Part 1

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Echo de Paris

Echo de Paris

BY

Laurence Housman

Author of “Angels and Ministers,” “Prunella,” “An Englishwoman’s Love-Letters,” Etc.

D. Appleton and Company New York [Illustration: Decoration] Mcmxxiv

Copyright, 1924, by D. Appleton and Company

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

In a book of political dialogues, published a year ago, I explained (perhaps unnecessarily) that they were entirely unauthentic—a personal interpretation, given in dramatic form, of certain minds and events that had gone to make history.

But the dialogue which here follows differs from those, in that it has a solid basis in fact, and that I myself was a participant in the conversation which, as here recorded, is but a free rendering of what was then actually said.

And if it would interest any of my readers to know where these paraphrases of memory stand nearest to fact, they will find them in those passages dealing with the writings of Carlyle, the Scotsman’s worship of success, and the theory of the complete life of the artist. Other references by the way were the bird with the Berkeleyan philosophy, and the novels of Mr. Benjamin Swift. The rest is my own development of the main theme, though it may well be that, here and there, I have remembered better than I know.

The scene, as regards its setting—the outside of a Paris restaurant—is true to history; and if, toward the end, a touch of drama has been introduced, the reader will understand that it is more symbolic than actual. The non-arriving guest, with the unreal name, did not, on that occasion, even begin to arrive. He was, nevertheless, a very real element in the tragic situation which I have tried to depict; and it is likely enough that there were more of his kind than one knew—that he was generic rather than individual.

My choice of initials to represent those who appear upon the scene—a convenient device for the better ordering of the printed page—was not made with any intention to disguise identity where that could be of interest; but it seemed better manners, in a scene where only one character really counted, to adopt the unobtrusive formula, except in speeches where the names occur naturally. The friendly “R.R.” is dead, and will be easily identified; the rest are still living. And though, for the most part, they were listeners not speakers, I have no reason for leaving them out of a scene which, after nearly twenty-five years, I remember so well.

My original intention was to include this dialogue in my book of _Dethronements_; but I was warned by a good authority that if I did so the interest of my commentators would be largely diverted from the political theme to the personal; there was also a certain objection to including in a set of purely imaginary dialogues another which was so largely founded on fact. I decided, therefore, to let this other “dethronement” stand alone in its first appearing, as different in kind from the rest.

But though different, my reason for writing it was precisely the same. It is, like those others, a record of failure; and failures interest me more, generally, than success. If I am asked why, my answer is that they seem to reveal human nature more truly, and, on the whole, more encouragingly, than anything else in the world. The way a man faces failure is the best proof of him. What he has done before matters little, or only in a minor degree, if as the outcome of all, in the grip of final and irretrievable ruin, he retains the stature of a man. That places him far more truly than the verdicts of juries, or the judgment of contemporary society. Sometimes he may prove his worth more surely by failure than by success, sometimes may only just manage to hold his ground; but if he is able to do that without complaint or greedy self-justification, and without speaking bitterly of those who have compassed his downfall, even so something stands to his credit, and there is a balance on the right side.

And so, the longer I live, the more do failures attract me, making me believe not less in human nature, but more. There are financial vulgarians of our own day whom, in prison, one might find lovable—and so be brought nearer to the great common heart which, with its large tolerance for ill-doers in their gambling day of success, has found them lovable even when they were at their worst. For it is not only Art which holds up the mirror to Nature, or reflects most flatteringly the coarsest of its features. The British public flourishes its mirror, with all the self-satisfaction of a barber displaying his own handicraft, before characters of a certain type; and a man may follow a thoroughly vicious career with great success, so long as he does it in a thoroughly British way. But what a pity that the mirror should cease from its obsequious civility just when its hero, overwhelmed in failure and disgrace, becomes so much more worthy of study and deserving of sympathy than ever before.

And here, I suppose, lies the great difference between the mirror of Art and the mirror of popular opinion: the mirror of Art is not broken in a tantrum when the object becomes less acceptable to the public gaze. But the public is shocked in its sense of decency when it finds it has been looking at itself under an alias, applauding its own sorry features in the mask of success. The mask falls away, and there, instead, are the quite ordinary features of a poor human criminal, very like all the rest of us, if only it could be known: no wonder, then, that the mirror gets broken. In the mirror there is no such break: the interest holds on.

And so, from the non-popular standpoint, I had sufficient reason for putting on record my last meeting with so conspicuous a failure as Oscar Wilde. Our previous acquaintance, except by correspondence, had been very slight. Only once before had I met him at a friend’s house. He was then at the height of his fame and success, and I an unknown beginner, still undecided whether to be book-illustrator or author. But I had recently published a short story, with illustrations of my own, in the _Universal Review_; and a few minutes after our introduction Mr. Wilde turned and, addressing me for the first time, said: “And when, pray, are we to have another work from your pen?”

Like most of his remarks, the enquiry was phrased with a certain decorative solemnity, in excess of what the occasion required; but the kindness and the courtesy of it were very real, and of course it pleased and encouraged me. I learned later that a certain descriptive phrase, “The smoke of their wood-fires lay upon the boughs, soft as the bloom upon a grape,” had attracted him in my story; he had quoted it as beautiful, adding that one day he should use it himself, and, sure enough, in _The Picture of Dorian Grey_, I came upon it not long afterwards, slightly altered; and again I was pleased and complimented; for it meant that he had really liked something in my story, and had not praised merely to please.

I did not see him again to speak to, until we met in Paris some seven years later, the year before his death.

Upon his release from prison I had sent him my recently published book, _All-Fellows: seven legends of lower Redemption_, hoping that its title and contents would say something on my behalf, which, in his particular case, I very much wished to convey. A fortnight later a courteous and appreciative letter reached me from the south of France, telling me incidentally that by the same post had come a copy of _A Shropshire Lad_, sent with the good wishes of the author, whom he had never met. “Thus you and your brother,” he wrote, “have given me a few moments of that rare thing called happiness.”

From that time on I sent him each of my books as they appeared, and received letters of beautifully ornate criticism; and as I passed through Paris on my way back from Italy in the autumn of 1899, we met once more in the company of friends.

My memory of him upon that occasion inclines me to believe that those are right who maintain that as a personality he was more considerable than as a writer. The brilliancy of conversation is doubtfully reproduced in the cold medium of print, and I may have wholly failed to convey the peculiar and arresting quality of what, by word of mouth, sounded so well. But the impression left upon me from that occasion is that Oscar Wilde was incomparably the most accomplished talker I had ever met. The smooth-flowing utterance, sedate and self-possessed, oracular in tone, whimsical in substance, carried on without halt, or hesitation, or change of word, with the quiet zest of a man perfect at the game, and conscious that, for the moment at least, he was back at his old form again: this, combined with the pleasure, infectious to his listeners, of finding himself once more in a group of friends whose view of his downfall was not the world’s view, made memorable to others besides myself a reunion more happily prolonged than this selected portion of it would indicate.

But what I admired most was the quiet, uncomplaining courage with which he accepted an ostracism against which, in his lifetime, there could be no appeal. To a man of his habits and temperament—conscious that the incentive to produce was gone with the popular applause which had been its recurrent stimulus—the outlook was utterly dark: life had already become a tomb. And it is as a “monologue d’outre tombe” that I recall his conversation that day; and whether it had any intrinsic value or no, it was at least a wonderful expression of that gift which he had for charming himself by charming others.

Among the many things he touched on that day (of which only a few disjointed sentences now remain to me), one note of enthusiasm I have always remembered, coming as it did so strangely from him, with his elaborate and artificial code of values, based mainly not on the beauty of human character, but on beauty of form—when, with a sudden warmth of word and tone, he praised Mrs. Gladstone for her greatness and gentleness of heart: “her beautiful and perfect charity” I think was the phrase he used, adding: “But then, she was always like that.”

None of us knew her; but from that day on, the warmth and humility of his praise left an impression upon my mind, which a reading of her life only two years ago came to confirm. Perhaps—I like to think that it was possible—an expression of her “beautiful and perfect charity” had come to him personally, so making her stand differently in his eyes from the rest of the world.

Echo de Paris

Echo de Paris

A Study from Life

_The echo is from as far back as the year 1899. It is late September. By the entrance of a café, on a street opening into the Place de l’Opera, three Englishmen sit waiting at a small table, relieved for the moment from the solicitations of the garçon anxious to serve them their aperitifs. It is all very well for the café to call itself the “Vieille Rose”: no doubt by gaslight it lives charmingly up to its name; but seen in the noonday’s glare, its interior upholsterings are unmistakably magenta. From the warm sunshade of its awning the street view is charming; and while one of the trio watches it benevolently with an accustomed eye, the other two, encountering Paris for the first time, find in its brisk movement the attraction of novelty. But it is a reversion to English habit which makes one of them presently look at his watch a little anxiously._

L.H. Is he generally so late as this?

R.R. Generally never as early.

L.H. You are sure you said the Café Vieille Rose?

R.R. (_with a disarming smile_). As well as I could, my dear L.H. I can’t say it quite like you.

L.H. I don’t pretend to talk French: hearing it spoken absorbs all my faculties.

R.R. Oh, but you should! They are so charming about it: they pretend to understand you.

L.H. Well, I did screw up courage to go to a French barber yesterday.

R.R. Ah! That explains it. I was wondering.

L.H. You might well. When I looked in the glass after he had finished me I saw myself no longer English, but Parisian.

R.R. (_enjoying himself_). No, L.H., no! Not Parisian, I assure you!—Alsatian.

L.H. No longer English was all that mattered: “tout à fait transformé,” as I managed to say to the man. And he—magnificently: “Mais oui, Monsieur, c’était bien necessaire!” Is that what you call French politeness?

R.R. Rather the “amour propre” of the artist, I should say.

L.H. In this nation of artists one gets too much of it.

H.A. There isn’t such a thing as a nation of artists. The French only appear so because they take a more transparent pride in themselves than we do. They haven’t yet discovered that modesty is the best vanity.

R.R. Is that your own, Herbie, or did you get it from Oscar yesterday?

H.A. No. I didn’t see him. I invented it as I got up this morning, meaning to let it occur as an impromptu. Now it’s gone.

R.R. Oh, no. Say it again, my dear boy, say it again! We shall all be charmed: so will he.

L.H. Look; there he is! Who’s with him?

R.R. Davray. I asked Davray to go and bring him, so as to make sure. You know him, don’t you? You like him?

L.H. A Frenchman who can talk English always goes to my heart.

R.R. Davray is Anglomaniac: he not only talks it, he thinks it: signs himself “Henry,” like an Englishman, and has read more of your books than I have.

L.H. One?

R.R. Don’t be bitter, L.H. I read them—in the reviews—regularly.

(_While they talk, a fiacre, disentangling itself from the traffic of the main thoroughfare, draws up at the newspaper-kiosk on the further side of the street, and discharges its occupants: one small, alert, and obviously a Frenchman; the other large and sedate, moving with a ponderous suavity, which gives him an air of importance, almost of dignity. But though he has still a presence, its magnificence has departed. Threading his way indolently across the traffic, his eye adventures toward the waiting group. Met by the studied cordiality of their greetings, his face brightens._)

R.R. Oscar, L.H. thinks you are late.

O.W. Thought I was going to be late, you mean, my dear Robbie. If I were, what matter? What are two minutes in three years of disintegrated lifetime? It is almost three years, is it not, since we missed seeing each other?

(_This studied mention of a tragic lapse of time is not quite as happy as it would like to be, being too deliberate an understatement. The tactful “Robbie” hastens to restore the triviality suitable to the occasion._)

R.R. Oscar, when did you learn to cross streets? I have just seen you do it for the first time. In London you used to take a cab.

O.W. No, Robbie, the cab used to take me. But here the French streets are so polite; one gets to the right side of them without knowing it. (_He turns to L.H._) How delightfully English of you to think that I was going to be late!

L.H. I thought you might have done as I am always doing—gone to the wrong place, or lost your way.

O.W. But that is impossible! In Paris one can lose one’s time most delightfully; but one can never lose one’s way.

H.A. With the Eiffel Tower as a guide, you mean?

O.W. Yes. Turn your back to that—you have all Paris before you. Look at it—Paris vanishes.

R.R. You might write a story about that, Oscar.

O.W. In natural history, Robbie, it has already been done. Travellers in South America tell of a bird which, if seen by you unawares, flies to hide itself. But if it has seen you first, then—by keeping its eye on you—it imagines that it remains invisible, and nothing will induce it to retreat. The bird-trappers catch it quite easily merely by advancing backwards. Now that, surely, is true philosophy. The bird, having once made you the object of its contemplation, has every right to think (as Bishop Berkeley did, I believe) that you have no independent existence. You are what you are—the bird says, and the Bishop says—merely because they have made you a subject of thought; if they did not think of you, you would not exist. And who knows?—they may be right. For, try as we may, we cannot get behind the appearance of things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances.

H.D. You English are always talking what you think is philosophy, when we should only call it theology.

O.W. How typical of the French mind is that word “only”! But what else, my dear Davray, was the thought of the eighteenth century, so far as it went, but an attempt to bring Religion and Philosophy together in the bonds of holy matrimony?

R.R. The misalliance which produced the French Revolution.

O.W. Robbie, you must not be so brilliant before meals! Or do you wish to divert my appetite? May a guest who was supposed to be late enquire—when, precisely?

R.R. The situation, my dear Oscar, is of your own making. You insisted upon ortolans; L.H. telegraphed for them; they have only just arrived.

O.W. If they are still in their feathers, let them fly again! A flight of ortolans across Paris: how romantic, how unexplainable!

H.A. Oh, no! Let’s wait for them, please! I want to taste one: I never have.

O.W. So young, and already so eager for disappointment! Why give up imagination? “Ortolan,” the word, is far more beautiful than when it is made flesh. If you were wise you would learn life only by inexperience. That is what makes it always unexpected and delightful. Never to realize—that is the true ideal.

L.H. Still, one goes on liking plovers’ eggs after eating them: at least, I do.

O.W. Ah, yes; an egg is always an adventure: it may be different. But you are right; there are a few things—like the Nocturnes of Chopin—which can repeat themselves without repetition. The genius of the artist preserves them from being ever quite realized. But it has to be done carelessly.

(_There is a pause, while L.H., with due enquiry of each, orders the aperitifs._)

R.R. Oscar, why did you choose the “Vieille Rose”?

O.W. Will you believe me, Robbie, when I say—to match my complexion? I have never before seen it by daylight. Is it not a perfect parable of life, that such depravity by gaslight should become charming? Will our host allow us to have white wine as a corrective? An additional red might be dangerous.

(_And with the colour-scheme of the approaching meal made safe, he continues to charm the ears of himself and of his listeners._)

I chose it also for another and a less selfish reason. It is here I once met a woman who was as charming as she was unfortunate, or as she would have been, but for the grace that was in her. To say that she was entirely without beauty is to put it mildly; but she accepted that gift of a blind God with so candid a benevolence, and cultivated it with so delicate an art, that it became a quality of distinction, almost of charm. She was the _belle amie_ of a friend of mine, whose pity she had changed to love. He brought me here to meet her, telling me of the rare reputation she had acquired in this city of beautiful misalliances, as being a woman of whom nobody could possibly say that she was merely plain. And here, upon this spot, in the first few moments of our meeting, she challenged me, in the most charming manner possible, for that which a woman so rarely seeks to know—the truth about herself. “Tell me, Monsieur,” she said—but no: it can only be told in French: “Dites moi, Monsieur, si je ne suis pas la femme la plus laide à Paris?” And for once in my life I was able to please a woman merely by telling her the truth; and I replied, “Mais, Madame, dans tout le monde!”

R.R. A poem, in six words! What did she say?

O.W. What could she say, Robbie? She was delighted. To that impossible question which she had the courage to ask I had given the only impossible answer. Upon that we became friends. How much I have wished since that we could have met again. For the unbeautiful to have so much grace as to become charming is a secret that is worth keeping; and one the keeping of which I should have liked to watch. I would not have asked to know it for myself, for then it would no more be a mystery; but—merely to see her keeping it. In Paris (where almost everything is beautiful), they were very happy together. Now they are gone to America; and in that country, from which all sense of beauty has flown, perhaps she is no longer able to keep, as a secret, that which there would be no eyes to interpret. When I was in America, I did not dare to tell America the truth; but I saw it clearly even then—that the discovery of America was the beginning of the death of Art. But not yet; no, not yet! Whistler left America in order to remain an artist, and Mr. Sargent to become one, I believe.... But now, tell me of England: who are the new writers I ought to be reading, but have not?

L.H. Isn’t to be told what you ought to like rather irritating?

O.W. But I did not say “like”; I said “read.” There are many things one ought to read which one is not bound to like: Byron, Wordsworth—even Henry James, if Robbie will allow me to say so. But tell me whom you yourself find interesting. I shall, at least, be interested to know why. I have already had two books—from you and your brother—which have interested me.

L.H. Like you, as regards my own, I should be interested to know why?

O.W. Yours interested me—shall I confess?—partly because a few years ago it would have interested me so much less. For at that time, believing that I had discovered—that, in a way, I represented the symbol of my age, I was only interested in myself. Now, in an age to which I do not belong, I find myself interested in others. Robbie, who is the most sincere of flatterers, would have me believe that in this transfer of interest I am making a poor exchange. I am not sure. Till recently, absorbed in myself, I might have missed that new strange writer of things impossible in life, who writes under the name of Benjamin Swift. Ought I to have done so? His style has the gleam of a frozen fire. He writes like a sea-pirate driven by contrary winds to a vain search for tropical forests at the North Pole. Why does he look at life only in profile, as though, met face to face, it might mean death to him? Is he as mysterious, as unaccountable to himself, as he seems to others?

L.H. I don’t know whether the fact that he is a well-to-do Scotsman, who finished his education at a German university, can be said to account for him. We have met, and I find him interesting. He reminds me, somehow, of a lion turned hermit, wearing a hair-shirt, and roaring into it to frighten out the fleas. In other words, he is full of contradictions, and revels in them even while they torment him.

O.W. A Scotsman? That explains everything. For a man to be both a genius and a Scotsman is the very stage for tragedy. He apparently perceives it. Generally they are unaware of it.

R.R. My dear Oscar, why cannot a Scotsman be a genius as comfortably as anyone else?

O.W. I ought to have said “artist”: I meant artist. It is much easier for a Scotsman to be a genius than to be an artist. Mr. Gladstone, I believe, claimed to be a Scotsman whenever he stood for a Scottish constituency or spoke to a Scottish audience. The butter-Scotch flavour of it makes me believe it was true. There was no art in that; and yet how truly typical! It was always so successful....