. With 
this most writers would be content, but with Mallaime the 
work has only begun. He works ()\er it, word Iw word, 
changing a word here, for its colour, which is not precisely the 
colour required, a word there, for the break it makes in the 
music. A new image occurs to him. rarer, subtler than the 
one he has used ; the image is transferred. By the time the 
poem has reached, as it seems to him, a flawless unity, the 
steps of the progress have been only toy effeCtuallv effaced ; 
and while the poet, who has seen the unitx- from the beginning, 
still sees the relation of point to point, the reader, who comes 
to it only in its linal stage, finds himself in a not unnatural 
bewilderment. Pursue this manner of writing to its ultimate 
devclopm<:nt ; start with an enigma, and then withdraw 
the key of the enigma ; and you arri\-e, easilv. at the frozen 
impenetrability of those lates't sonnets in which the absence 
of all punctuation is scarcely a recognisable hindrance. 
He spoke to me also of mmlern dress : what coukf be done 
with it? It all depends on the suggestion of the nude under- 
neath the clothes. The beauty of woman's costume is. that 
the woman is underneath, auff lends it some of her life. It 
makes him sad to see iild clothes hanging in shop-windows — 
tiiey seem so empty of life, waiting to become alive. He spoke 
of the way in which the nude is suggested here, simplified In- 
some fine sweep. He has not done it because he has been 
yngaged in other work and so has had no time even to attempt 
it. it can ne\er be as great as the nude, but the eighteenth 
' I nluiy lia<l shown that it can be delightful. 
Wh'ii 1 first saw iiini he saifl to ni'- th.if bis mi ivt consi-^teA 
in exaggeration : that in this wa\- he gets his effects without 
anv of the hardness of other sculptors. As he showed me his 
mysterious little .^tatue — the man kneeling so strangely in 
adoration before the woman in whom is imaged the spliin.x 
and the child— he said tQ me : " Tell me what it means — 
what is yovir impression ? 
" I.e mystere de Vamour," I said. 
I saw the Danaid slightly enlarged, with its wonderful flesh, 
the palpitation of the very dimples. Certainly' no one but 
Uodin has been so tender with women in his exquisite crea- 
tions ; none has ever caught so much of the eternal feminine 
as this sculptor of Hell. I saw the bust of Puvis de Chevanne, 
in marble, wonderfully modelled : the lines of the neck coming 
out like real tlesli, the modelling of the ear, the lines of the face. 
Vet in so wonderful a poise of the head one saw the ability of 
the expression of nullity : the look of a man who goes through 
a crowd and sees nothing. 
When one has realised what is called the colouring vi his 
statues, in a sense like that of painting, the iimning employ- 
ment of shadows, the massing, the conception that begins 
them, the achievement that ends them, one sees little enough 
of the infinite secrets of this man of genius. Let me choose, 
for instance, the exquisitely enlaced couple where a youth and 
a maiden are clas{)ed in a virginal embrace — the shadow of 
the hair falling along his cheeks — with so lovely and discreet 
a shadow, when the lips press the hair of the maiden ; her 
face is blqjted out under his cheek : one sees it. lost in ecstasy, 
behind. .\nd in these who Ho in a space of small rock, one 
sees the exquisite purity of the flesh, the daring of the pose, 
foot pressed amorously on fpot : the verv* down of the flesh. 
Rodin told me that the inspiration for La Porte de I'Enfcr 
came to him in 1875. When I saw it it covered the entire 
space of one vast wall ; there was the great door, and on 
either side of the door climbed up and down tormented 
creatures, climbed and ciawled and coile4 : all one headlong 
flight and falling, in which all the agonies of a place of tor- 
ment, wliich is Baudelaire's rather than Dante's, swarm in 
actual movement. Fi'mmes damnccR lean upward and dovvn- 
. ward out of hollow caves and mountainous crags, they chug 
to the edg(? of the world, oft which their feet slip, they em- 
brace blindly over a precipice, they roll together into bottom- 
less pits of descent. And all this sorrowful flesh is consumed 
with desire, with the hurrying fever of those who have only 
a short time in which to enjoy the fruits of desire. Their 
mouths open towards one another in an endless longing, all 
their muscles strain \'iolently towards the embrace. They 
live only with a life of desire, and that obsession -has carried 
them beyond the wholesome beauty of nature into the 
\ioIence of a per\ersity which is at times almost insane. 
I.c Pcnseiir is seated in an air of meditation in the middle of 
the frieze. On one side of it a Dance of Death ; a skeleton, 
a ^henad, with lifted throats and hands ; figures shameless 
and hilarious, dancing, lying on the ground, lifted on one 
another's shoulders. Some writhe in agony, move tumul- 
tuouslj', swarm round the Thinker. Below are larger groups. 
Here is one figure falling backwards— a great figiire of a man 
—who falls right out of the composition, beyond the line of the 
frieze. A winged figure falls horribly ; creatures creep out 
of ho'les, climb rocks, grovel, mount and descend in an agon\' 
of useless effort. ,\ desperately faced woman flings hetsoll 
on the body of her lover, as if to guard or save or help liini. 
