Except for the cab-drives between quay and station at Southampton and
Havre, and three half-days in Rouen, I had seen no town whatsoever
outside North Devon. Par_ee_! Par_ee_! my heart kept crying.
Now "Pariss" was a poor flat word, and "Pary" too, as the French
pronounce it; but by dropping the English S while Englishifying the
French vowel I formed a darling word which my heart could caress
and unwearyingly repeat, thus giving fullest vent to the delight it
anticipated. It was Paree! Paree! all the way in the train and on the
magical twilight drive from St. Lazare Station (gloomy hole enough)
down the great boulevards, past the looming Madeleine, along the Rue
Royale, across the great Concord Place, and over the sheeny river to
the family "hotel" in the Faubourg. Such a glorious city, such princely
streets and monuments I had never pictured, never been able to picture.
Paree! Paree!
There were walks and drives with Elise and Suzanne, visits to museums,
galleries, churches; though from all theatres and concerts, following
the solemn promise to my Grandmother, I was debarred. The brilliant
new boulevards were my chief interest. It was often a morbid interest:
to see the crowds, laughing or careworn, hideous deformities, vile
pockmarked faces, hunger jostling with gluttony; everywhere hurrying
gesticulating Mammon. I hated them, loathed them with a physical
loathing that held something of puritanism and patriotism combined:
I longed for England, for goodness, for the ugly unworldliness and
cleanness of the Saints. Now and then a gentle-faced little boy (for
the little girls were for the most part precocious over-dressed apers
of the women they would become) lit up my heart with a moment's
delight: I would turn round and stare as he passed, hoping he too would
turn and stare.
Our most frequent pilgrimage was to the Great Exhibition, a faery
wilderness of gardens and fountains, of pavilions, pagodas and
pinnacles. We witnessed the Imperial distribution of the prizes
in the Great Hall. On a dais sat the Emperor--my Emperor: Man of
Destiny, Parrot-Face, Waxworks, Long-Body, the prince of the kings of
the earth--surrounded by kings, with the Sultan on his right hand,
and pride everywhere. When the little Prince Imperial advanced to
his father with the prize for workmen's dwellings, wild applause
searched the very roof of the glass palace of Industry. The Emperor
smiled, smiled dismally I thought, for the eyes were sad, wretched.
("Queretaro, Queretaro." His brain rang like a beaten bell. He had
learnt the news today, though none of his subjects yet knew. While we
saw a Sovereign adulated by the world, he saw another Sovereign--his
client king--and a Mexican court-yard, and a firing party. Did he see
also the selfsame day three years ahead: himself, and the preening
Sultan at his right hand, prisoners both in exile and disgrace?)
Kings, everywhere Kings. For this was the year, more truly than
Talleyrand's, when your carriage could not move through the streets
of Paris because they were _blocked with Kings_. I do not think I
missed a single royal visit--except the King of the Belgians', as I was
seedy that day. The girls, even the Countess, made fun of my courtly
mania: I did not care, I studied the newspapers, and made sure of the
best view-points in each procession. Then I would stand for hours, in
patient royalism, fully rewarded by the instant's pomp and the dear
glance at the Lord's Anointed. There was the barbarous Tsar, with the
Cæsarevitch and the young Grand Duke, his brother. Old Prussia with his
big minister, one Count von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who liked France--so
well that he visited it again. Austrian Franz-Josef and the ill-fated
Empress. Our own hearty Prince of Wales. Lesser truck: Sweden,
Wurtemberg, Portugal, Greece; with the two Louis of Bavaria, the one
that loved Lola Montes and the other that loved Wagner.
So the quick scenes shifted, with the actors princes all: till my mind
was raced through by glittering equipages and the remembered faces of
the great.
Greatest of all were their Hosts, Eagle and his Wife, though not too
great to remember friends, or to invite our Villebecq household (with
dependent) to a Tuileries dance. It was not a state-ball, but one of
the Empress's "Mondays," an intimate little function for some thirty or
forty guests. My orgilous delight was chilled by a swift reflection: I
could not dance.
"Well," said the Countess, "you must learn."
I saw Grandmother's gentle eyes, appealing, mute in horror. My Mother
came to me with a pleading No. Poor kept-in-his-place Resolution dared:
_What would Jesus do?_ I sent them packing, closed my eyes, barred up
my heart. "Yes, Madame, and at once; there is no time to lose." I spoke
so sharply that the poor lady started back in amaze.
Not that I danced very much at the ball, or cared to; I was the guest
of an Empress, and that sufficed me. In a wide hall, the Salon of the
First Consul, we stood ranged in double row. Eugenie, in a lovely robe
of blue satin, of pure simplicity, without pattern or frill, swept
into the room, preceded by sumptuous Officers of the Household, and
followed by her ladies. Like the Emperor his soldiers, she passed us
in review. To each a few gracious words. Yet what right had she to be
so condescending? Who was she, anyway? Why should a few words from her
lips be deemed our highest earthly privilege? It was vulgar resentment
that some woman else was in a lordlier position than I; it was envy; it
was democracy. I was ashamed of my unguestly thoughts when she stopped
at me and said in beautiful English: "This is not worth Jumièges, do
you think?"
The ball began. Most of the ladies were dressed far more gorgeously
than the Empress. I remember a tall woman (a duchess, confided the
Countess), gowned in shimmering black velvet flounced with gold
guipure; another in crimson velvet sewn with great silver daffodils;
another in white satin-tulle covered by a light overwork of golden
feathers. Everywhere lace, fans, tiaras, jewels. How plain I was beside
them! I despised their half-revealed bosoms, their selfish painted
faces, their sensual lips. The old ways and the Meeting would keep
appearing before me, and Grandmother, and the Lord: I knew that they
were right, and these things wrong. Here was I, a saved young woman,
one of the Lord's elected children--tricked out like a Jezebel, with
flowers in my hair. The old hymn I had so often repeated to Aunt Jael
forced its way into my memory, compelled me to repeat it to myself,
verse by remorseless verse:
Shall the Christian maiden wear
Flowers or jewels in her hair,
When the blood-stained crown of thorn
On her Saviour's brow was borne?
Here in this King's palace I revelled, my bosom swelling with vanity,--
Shall the Christian maiden's breast
Swell beneath the broidered vest,
When the scarlet robe of shame
Girt her Saviour's tortured frame?
And I was dancing. The first moments showed me that our Brethren-hatred
was good hatred, and Elise's description of men a just description.
They pressed insinuatingly, their contact sickened me. O Lord, Lord, to
what fleshliness was I sinking?--
Shall the Christian maiden's feet
Earth's unhallowed measures beat,
While beneath the Cross's load
Sank the suffering Son of God?
It was nightmare. Hatred of all this luxury and glare and godlessness
flooded me in so physical and overwhelming a fashion that I was near
to fainting. I turned from the fleshly men, the hard horrible women:
Vanity, Vanity. There was more Resolution in that night's distaste
than a thousand sealed envelopes. I pleaded headache, and refused to
dance again. Elise was no comfort: she was indifferent tonight, not
rebellious like me. "What did I tell you?" was the best she could do.
I could watch them no longer, and suddenly left the ballroom, to wander
about the palace rooms, deliberately turning my thoughts to the old
history of this place that I might forget the present loathing. Whether
or no much reading be a weariness to the flesh, to me it was a resource
unfailing: I could take refuge from the day's trouble in reviewing the
glory of yesterday. As for the Tuileries Palace, I would wager that
no other living English girl could have told herself its tale much
more fully: summoned more surely the long procession of its grey and
glittering dead....
Catherine de Medici, first builder of the palace, warned by an
astrologer that it would end in tragedy and flames. Louis XIV, the Sun
King, lording it in Carrousel fêtes. Marie-Antoinette, Austrian woman,
brought here with her poor husband from Versailles, brought back again
a prisoner after Varennes. June '92, first invasion of the palace by
the mob: threats, insults and obscene shouts. September '92, when the
vile mob invaded, sent Louis and Marie to Conciergerie prison, came
here to yell, steal, sack, blaspheme, and murder, hacking to pieces the
old faithful servants of the crown, slashing with knives the dying and
the doctors attending to the dying: prostitutes ransacked the Queen's
wardrobes and wallowed, loathsomely, in her bed, kicking up their legs
in democratic glee. Revolutionaries, Girondins, Mountainists, with
Prince Robespierre--mean, savage and pure. The flat-haired Corsican
youth. From here he went forth to be crowned, from here the Pope of
Rome went forth to crown him. Here reigned the pomp and splendour of
the Empire; hither entered Josephine in triumph and hence slunk out
in disgrace; hither came Marie-Louise (Austrian woman too) in pomp
processional, hence she fled a fugitive. These walls stared at the
coming and going of the Hundred Days; at bellied Eighteenth Louis
and Charles the Tenth his brother, last king of Ancient France; at
Louis-Philippe of pear-shaped head and Brethering umbrella; at the wild
mobs of '48 (my birth year), pillaging anew. Phrensy of peoples, folly
of Kings: change and change about. Each new monarch had sagely wagged
his head: "The others, ha ha!--I know the mistakes they made--I will
profit by their example--my sojourn here is eternal--these barns are
big, but I will build greater."
With my Emperor permanence had come at last. Him no fears could shake:
not by divine right nor mere parliaments nor yet by plebiscite alone
had he reached the palace, but by dreams, which alone come true. Here
he had entered in a state which mocked his poor predecessors; here
on the balcony he had stood, while the crowd in the gardens madly
acclaimed him, and the Marshal St. Arnaud proclaimed the Second
Empire. Here in a pomp and luxury before unknown he had reigned and
gloried. From these doors, at the Depart for Italy, he had sallied
forth; to sally forth again to Notre-Dame, for the Te-Deum for
Solferino, through roads strewn with flowers and adoration. He had made
Paris the capital of capitals, himself the King of Kings, this Palace
the centre of the universe....
One morning a letter reached the Countess from Lord Tawborough. He was
at an hotel in Paris; might he take the liberty of calling?
My heart beat fast with joyful expectation.
He came, once and again. We went out together, sometimes with the
others, oftenmost alone--on long walks in the Paris streets or
excursions to Versailles and the environs. He was an oasis in this
city-wilderness of evil faces: the sight of this Englishman, the
clean-featured noble face, the fairy godfather to whom I owed all the
rich experiences of the past year, Rachel's little boy, gave me a
peaceful pleasure which after my hectic ambitions and intrigues was
like dew after rain. The interest of his conversation, the sense of
worth and superiority (to me) he imparted cleared my foolish brain and
cooled my insane pride. "You'd call this gush if it were Suzanne who
thought it!" whispered Satan. "Yes Sir," I replied, "but Tawborough
is not Fouquier"--Everywoman's reply. Intellect, character, kindness,
purity, race--it was a banquet of pure delight.
I tried to analyse for myself the reasons for the exhilaration
which filled me in his presence, and in no other presence; not in
Grandmother's, though I had loved her always: not in Elise's, though I
loved her now. I could unravel no reasons, only ponder on the facts:
(1) that his was the only face I knew which gave me a positive,
physical joy, which filled me with tenderness and wonder. I would have
fed on his face unceasingly if I had dared; (2) that in his presence
alone the consciousness of self, of omnipresent Mary, left me, and I
felt free, unconscious, unburdened, happy: if when he was at hand I
stopped suddenly and asked myself "And Eternity?" I could laugh, and
flout the bogey; (3) I apprehended that these emotions were reciprocal,
and this was the chief delight of all.
Yet, I argued, this was not Love. Love was Robbie. Love was
Christmas-Night, one day to be renewed. Still, what lesser word than
love could describe the admiration, the gratitude, the fluttering
tenderness, the pure exultant affection I felt? So in my diary I called
it love (with a small l) and kept the capital for Robbie.