And Barty the head boy of the school, though not the oldest--and the
brilliant show-boy of the class.
Just before Easter (1851) he and I and Rapaud and Laferte and
Jolivet trois (who was nineteen) and Palaiseau and Bussy-Rabutin
went up for our "bachot" at the Sorbonne.
We sat in a kind of big musty school-room with about thirty other
boys from other schools and colleges. There we sat side by side from
ten till twelve at long desks, and had a long piece of Latin
dictated to us, with the punctuation in French: "un point--point et
virgule--deux points--point d'exclamation--guillemets--ouvrez la
parenthese," etc., etc.--monotonous details that enervate one at
such a moment!
Then we set to work with our dictionaries and wrote out a
translation according to our lights--a _pion_ walking about and
watching us narrowly for cribs, in case we should happen to have one
for this particular extract, which was most unlikely.
Barty's nose bled, I remember--and this made him nervous.
Then we went and lunched at the Cafe de l'Odeon, on the best omelet
we had ever tasted.
"Te rappelles-tu cette omelette?" said poor Barty to me only last
Christmas as ever was!
Then we went back with our hearts in our mouths to find if we had
qualified ourselves by our "version ecrite" for the oral examination
that comes after, and which is so easy to pass--the examiners having
lunched themselves into good-nature.
There we stood panting, some fifty boys and masters, in a small,
whitewashed room like a prison. An official comes in and puts the
list of candidates in a frame on the wall, and we crane our necks
over each other's shoulders.
And, lo! Barty is plucked--_colle_! and I have passed, and actually
Rapaud--and no one else from Brossard's!
An old man--a parent or grandparent probably of some unsuccessful
candidate--bursts into tears and exclaims,
"Oh! que malheur--que malheur!"
A shabby, tall, pallid youth, in the uniform of the College
Ste.-Barbe, rushes down the stone stair's shrieking,
"Ca pue l'injustice, ici!"
One hears him all over the place: terrible heartburns and tragic
disappointments in the beginning of life resulted from failure in
this first step--a failure which disqualified one for all the little
government appointments so dear to the heart of the frugal French
parent. "Mille francs par an! c'est le Pactole!"
* * * * *
Barty took his defeat pretty easily--he put it all down to his nose
bleeding--and seemed so pleased at my success, and my dear mother's
delight in it, that he was soon quite consoled; he was always like
that.
To M. Merovee, Barty's failure was as great a disappointment as it
was a painful surprise.
[Illustration: "'MAURICE AU PIQUET!'"]
"Try again Josselin! Don't leave here till you have passed. If you are
content to fail in this, at the very outset of your career, you will
never succeed in anything through life! Stay with us as my guest till
you can go up again, and again if necessary. _Do_, my dear child--it
will make me so happy! I shall feel it as a proof that you reciprocate
in some degree the warm friendship I have always borne you--in common
with everybody in the school! Je t'en prie, mon garcon!"
Then he went to the Rohans and tried to persuade them. But Lord
Archibald didn't care much about Bachots, nor his wife either. They
were going back to live in England, besides; and Barty was going
into the Guards.
I left school also--with a mixture of hope and elation, and yet the
most poignant regret.
I can hardly find words to express the gratitude and affection I
felt for Merovee Brossard when I bade him farewell.
Except his father before him, he was the best and finest Frenchman I
ever knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this
way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen
in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and
mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to
any country in the world.
I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and so did Barty;
and then our letters grew fewer and farther between, and finally
left off altogether--as nearly always happens in such cases, I
think. And I never saw him again; for when he broke up the school he
went to his own province in the southeast, and lived there till
twenty years ago, when he died--unmarried, I believe.
Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mlle. Marceline, and others--and
three or four boys with whom both Barty and I were on terms of warm
and intimate friendship. None of these boys that I know of have
risen to any world-wide fame; and, oddly enough, none of them have
ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just as famous in
France for his French literary work as on this side of the Channel
for all he has done in English. He towers just as much there as
here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and
we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright
luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but,
like Sirius, a sun.
Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school where he lived
for four years and was so strangely popular--and which he so filled
with his extraordinary personality!
* * * * *
So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I fear I may have
dwelt on them at too great a length. No period of time has ever been
for me so bright and happy as those seven years I spent at the
Institution F. Brossard--especially the four years I spent there
with Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to recall the
trivial little incidents that made for us both the sum of existence
in those happy days.
La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance! what better sport can there be,
or more bloodless, at my time of life?
And all the lonely pathetic pains and pleasures of it, now that _he_
is gone!
The winter twilight has just set in--"betwixt dog and wolf." I
wander alone (but for Barty's old mastiff, who follows me
willy-nilly) in the woods and lanes that surround Marsfield on the
Thames, the picturesque abode of the Josselins.
Darker and darker it grows. I no longer make out the familiar trees
and hedges, and forget how cold it is and how dreary.
"Je marcherai les yeux fixes sur mes pensees,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit--
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbe, les mains croisees:
Triste--et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."
(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)
It's really far away I am--across the sea; across the years, O
Posthumus! in a sunny play-ground that has been built over long ago,
or overgrown with lawns and flower-beds and costly shrubs.
Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny,
funny old French remembrance long forgotten--a brand-new old
remembrance--a kind of will-o'-the-wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on
tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by
mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house
on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs,
into the big cheerful music-room like a studio--ruddy and bright
with the huge log-fire opposite the large window. All is on an ample
scale at Marsfield, people and things! and I! sixteen stone, good
Lord!
How often that window has been my beacon on dark nights! I used to
watch for it from the train--a landmark in a land of milk and
honey--the kindliest light that ever led me yet on earth.
I sit me down in my own particular chimney-corner, in my own
cane-bottomed chair by the fender, and stare at the blaze with my friend
the mastiff. An old war-battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and
makes friends too. There goes my funny little French remembrance, trying
to fly up the chimney like a burnt love-letter....
Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe in black,
brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I like it. A well-grown
little son of hers, a very Ganymede, beau comme le jour, brings me a
cigarette, and insists on lighting it for me himself. I like that
too.
Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we call
her--though there is no such word that I know of--goes to the piano
and sings little French songs of forty, fifty years ago--songs that
she has learnt from her dear papa.
Heavens! what a voice! and how like his, but for the difference of
sex and her long and careful training (which he never had); and the
accent, how perfect!
Then suddenly:
"A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Vous etiez, vous etiez bien aise!
A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Nous etions, nous etions bien la!
Mais de vous en souvenir
Prendrez-vous la peine?
Mais de vous en souvenir,
Et d'y revenir?
A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Vivre et mourir la!"
So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the richest,
sweetest voice I know. And behold! at last I have caught my little
French remembrance, just as the lamps are being lit--and I transfix
it with my pen and write it down....
And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as
it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau,
the sniffer at the fete de St.-Cloud--all about a tame magpie, a
gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and
doesn't concern Barty in the least; for it so happened that Barty
wasn't there!
* * * * *
Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I bade adieu forever
to our happy school life--and for a few years to our beloved
Paris--and for many years to our close intimacy of every hour in the
day.
I remember spending two or three afternoons with him at the great
exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went on a visit to his
grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire--and happy afternoons they
were! and we made the most of them. We saw all there was to be seen
there, I think; and found ourselves always drifting back to the
"Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which Barty's admiration
was boundless.
And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite
deplorable by contrast--especially the shoes, and the way of
dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female
beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one
so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French
boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not
all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget
can so eloquently describe!
My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the
Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the
Vougeot-Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with
any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties
at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.
[Illustration:
"'QUAND ON PERD, PAR TRISTE OCCURRENCE,
SON ESPERANCE,
ET SA GAITE,
LE REMEDE AU MELANCOLIQUE
C'EST LA MUSIQUE
ET LA BEAUTE'"
]
My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities,
Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a
great dislike to business--and so had I; from different motives, I
fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science--a passion that had
been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension
Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest
interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in.
Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me
in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of
Chemistry at University College, close by--in October, 1851--and
studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my
father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have
pleased him even more.
At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the
Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately.
Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or
the society we severally frequented.
I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St.
James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture,
and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph
engravings on the walls--beautiful female faces--the gift of Lady
Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly
maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were
also foils, boxing-gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many
weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own
martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often
came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice
a week, and was made much of--even by my father, who thoroughly
disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and
agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.
My father was much away--in Paris and Dijon--and Barty made rain and
fine weather in our dull abode, to use a French expression--_il y
faisait la pluie et le beau temps_. That is, it rained there when he
was away, and he brought the fine weather with him; and we spoke
French all round.
The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast with Barty in
St. James's Street on Sunday mornings, when he was not serving his
Queen and country--either alone with him or with two or three of his
friends--mostly young carpet warriors like himself; and very
charming young fellows they were. I have always been fond of
warriors, young or old, and of whatever rank, and wish to goodness I
had been a warrior myself. I feel sure I should have made a fairly
good one!
Then we would spend an hour or two in athletic exercises and smoke
many pipes. And after this, in the summer, we would walk in
Kensington Gardens and see the Rank and Fashion. In those days the
Rank and Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Kensington
Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the Serpentine Bridge again
and again between Prince's Gate and Bayswater.
Then for dinner we went to some pleasant foreign pot-house in or
near Leicester Square, where they spoke French--and ate and drank
it!--and then back again to his rooms. Sometimes we would be alone,
which I liked best: we would read and smoke and be happy; or he
would sketch, or pick out accompaniments on his guitar; often not
exchanging a word, but with a delightful sense of close
companionship which silence almost intensified.
Sometimes we were in very jolly company: more warriors; young
Robson, the actor who became so famous; a big negro pugilist, called
Snowdrop; two medical students from St. George's Hospital, who boxed
well and were capital fellows; and an academy art student, who died
a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of Barty's mural
decorations and laughed at the colored lithographs; and many others
of all sorts. There used to be much turf talk, and sometimes a
little card-playing and mild gambling--but Barty's tastes did not
lie that way.
His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the gloves with
Snowdrop, or any one else who chose--or fencing--or else making
music; or being funny in any way one could; and for this he had
quite a special gift: he had sudden droll inspirations that made one
absolutely hysterical--mere things of suggestive look or sound or
gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite original;
absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it made one laugh till
one's sides ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this.
Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of the most
high-minded, there is often a latent longing for this kind of happy
idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for those who can supply it
without effort and who delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor
of the Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our day,
although he developed in quite another direction!
Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love-ballad or
sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the
throat; poor Snowdrop would weep by spoonfuls!
By-the-way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing things
up--confusing Sundays and week-days; of course our Sunday evenings
were quiet and respectable, and I much preferred them when he and I
were alone; he was then another person altogether--a thoughtful and
intelligent young Frenchman, who loved reading poetry aloud or being
read to; especially English poetry--Byron! He was faithful to his
"Don Juan," his Hebrew melodies--his "O'er the glad waters of the
deep blue sea." We knew them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we
read them still; and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred de
Musset....
And one day I discovered another Alfred who wrote verses--Alfred the
Great, as we called him--one Alfred Tennyson, who had written a
certain poem, among others, called "In Memoriam"--which I carried
off to Barty's and read out aloud one wet Sunday evening, and the
Sunday evening after, and other Sunday evenings; and other poems by
the same hand: "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Lotos-Eaters," "The
Lady of Shalott"--and the chord of Byron passed in music out of
sight.
Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and Wordsworth--and our
Sunday evenings were of a happiness to be remembered forever; at
least they were so to me!
If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was a blank day
for Robert Maurice. For it was not very lively at home--especially
when my father was there. He was the best and kindest man that ever
lived, but his businesslike seriousness about this world, and his
anxiety about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were deadly
depressing; combined with the aspect of London on the Lord's
day--London east of Russell Square! Oh, Paris ... Paris ... and the
yellow omnibus that took us both there together, Barty and me, at
eight on a Sunday morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back
to school till fourteen hours later!
I shall never forget one gloomy wintry Sunday--somewhere in 1854 or
5, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end of Barty's career as a
Guardsman.
Twice after lunch I had called at Barty's, who was to have been on
duty in barracks or at the Tower that morning; he had not come back;
I called for him at his club, but he hadn't been there either--and I
turned my face eastward and homeward with a sickening sense of
desolate ennui and deep disgust of London for which I could find no
terms that are fit for publication!
And this was not lessened by the bitter reproaches I made myself for
being such a selfish and unworthy son and brother. It was precious
dull at home for my mother and sister--and my place was _there_.
They were just lighting the lamps as I got to the arcade in the
Quadrant--and there I ran against the cheerful Barty. Joy! what a
change in the aspect of everything! It rained light! He pulled a new
book out of his pocket, which he had just borrowed from some fair
lady--and showed it to me. It was called _Maud_.
We dined at Pergolese's, in Rupert Street--and went back to
Barty's--and read the lovely poem out loud, taking it by turns; and
that is the most delightful recollection I have since I left the
Institution F. Brossard!
Occasionally I dined with him "on guard" at St. James's Palace--and
well I could understand all the attractions of his life, so
different from mine, and see what a good fellow he was to come so
often to Brunswick Square, and seem so happy with us.
The reader will conclude that I was a kind of over-affectionate
pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to
him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and
with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and
affectionate nature--and was of a Frenchness that made French
thought and talk and commune almost a daily necessity. We nearly
always spoke French when together alone, or with my mother and
sister. It would have seemed almost unnatural not to have done so.
I always feel a special tenderness towards young people whose lives
have been such that those two languages are exactly the same to
them. It means so many things to me. It doubles them in my
estimation, and I seem to understand them through and through.
Nor did he seem to care much for the smart society of which he saw
so much; perhaps the bar sinister may have made him feel less at his
ease in general society than among his intimates and old friends. I
feel sure he took this to heart more than any one would have thought
possible from his careless manner.
He only once alluded directly to this when we were together. I was
speaking to him of the enviable brilliancy of his lot. He looked at
me pensively for a minute or two, and said, in English:
"You've got a kink in your nose, Bob--if it weren't for that you'd
be a deuced good-looking fellow--like me; but you ain't."
"Thanks--anything else?" said I.
"Well, I've got a kink in my birth, you see--and that's as big a
kill-joy as I know. I hate it!"
It _was_ hard luck. He would have made such a splendid Marquis of
Whitby! and done such honor to the proud old family motto:
"Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis!"
Instead of which he got himself a signet-ring, and on it he caused
to be engraved a zero within a naught, and round them:
"Rohan ne puis, roi ne daigne. Rien ne suis!"
Soon it became pretty evident that a subtle change was being wrought
in him.
He had quite lost his power of feeling the north, and missed it
dreadfully; he could no longer turn his back-somersault with ease
and safety; he had overcome his loathing for meat, and also his
dislike for sport--he had, indeed, become a very good shot.
But he could still hear and see and smell with all the keenness of a
young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being
alive very much more vivid than is the case with other mortals.
He had also corrected his quick impulsive tendency to slap faces
that were an inch or two higher up than his own. He didn't often
come across one, for one thing--then it would not have been
considered "good form" in her Majesty's Household Brigade.
When he was a boy, as the reader may recollect, he was fond of
drawing lovely female profiles with black hair and an immense black
eye, and gazing at them as he smoked a cigarette and listened to
pretty, light music. He developed a most ardent admiration for
female beauty, and mixed more and more in worldly and fashionable
circles (of which I saw nothing whatever); circles where the
heavenly gift of beauty is made more of, perhaps, than is quite good
for its possessors, whether female or male.
He was himself of a personal beauty so exceptional that incredible
temptations came his way. Aristocratic people all over the world
make great allowance for beauty-born frailties that would spell ruin
and everlasting disgrace for women of the class to which it is my
privilege to belong.
Barty, of course, did not confide his love-adventures to me; in this
he was no Frenchman. But I saw quite enough to know he was more
pursued than pursuing; and what a pursuer, to a man built like that!
no innocent, impulsive young girl, no simple maiden in her
flower--no Elaine.
But a magnificent full-blown peeress, who knew her own mind and had
nothing to fear, for her husband was no better than herself. But for
that, a Guinevere and Vivien rolled into one, _plus_ Messalina!
Nor was she the only light o' love; there are many naughty "grandes
dames de par le monde" whose easy virtue fits them like a silk
stocking, and who live and love pretty much as they please without
loss of caste, so long as they keep clear of any open scandal. It is
one of the privileges of high rank.
Then there were the ladies gay, frankly of the half-world,
these--laughter-loving hetaerae, with perilously soft hearts for such
as Barty Josselin! There was even poor, listless, lazy, languid
Jenny, "Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea!"
His heart was never touched--of that I feel sure; and he was not vain of
these triumphs; but he was a very reckless youth, a kind of young John
Churchill before Sarah Jennings took him in hand--absolutely non-moral
about such things, rather than immoral.
He grew to be a quite notorious young man about town; and, most
unfortunately for him, Lord (and even Lady) Archibald Rohan were so
fond of him, and so proud, and so amiably non-moral themselves, that
he was left to go as he might.
He also developed some very rowdy tastes indeed--and so did I!
It was the fashion for our golden youth in the fifties to do so.
Every night in the Haymarket there was a kind of noisy saturnalia,
in which golden youths joined hands with youths who were by no means
golden, to give much trouble to the police, and fill the pockets of
the keepers of night-houses--"Bob Croft's," "Kate Hamilton's," "the
Piccadilly Saloon," and other haunts equally well pulled down and
forgotten. It was good, in these regions, to be young and big and
strong like Barty and me, and well versed in the "handling of one's
daddles." I suppose London was the only great city in the world
where such things could be. I am afraid that many strange people of
both sexes called us Bob and Barty; people the mere sight or hearing
of whom would have given my poor dear father fits!
Then there was a little public-house in St. Martin's Lane, kept by
big Ben the prize-fighter. In a room at the top of the house there
used to be much sparring. We both of us took a high degree in the
noble art--especially I, if it be not bragging to say so; mostly on
account of my weight, which was considerable for my age. It was in
fencing that he beat me hollow: he was quite the best fencer I ever
met; the lessons at school of Bonnet's prevot had borne good fruit
in his case.
Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and betting-men and
medical students, where people sang and fought and laid the odds and
got very drunk--and where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic
and sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm that
seems almost incredible among such a brutalized and hardened crew.
One night he and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a
fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing
for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's
Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played
the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the bones. Then we went
to the Haymarket, and Barty made five pounds in no time; most of it
in silver donations from unfortunate women--English, of course--who
are among the softest-hearted and most generous creatures in the
world.
"O lachrymarum fons!"