mind, with an extraordinary vividness. He was sitting on her knee in
the cottage, and his clear child’s voice rang like a bell in the silent
room--so clearly, that Jeanne-Marie started, and wondered if she were
light-headed or had been dreaming. Then the voice faded away, and she
saw the cool, high grass of the orchard, and there was Henri laughing
at her, and rolling among the flowers. How cool and fresh it looked;
and Henri was asking her to come and play: “Tante Jeanne-Marie, viens
jouer avec ton petit. Tante Jeanne-Marie, tante Jeanne-Marie!” She must
throw herself on the grass with him--on the cool, waving grass. And she
bent forward with outstretched arms; but the movement brought her to
herself, and as she lay back on her pillows, suddenly the reality of
suffering rushed back upon her, with the agonising sense of separation
and of loss. Little Henri was dying; was dead perhaps; never to hear
his voice, or feel his warm little arms round her neck. She could do
nothing for him; he must die without her. “Tante Jeanne-Marie! Tante
Jeanne-Marie!” Was he calling her, from his feverish little bed? If
he called, she must go to him, she could not lie here, this suffering
was choking her. She must have air, and space to breathe in; this room
was suffocating her. She must go to Henri. With a desperate effort she
struggled to her feet, and stood supporting herself by the bed-post.
The moon, that had hidden itself in the clouds, struggled out, the
long, old-fashioned glass hanging on the wall opposite the bed became
one streak of light, and Jeanne-Marie, gazing at herself, met the
reflection of her own face, and knew that no power on earth could make
her reach the farm where little Henri lay.
She stood, as if spell-bound, marking the sunken look of the eyes, the
grey-blue colour of the cheeks, the face that was the face of an old
woman.
A sudden, fierce revolt against her starved life swept through her at
the sight, and conquered even the physical pain raging at her heart.
Still struggling for breath, she threw up her arms and tore the cotton
nightgown from her shoulders, and stood there beating her breast with
her hands.
“Oh, good God! good God! see here what I am. How old and shrunken
before my time! Cursed be these breasts, that no child has ever
suckled; cursed be this withered body, that no man has ever embraced. I
could have loved, and lived long, and been made beautiful by happiness.
Ah, why am I accursed? I die, unloved and neglected by my own people.
No children’s tears, no husband to close my eyes; old, worn out, before
my time. A woman only in name--not wife, not mother. Despised and
hideous before God and men--God and men.”
Her voice died away in a moan, her head fell forward on her breast,
and she stumbled against the bed. For a long time she lay crouched
there, insensible from mere exhaustion, until, just as the clocks were
striking midnight, the door opened gently, and Marthe and M. le Curé
came in. Jean, awakened by the sounds overhead, had run quickly for
Marthe, and coming back together, they had met M. le Curé on his way.
They raised her gently, and laid her on the bed, and finding she still
breathed, Marthe ran to fetch brandy, and the Curé knelt by the bed in
prayer.
Presently, the eyes opened quietly, and M. le Curé saw her lips move.
He bent over her, and whispered: “You are troubled, Jeanne-Marie; you
wish for the absolution?”
But her voice came back to her, and she said clearly: “To die unloved,
unmourned; a woman, but no wife; no mother.”
She closed her eyes again. There were noises singing in her head,
louder and louder; but the pain at her heart had ceased. She was
conscious only of a great loneliness, as if a curtain had risen, and
shut her off from the room; and again the words came, whispered from
her lips: “A woman, accursed and wasted; no mother and no wife.”
But some one was speaking, speaking so loudly that the sounds in her
head seemed to die away. She opened her eyes, and saw M. le Curé,
where he knelt, with his eyes shining on her lace, and heard his
voice saying: “And God said, ‘Blessed be the virgins above all women;
give unto them the holy places; let them be exalted and praised by My
church, before all men, and before Me. Worthy are they to sit at My
feet--worthy are they above all women.’”
A smile of infinite happiness and of supreme relief lit up
Jeanne-Marie’s face.
“Above all women,” she whispered: “above all women.”
And Jeanne-Marie bowed her head, and died.
Parson Herrick’s Muse
By C. W. Dalmon
THE parson dubs us, in our cups,
“A tipsy, good-for-nothing crew!”
It matters not--it may be false;
It matters not--it may be true.
But here’s to parson Herrick’s Muse!
Drink to it, dear old comrades, please!
And, prithee, for my tombstone choose
A verse from his “Hesperides.”
The parson’s rich, but we are poor;
And we are wrong, but he is right--
Who knows how much his cellar holds,
Or how he goes to bed at night?
But here’s to parson Herrick’s Muse!
Drink to it, dear old comrades, please!
And, prithee, for my tombstone choose
A verse from his “Hesperides.”
The landlord shall our parson be;
The tavern-door our churchyard gate;
And we will fill the landlord’s till
Before we fill the parson’s plate!
But here’s to parson Herrick’s Muse!
Drink to it, dear old comrades, please!
And, prithee, for my tombstone choose
A verse from his “Hesperides.”
George the Fourth
By Max Beerbohm
[Illustration]
A Note on George the Fourth
By Max Beerbohm
THEY say that when King George was dying, a special form of prayer
for his recovery, composed by one of the Archbishops, was read aloud
to him, and that his Majesty, after saying Amen “thrice, with great
fervour,” begged that his thanks might be conveyed to its author.
To the student of royalty in modern times there is something rather
suggestive in this incident. I like to think of the drug-scented room
at Windsor, and of the King, livid and immobile among his pillows,
waiting, in superstitious awe, for the near moment when he must stand,
a spirit, in the presence of a perpetual King. I like to think of
him following the futile prayer with eyes and lips, and then, custom
resurgent in him and a touch of pride that, so long as the blood moved
ever so little in his veins, he was still a king, expressing a desire
that the dutiful feeling and admirable taste of the Prelate should
receive a suitable acknowledgment. It would have been impossible
for a real monarch like George, even after the gout had turned his
thoughts heavenward, really to abase himself before his Maker. But
he could, so to say, treat with him, as he might have treated with a
fellow-sovereign, long after diplomacy was quite useless. How strange
it must be to be a king! How delicate and difficult a task it is to
judge him! So far as I know, no fair attempt has been made to form
an estimate of George the Fourth. The hundred and one eulogies and
lampoons, published irresponsibly during and immediately after his
reign, are not worth a wooden hoop in Hades. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has
published a history of George’s reign, in which he has so artistically
subordinated his own personality to his subject, that I can scarcely
find from beginning to end of the two bulky volumes a single opinion
expressed, a single idea, a single deduction from the admirably
arranged facts. All that most of us know of George is from Thackeray’s
brilliant denunciation. Now, I yield to few in my admiration of
Thackeray’s powers. He had a charming style. We never find him
searching for the _mot juste_ as for a needle in a bottle of hay. Could
he have looked through a certain window by the river at Croisset, or
in the quadrangle at Brasenose, how he would have laughed! He blew on
his pipe, and words came tripping round him, like children, like pretty
little children who are perfectly drilled for the dance, or came, did
he will it, treading in their precedence, like kings, gloomily. And I
think it is to the credit of the reading mob that, by reason of his
beautiful style, all that he said was taken for the truth, without
questioning. But truth after all is eternal, and style transient, and
now that Thackeray’s style is becoming, if I may say so, a trifle
1860, it may not be amiss that we should inquire whether his estimate
of George is in substance and fact worth anything at all. It seems
to me that, as in his novels, so in his history of the four Georges,
Thackeray made no attempt at psychology. He dealt simply with types.
One George he insisted upon regarding as a buffoon, another as a yokel.
The Fourth George he chose to hold up for reprobation as a drunken,
vapid cad. Every action, every phase of his life that went to disprove
this view, he either suppressed or distorted utterly. “History,”
he would seem to have chuckled, “has nothing to do with the First
Gentleman. But I will give him a niche in Natural History. He shall
be king of the Beasts.” He made no allowance for the extraordinary
conditions under which any monarch finds himself, none for the
unfortunate circumstances by which George was from the first hampered.
He judged him as he judged Barnes Newcome and all the scoundrels he
created. Moreover, he judged him by the moral standard of the Victorian
Age. In fact he applied to his subject the wrong method in the wrong
manner, and at the wrong time. And yet every one has taken him at his
word. I feel that my essay may be scouted as a paradox; but I hope that
many may recognise that I am not, out of mere boredom, endeavouring to
stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, in a spirit of real
earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has been cruel to George. I
do not despair of success. I think I shall make converts. For the mob
is notoriously fickle, and so occasionally cheers the truth.
None, at all events, will deny that England to-day stands otherwise
than she stood a hundred and thirty-two years ago, when George was
born. We to-day are living a decadent life. All the while that we are
prating of progress, we are really so deteriorate! There is nothing but
feebleness in us. Our youths who spend their days in trying to build
up their constitutions by sport or athletics, and their evenings in
undermining them with poisonous and dyed drinks, our daughters who are
ever searching for some new quack remedy for new imaginary megrim, what
strength is there in them? We have our societies for the prevention
of this and the promotion of that and the propagation of the other,
because there are no individuals among us. Our sexes are already nearly
assimilate. Real women are becoming nearly as rare as real ladies, and
it is only at the music halls that we are privileged to see strong
men. We are born into a poor, weak age. We are not strong enough to be
wicked, and the Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
But this was not so in the days when George was walking by his tutor’s
side in the gardens of Kew or of Windsor. London must have been a
splendid place in those days--full of life and colour and wrong and
revelry. There was no absurd press nor vestry to see that everything
should be neatly ordered, nor to protect the poor at the expense of the
rich. Every man had to shift for himself and, in consequence, men were,
as Mr. Clement Scott would say, manly, and women, as Mr. Clement Scott
would say, womanly. A young man of wealth and family in that period
found open to him a vista of such license as had been unknown to any
since the barbatuli of the Roman Empire. To spend the early morning
with his valet, gradually assuming the rich apparel that was not then
tabooed by a false sumptuary standard; to saunter round to White’s for
ale and tittle-tattle and the making of wagers; to attend a “drunken
déjeûner” in honour of “la très belle Rosaline” or the Strappini; to
drive a friend out into the country in his pretty curricle, “followed
by two well-dressed and well-mounted grooms, of singular elegance
certainly,” and stop at every tavern on the road to curse the host
for not keeping better ale and a wench of more charm; to reach St.
James’ in time for a random toilet and so off to dinner. Which of _our_
dandies could survive a day of pleasures such as this? Which would be
ready, dinner done, to scamper off again to Ranelagh and dance and skip
and sup in the rotunda there? Yet the youth of this period would not
dream of going to bed before he had looked in at White’s or Crockford’s
for a few hours’ faro.
This was the kind of life that young George found opened to him, when,
in his nineteenth year, he at length was given an establishment of
his own in Buckingham House. How his young eyes must have sparkled,
and with what glad gasps must he have taken the air of freedom into
his lungs. Rumour had long been busy with the confounded surveillance
under which his childhood had been passed. A paper of the time says
significantly that “the Prince of Wales, with a spirit which does him
honour, has three times requested a change in that system.” For a long
time King George had postponed permission for his son to appear at any
balls, and the year before had only given it, lest he should offend
the Spanish Minister, who begged it as a personal favour. I know few
pictures more pathetic than that of George, then an overgrown boy of
fourteen, tearing the childish frill from around his neck and crying
to one of the royal servants, “See how they treat me!” Childhood has
always seemed to me the tragic period of life--to be subject to the
most odious espionage at the one age when you never dream of doing
wrong, to be deceived by your parents, thwarted of your smallest wish,
oppressed by the terrors of manhood and of the world to come, and to
believe, as you are told, that childhood is the only happiness known:
all this is quite terrible. And all Royal children, of whom I have
read, particularly George, seem to have passed through greater trials
in childhood than do the children of any other class. Mr. Fitzgerald,
hazarding for once an opinion, thinks that “the stupid, odious, German,
sergeant-system of discipline that had been so rigorously applied,
was, in fact, responsible for the blemishes of the young Prince’s
character.” Even Thackeray, in his essay upon George III., asks what
wonder that the son, finding himself free at last, should have plunged,
without looking, into the vortex of dissipation. In Torrens’s “Life
of Lord Melbourne” we learn that Lord Essex, riding one day with the
King, met the young prince wearing a wig, and that the culprit, being
sternly reprimanded by his father, replied that he had “been ordered
by his doctor to wear a wig, for he was subject to cold.” Whereupon
the King, whether to vent the aversion he already felt for his son or
in complacence at the satisfactory result of his discipline, turned
to Lord Essex and remarked, “A lie is ever ready when it is wanted.”
George never lost this early-engrained habit of lies. It is to George’s
childish fear of his guardians that we must trace that extraordinary
power of bamboozling his courtiers, his ministry and his mistresses
that distinguished him through his long life. It is characteristic
of the man that he should himself have bitterly deplored his own
untruthfulness. When, in after years, he was consulting Lady Spencer
upon the choice of a governess for his child he made this remarkable
speech, “Above all, she must be taught the truth. You know that I don’t
speak the truth and my brothers don’t, and I find it a great defect,
from which I would have my daughter free. _We have been brought up
badly, the Queen having taught us to equivocate._” You may laugh at
the picture of the little chubby, curly-heeded fellows learning to
equivocate at their mother’s knee, but you must remember that the
wisest master of ethics himself, in his theory of ἕξεις ἀποδείκτικαι,
similarly raised virtues, such as telling the truth, to the level of
regular accomplishments, and before you judge poor George harshly, in
his entanglements of lying, remember the cruelly unwise education he
had undergone.
However much we may deplore this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of its
evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it
existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he
passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other
young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that
splendid pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life. He
was so young and so handsome, and so strong, that can we wonder if all
the women fell at his feet? “The graces of his person,” says one whom
he honoured by an intrigue, “the irresistible sweetness of his smile,
the tenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by
me till every vision of this changing scene are forgotten. The polished
and fascinating ingenuousness of his manners contributed not a little
to enliven our promenade. He sang with exquisite taste, and the tones
of his voice, breaking on the silence of the night, have often appeared
to my entranced senses like more than mortal melody.” But besides his
graces of person, he had a most delightful wit, he was a scholar who
could bandy quotations with Fox or Sheridan; and, like the young men
of to-day, he knew all about Art. He spoke French, Italian, and German
perfectly, and Crossdill had taught him the violoncello. At first, as
was right for one of his age, he cared more for the pleasures of the
table and of the ring, for cards and love. He was wont to go down to
Ranelagh surrounded by a retinue of bruisers--rapscallions, such as
used to follow Clodius through the streets of Rome, and he loved to
join in the scuffles like any commoner. He learnt to box from Angelo,
and was considered by some to be a fine performer. On one occasion,
too, at an _exposition d’escrime_, he handled the foils against the
_maître_, and “was highly complimented upon his graceful postures.”
In fact, in spite of his accomplishments, he seems to have been a
thoroughly manly young fellow. He was just the kind of figure-head
Society had long been in need of. A certain lack of tone had crept
into the amusements of the _haut monde_, and this was doubtless due
to the lack of an acknowledged leader. The King was not yet mad, but
he was always bucolic, and socially out of the question. So at the
coming of his son Society broke into a gallop. Balls and masquerades
were given in his honour night after night. Good Samaritans must have
approved when they found that at these entertainments great ladies
and courtesans brushed beautiful shoulders in utmost familiarity, but
those who delighted in the high charm of society doubtless shook their
heads. We need not, however, find it a flaw in George’s social bearing
that he did not check this kind of freedom. At the first, as a young
man full of life, of course he took everything as it came, joyfully. No
one knew better than he did, in later life, that there is a time for
laughing with great ladies and a time for laughing with courtesans. But
as yet it was not possible for him to exert influence. How great that
influence became I will indicate later on.
I like to think of him as he was at this period, charging about,
in pursuit of pleasure, like a young bull. The splendid taste for
building had not yet come to him. His father would not hear of him
patronising the turf. But already he was implected with a passion for
dress, and seems to have erred somewhat on the side of dressing up,
as is the way of young men. It is fearful to think of him, as Cyrus
Redding saw him, “arrayed in deep-brown velvet, silver embroidered,
with cut-steel buttons, and a gold net thrown over all.” Before that
“gold net thrown over all,” all the mistakes of his after-life seem to
me to grow almost insignificant. Time, however, toned his too florid
sense of costume, and we should at any rate be thankful that his
imagination never deserted him. All the delightful munditiæ that we
find in the contemporary “fashion-plates for gentlemen” can be traced
to George himself. His were the much-approved “quadruple stock of
great dimension,” the “cocked grey-beaver,” the pantaloons of mauve
silk “negligently crinkled” and any number of other little pomps and
foibles of the kind. As he grew older and was obliged to abandon many
of his more vigorous pastimes, he grew more and more enamoured of
the pleasures of the wardrobe. He would spend hours, it is said, in
designing coats for his friends and liveries for his servants, and even
uniforms. Nor did he ever make the mistake of giving away outmoded
clothes to his valets, but kept them to form what must have been the
finest collection of clothes that has been seen in modern times. With a
sentimentality that is characteristic of him he would often, as he sat,
crippled by gout, in his room at Windsor, direct his servant to bring
him this or that coat, which he had worn ten or twenty or thirty years
before, and, when it was brought to him, spend much time in laughing or
sobbing over the memories that lay in its folds. It is pleasant to know
that George, during his long and various life, never forgot a coat,
however long ago worn, however seldom.
But in the early days of which I speak he had not yet touched that
self-conscious note which, in manner and mode of life, as well as in
costume, he was to touch later. He was too violently enamoured of all
around him to think very deeply of himself. But he had already realised
the tragedy of the voluptuary, which is, after a little time, not that
he must go on living, but that he cannot live in two places at once.
We have, at this end of the century, tempered this tragedy by the
perfection of railways, and it is possible for that splendid exemplar
of the delectable life, our good Prince, whom Heaven bless, to waken to
the sound of the Braemar bagpipes, while the music of Mdlle. Guilbert’s
latest song, cooed over the footlights of the Concerts Parisiens,
still rings in his ears. But in the time of our Prince’s illustrious
great-uncle there were not railways; and we find George perpetually
driving, for wagers, to Brighton and back (he had already acquired
that taste for Brighton which was one of his most loveable qualities)
in incredibly short periods of time. The rustics who lived along the
road were well accustomed to the sight of a high, tremulous phaeton,
flashing past them, and the crimson face of the young prince bending
over the horses. There is something absurd in representing George as,
even before he came of age, a hardened and cynical profligate, an
Elagabalus in trousers. His blood flowed fast enough through his veins.
All his escapades were those of a healthful young man of the time. Need
we blame him if he sought, every day, to live faster and more fully?