Chapter 8
"You mustn't imagine to yourselves, messieurs, that because I teach you boys science at the Pension Brossard, and take you out walking on Thursday afternoons, and all that, that I do not associate _avec des gens du monde_! Last night, for example, I was dining at the Cafe de Paris with a very intimate friend of mine--he's a marquis--and when the bill was brought, what do you think it came to? you give it up?" (vous donnez votre langue aux chats?). "Well, it came to fifty-seven francs, fifty centimes! We tossed up who should pay--et, ma foi, le sort a favorise M. le Marquis!"
To this there was nothing to say; so none of us said anything, except du Tertre-Jouan, _our_ marquis (No. 2), who said, in his sulky, insolent, peasantlike manner:
"Et comment q'ca s'appelle, vot' marquis?" (What does it call itself, your marquis?)
Upon which M. Dumollard turns very red ("pique un soleil"), and says:
"Monsieur le Marquis Paul--Francois--Victor du Tertre-Jouan de Haultcastel de St.-Paterne, vous etes un paltoquet et un rustre!..."
And goes back to his equations.
Du Tertre-Jouan was nearly six feet high, and afraid of nobody--a kind of clodhopping young rustic Hercules, and had proved his mettle quite recently--when a brutal usher, whom I will call Monsieur Boulot (though his real name was Patachou), a Meridional with a Horrible divergent squint, made poor Rapaud go down on his knees in the classe de geographie ancienne, and slapped him violently on the face twice running--a way he had with Rapaud.
It happened like this. It was a kind of penitential class for dunces during play-time. M. Boulot drew in chalk an outline of ancient Greece on the blackboard, and under it he wrote--
"Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!"
"Rapaud, translate me that line of Virgil!" says Boulot.
"J'estime les Danois et leurs dents de fer!" says poor Rapaud (I esteem the Danish and their iron teeth). And we all laughed. For which he underwent the brutal slapping.
The window was ajar, and outside I saw du Tertre-Jouan, Jolivet, and Berquin, listening and peeping through. Suddenly the window bursts wide open, and du Tertre-Jouan vaults the sill, gets between Boulot and his victim, and says:
"Le troisieme coup fait feu, vous savez! touchez-y encore, a ce moutard, et j'vous assomme sur place!" (Touch him again, that kid, and I'll break your head where you stand!).
There was an awful row, of course--and du Tertre-Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the very same day; and Tertre-Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow-minded, and suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year without taking any degree--and I don't know what became of him.
This year also Barty conceived a tender passion for Mlle. Marceline.
It was after the mumps, which we both had together in a double-bedded infirmerie next to the lingerie--a place where it was a pleasure to be ill; for she was in and out all day, and told us all that was going on, and gave us nice drinks and tisanes of her own making--and laughed at all Barty's jokes, and some of mine! And wore the most coquettish caps ever seen.
Besides, she was an uncommonly good-looking woman--a tall blonde with beautiful teeth, and wonderfully genial, good-humored, and lively--an ideal nurse, but a terrible postponer of cures! Lord Archibald quite fell in love with her.
"C'est moi qui voudrais bien avoir les oreillons ici!" he said to her. "Je retarderais ma convalescence autant que possible!"
"Comme il sait bien le francais, votre oncle--et comme il est poli!" said Marceline to the convalescent Barty, who was in no hurry to get well either!
When we did get well again, Barty would spend much of his play-time fetching and carrying for Mlle. Marceline--even getting Dumollard's socks for her to darn--and talking to her by the hour as he sat by her pleasant window, out of which one could see the Arch of Triumph, which so triumphantly dominated Paris and its suburbs, and does so still--no Eiffel Tower can kill that arch!
I, being less precocious, did not begin my passion for Mlle. Marceline till next year, just as Bonneville and Jolivet trois were getting over theirs. Nous avons tous passe par la!
What a fresh and kind and jolly woman she was, to be sure! I wonder none of the masters married her. Perhaps they did! Let us hope it wasn't M. Dumollard!
It is such a pleasure to recall every incident of this epoch of my life and Barty's that I should like to go through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, microscopically--to describe every book we read, every game we played, every _pensum_ (_i.e._, imposition) we performed; every lark we were punished for--every meal we ate. But space forbids this self-indulgence, and other considerations make it unadvisable--so I will resist the temptation.
La pension Brossard! How often have we both talked of it, Barty and I, as middle-aged men; in the billiard-room of the Marathoneum, let us say, sitting together on a comfortable couch, with tea and cigarettes--and always in French whispers! we could only talk of Brossard's in French.
"Te rappelles-tu l'habit neuf de Berquin, et son chapeau haute-forme?"
"Te souviens-tu de la vieille chatte angora du pere Jaurion?" etc., etc., etc.
Idiotic reminiscences! as charming to revive as any old song with words of little meaning that meant so much when one was four--five--six years old! Before one knew even how to spell them!
"Paille a Dine--paille a Chine-- Paille a Suzette et Martine-- Bon lit a la Dumaine!"
Celine, my nurse, used to sing this--and I never knew what it meant; nor do I now! But it was charming indeed.
Even now I dream that I go back to school, to get coached by Dumollard in a little more algebra. I wander about the playground; but all the boys are new, and don't even know my name; and silent, sad, and ugly, every one! Again Dumollard persecutes me. And in the middle of it I reflect that, after all, he is a person of no importance whatever, and that I am a member of the British Parliament--a baronet--a millionaire--and one of her Majesty's Privy Councillors! and that M. Dumollard must be singularly "out of it," even for a Frenchman, not to be aware of this.
"If he only knew!" says I to myself, says I--in my dream.
Besides, can't the man see with his own eyes that I'm grown up, and big enough to tuck him under my left arm, and spank him just as if he were a little naughty boy--confound the brute!
Then, suddenly:
"Maurice, au piquet pour une heure!"
"Moi, m'sieur?"
"Oui, vous!"
"Pourquoi, m'sieur!"
"Parce que ca me plait!"
And I wake--and could almost weep to find how old I am!
And Barty Josselin is no more--oh! my God! ... and his dear wife survived him just twenty-four hours!
* * * * *
Behold us both "en Philosophie!"
And Barty the head boy of the school, though not the oldest--and the brilliant show-boy of the class.
Just before Easter (1851) he and I and Rapaud and Laferte and Jolivet trois (who was nineteen) and Palaiseau and Bussy-Rabutin went up for our "bachot" at the Sorbonne.
We sat in a kind of big musty school-room with about thirty other boys from other schools and colleges. There we sat side by side from ten till twelve at long desks, and had a long piece of Latin dictated to us, with the punctuation in French: "un point--point et virgule--deux points--point d'exclamation--guillemets--ouvrez la parenthese," etc., etc.--monotonous details that enervate one at such a moment!
Then we set to work with our dictionaries and wrote out a translation according to our lights--a _pion_ walking about and watching us narrowly for cribs, in case we should happen to have one for this particular extract, which was most unlikely.
Barty's nose bled, I remember--and this made him nervous.
Then we went and lunched at the Cafe de l'Odeon, on the best omelet we had ever tasted.
"Te rappelles-tu cette omelette?" said poor Barty to me only last Christmas as ever was!
Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to find if we had qualified ourselves by our "version ecrite" for the oral examination that comes after, and which is so easy to pass--the examiners having lunched themselves into good-nature.
There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters, in a small, whitewashed room like a prison. An official comes in and puts the list of candidates in a frame on the wall, and we crane our necks over each other's shoulders.
And, lo! Barty is plucked--_colle_! and I have passed, and actually Rapaud--and no one else from Brossard's!
An old man--a parent or grandparent probably of some unsuccessful candidate--bursts into tears and exclaims,
"Oh! que malheur--que malheur!"
A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the College Ste.-Barbe, rushes down the stone stair's shrieking,
"Ca pue l'injustice, ici!"
One hears him all over the place: terrible heartburns and tragic disappointments in the beginning of life resulted from failure in this first step--a failure which disqualified one for all the little government appointments so dear to the heart of the frugal French parent. "Mille francs par an! c'est le Pactole!"
* * * * *
Barty took his defeat pretty easily--he put it all down to his nose bleeding--and seemed so pleased at my success, and my dear mother's delight in it, that he was soon quite consoled; he was always like that.
To M. Merovee, Barty's failure was as great a disappointment as it was a painful surprise.
"Try again Josselin! Don't leave here till you have passed. If you are content to fail in this, at the very outset of your career, you will never succeed in anything through life! Stay with us as my guest till you can go up again, and again if necessary. _Do_, my dear child--it will make me so happy! I shall feel it as a proof that you reciprocate in some degree the warm friendship I have always borne you--in common with everybody in the school! Je t'en prie, mon garcon!"
Then he went to the Rohans and tried to persuade them. But Lord Archibald didn't care much about Bachots, nor his wife either. They were going back to live in England, besides; and Barty was going into the Guards.
I left school also--with a mixture of hope and elation, and yet the most poignant regret.
I can hardly find words to express the gratitude and affection I felt for Merovee Brossard when I bade him farewell.
Except his father before him, he was the best and finest Frenchman I ever knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to any country in the world.
I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and so did Barty; and then our letters grew fewer and farther between, and finally left off altogether--as nearly always happens in such cases, I think. And I never saw him again; for when he broke up the school he went to his own province in the southeast, and lived there till twenty years ago, when he died--unmarried, I believe.
Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mlle. Marceline, and others--and three or four boys with whom both Barty and I were on terms of warm and intimate friendship. None of these boys that I know of have risen to any world-wide fame; and, oddly enough, none of them have ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just as famous in France for his French literary work as on this side of the Channel for all he has done in English. He towers just as much there as here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but, like Sirius, a sun.
Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school where he lived for four years and was so strangely popular--and which he so filled with his extraordinary personality!
* * * * *
So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I fear I may have dwelt on them at too great a length. No period of time has ever been for me so bright and happy as those seven years I spent at the Institution F. Brossard--especially the four years I spent there with Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to recall the trivial little incidents that made for us both the sum of existence in those happy days.
La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance! what better sport can there be, or more bloodless, at my time of life?
And all the lonely pathetic pains and pleasures of it, now that _he_ is gone!
The winter twilight has just set in--"betwixt dog and wolf." I wander alone (but for Barty's old mastiff, who follows me willy-nilly) in the woods and lanes that surround Marsfield on the Thames, the picturesque abode of the Josselins.
Darker and darker it grows. I no longer make out the familiar trees and hedges, and forget how cold it is and how dreary.
"Je marcherai les yeux fixes sur mes pensees, Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit-- Seul, inconnu, le dos courbe, les mains croisees: Triste--et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."
(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)
It's really far away I am--across the sea; across the years, O Posthumus! in a sunny play-ground that has been built over long ago, or overgrown with lawns and flower-beds and costly shrubs.
Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgotten--a brand-new old remembrance--a kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs, into the big cheerful music-room like a studio--ruddy and bright with the huge log-fire opposite the large window. All is on an ample scale at Marsfield, people and things! and I! sixteen stone, good Lord!
How often that window has been my beacon on dark nights! I used to watch for it from the train--a landmark in a land of milk and honey--the kindliest light that ever led me yet on earth.
I sit me down in my own particular chimney-corner, in my own cane-bottomed chair by the fender, and stare at the blaze with my friend the mastiff. An old war-battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and makes friends too. There goes my funny little French remembrance, trying to fly up the chimney like a burnt love-letter....
Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe in black, brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I like it. A well-grown little son of hers, a very Ganymede, beau comme le jour, brings me a cigarette, and insists on lighting it for me himself. I like that too.
Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we call her--though there is no such word that I know of--goes to the piano and sings little French songs of forty, fifty years ago--songs that she has learnt from her dear papa.
Heavens! what a voice! and how like his, but for the difference of sex and her long and careful training (which he never had); and the accent, how perfect!
Then suddenly:
"A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ... Vous etiez, vous etiez bien aise! A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ... Nous etions, nous etions bien la! Mais de vous en souvenir Prendrez-vous la peine? Mais de vous en souvenir, Et d'y revenir? A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ... Vivre et mourir la!"
So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the richest, sweetest voice I know. And behold! at last I have caught my little French remembrance, just as the lamps are being lit--and I transfix it with my pen and write it down....
And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fete de St.-Cloud--all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and doesn't concern Barty in the least; for it so happened that Barty wasn't there!
* * * * *
Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I bade adieu forever to our happy school life--and for a few years to our beloved Paris--and for many years to our close intimacy of every hour in the day.
I remember spending two or three afternoons with him at the great exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire--and happy afternoons they were! and we made the most of them. We saw all there was to be seen there, I think; and found ourselves always drifting back to the "Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which Barty's admiration was boundless.
And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite deplorable by contrast--especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget can so eloquently describe!
My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the Vougeot-Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.
My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities, Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a great dislike to business--and so had I; from different motives, I fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science--a passion that had been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in.
Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College, close by--in October, 1851--and studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have pleased him even more.
At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately.
Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or the society we severally frequented.
I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls--beautiful female faces--the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were also foils, boxing-gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice a week, and was made much of--even by my father, who thoroughly disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.
My father was much away--in Paris and Dijon--and Barty made rain and fine weather in our dull abode, to use a French expression--_il y faisait la pluie et le beau temps_. That is, it rained there when he was away, and he brought the fine weather with him; and we spoke French all round.
The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast with Barty in St. James's Street on Sunday mornings, when he was not serving his Queen and country--either alone with him or with two or three of his friends--mostly young carpet warriors like himself; and very charming young fellows they were. I have always been fond of warriors, young or old, and of whatever rank, and wish to goodness I had been a warrior myself. I feel sure I should have made a fairly good one!
Then we would spend an hour or two in athletic exercises and smoke many pipes. And after this, in the summer, we would walk in Kensington Gardens and see the Rank and Fashion. In those days the Rank and Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Kensington Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the Serpentine Bridge again and again between Prince's Gate and Bayswater.
Then for dinner we went to some pleasant foreign pot-house in or near Leicester Square, where they spoke French--and ate and drank it!--and then back again to his rooms. Sometimes we would be alone, which I liked best: we would read and smoke and be happy; or he would sketch, or pick out accompaniments on his guitar; often not exchanging a word, but with a delightful sense of close companionship which silence almost intensified.
Sometimes we were in very jolly company: more warriors; young Robson, the actor who became so famous; a big negro pugilist, called Snowdrop; two medical students from St. George's Hospital, who boxed well and were capital fellows; and an academy art student, who died a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of Barty's mural decorations and laughed at the colored lithographs; and many others of all sorts. There used to be much turf talk, and sometimes a little card-playing and mild gambling--but Barty's tastes did not lie that way.
His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the gloves with Snowdrop, or any one else who chose--or fencing--or else making music; or being funny in any way one could; and for this he had quite a special gift: he had sudden droll inspirations that made one absolutely hysterical--mere things of suggestive look or sound or gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite original; absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it made one laugh till one's sides ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this.
Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of the most high-minded, there is often a latent longing for this kind of happy idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for those who can supply it without effort and who delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor of the Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our day, although he developed in quite another direction!
Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love-ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep by spoonfuls!
By-the-way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing things up--confusing Sundays and week-days; of course our Sunday evenings were quiet and respectable, and I much preferred them when he and I were alone; he was then another person altogether--a thoughtful and intelligent young Frenchman, who loved reading poetry aloud or being read to; especially English poetry--Byron! He was faithful to his "Don Juan," his Hebrew melodies--his "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea." We knew them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we read them still; and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred de Musset....