Chapter 27
Is it only on account of their pretty manners that my titled friends are such favorites with these highly intellectual guests of mine--and with me? If so, then pretty manners should come before everything else in the world, and be taught instead of Latin and Greek.
But if it's only because they're noble lords, then I'm beginning to think with Mr. Labouchere that it's high time the Upper House were abolished, and its denizens wafted into space, since they make such snobs of us all--including your humble servant, of course, who at least is not quite so snobbish as to know himself for a damned snob and pretend he isn't one.
Anyhow, I'm glad my life has been such a success. But would I live it all over again? Even the best of it? The "forty year"?
Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly not.
I have only met two men of my own age who would live their lives over again. They both cared more for their meals than for anything else in the world--and they have always had four of these every day; sometimes even five! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree with them! affaire d'estomac! They simply want to eat all those meals once more. They lived to feed, and to refeed would re-live!
My meals have never disagreed with me either--but I have always found them monotonous; they have always been so simple and so regular when I've had the ordering of them! Fried soles, chops or steaks, and that sort of thing, and a pint of lager-beer--no wine for me, thank you; I sell it--and all this just to serve as a mere foundation for a smoke--and a chat with Barty, if possible!
Hardly ever an ache or a pain, and I wouldn't live it all over again! yet I hope to live another twenty years, if only to take Leah's unborn great-grandchildren to the dentist's, and tip them at school, and treat them to the pantomime and Madame Tussaud's, as I did their mothers and grandmothers before them--or their fathers and grandfathers.
This seems rather inconsistent! For would I care, twenty years hence, to re-live these coming twenty years? Evidently not--it's out of the question.
So why don't I give up at once? I know how to do it, without pain, without scandal, without even invalidating my life-insurance, about which I don't care a rap!
Why don't I? why don't _you_, O middle-aged reader--with all the infirmities of age before you and all the pleasures of youth behind? Anyhow, we don't, either you or I--and so there's an end on't.
O Pandora! I have promised myself that I would take a great-grandchild of Barty's on a flying-machine from Marsfield to London and back in half an hour--and that great-grandchild can't well be born for several years--perhaps not for another twenty!
And now, gentle reader, I've had my little say, and I'm a good deal better, thanks, and I'll try not to talk about myself any more.
Except just to mention that in the summer of 1876 I contested East Rosherville in the Conservative interest and was successful--and owed my success to the canvassing of Barty and Leah, who had no politics of their own whatever, and would have canvassed for me just as conscientiously if I'd been a Radical, probably more so! For if Barty had permitted himself any politics at all, he would have been a red-hot Radical, I fear--and his wife would have followed suit. And so, perhaps, would I!
Part Tenth
"Je suis alle de bon matin Cueillir la violette, Et l'aubepine, et le jasmin, Pour celebrer ta fete. J'ai lie de ma propre main Bouton de rose et romarin Pour couronner ta blonde tete.
"Mais de ta royale beaute Sois humble, je te prie. Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'ete, La jeunesse et la vie: Bientot, bientot ce jour sera, Ma belle, ou l'on te portera Dans un linceul, pale et fletrie."
--A _Favorite Song of_ Mary Trevor's.
That was a pleasant summer.
First of all we went to Ste. Adresse, a suburb of Havre, where there is very good bathing--with rafts, _perissoires_, _pique-tetes_ to dive from--all those aquatic delights the French are so clever at inventing, and which make a "station balneaire" so much more amusing than a mere British watering-place.
We made a large party and bathed together every morning; and Barty and I taught the young ones to dive and do "la coupe" in the true orthodox form, with that free horizontal sweep of each alternate arm that gives it such distinction.
It was very good fun to see those rosy boys and girls taking their "hussardes" neatly without a splash from the little platform at the top of the pole, and solemnly performing "la coupe" in the wake of their papa; one on his back. Right out to sea they went, I bringing up the rear--and the faithful Jean-Baptiste in attendance with his boat, and Leah inside it--her anxious eyes on the stretch to count those curly heads again and again. She was a good mathematician, and the tale always came right in the end; and home was reached at last, and no one a bit the worse for a good long swim in those well-aired, sunlit waves.
Once we went on the top of the diligence to Etretat for the day, and there we talked of poor Bonzig and his first and last dip in the sea; and did "la coupe" in the waters that had been so fatal to him, poor fellow!
Then we went by the steamer _Jean Bart_ to Trouville and Deauville, and up the Seine in a steam-launch to Rouen.
In the afternoons and evenings we took long country walks and caught moths, or went to Havre by tramway and cleared out all the pastry-cooks in the Rue de Paris, and watched the transatlantic steamers, out or home, from that gay pier which so happily combines business with pleasure--utile dulci, as Pere Brossard would have said--and walked home by the charming Cote d'Ingouville, sacred to the memory of Modeste Mignon.
And then, a little later on, I was a good Uncle Bob, and took the whole party to Auteuil, near Paris, and hired two lordly mansions next door to each other in the Villa Montmorency, and turned their gardens into one.
Altogether, with the Scatcherds and ourselves, eight children, governesses, nurses, and other servants, and dogs and the smaller animals, we were a very large party, and a very lively one. I like this sort of thing better than anything else in the world.
I hired carriages and horses galore, and for six weeks we made ourselves thoroughly comfortable and at home in Paris and around.
That was the happiest holiday I ever had since the vacation Barty and I spent at the Lafertes' in the Gue des Aulnes when we were school-boys.
And such was our love for the sport he called "_la chasse aux souvenirs_" that one day we actually went there, travelling by train to La Tremblaye, where we spent the night.
It was a sad disenchantment!
The old Lafertes were dead, the young ones had left that part of the country; and the house and what remained of the gardens now belonged to another family, and had become formal and mean and business-like in aspect, and much reduced in size.
Much of the outskirts of the forest had been cleared and was being cleared still, and cheap little houses run up for workmen; an immense and evil-smelling factory with a tall chimney had replaced the old home-farm, and was connected by a single line of rails with the station of La Tremblaye. The clear, pellucid stream where we used to catch crayfish had been canalized--"s'est encanaille," as Barty called it--its waters fouled by barge traffic and all kinds of horrors.
We soon found the haunted pond that Barty was so fond of--but quite in the open, close to an enormous brick-field, and only half full; and with all its trees cut down, including the tree on which they had hanged the gay young Viscount who had behaved so badly to Seraphine Doucet, and on which Seraphine Doucet afterwards hanged herself in remorse.
No more friendly charcoal-burners, no more wolves or boars or cerfs--dix-cors; and as for were-wolves, the very memory of them had died out.
There seems no greater desecration to me than cutting down an old and well-remembered French forest I have loved; and solving all its mystery, and laying bare the nakedness of the land in a way so brutal and expeditious and unexpected. It reminds one of the manner in which French market-women will pluck a goose before it's quite dead; you bristle with indignation to see it, but you mustn't interfere.
La Tremblaye itself had become a flourishing manufacturing town, and to our jaundiced and disillusioned eyes everybody and everything was as ugly as could be--and I can't say we made much of a bag in the way of souvenirs.
We were told that young Laferte was a barrister at Angers, prosperous and married. We deliberated whether we would hunt him up and talk of old times. Then we reflected how curiously cold and inhospitable Frenchmen can sometimes be to old English friends in circumstances like these--and how little they care to talk of old times and all that, unless it's the Englishman who plays the host.
Ask a quite ordinary Frenchman to come and dine with you in London, and see what a genial and charming person he can be--what a quick bosom friend, and with what a glib and silver tongue to praise the warmth of your British welcome.
Then go and call on him when you find yourself in Paris--and you will soon learn to leave quite ordinary Frenchmen alone, on their own side of the Channel.
Happily, there are exceptions to this rule!
Thus the sweet Laferte remembrance, which had so often come back to me in my dreams, was forever spoiled by this unlucky trip.
It had turned that leaf from the tablets of my memory into a kind of palimpsest, so that I could no longer quite make out the old handwriting for the new, which would not be obliterated, and these were confused lines it was hard to read between--with all my skill!
Altogether we were uncommonly glad to get back to the Villa Montmorency--from the distorted shadows of a nightmare to happy reality.
There, all was fresh and delightful; as boys we had often seen the outside walls of that fine property which had come to the speculative builder at last, but never a glimpse within; so that there was no desecration for us in the modern laying out of that beautiful double garden of ours, whatever there might have been for such ghosts of Montmorencys as chose to revisit the glimpses of the moon.
We haunted Auteuil, Passy, Point du Jour, Suresnes, Courbevoie, Neuilly, Meudon--all the familiar places. Especially we often haunted the neighborhood of the rond point de l'Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.
One afternoon, as he and I and Leah and Ida were driving round what once was our old school, we stopped in the lane not far from the porte-cochere, and Barty stood up on the box and tried to look over the wall.
Presently, from the grand stone loge which had replaced Jaurion's den, a nice old concierge came out and asked if we desired anything. We told him how once we had been at school on that very spot, and were trying to make out the old trees that had served as bases in "la balle au camp," and that if we really desired anything just then it was that we might become school-boys once more!
"Ah, ma foi! je comprends ca, messieurs--moi aussi, j'ai ete ecolier, et j'aimais bien la balle au camp," said the good old man, who had been a soldier.
He informed us the family were away, but that if we liked to come inside and see the garden he was sure his master would have no objection. We jumped at this kind offer and spent quite an hour there, and if I were Barty I could so describe the emotions of that hour that the reader would feel quite as tearfully grateful to me as to Barty Josselin for Chapters III. and IV. in _Le Fil de la Vierge_, which are really founded, _mutatis mutandis_, on this self-same little adventure of ours.
Nothing remained of our old school--not even the outer walls; nothing but the big trees and the absolute ground they grew out of. Beautiful lawns, flower-beds, conservatories, summer-houses, ferns, and evergreen shrubs made the place seem even larger than it had once been--the very reverse of what usually happens--and softened for us the disenchantment of the change.
Here, at least, was no desecration of a hallowed spot. When the past has been dead and buried a long while ago there is no sweeter decking for its grave than a rich autumn tangle, all yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp moss to keep up the illusion of spring and summer all the year round.
Much to the amusement of the old concierge and his wife, Barty insisted on climbing into a huge horse-chestnut tree, in which was a natural seat, very high up, where, well hidden by the dense foliage, he and I used to color pipes for boys who couldn't smoke without feeling sick.
Nothing would suit him now but that he must smoke a pipe there while we talked to the good old couple below.
"Moi aussi, je fumais quand c'etait defendu; que voulez-vous? Il faut bien que jeunesse se passe, n'est ce pas?" said the old soldier.
"Ah, dame!" said his old wife, and sighed.
Every tree in this enchanted place had its history--every corner, every square yard of soil. I will not inflict these histories on the reader; I will restrain myself with all my might, and merely state that just as the old school had been replaced by this noble dwelling the noble dwelling itself has now been replaced, trees and garden and all, by a stately palace many stories high, which rears itself among so many other stately palaces that I can't even identify the spot where once stood the Institution F. Brossard!
Later, Barty made me solemnly pledge my word that if he and Leah should pre-decease me I would see to their due cremating and the final mingling of their ashes; that a portion of these--say half--should be set apart to be scattered on French soil, in places he would indicate in his will, and that the lion's share of that half should be sprinkled over the ground that once was our play-ground, with--or without--the legitimate owner's permission.
(Alas! and ah me! These instructions would have been carried out to the letter but that the place itself is no more; and, with a conviction that I should be merely acting just as they would have wished, I took it on myself to mingle with their ashes those of a very sweet and darling child of theirs, dearer to them and to me and to us all than any creature ever born into this cruel universe; and I scattered a portion of these precious remains to the four winds, close by the old spot we so loved.)
* * * * *
Yes, that was a memorable holiday; the charming fete de St. Cloud was in full swing--it was delightful to haunt it once more with those dear young people so little dreamt of when Barty and I first got into scrapes there, and were duly punished by Latin verbs to conjugate in our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.
Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de Boulogne for the little "Mare aux Biches," where his father had fallen under the sword of Lieutenant Rondelys; but we never managed to find it: perhaps it had evaporated; perhaps the does had drunk it all up, before they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German invader--or inside him; for he was fond of French venison, as well as of French clocks! He was a most omnivorous person.
Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we relieved ourselves at last of that long homesickness of years, and could almost believe we were boys again, as we dived into such old and well-remembered streets as yet remained.
There were still some slums we had loved; one or two of them exist even now. Only the other day I saw the Rue de Clery, the Rue de la Lune, the Rue de la Montagne--all three on the south side of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle: they are still terrible to look at from the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight--the houses so tall, so irregular, the streets so narrow and winding and black. They seemed to us boys terrible, indeed, between eight and nine on a winter's evening, with just a lamp here and there to make their darkness visible. Whither they led I can't say; we never dared explore their obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have ended in the _cour des miracles_ for all we knew--it was nearly fifty years ago--and they may be quite virtuous abodes of poverty to-day; but they seemed to us then strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of long winter nights. Evidently, to us in those days, whoever should lose himself there would never see daylight again; so we loved to visit them after dark, with our hearts in our mouths, before going back to school.
We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures--dingy moths, silent but ominous night-jars, forlorn women of the town--ill-favored and ill-dressed, some of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks looking for a situation.
They never spoke to us, and seemed to be often brutally repulsed by whatever men they did speak to--mostly men in blouses.
"O dis-donc, _Hor_tense! qu'y _fait_ froid! quand donc qu'y s'ra _onze_ heures, q'nous allions nous _cou_cher?"
So said one of them to another one cold, drizzly night, in a raucous voice, with low intonations of the gutter. The dimly felt horror and despair and pathos of it sent us away shivering to our Passy omnibus as fast as our legs could carry us.
That phrase has stuck in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now--they need walk those evil streets no more....
When we had exhausted it all, and we felt homesick for England again, it was good to get back to Marsfield, high up over the Thames--so beautiful in its rich October colors which the river reflected--with its old trees that grew down to the water's edge, and brooded by the boat-house there in the mellow sunshine.
And then again when it became cold and dreary, at Christmas-time there was my big house at Lancaster Gate, where Josselins were fond of spending some of the winter months, and where I managed to find room for them all--with a little squeezing during the Christmas holidays when the boys came home from school. What good times they were!
* * * * *
"On May 24th, at Marsfield, Berks, the wife of Bartholomew Josselin, of a daughter"--or, as Leah put it in her diary, "our seventh daughter and ninth child--to be called Martia, or Marty for short."
It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for this life, and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's motherly lap, was of a different type to her predecessors--much whiter, and lighter, and slighter; and she made no exhibition of that lusty lung-power which had so characterized the other little Barties on their introduction to this vale of tears.
Her face was more regularly formed and more highly finished, and in a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn and pathetic that it would sometimes make Mrs. Jones, who had lost babies of her own, shed motherly tears merely to look at her.
Even _I_ felt sentimental about the child; and as for Barty, he could talk of nothing else, and made those rough and hasty silver-point studies of her head and face--mere sketches--which, being full of obvious faults, became so quickly famous among aesthetic and exclusive people who had long given up Barty as a writer on account of his scandalous popularity.
Alas! even those silver-points have become popular now, and their photogravures are in the shop-windows of sea-side resorts and in the back parlors of the lower middle-class; so that the aesthetic exclusives who are up to date have had to give up Barty altogether. No one is sacred in those days--not even Shakespeare and Michael Angelo.
We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the piano-organ, and "_nous autres_" of the cultured classes will have to fall back on Balfe and Byron and Landseer.
In a few months little Marty became famous for this extra beauty all over Henley and Maidenhead.
She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and her mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there was one person who idolized her more than all the rest, it was I, Bob Maurice.
She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety and many alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant visitor at Marsfield Lodge. It was fortunate, for her sake, that the Josselins had left Campden Hill and made their home in Marsfield.
Nine of these children--including one not yet born then--developed there into the finest and completest human beings, take them for all in all, that I have ever known; nine--a good number!
"Numero Deus impare gaudet."
Or, as poor Rapaud translated this (and was pinched black and blue by Pere Brossard in consequence):
"Le numero deux se rejouit d'etre impair!" (Number two takes a pleasure in being odd!)
The three sons--one of them now in the army, as becomes a Rohan; and one a sailor, as becomes a Josselin; and one a famous actor, the true Josselin of all--are the very types of what I should like for the fathers of my grandchildren, if I had marriageable daughters of my own.
And as for Barty's daughters, they are all--but one--so well known in society and the world--so famous, I may say--that I need hardly mention them here; all but Marty, my sweet little "maid of Dove."
When Barty took Marsfield he and I had entered what I have ever since considered the happiest decade of a successful and healthy man's life--the forties.
"Wait till you get to _forty year_!"
So sang Thackeray, but with a very different experience to mine. He seemed to look upon the fifth decade as the grave of all tender illusions and emotions, and exult!
My tender illusions and emotions became realties--things to live by and for. As Barty and I "dipped our noses in the Gascon wine"--Vougeot-Conti & Co.--I blessed my stars for being free of Marsfield, which was, and is still, my real home, and for the warm friendship of its inhabitants who have been my real family, and for several years of unclouded happiness all round.
Even in winter what a joy it was, after a long solitary walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast, what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so cultivated! Music was a special inherited gift of the entire family, and no trouble or expense was ever spared to make the best and the most of it.
Roberta became the most finished and charming amateur pianist I ever heard, and as for Mary _la rossignolle_--Mrs. Trevor--she's almost as famous as if she had made singing her profession, as she once so wished to do. She married happily instead, a better profession still; and though her songs are as highly paid for as any--except, perhaps, Madame Patti's--every penny goes to the poor.
She can make a nigger melody sound worthy of Schubert and a song of Schumann go down with the common herd as if it were a nigger melody, and obtain a genuine encore for it from quite simple people.
Why, only the other night she and her husband dined with me at the Bristol, and we went to Baron Schwartzkind's in Piccadilly to meet Royal Highnesses.
Up comes the Baron with:
"Ach, Mrs. Drefor! vill you not zing zomzing? ze Brincess vould be so jarmt."
"I'll sing as much as you like, Baron, if you promise me you'll send a checque for L50 to the Foundling Hospital to-morrow morning," says Mary.