II

At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes,

books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for

Paris and Art.

We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past six

in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard city.

Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a peculiar

bleakness in the streets. The _ménagère_ hurries down the asphalte to

market; a dreadful _garçon de café_, with a napkin tied round his

throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it

seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the

Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées? I asked myself; and feeling

bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to my

valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to the

study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to

formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and

the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for.

My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the Beaux Arts--Cabanel's

studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration

for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was

told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on the

master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to speak

to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks until I could

hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot say. I

never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my

language must have been like--like nothing ever heard under God's sky

before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of

the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures

I had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then

in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he

would be glad to have me as a pupil....

But life in the Beaux Arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits

only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast;

and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an

effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey

perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the

lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the

room, that I would return to the Beaux Arts no more. I felt humiliated

at my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy; and

I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the Boulevards,

studying the photographs of the _salon_ pictures, thinking of what my

next move should be. I had never forgotten my father showing me, one day

when he was shaving, three photographs from pictures. They were by an

artist called Sevres. My father liked the slenderer figure, but I liked

the corpulent--the Venus standing at the corner of a wood, pouring wine

into a goblet, while Cupid, from behind her satin-enveloped knees, drew

his bow and shot the doves that flew from glistening poplar trees. The

beauty of this woman, and what her beauty must be in the life of the

painter, had inspired many a reverie, and I had concluded--this

conclusion being of all others most sympathetic to me--that she was his

very beautiful mistress, that they lived in a picturesque pavilion in

the midst of a shady garden full of birds and tall flowers. I had often

imagined her walking there at mid-day, dressed in white muslin with wide

sleeves open to the elbow, scattering grain from a silver plate to the

proud pigeons that strutted about her slippered feet and fluttered to

her dove-like hand. I had dreamed of seeing that woman as I rode

racehorses on wild Irish plains, of being loved by her; in London I had

dreamed of becoming Sevres's pupil.

What coming and going, what inquiries, what difficulties arose! At last

I was advised to go to the Exposition aux Champs Elysée and seek his

address in the catalogue. I did so, and while the _concierge_ copied out

the address for me, I chased his tame magpie that hopped about one of

the angles of the great building. The reader smiles. I was a childish

boy of one-and-twenty who knew nothing, and to whom the world was

astonishingly new. Doubtless before my soul was given to me it had been

plunged deep in Lethe, and so an almost virgin man I stood in front of a

virgin world.

Engin is not far from Paris, and the French country seemed to me like a

fairy-book. Tall green poplars and green river banks, and a little lake

reflecting the foliage and the stems of sapling oak and pine, just as in

the pictures. The driver pointed with his whip, and I saw a high garden

wall shadowed with young trees, and a tall loose iron gate. As I walked

up the gravel path I looked for the beautiful mistress, who, dressed in

muslin, with sleeves open at the elbow, should feed pigeons from a

silver plate of Venus and the does. M. Sevres caught me looking at it;

and hoping his mistress might appear I prolonged the conversation till a

tardy sense of the value of his time forced me to bring it to a close;

and as I passed down the green garden with him I scanned hopefully every

nook, fancying I should see her reading, and that she would raise her

eyes as I passed.

Looking back through the years it seems to me that I did catch sight of

a white dress behind a trellis. But that dress might have been his

daughter's, even his wife's. I only know that I did not discover M.

Sevres's mistress that day nor any other day. I never saw him again. Now

the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say, and all the reveries that

the photographs had inspired resulted in nothing, mere childish

sensualities.

I returned to Engin with my taciturn valet; but he showed no enthusiasm

on the subject of Engin. I saw he was sighing after beef, beer and a

wife, and was but little disposed to settle in this French suburb. We

were both very much alone in Paris. In the evenings I allowed him to

smoke his clay in my room, and in an astounding brogue he counselled me

to return to my mother. But I would not listen, and one day on the

Boulevards I was stricken with the art of Jules Lefebvre. True it is

that I saw it was wanting in that tender grace which I am forced to

admit even now, saturated though I now am with the æsthetics of

different schools, is inherent in Cabanel's work; but at the time I am

writing of my nature was too young and mobile to resist the conventional

attractiveness of nude figures, indolent attitudes, long hair, slender

hips and hands, and I accepted Jules Lefebvre wholly and

unconditionally. He hesitated, however, when I asked to be taken as a

private pupil, but he wrote out the address of a studio where he gave

instruction every Tuesday morning. This was even more to my taste, for I

had an instinctive liking for Frenchmen, and was anxious to see as much

of them as possible.

The studio was perched high up in the Passage des Panoramas. There I

found M. Julien, a typical meridional--the large stomach, the dark eyes,

crafty and watchful; the seductively mendacious manner, the sensual

mind. We made friends at once--he consciously making use of me, I

unconsciously making use of him. To him my forty francs, a month's

subscription, were a godsend, nor were my invitations to dinner and to

the theatre to be disdained. I was curious, odd, quaint. To be sure, it

was a little tiresome to have to put up with a talkative person, whose

knowledge of the French language had been acquired in three months, but

the dinners were good. No doubt Julien reasoned so; I did not reason at

all. I felt this crafty, clever man of the world was necessary to me. I

had never met such a man before, and all my curiosity was awake. He

spoke of art and literature, of the world and the flesh; he told me of

the books he had read, he narrated thrilling incidents in his own life;

and the moral reflections with which he sprinkled his conversation I

thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the

look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The

world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years

before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out

straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a

distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society

only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and

which was destined to absorb some years of my life.

In the studio there were some eighteen or twenty young men, and among

these there were some four or five from whom I could learn; there were

also some eight or nine young English girls. We sat round in a circle

and drew from the model. And this reversal of all the world's opinions

and prejudices was to me singularly delightful; I loved the sense of

unreality that the exceptional nature of our life in this studio

conveyed. Besides, the women themselves were young and interesting, and

were, therefore, one of the charms of the place, giving, as they did,

that sense of sex which is so subtle a mental pleasure, and which is, in

its outward aspect, so interesting to the eye--the gowns, the hair

lifted, showing the neck; the earrings, the sleeves open at the elbow.

Though all this was very dear to me I did not fall in love: but he who

escapes a woman's dominion generally comes under the sway of some friend

who ever exerts a strange attractiveness, and fosters a sort of

dependency that is not healthful or valid: and although I look back with

undiminished delight on the friendship I contracted about this time--a

friendship which permeated and added to my life--I am nevertheless

forced to recognise that, however suitable it may have been in my

special case, in the majority of instances it would have proved but a

shipwrecking reef, on which a young man's life would have gone to

pieces. What saved me was the intensity of my passion for Art, and a

moral revolt against any action that I thought could or would definitely

compromise me in that direction. I was willing to stray a little from my

path, but never further than a single step, which I could retrace when I

pleased. One day I raised my eyes, and saw there was a new-comer in the

studio; and, to my surprise, for he was fashionably dressed, and my

experience had not led me to believe in the marriage of genius and

well-cut clothes, he was painting very well indeed. His shoulders were

beautiful and broad; a long neck, a tiny head, a narrow, thin face, and

large eyes, full of intelligence and fascination. And although he could

not have been working more than an hour, he had already sketched in his

figure, with all the surroundings--screens, lamps, stoves, etc. I was

deeply interested. I asked the young lady next me if she knew who he

was. She could give me no information. But at four o'clock there was a

general exodus from the studio, and we adjourned to a neighbouring

_café_ to drink beer. The way led through a narrow passage, and as we

stooped under an archway, the young man (Marshall was his name) spoke to

me in English. Yes, we had met before; we had exchanged a few words in

So-and-So's studio--the great blonde man, whose Doré-like improvisations

had awakened aspiration in me.

The usual reflections on the chances of life were of course made, and

then followed the inevitable "Will you dine with me to-night?" Marshall

thought the following day would suit him better, but I was very

pressing. He offered to meet me at my hotel; or would I come with him to

his rooms, and he would show me some pictures--some trifles he had

brought up from the country? Nothing would please me better. We got

into a cab. Then every moment revealed new qualities, new superiorities,

in my new-found friend. Not only was he tall, strong, handsome, and

beautifully dressed, infinitely better dressed than myself, but he could

talk French like a native. It was only natural that he should, for he

was born in Brussels and had lived there all his life, but the accident

of birth rather stimulated than calmed my erubescent admiration. He

spoke of, and he was clearly on familiar terms with, the fashionable

restaurants and actresses; he stopped at a hairdresser's to have his

hair curled. All this was very exciting, and a little bewildering. I was

on the tiptoe of expectation to see his apartments; and, not to be

utterly outdone, I alluded to my valet.

His apartments were not so grand as I expected; but when he explained

that he had just spent ten thousand pounds in two years, and was now

living on six or seven hundred francs a month, which his mother would

allow him until he had painted and had sold a certain series of

pictures, which he contemplated beginning at once, my admiration

increased to wonder, and I examined with awe the great fireplace which

had been constructed at his orders, and admired the iron pot which hung

by a chain above an artificial bivouac fire. This detail will suggest

the rest of the studio--the Turkey carpet, the brass harem lamps, the

Japanese screen, the pieces of drapery, the oak chairs covered with red

Utrecht velvet, the oak wardrobe that had been picked up somewhere,--a

ridiculous bargain, and the inevitable bed with spiral columns. There

were vases filled with foreign grasses, and palms stood in the corners

of the rooms. Marshall pulled out a few pictures; but he paid very

little heed to my compliments; and sitting down at the piano, with a

great deal of splashing and dashing about the keys, he rattled off a

waltz.

"What waltz is that?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing; something I composed the other evening. I had a fit of the

blues, and didn't go out. What do you think of it?"

"I think it beautiful; did you really compose that the other evening?"

At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and an English girl

entered. Marshall introduced me. With looks that see nothing, and words

that mean nothing, an amorous woman receives the man she finds with her

sweetheart. But it subsequently transpired that Alice had an

appointment, that she was dining out. She would, however, call in the

morning and give him a sitting for the portrait he was painting of her.

I had hitherto worked very regularly and attentively at the studio, but

now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the

sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was

so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough,

and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience

opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my

arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the

Mabille and the Valentino, and I had dined at the Maison d'Or by myself;

but now I was taken to strange students' _cafés_, where dinners were

paid for in pictures; to a mysterious place, where a _table d'hôte_ was

held under a tent in a back garden; and afterwards we went in great

crowds to _Bullier_, the _Château Rouge_, or the _Elysée Montmartre_.

The clangour of the band, the unreal greenness of the foliage, the

thronging of the dancers, and the chattering of women--we only knew

their Christian names. And then the returning in open carriages rolling

through the white dust beneath the immense heavy dome of the summer

night, when the dusky darkness of the street is chequered by a passing

glimpse of light skirt or flying feather, and the moon looms like a

magic lantern out of the sky.

Now we seemed to live in fiacres and restaurants, and the afternoons

were filled with febrile impressions. Marshall had a friend in this

street, and another in that. It was only necessary for him to cry "Stop"

to the coachman, and to run up two or three flights of stairs....

"_Madame ----, est-elle chez elle?_"

"_Oui, Monsieur; si Monsieur veut se donner la peine d'entrer._" And we

were shown into a handsomely-furnished apartment. A lady would enter

hurriedly, and an animated discussion was begun. I did not know French

sufficiently well to follow the conversation, but I remember it always

commenced _mon cher ami_, and was plentifully sprinkled with the phrase

_vous avez tort_. The ladies themselves had only just returned from

Constantinople or Japan, and they were generally involved in mysterious

lawsuits, or were busily engaged in prosecuting claims for several

millions of francs against different foreign governments.

And just as I had watched the chorus girls and mummers, three years

ago, at the Globe Theatre, now, excited by a nervous curiosity, I

watched this world of Parisian adventurers and lights-o'-love. And this

craving for observation of manners, this instinct for the rapid notation

of gestures and words that epitomise a state of feeling, of attitudes

that mirror forth the soul, declared itself a main passion; and it grew

and strengthened, to the detriment of the other Art still so dear to me.

With the patience of a cat before a mouse-hole, I watched and listened,

picking one characteristic phrase out of hours of vain chatter,

interested and amused by an angry or loving glance. Like the midges that

fret the surface of a shadowy stream, these men and women seemed to me;

and though I laughed, danced, and made merry with them, I was not of

them. But with Marshall it was different: they were my amusement, they

were his necessary pleasure. And I knew of this distinction that made

twain our lives; and I reflected deeply upon it. Why could I not live

without an ever-present and acute consciousness of life? Why could I not

love, forgetful of the harsh ticking of the clock in the perfumed

silence of the chamber?

And so my friend became to me a study, a subject for dissection. The

general attitude of his mind and its various turns, all the apparent

contradictions, and how they could be explained, classified, and reduced

to one primary law, were to me a constant source of thought. Our

confidences knew no reserve. I say our confidences, because to obtain

confidences it is often necessary to confide. All we saw, heard, read or

felt was the subject of mutual confidences: the transitory emotion that

a flush of colour and a bit of perspective awakens, the blue tints that

the summer sunset lends to a white dress, or the eternal verities, death

and love. But, although I tested every fibre of thought and analysed

every motive, I was very sincere in my friendship and very loyal in my

admiration. Nor did my admiration wane when I discovered that Marshall

was shallow in his appreciations, superficial in his judgments, that his

talents did not pierce below the surface; _il avait si grand air_, there

was fascination in his very bearing, in his large, soft, colourful eyes,

and a go and dash in his dissipations that carried you away.

To any one observing us at this time it would have seemed that I was but

a hanger-on, and a feeble imitator of Marshall. I took him to my

tailor's, and he advised me on the cut of my coats; he showed me how to

arrange my rooms, and I strove to copy his manner of speech and his

general bearing; and yet I knew very well indeed that mine was a rarer

and more original nature. I was willing to learn, that was all. There

was much that Marshall could teach me, and I used him without shame,

without stint. I used him as I have used all those with whom I have been

brought into close contact. Search my memory as I will, I cannot recall

a case of man or woman who ever occupied any considerable part of my

thoughts without contributing largely towards my moral or physical

welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had

useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal

fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious,

egoistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and

more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent

services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with

less design than myself. Never have I given a thought to the advantage

that might accrue from being on terms of friendship with this man and

avoiding that one. "Then how do you explain," cries the angry reader,

"that you have never had a friend by whom you did not profit? You must

have had very few friends." On the contrary, I have had many friends,

and of all sorts and kinds--men and women: and, I repeat, none took part

in my life who did not contribute something towards my well-being. It

must, of course, be understood that I make no distinction between mental

and material help; and in my case the one has at all times been adjuvant

to the other. "Pooh, pooh!" again exclaims the reader; "I for one will

not believe that chance has only sent across your way the people who

were required to assist you." Chance! dear reader, is there such a thing

as chance? Do you believe in chance? Do you attach any precise meaning

to the word? Do you employ it at haphazard, allowing it to mean what it

may? Chance! What a field for psychical investigation is at once opened

up; how we may tear to shreds our past lives in search of--what? Of the

Chance that made us. I think, reader, I can throw some light on the

general question, by replying to your taunt: Chance, or the conditions

of life under which we live, sent, of course, thousands of creatures

across my way who were powerless to benefit me; but then an instinct of

which I knew nothing, of which I was not even conscious, withdrew me

from them, and I was attracted to others. Have you not seen a horse

suddenly leave a corner of a field to seek pasturage further away?

Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my

mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind

asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much

expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same

processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the

case in a well-ordered stomach. Shelley, who fired my youth with

passion, and purified and upbore it for so long, is now to me as

nothing: not a dead or faded thing, but a thing out of which I

personally have drawn all the sustenance I can draw from him; and,

therefore, it (that part which I did not absorb) concerns me no more.

And the same with Gautier. Mdlle. de Maupin, that godhead of flowing

line, that desire not "of the moth for the star," but for such

perfection of arm and thigh as leaves passion breathless and fain of

tears, is now, if I take up the book and read, weary and ragged as a

spider's web, that has hung the winter through in the dusty, forgotten

corner of a forgotten room. My old rapture and my youth's delight I can

regain only when I think of that part of Gautier which is now incarnate

in me.

As I picked up books, so I picked up my friends. I read friends and

books with the same passion, with the same avidity; and as I discarded

my books when I had assimilated as much of them as my system required,

so I discarded my friends when they ceased to be of use to me. I employ

the word "use" in its fullest, not in its limited and twenty-shilling

sense. This parallel of the intellect to the blind unconsciousness of

the lower organs will strike some as a violation of man's best beliefs,

and as saying very little for the particular intellect that can be so

reduced. But I am not sure these people are right. I am inclined to

think that as you ascend the scale of thought to the great minds, these

unaccountable impulses, mysterious resolutions, sudden, but certain

knowings, falling whence or how it is impossible to say, but falling

somehow into the brain, instead of growing rarer, become more and more

frequent; indeed, I think that if the really great man were to confess

to the working of his mind, we should see him constantly besieged by

inspirations...inspirations! Ah! how human thought only turns in a

circle, and how, when we think we are on the verge of a new thought, we

slip into the enunciation of some time-worn truth. But I say again, let

general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these

pages if it be understood that brain instincts have always been, and

still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being.