[Illustration: flowers on branch]
The Lilac and Acacia, for instance, were the flower-bearers of the
tree-planted playground of that jocund old school where I received the
first rudiments of education: the _Institution Delescluze_, then situate
in a kind of backwater of the faubourg St. Honoré at the angle facing
the _Palais de l’Elysée_. It has, alas long since been swept away to
make room for modern mansions. This ancient _Institution_, or
preparatory school, would seem to have dated from the distant days,
early Louis XV probably, when the north side of the then lengthening
noble _faubourg_ must still have been occupied by meadows and orchards.
* * * * *
[Illustration: branches with leaves]
By the way, it has never occurred to me before to look up that little
topographical matter authoritatively. I do so now. I have here a copy of
a wonderful work, the “perspective” map of Paris as it stood in the
’thirties, of the eighteenth century. It is called the _Plan de Turgot_,
having been surveyed, and engraved, in lavishly decorative style, by
order of _Louis-le-Bien-Aimé_, under the care of the celebrated _Prévost
des Marchands_. The book is quite the most fascinating of its kind I
know—and I think I have handled as goodly a number of such works as any
man alive. ‹The nearest approach to it, in point of what one may call
picturesque perspicuity, is the wonderful bird’s-eye view of Edinburgh
set down by James Gordon of Rothiemay, and engraved at Amsterdam by F.
de Wit, about a century earlier.› This plan of Turgot is an elaborate
affair indeed—an atlas of twenty large sheets, showing practically every
individual house of any importance. Would we had such a work in
existence dealing with Georgian London!
Well, to investigate.... Aye, here are the orchards and market gardens,
beginning at the very back of a narrow line of houses, covering all the
ground of what nowadays is a close network of stone-fronted streets!
Here stands the Hôtel d’Evreux, the last, moving westward, of that array
of lordly mansions: the Hôtels de Montbazon, de Guébrian, de Charost, de
Duras.... A few of these patrician dwellings, each with their own formal
gardens stretching southwards to the Champs Elysées, have retained to
our own times their dignity unimpaired. But where are now scattered most
of these grand French family names, since the tornado of the great
Revolution? But, to our map.... Yes, this Hôtel d’Evreux—whilom appanage
of Madame de Pompadour, now the aforesaid Palais de l’Elysée; residence,
in due rotation, of the swift-changing presidents of the Republic—is
here under my finger. And its position unquestionably fixes, some two
hundred yards westward, that of the now vanished _Institution
Delescluze_, so interesting to me. And here spread themselves the
orchards, of which the existence a moment ago was, after all, only a
matter of surmise!
[Sidenote: PLUM-TREE GUM]
My discovery adds particularity now to the remembrance of that mellow
place.... A goodly number of antiquated fruit trees were scattered about
the _cour de récréation_. I can now carve it, in fancy, out of the
cultivated land shown by the engraver in the most engaging conventional
manner, at the back of the northern street front—an acre or so. Perhaps
a little more; likelier still, a little less: recollections of this kind
have a knack of magnifying affairs. It is bounded by grey walls, tall
and thick, but distinctly decrepit. The trees were, of course, long past
bearing, through age and neglect; but they were pleasant company,
whether snow-laden, or in summer affording their scanty shade. Plum
trees they were, I should say. At any rate the rough bark of their boles
distilled a kind of brown gum which was in great demand among us small
boys for immediate consumption; and sedulously scooped out, as soon as
discovered, with the help of the stump end of a steel-pen nib.
Interspersed among these remnants of the forgotten orchard were the odd
groups of Lilacs and Acacias previously mentioned. The latter, the
Acacias, were tall and above interference. But strict were the standing
orders touching the bloom of the Lilac, and dire the prospect of
_pensum_ or _piquet_ to the youthful scholar who should dare to pluck
the fragrant bunches!
Thus came the Lilac to assume a character at once sacred—or, at least,
“taboo”—and at the same time perennially tantalizing. It was long before
the realization dawned that _Lilas_ were not the rare and precious
blossoms that so uncompromising a prohibition appeared to proclaim. As a
matter of fact, the _Lilas_, _Blanc ou Rose_, is one of the commonest of
spring objects in France. Almost might it in its popularity be regarded
as the national emblem of the _renouveau_, much as with us the pallid,
delicate Primrose is held to herald the last of wintry days.
The old French name for the latter is _Primerole_, suggestive by its
etymological connection with “prime,” of the youth of the year. We have
made of it Prim_rose_, through the usual process of popular phonetic
adaptation, which ever tends to make a word sound like something already
familiar. So that the old _Primerole_—meaning simply an early floweret,
_primula_—has become with us “the early rose”! The French dubbed it
_Primevère_ a learned equivalent for the _Coucou_ of the rustic tongue,
to symbolize the advent of vernal days.
The name brings at once to mind the well-known yearning lines:
“_O Primavera, gioventù dell’ anno!_
* * * * *
_O gioventù, primavera della vita!_”
In France, however, the accepted harbinger of _les beaux jours_, is not
the
“Pale cowslip, fit for maiden’s early bier,”
not the faint Primula but emphatically the Lilac—the Syringa Vulgaris;
the joyous _fleur des humbles_, as contrasted to the noble Rose.
“_Oh, gai! vive la rose,
La rose ... et les lilas!_”
runs the refrain of olden days.
During the last century or two it has grown as common, almost, around
villages as the hawthorn, the _Aubépine_ itself. But it is perhaps best
appreciated in the towns. While the tender purple bloom lasts, there is
scarce too modest a working home’s window-sill or mantelpiece for the
display of a _branche de Lilas_ stuck in the gullet of a water-bottle.
And your gay-hearted _grisette_ or _midinette_, early afoot in the
streets, will always spend her first _sou_ of the day on a sprig of the
sweet-breathing rosy cluster.
[Sidenote: LAYLOCKS—LILAS BLANC]
One may learn, whilst intent upon other matters, many unsuspected things
about objects even as familiar as the common “Laylock.” ‹A collection of
old letters of Georgian and very early Victorian days, with which we
have had much to do at one time, show a preference for this phonetic
rendering of the name.› Thus it appears that a valuable febrifuge
“principle” is obtainable from its fruit; that its wood, veined in
pleasing colours and very fine-grained, is in high request for delicate
articles of turnery and in particular for inlaying; that a perfumed
essence is sometimes distilled from it that is almost indistinguishable
from Rhodes Balsam—and so forth.
Those, however, are not the points of interest which have made it
imperative to have a plant or two of “Laylocks” in our Sentimental
Garden. ‹They do fairly well, be it said, in their own specially
sheltered, suntrap corner of the ground.› No, there is in life an
ever-growing motive—old sake’s sake. Syringa Persica may mean much to
the operative gardener, but it can never mean _Lilas blanc_ ... _Lilas
rose_!
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X
As for the Acacias, in that queer old courtyard—distinctly exotic
creatures, aristocrats in the company of those palpable sons of the
soil, the caducous orchard trees—I still wonder how they ever came
there. Their rôle in the life of the small-boy school seems to have
been that of a butt for cockshies, and thus passively to foster a
notable precision in the use of those small river pebbles with which
the playground was covered. A game, deeply favoured by the young
scholars ‹but not recognized by the authorities› when Acacias were
“in,” consisted in the bringing down of some selected bunch of
fragrant, creamy flowers from its lofty station with the minimum
number of pebbles. The feat was the subject of wager, the stakes
stated and paid in steel nibs. Nibs—in the tongue of the aborigines,
_becs-de-plume_—were accepted as currency and legal tender. It would
be truly interesting to find out how this particular token of exchange
came to be established among the youthful communities of French
elementary schools. Be it as it may, the convention was hallowed by
tradition “whereof the memory of boy ran not to the contrary.”
[Sidenote: GARLANDS AND ACACIAS]
When, however, the pale yellow, incense-smelling, honey-tasting racemes
were “out,” the devoted Acacia became the object of other, slightly
different, balistic attentions. The boys, be it stated, were regularly
released from the durance of bench and desk every hour for some ten
minutes ‹a commendable system with seven to ten year-olds› during which
the courtyard became clamorous as any aviary. During these short
intervals of recreation, too short to allow of any settled games, a
favourite occupation was the adorning of the inaccessible branches with
long streamers of coloured paper, previously manufactured at
home—_guirlandes_ by name. These _guirlandes_, some twenty or thirty
feet long, were wound with sedulous care round a suitable stone, leaving
a small length as trailer; the apparatus was then cast up in a parabola
over the tree-top. If the indirect fire was successful the trailer
caught in the leafage, unrolling the remainder and releasing the
ballasting stone. The most successful shot was, of course, that which
left the streamer properly entangled on the topmost boughs. Each boy had
his chosen and declared colour, or mixture of colours; and the trophy
remained, flaunting his achievement “in its own tincts” as long as wind
or rain permitted. It afforded the small breast a distinct satisfaction
when, reaching the school of a morning, the boy could see his pennant
still flying in the breeze....
Such is the strength of the association of ideas that I never could come
upon a roadside plantation of Acacias in the hot plains of Hungary—where
the tree is used as commonly as in France the Poplar, that inevitable
feature of the great highways—without adorning it in imagination with
the multi-coloured _guirlandes_ of my first school.
* * * * *
If there was no reasonable accounting for the presence of Acacias at the
_Institution Delescluze_, the great Poplar, on the other hand, that
raised its height in the very centre of the _cour_, had a
well-authenticated history. A relic of Revolution days, it was then in
its eighth decade, in the strength of its age; having been planted, at
the same time as hundreds of others, as a Tree of Liberty—Populus,
emblematic of _sans-culotte_ ascendancy—at the time when the royal
Bastille, emblem of another form of tyranny, was laid low.
For some cryptic reason, by the way, the democratic Poplar, which had
subsisted through many changes of régime, and had become undoubtedly too
ornamental a mark of antiquity to be destroyed, was never honoured by
the flights of our banderoles. Perhaps it was a result of political
prejudice, which in France characteristically affects the views even of
scholars at the hornbook stage of life. Or perhaps it was that the old
_Peuplier_ was the site of the disciplinary punishment known as
_piquet_—the playground equivalent of our nursery “corner.”
* * * * *
[Sidenote: GLAMOUR OF YORE]
Poplar and gummy Plum-trees, Lilac and Acacias, courtyard and indeed the
whole _Institution_, had already disappeared when I bethought myself,
for the first time after so many years of oblivion, to go and gaze upon
the scene once more. It was quite in middle life. I had lately been
reading that sad and strangely affecting work, “Peter Ibbetson,” the
first, and to my mind by far the best, of the three novels written by
Georges du Maurier in the late autumn of his days. By the thousands who
for so many years had, week after week, enjoyed the delicate humour and
pencilling of the great Punch artist, the book was received with a
favour that paved the way for the greater popular success of “Trilby.”
But I doubt whether it ever appealed to any denizen of our planet as
intimately as to the Master of the House.
Those who have read the curiously original novel which, like so many
first attempts at fiction, is autobiographical—autobiographical as to
feelings, if not necessarily as to facts—may remember his description of
the English boy’s early “French days;” and, later on, of the mature
man’s poignant impressions on revisiting the old playground of his life.
Now, there were so many points of resemblance between the surroundings
of Du Maurier’s hero’s childhood and my own; so many allusions to the
kind of things and the kind of people I had once been familiar with but,
as time flowed on, had dismissed from mind as removed from real
existence and new workaday points of view; they were presented,
moreover, in so sympathetic a manner, that one need hardly wonder at the
sudden resolve that rose within me, to go and look up the old place
again.
Such a desire, when it comes, has something of the twist of hunger about
it—it is _une fringale_, to use a word for which, oddly enough, we have
no counterpart. But, alas! delight in scenes of the _beau temps jadis_
is not to be recaptured! It may but be espied in fitful, elusive
glimpses. The world has moved on and the _genius loci_ has fled. Have
you ever found out that the return, after many years, to a place oft
dreamed of until then and with never-failing tenderness, besides leaving
you blankly unsatisfied, seems to have killed the glamour, to have
broken the magic spell of memory? The dream is dispelled. It will
henceforth nevermore haunt your pillow. You have seen the phantom of the
past with the eyes of nowadays; the new picture has replaced that of the
dream—for ever.
Well, _la boite Delescluze_—as we irreverent youngsters called that
respectable institution—unlike those other places, St. Cloud, for
instance, which were fated to evoke but a melancholy disappointment,
could not be beheld again with the carnal eye—not the least vestige of
it. And it is, no doubt, for that reason that so many memories still
come flitting back, smiling and clear, of that forgotten cradle of
scholarship.
------------------------------------------------------------------------