[In which we translate a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du
bon Tabac, at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe.]
Maison du bon Tabac, Hampstead,
August 29, 1905.
Chère Mimi,--Do you remember when Mademoiselle Marcelle taught us to
sing--
“J’ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière,
J’ai du bon tabac, tu n’en aurais pas?”
There is a song _ma mie_, which others have been singing this
afternoon in the house which their old comrade Mimi will not enter.
_Ah, mes enfants!_ And what shall I say to them?
Behold the builder, and ask if he be not punished enough. So much is
admitted by those who have climbed upward to this height as you and I,
_ma mie_, climbed upward in the old days, by the Villa Polichinelle,
under the sails of La Galette, to the little house where Gabriel de
Math had written immortality upon the windows and your old friend
Desmond Barrymore used to sing you to sleep while he painted.
They came here, Mimi, out of the Paris they love, to bring a message
from the Butte to this savage land. But one is missing who should have
welcomed them--_ah, mes enfants_.
It is not Paris, this new house of the _bon Tabac_ at Hampstead, but
you might rub your eyes sometimes and believe another story. Here, as
upon our own beloved Butte, there stands the villa with the roses
twined about it; here is the same tangle of a garden that served the
Chevalier for his verses; here we sip the red wine and sing the songs
which Jean Bataille taught us. One voice alone is missing. One who
used to love us will not come to us--and the roses droop, and silence
falls, and we know that we have not forgotten.
Riches did not build this house, _ma mie_, nor will they support it.
We are all poor as in the splendid days. If we open a little window
and look down to the valley, we see the great city, and try to make
believe that it is the Paris we love. Ah, what a cheat is that, and
how willingly we consent to say, There is the dome of the Invalides,
and there St. Jacques, and there the frowsy houses of the Mich’.
Georges Oleander, the pitiful old mendicant, started the game and is
the busiest to play it--but your old friend Desmond Barrymore makes
one of the conspirators, and he has a little bust of you in clay upon
the table as I write.
Not Paris, but to those who will that it shall be so, a city of their
desires. For what land is not a home to us when old friends are about
us and there is good wine upon the table, and we may eat a
Chateaubriand aux pommes and hear the Chevalier singing to us, and
laugh at old Georges Oleander when he would beg the money for a new
debauch to-morrow. Fifty francs may be the sum total of our riches--I
doubt that it will be more. Each is poorer than his neighbour, and
proud of the fact. When you come to us, _ma mie_, let your hands be
full of gold, or we shall starve. Let Mimi be the Queen of our
Treasury.
You will find the house without difficulty, for your new friends will
be aware of its situation when you tell them that it is in the Walk at
Hampstead Heath, near London, and has the verses of Villon--though
they will not have heard of him--upon the façade. Should you remember
our loneliness, take an early train to London, enter a chariot, and
demand to be driven here. As I say, your friends will direct you--and
are you not rich, Mimi?
This is the message of the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort: Let Mimi
come to us.
And this the command of Georges Oleander: Let Mimi come to us.
And this the great hope upon the lips of Desmond Barrymore: Let Mimi
come to us.
And this the prayer of one whose house is empty when Mimi is not here.
_Ah, mes enfants._
Henry Gastonard.