PARIS AGAIN
We returned to Drishane in October, having by that time written and
illustrated the third story of the series. Which was fortunate, as on
the first of November, “November Day” as we call it in Carbery, we went
a-hunting, and under my eyes Martin “took a toss” such as I trust I may
never have to see again. It happened in the middle of a run; there was a
bar across an opening into a field. It was a wooden bar, with bushes
under it, and it was not very high, but firmly fixed. I jumped it, and
called to her to come on. The horse she was riding, Dervish, was a good
hunter, but was cunning and often lazy. He took the bar with his knees,
and I saw him slowly fall on to his head, and then turn over, rolling on
Martin, who had kept too tightly her grip of the saddle. Then he
struggled to his feet, but she lay still.
It was two months before she was able again to “lift her hand serenely
in the sunshine, as before,” or so much as take a pen in it, and several
years before she could be said to have regained such strength as had
been hers. Nothing had been broken, and she had entirely escaped
disfigurement, even though the eye-glasses, in which she always rode,
had cut her brow; but one of the pummels of the saddle had bruised her
spine, and the shock to a system so highly-strung as hers was what might
be expected. The marvel was that so fragile a creature could ever have
recovered, but her spirit was undefeated, and long before she could even
move herself in bed, she had begun to work with me again, battling
against all the varied and subtle sufferings that are known only to
those who have damaged a nerve centre, with the light-hearted courage
that was so conspicuously hers.
During the second half of that black November we were writing “The
Waters of Strife,” which is the fourth story of the “R.M.” series. Its
chief incident was the vision which came to the central figure of the
story, of the face of the man he had murdered. This incident, as it
happened, was a true one, and was the pivot of the story. We had
promised a monthly story, and in order to keep faith, we had written it
with an effort that had required almost more than we had to give. The
story now appears in our book as we originally wrote it, but on its
first appearance in the _Badminton Magazine_ a passage had been
introduced by an alien and unsolicited collaborator, and “various jests”
had been “eliminated as unfit” for, one supposes, the sensitive readers
of the magazine. Sometimes one wonders who are these ethereal beings
whose sensibilities are only shielded from shock by the sympathetic
delicacy of editors. I remember once before being crushed by another
editor. I had drawn, from life, for the Connemara Tour, a portrait of
“Little Judy from Menlo,” a Galway beggar-woman of wide renown. It was
returned with the comment that “such a thing would shock delicate
ladies.” So, as the song says, “Judy being bashful said ‘No, no, no’!”
and returned to private life. Another and less distinguished
beggar-woman once said to me of the disappointments of life, “Such
things must be, Miss Somerville, my darlin’ gerr’l!” and authors must,
one supposes, submit sometimes to be sacrificed to the susceptibilities
of the ideal reader.
The twelve “R.M.” stories kept us desperately at work until the
beginning of August, 1899. Looking back on the writing of them, each
one, as we finished it, seemed to be the last possible effort of
exhausted nature. Martin hardly knew, through those strenuous months,
what it was to be out of suffering. Even though it cannot be denied that
we both of us found enjoyment in the writing of them, I look back upon
the finish of each story as a nightmare effort. Copying our unspeakably
tortuous MS. till the small hours of the morning of the last possible
day; whirling through the work of the illustrations (I may confess that
one small drawing, that of “Maria” with the cockatoo between her paws,
was done, as it were “between the stirrup and the ground,” while the
horse, whose mission it was to gallop in pursuit of the postman, stamped
and raged under my studio windows). By the time the last bundle had been
dispatched Martin and I had arrived at a stage when we regarded an
ink-bottle as a mad dog does a bucket of water. Rest, and change of air,
for both of us, was indicated. I was sent to Aix, she went to North
Wales, and we decided to meet in Paris and spend the winter there.
In the beginning of October, 1899, we established ourselves in an
_appartement_ in the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, and there we spent the next
four months.
Looking back through our old diaries I recognise for how little of that
time Martin was free from suffering of some kind. The effects of the
hunting accident, and the strain of writing, too soon undertaken, were
only now beginning to come to their own. Neuralgia, exhaustion,
backaches, and all the indescribable miseries of neurasthenia held her
in thrall. It is probable that the bracing tonic of the Paris climate
saved her from a still worse time, but she had come through her
reserves, and was now going on pluck. We wrote, desultorily, when she
felt equal to it, and I worked at M. Délécluse’s studio in the mornings,
and, with some others, assisted Mr. Cyrus Cuneo, a young, and then
unknown, American, in getting up an “illustration class” in the
afternoons. Most people have seen the brilliant black and white
illustrations that Mr. Cuneo drew for the _Illustrated London News_ and
other papers and magazines, and his early death has left a blank that
will not easily be filled. He could have been no more than four or five
and twenty when I met him, and he was already an extraordinarily clever
draughtsman. He was small, dark, and exceedingly good-looking, with a
peculiarly beautiful litheness, balance, and swiftness of movement, that
was to some extent explained by the fact that before he took up Art he
had occupied the exalted position of “Champion Bantam of the South
Pacific Slope”!
At that juncture we were all mad about a peculiar style of crayon
drawing, which, as far as we were concerned, had been originated by
Cuneo, and about a dozen of us took a studio in the Passage Stanilas,
and worked there, from the most sensational models procurable. Cuneo was
“_Massier_”; he found the models, and posed them (mercilessly), and we
all worked like tigers, and brutally enjoyed the strung-up sensation
that comes from the pressure of a difficult pose. Each stroke is Now or
Never, every instant is priceless. Pharaoh of the Oppression was not
firmer in the matter of letting the Children of Israel go, than we were
with those unhappy models. I console myself by remembering that a good
model has a pride in his endurance in a difficult pose that is as
sustaining as honest and just pride always is. Nevertheless, when I look
over these studies, and see the tall magician, peering, on tip-toe, over
a screen, and the High-priest denouncing the violation of the sanctuary,
and the unfortunate Arab, half rising from his couch to scan the
horizon, I recognise that for these models, though Art was indisputably
long, Time could hardly have been said to be fleeting.
Mr. Whistler was at that time in Paris, and had a morning class for
ladies only, and it was in their studio that we had our class. It was
large, well-lighted, with plenty of stools and easels and a sink for
washing hands and brushes. It also was thoroughly insanitary, and had a
well-established reputation for cases of typhoid. As a precautionary
measure we always kept a certain yellow satin cushion on the mouth of
the sink; this, not because of any superstition as to the colour, or the
cushion, but because there was no other available “stopper for the
stink.” (Thus Cuneo, whose language, if free, was always well chosen.)
One of our members was a very clever American girl, who had broken loose
from the bondage of the Whistler class. There, it appeared from her, if
you had a soul, you could not think of calling it your own. It was
intensively bossed by Mr. Whistler’s _Massière_, on the lines laid down
by Mr. Whistler, until, as my friend said, you had “no more use for it,
and were just yelling with nerves.” The model, whether fair, dark, red,
white, or brown, had to be seen through Mr. Whistler’s spectacles, and
these, judging by the studies that were occasionally left on view, were
of very heavily smoked glass. When it came to the _Massière_ setting my
American friend’s palette, and dictating to her the flesh tones, the
daughter of the Great Republic
[Illustration: “CHEZ CUNEO.”]
observed that she was used to a free country, and shook the dust off her
feet, and scraped the mud off her palette, and retired. An interesting
feature of the studio was that many sheets of paper on which Mr.
Whistler had scribbled maxim and epigram were nailed on its walls, for
general edification, and it might have served better had his lieutenant
allowed these to influence the pupils, unsupported by her
interpretations. Since then I have met some of these pronouncements in
print, but I will quote one of those that I copied at the time, as it
bears on the case in point.
“That flesh should ever be low in tone would seem to many a source of
sorrow, and of vast vexation, and its rendering, in such circumstance,
an unfailing occasion of suspicion, objection, and reproach; each
objection--which is the more fascinating in that it would seem to imply
superiority and much virtue on the part of the one who makes it--is
vaguely based upon the popular superstition as to what flesh really
is--when seen on canvas, for the people never look at Nature with any
sense of its pictorial appearance, for which reason, by the way, they
also never look at a picture with any sense of Nature, but
unconsciously, from habit, with reference to what they have seen in
other pictures. Lights have been heightened until the white of the tube
alone remains. Shadows have been deepened until black only is left!
Scarcely a feature stays in its place, so fierce is its intention of
firmly coming forth. And in the midst of this unseemly struggle for
prominence, the gentle truth has but a sorry chance, falling flat and
flavourless and without force.”
No one who has not lived, as we did, the life of “The Quarter” can at
all appreciate its charm. In description--as I have already had occasion
to say--it is usual, and more entertaining, to dwell upon the disasters
of daily life, but though these, thanks to a _bonne à tout faire_, and a
perfidious stove, were not lacking, Martin and I, and our friends,
enjoyed ourselves. Small and select tea-parties were frequent;
occasionally we aspired to giving what has been called by a gratified
guest in the County Cork “a nice, ladylike little dinner,” and in a
letter of my own I find an account of a more unusual form of
entertainment which came our way.
“A friendly and agreeable American, who works in the Studio, asked us to
come and see her in her rooms, away back of Saint Sulpice. When we got
there we found, as well as my American friend, a little incidental,
casual mother, whom she had not thought worth mentioning before. She
just said, briefly,
“‘Oh, this is Mother,’ which, after all, sufficed.
“‘Mother’ was a perfect specimen of one of the secret, serf-like
American mothers, who are concealed in Paris, put away like a pair of
warm stockings, or an old waterproof, for an emergency. She was a nice,
shrivelled, little old thing, very kind and polite. Their room, which
was about six inches square, had little in it save a huge and catafaltic
bed with deep crimson curtains; the window curtains were deep crimson,
the walls, which were brown, had panels of deep crimson. Hot air welled
into the room through gratings. We sat and talked, and looked at picture
postcards for a long time, and our tongues were beginning to hang out,
from want of tea, and suffocation, when the daughter said something to
the mother.
“There was then produced, from a sort of hole in the wall, sweet
biscuits, and a bottle of wine, the latter also deep crimson (to match
the room, no doubt). It was a fierce and heady vintage. I know not its
origin, I can only assure you that in less than two minutes from its
consumption our faces were tremendously _en suite_ with the curtains. We
tottered home, clinging to each other, and lost our way twice.”
We had ourselves an opportunity of offering a somewhat unusual form of
hospitality to two of our friends, the occasion being nothing less than
the expected End of the World. This was timed by the newspapers to occur
on the night of November 15, and I will allow Martin to describe what
took place. The beginning part of the letter gives the history of one of
those curious and unlucky coincidences of which writing-people are more
often the victims than is generally known, and for this reason I will
transcribe it also.
V. F. M. to Mrs. Martin. (Nov. 23, 1899.)
“...The story for the Christmas number of the _Homestead_ came to
a most untimely end; not that it was untimely, as we were at the
very limit of time allowed for sending it in. It was finished, and
we were just sitting down to copy it, when I chanced to look
through last year’s Xmas No. (which, fortunately, we happened to
have here,) in order to see about the number of words. I then made
the discovery that one of the stories last Christmas, by Miss Jane
Barlow, no less! was built round the same idea as ours; one or two
incidents quite startlingly alike, so much so that one couldn’t
possibly send in ours. It read like a sort of burlesque of Miss
Barlow’s, and would never have done. There was no time to re-write
it, so all we could do was to write and tell the Editor what had
happened, and make our bows. E. sent him a sketch, as an _amende_,
which he has accepted in the handsome and gentlemanlike spirit in
which it was offered, and I sent him a little dull article[13]
that I happened to have here, on the chance that it might do to
fill a corner, and it is to appear with E.’s sketch. But I am
afraid, though he was very kind about it, that these things have
not at all consoled the Editor, who wanted a story like the
‘R.M.’s.’
“Nothing very interesting has happened here since the night of ‘The
Leonids,’ the Shower of Stars that was to have happened last week.
There was much excitement in Paris, at least the newspapers were
excited. On my way to the dentist a woman at the corner of the
boulevard was selling enormous sheets of paper, with ‘_La Fin du
Monde, à trois heures!_’ on them, and a gorgeous picture of Falbe’s
comet striking the earth. It was then 1.30, but I thought I had
better go to the dentist just the same. I believe that lots of the
poor people were very much on the jump about it. The Rain of
Meteors was prophesied by the Observatory here for that night, and
Kinkie, and the lady whom we call ‘Madame Là Là,’ arranged to spend
the night in our sitting room (which has a good view of the sky in
two aspects). We laid in provender and filled the stove to
bursting, and our visitors arrived at about 9.30 p.m. It really was
very like a wake, at the outset. The stipulation was that they were
to call us if anything happened; I went to bed at 10.30, E. at
midnight, and those unhappy creatures sat there all night, and
_nothing_ happened. They saw three falling stars, and they made tea
three times (once in honour of each star), and they also had
‘Maggi,’ which is the French equivalent for Bovril, and twice as
nice. During the night I could hear their stealthy steps going to
and fro to the kitchen to boil up things on the gas stove. In the
awful dawn they crept home, and, I hear, turned up at the Studio
looking just the sort of wrecks one might have expected.
“I believe that they did see a light go sailing up from the Dome of
the Observatoire, (which we can see from here) and that was a
balloon, containing a lady astronomer, Mademoiselle Klumpke, (who
is, I believe an American) and others. She sailed away in the
piercing cold to somewhere in the South of Switzerland, and I
believe she saw a few dozen meteors. Anyhow, two days afterwards,
she walked into Kinkie’s studio, bringing a piece of mistletoe, and
some flowers that she had gathered when she got out of the balloon
down there.”
The South African War made life in Paris, that winter, a school of
adversity for all English, or nominally English, people. Each reverse of
our Army--and if one could believe the French papers it would seem that
such took place every second day--was snatched at by the people of Paris
and their newspapers with howls of delight. Men in the omnibuses would
thrust in our faces _La Patrie_, or some such paper, to exhibit the
words “_Encore un Écrasement Anglais!_”, in large, exultant letters,
filling a page. Respectable old gentlemen, in “faultless morning dress,”
would cry “Oh yais!” as we passed; large tongues would be exhibited to
us, till we felt we could have diagnosed the digestions of the Quarter.
At last our turn came, and when the _Matin_ had a line, “_Capitulation
de Cronjé_,” writ large enough for display, Martin made an expedition in
an omnibus down “The Big Boulevards” for no purpose other than to flaunt
it in the faces of her fellow passengers.
To Martin, who was an intensely keen politician, the aloofness of many
of the art-students whom she met, from the War, the overthrow of the
French Government, from, in fact, any question on any subject outside
the life of the studio, was a constant amazement.
In a letter from her to one of her sisters she releases her feelings on
the subject.
V. F. M. to Mrs. Cuthbert Dawson.
(Paris, Nov. 29, 1899.)
“The French papers are realising that a mistake has been made in
the attacks on the Queen, and the better ones are saying so. But
the _Patrie_, the _Libre Parole_, and all that fleet of halfpenny
papers that the poor read, have nailed their colours to the mast,
and it seems as if their idea is to overthrow their present
Government by fair means or foul. As long as this Government is in
there will be no quarrel with England, but it might, of course, go
out like a candle, any day. I daresay you have heard the _Rire_
spoken of as one of the papers that ought to be suppressed. We
bought the number that was to be all about the English, and all
about them it was, a sort of comic history of England since the
Creation, with Hyde Park as the Garden of Eden. The cover was a
hauntingly horrible picture of Joan of Arc being burned. The rest
of the pictures were dull, disgusting, and too furiously angry to
be clever. We had pleasure in consigning the whole thing to the
stove.... The students here, with exceptions, of course,--appear
deaf and blind to all that goes on, and Revolutions in Paris, and
the War in the Transvaal, are as nothing to them as compared with
the pose of the model. In every street are crowds of them, scraping
away at their charcoal ‘academies’ by the roomful, all perfectly
engrossed and self-centred, and, I think, quite happy. Last Sunday
we went to a mild little tea-party in a studio, where were several
of these artist-women, in their best clothes, and somewhere in the
heart of the throng was a tiny hideosity, an American, (who has a
studio in which R. B. once worked,) fat, bearded, and unspeakably
common, but interesting.[14] Holding another court of the women was
a microbe English artist, an absurd little thing to look at, but, I
believe, clever; I hear that on weekdays he dresses like a French
workman and looks like a toy that you would buy at a bazaar. No one
talked anything but Art, except when occasionally one of the
hostesses (there were four) hurriedly asked me what I thought of
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, or _how_ two people managed to write
together, just to show what good hostesses they were, while all the
while they tried to listen to the harangues of the microbe or the
hideosity. Poor things, it was very nice of them, and I was
touched. There are about half a dozen, that I know here, who take
an English paper; it is a remarkable thing that they are nearly all
Irish and Scotch, and have baths.”