GRANDFATHER CAMERON.
The unhappiest little child that ever drew breath has immediate
compensations between the dark hours undreamed of by elders. One of the
persons that lent the relief of sparkle to those sombre months, and by
whose aid I wandered blithely enough down the sunny avenues of
imagination, which, like a straight road running into the sky, lead to
Paradise, was my Scottish grandfather.
Grandpapa was a sombre-visaged little gentleman, not in the least like
his formidable daughter. He had very dark eyes, and he often assured me
that Stevie got his beautiful red-brown hair from him. I needed the
assurance pretty frequently, for grandpapa's hair was white. He proudly
drew my attention to the fact that there was not a bald spot, however.
In all ordinary matters of existence, grandpapa was of a happy facility.
He tolerated every error, every crime, I believe, except a false note or
an inferior taste in music. He loved me, not because of the accuracy of
my ear, for I had none to speak of, but because of my instinctive
passion for music. Still, in middle life, I can say there never has been
for me a grief that could resist the consolation of music well
interpreted.
If grandpapa found me in a corner white and dejected, he asked no
questions,--he wished to be in ignorance of his daughter's domestic
affairs, which was the reason, I suppose, he so sedulously avoided the
society of my stepfather--but he took me off with him to hear music or
singing somewhere. In winter he took me to the pantomime, and we sat in
the pit, and he indulged me with an orange to suck.
In the Dublin season he took me to the Opera or the Opera-Bouffe with
equal readiness. Sometimes there were morning or afternoon concerts, and
I sat out with exemplary gravity sonatas and concerts or part-singing,
and woke up to genial comprehension of the ballads and simple melodies.
Grandpapa had one great charm. He never spoke to me as a child, and I
rarely understood the tenth of his talk. That was why, no doubt, as a
personage grandpapa appealed so delightfully to my imagination. He was a
mystery, a problem, a permanent excitement. A month or a year--perhaps,
to be more accurate, a month--would elapse without my seeing him, and
then suddenly he would again enter the chaos of dreams and visions, a
smiling dark-eyed old gentleman, with a long black cloak flung round his
shoulder and a slouched felt hat that left revealed his abundant white
hair.
He would place a finger on his lip and say, "Hush!" so mysteriously,
looking round the room. How well I, who lived in such fear of my
mother's presence, understood that attitude and look.
I have since been assured that grandpapa was a harmless lunatic. If so,
he made lunacy more attractive to a child than sanity.
"Hush! I have that to say to you, child, which common ears may not hear.
These people call me Cameron. But, Angela, my real name is Hamlet. I was
born at Elsinore. I will take you to Elsinore some day. It is far away
in a country called Denmark. You yourself, Angela, look like a Dane,
with your yellow hair and blue eyes. Come, there is a concert at
Earlsfort Terrace. They play Bach. I will take you."
Could anything be more calculated to win a child's esteem and reverence
than this assertion that the world knew him by a false name?--that he
was really quite another person from the person they believed him to be?
Then, what sonorous words, Hamlet, Elsinore! Denmark I liked less--it
sounded more like an everyday place--but Elsinore was as good as a
fairy-tale in its awful beauty.
I asked him if you went in a ship over the sea to Elsinore, as Mary Jane
told me you went to America; and when he nodded and said "Yes," I got to
imagine there was no common sunlight on the sea as the ship crossed it
to Elsinore, but the lovely white light I had seen at the theatre when
the fairies danced, and all the people in the ship wore beautiful
garments of white and green gauze, and there was soft music all the way,
and the water shone like silver.
What I could not understand was why I should be a Dane because my eyes
were blue, when grandpapa's, who was so obviously more of a Dane than I,
were black. But grandpapa always frowned, and an odd flame shot into his
mild glance, if you asked him questions.
He gave you facts, and expected you to make what you could of them. He
was unreasonably proud, I thought, of his Scottish blood, all the same.
He was a Highlander, he said, while my grandmother, he explained
contemptuously, was a Glasgow lass. My uncle Douglas, he added, favoured
his side, while my mother was a blonde Ferguson. Pity it was an
intelligent little girl like me did not take more after the Camerons;
but I had my uncle Douglas's nose, and with a Cameron nose I need never
fear the future.
This was surely an excess of faith on my grandfather's side not
justified by experience. He had been only saved from the poorhouse by a
thrifty and judicious if hard-hearted wife, while my splendid uncle
Douglas, with his curly head of Greek god, had wandered from debt
through every expensive caprice, and was drowned sailing a little
pleasure-boat on one of the Killarney lakes at the inappropriate age of
twenty-four.
The Cameron nose has done as little for his young brother, my uncle
Willie. I have always loved the image I have made to myself of my
boy-uncle Willie, chiefly, I suppose, because of his brilliant promise
and early death; but largely, I believe, because not only grandpapa
Cameron, but others who remember him, tell me I resemble him in
character and feature.
They say it was his death, coming so soon after the blow of uncle
Douglas's doom, that turned my grandfather's brain. Willie had been
articled to a well-known architect, who, being musical like my
grandfather, was interested in his musical friend's bright-faced and
witty lad, with about as much knowledge of music as a healthy puppy.
This lamentable deficiency, however, brought about no disastrous clash
between master and pupil.
The distinguished architect loved Willie Cameron for his good-humour,
his industry, his quickness, and his impromptu jingling rhymes. He made
everything rhyme with a delicious comic absurdity, even the technical
terms of his profession, and in consequence no one was jealous of the
master's preference for his funny Scottish pupil. You see, he was so
much more of an Irish than a Scottish lad. Born on Irish soil, he seems
to have inherited the best of native virtues, and was universally
beloved. Even his eldest sister, who never sinned on the side of
tenderness, could not speak of uncle Willie without a smile.
So there were universal congratulations when Willie, barely of age, got
his first commission. No one accused the architect of favouritism,
though the first commission of a son could not have been of greater
moment to him. Uncle Willie posted triumphantly off to the country, and
the master told him to telegraph for his presence in the event of doubt
or difficulty. The season was wet, and uncle Willie reached his inn that
night drenched and shivering. They put him into damp sheets. The next
day was no drier, and uncle Willie drove off on a car in the rain. It
was his last drive alive. Ten days later what remained of him was driven
to the cemetery amid plumes and crape and white flowers.
It was curious that while grandpapa Cameron was always ready to speak of
his handsome son Douglas, of Willie, whom he loved best, he only spoke
to me once,--that was when he showed me an indefinite boy's picture, and
curtly told me it was my uncle Willie's portrait, and added, dreamily,
that I was the only one of his grandchildren who resembled Willie.
That fact, perhaps, had more to do than my musical proclivities with his
preference for me. He would give me five-shilling pieces from time to
time, and beg me "not to mention it." I took the pieces gratefully,
pleased with their brightness and largeness; but I own I found pennies
more useful. A child can buy almost anything for a penny, but the only
use of a silver five-shilling piece seemed to me to be able to look at
it from time to time. Had I known anything of arithmetic, I might have
calculated how many pennies were contained in these big silver pieces,
and have changed them for an inexhaustible store of my favourite coin.
But I was not clever enough to think of this, and by the time I was sent
across the sea to school in Warwickshire a year later, I had as many as
six five-shilling pieces in a box, which then did stout service in
supplying cakes and sweets on the scarce occasions I was allowed to make
such needful investments.
Grandpapa Cameron lived in a little cottage out of town, with a long
back-garden, where he spent his time cultivating roses. He had a
disagreeable old cook and a red-nosed gardener, and he saw no society
but a couple of priests, who took it in turn to drop in of an evening to
play cribbage.
On Sunday he went to the one church where Mozart's and Beethoven's
masses were sung. Once a new hardy organist with a fanciful French taste
introduced Gounod.
My grandfather's face changed. He cocked an indignant ear, turned
abruptly in his seat facing the altar, and looked long and angrily up at
the choir. The horrid and sentimental strains of Gounod continued, and,
unable to bear it any longer, my grandfather clapped his hat over his
eyes, with a disregard for the religious prejudices of his neighbours no
less brutal than the new organist's disregard for his musical
sensibilities.
He walked out of church, and meditated upon his protest for a week. When
I mention my belief that my grandfather had only become a convert from
Scottish Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism because of Mozart's and
Beethoven's masses, it will be recognised what a desperately serious
matter for him was this impertinent introduction of light French music
into church.
He succeeded in gathering a cluster of musical maniacs, one of whom was
his friend the distinguished architect. The four planted themselves,
with arms folded and furious purpose in their eyes, not in the least
like Christians come to Sunday prayers, but like heroes bent upon
showing an uncompromising front to injury. They heard in silence the
opening roll of the organ, then the thin sweetness of Monsieur Gounod's
religious strains filled the church, and the faithful sat up to listen
to the Kyrie Eleison.
A distinct and prolonged hiss burst from the lips of the four musical
maniacs, and my grandfather began to pound his stick upon the floor with
an eloquence that left no one in doubt as to how he would treat the
organist's head if he had it within reach. The officiating priests
glanced round in surprise and astonishment. People rubbed their eyes,
and wondered if they were dreaming.
There sat the four maniacs, hissing, booing, knocking their sticks on
the floor, and "ohing" as they do in the House of Commons. Surprise was
effaced in consternation, and a priest came down to the miscreants from
the altar.
"Let that fellow stop his French nonsense and we'll stop too," shouted
my grandfather. "I've been coming to this church for the past
twenty-five years, and during that time have paid bigger fees than any
of my neighbours. Why? Because there was a decent feeling for music
here. Because you respected yourselves and gave us the best. But if
you're going to degrade yourselves and follow an ignoble fashion and
adopt French fads--well, sir, I swear I'll wreck the church--I will
indeed."
The fight ended in my grandfather's defeat, and he never put his foot
again into church. He carried his indignation so far as to insult an old
French acquaintance, Monsieur Pruvot, the manager of a large wine house.
Still sore upon the triumph of Gounod, he was accosted affably by
Monsieur Pruvot, who cried out to him, waving his hat--
"How do you do, my dear Monsieur Camerone?"
"My name's Cameron, and I'm Mister, none of your damned French
Monsieurs, Mr. Pruvot," roared my grandfather, pronouncing the mute _t_
of the Frenchman's name with a vicious emphasis.
It is easy to imagine the amazement of the Frenchman, in ignorance of
the Beethoven-Gounod episode, and who until then had always found my
grandfather a genial and inoffensive neighbour. He made, by way of
insinuating concessions to wrath, a complimentary remark upon "this
charming little town of Dublin," pronouncing it in the French way.
"We call it Dublin, sir. Yes, I've no doubt it is a finer town than your
native Bordox. I see no reason, sir, why we in Dublin should treat your
town with a courtesy you, residing here, deny ours. If you can't learn
to say Dublin, we may well decline to say Bordeaux. A very good morning,
Mr. Pruvot."
Poor grandpapa Cameron! This was his last battle on earth, either in the
interests of Beethoven or Dublin. A few days later he was found in bed
with his face to the wall--dead.