I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it. Forty years ago
such things did not seem so horrible as they would now, and the word
"bounder" had not been invented.
* * * * *
My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a pupil at the
junior school in the Ladies' College, 48 Bedford Square. She soon
made friends--nice young girls, who came to our house, and it was
much the livelier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them well
before I ever saw them--especially Leah Gibson, who lived in
Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special friend; at last I was quite
anxious to see this paragon.
One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to school, she
pointed out to me three girls of her own age, or less, who stood
talking together at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. They were
all three very pretty children--quite singularly so--and became
great beauties; one golden-haired, one chestnut-brown, one
blue-black. The black-haired one was the youngest and the tallest--a
fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat back and square
shoulders; she was very well dressed, and had nice brown boots with
brown elastic sides on arched and straight-heeled slender feet, and
white stockings on her long legs--a fashion in hose that has long
gone out. She also wore a thick plait of black hair all down her
back--another departed mode, and one not to be regretted, I think;
and she swung her books round her as she talked, with easy
movements, like a strong boy.
"That's Leah Gibson," says my sister; "the tall one, with the long
black plait."
Leah Gibson turned round and nodded to my sister and smiled--showing
a delicate narrow face, a clear pale complexion, very beautiful
white pearly teeth between very red lips, and an extraordinary pair
of large black eyes--rather close together--the blackest I ever saw,
but with an expression so quick and penetrating and keen, and yet so
good and frank and friendly, that they positively sent a little warm
thrill through me--though she was only twelve years old, and not a
bit older than her age, and I a fast youth nearly twenty!
And finding her very much to my taste, I said to my sister, just for
fun, "Oh--_that's_ Leah Gibson, is it? then some day Leah Gibson
shall be Mrs. Robert Maurice!"
From which it may be inferred that I looked on Leah Gibson, at the
first sight of her, as likely to become some day an extremely
desirable person.
She did.
The Gibsons lived in a very good house in Tavistock Square. They
seemed very well off. Mrs. Gibson had a nice carriage, which she
kept entirely with her own money. Her father, who was dead, had been
a wealthy solicitor. He had left a large family, and to each of them
property worth L300 a year, and a very liberal allowance of good
looks.
Mr. Gibson was in business in the City.
[Illustration: THREE LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL (1853)]
Leah, their only child, was the darling of their hearts and the apple of
their eyes. To dress her beautifully, to give her all the best masters
money could procure, and treat her to every amusement in
London--theatres, the opera, all the concerts and shows there were, and
give endless young parties for her pleasure--all this seemed the
principal interest of their lives.
Soon after my first introduction to Leah, Ida and I received an
invitation to a kind of juvenile festivity at the Gibsons', and
went, and spent a delightful evening. We were received by Mrs.
Gibson most cordially. She was such an extremely pretty person, and
so charmingly dressed, and had such winning, natural, genial
manners, that I fell in love with her at first sight; she was also
very playful and fond of romping; for she was young still, having
married at seventeen.
Her mother, Mrs. Bletchley (who was present), was a Spanish
Jewess--a most magnificent and beautiful old person in splendid
attire, tall and straight, with white hair and thick black eyebrows,
and large eyes as black as night.
In Leah the high Sephardic Jewish type was more marked than in Mrs.
Gibson (who was not Jewish at all in aspect, and took after her
father, the late Mr. Bletchley).
It is a type that sometimes, just now and again, can be so
pathetically noble and beautiful in a woman, so suggestive of
chastity and the most passionate love combined--love conjugal and
filial and maternal--love that implies all the big practical
obligations and responsibilities of human life, that the mere term
"Jewess" (and especially its French equivalent) brings to my mind
some vague, mysterious, exotically poetic image of all I love best
in woman. I find myself dreaming of Rebecca of York, as I used to
dream of her in the English class at Brossard's, where I so pitied
poor Ivanhoe for his misplaced constancy.
If Rebecca at fifty-five, was at all like Mrs. Bletchley, poor old
Sir Wilfred's regrets must have been all that Thackeray made them
out to be in his immortal story of _Rebecca and Rowena_.
Mr. Gibson was a good-looking man, some twelve or fifteen years
older than his wife; his real vocation was to be a low comedian;
this showed itself on my first introduction to him. He informally
winked at me and said:
"Esker voo ker jer dwaw lah vee? Ah! kel Bonnure!"
This idiotic speech (all the French he knew) was delivered in so
droll and natural a manner that I took to him at once. Barty himself
couldn't have been funnier!
Well, we had games of forfeits and danced, and Ida played charming
things by Mendelssohn on the piano, and Leah sang very nicely in a
fine, bold, frank, deep voice, like a choir-boy's, and Mrs. Gibson
danced a Spanish fandango, and displayed feet and ankles of which
she was very proud, and had every right to be; and then Mr. Gibson
played a solo on the flute, and sang "My Pretty Jane"--both badly
enough to be very funny without any conscious effort or straining on
his part. Then we supped, and the food was good, and we were all
very jolly indeed; and after supper Mr. Gibson said to me:
"Now, Mister Parleyvoo--can't _you_ do something to amuse the
company? You're _big_ enough!"
I professed my willingness to do _anything_--and wished I was as
Barty more than ever!
"Well, then," says he--"kneel to the wittiest, bow to the
prettiest--and kiss the one you love best."
This was rather a large order--but I did as well as I could. I went
down on my knees to Mr. Gibson and craved his paternal blessing; and
made my best French bow with my heels together to old Mrs.
Bletchley; and kissed my sister, warmly thanking her in public for
having introduced me to Mrs. Gibson: and as far as mere social
success is worth anything, I was the Barty of that party!
Anyhow, Mr. Gibson conceived for me an admiration he never failed to
express when we met afterwards, and though this was fun, of course,
I had really won his heart.
It is but a humble sort of triumph to crow over--and where does
Barty Josselin come in?
Pazienza!
"Well--what do you think of Leah Gibson?" said my sister, as we
walked home together through Torrington Square.
"I think she's a regular stunner," said I--"like her mother and her
grandmother before her, and probably her _great_-grandmother too."
And being a poetical youth, and well up in my Byron, I declaimed:
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."...
Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quotations, I never
made a more felicitous quotation than that. I little guessed then to
what splendor that bony black-eyed damsel would reach in time.
* * * * *
All through this period of high life and low dissipation Barty kept
his unalterable good-humor and high spirits--and especially the
kindly grace of manner and tact and good-breeding that kept him from
ever offending the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits,
and made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and darling.
I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in very distinguished
company; I don't remember how I came to be invited--through Barty,
no doubt. He got me many invitations that I often thought it better
not to accept. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam!"
It was a fish dinner, and Barty ate and drank a surprising
amount--and so did I, and liked it very much.
We were all late and hurried for the last train, some twenty of
us--and Barty, Lord Archibald, and I, and a Colonel Walker Lindsay,
who has since become a peer and a Field-Marshal (and is now dead),
were all pushed together into a carriage, already occupied by a
distinguished clergyman and a charming young lady--probably his
daughter; from his dress, he was either a dean or a bishop, and I
sat opposite to him--in the corner.
Barty was very noisy and excited as the train moved off; he was rather
tipsy, in fact--and I was alarmed, on account of the clerical gentleman
and his female companion. As we journeyed on, Barty began to romp and
play the fool and perform fantastic tricks--to the immense delight of
the future Field-Marshal. He twisted two pocket-handkerchiefs into human
figures, one on each hand, and made them sing to each other--like Grisi
and Mario in the _Huguenots_--and clever drivel of that kind. Lord
Archibald and Colonel Lindsay were beside themselves with glee at all
this; they also had dined well.
Then he imitated a poor man fishing in St. James's Park and not
catching any fish. And this really was uncommonly good and true to
life--with wonderful artistic details, that showed keen observation.
I saw that the bishop and his daughter (if such they were) grew
deeply interested, and laughed and chuckled discreetly; the young
lady had a charming expression on her face as she watched the
idiotic Barty, who got more idiotic with every mile--and this was to
be the man who wrote _Sardonyx_!
As the train slowed into the London station, the bishop leant
forward towards me and inquired, in a whisper,
"May I ask the name of your singularly delightful young friend?"
"His name is Barty Josselin," I answered.
"Not of the Grenadier Guards?"
"Yes."
"Oh, indeed! a--yes--I've heard of him--"
And his lordship's face became hard and stern--and soon we all got
out.