"I really don't know," she said. "He's not a bit romantic, _is_ he?"
"No; but he's very handsome. Don't you think so?"
"Oh yes, indeed--much too handsome for a man. It seems such waste.
Why, I now remember seeing him when I was quite a little girl, three
or four years ago, at the Duke of Wellington's funeral. He had his
bearskin on. Papa pointed him out to us, and said he looked like
such a pretty girl! And we all wondered who he could be! And so sad
he looked! I suppose it was for the Duke.
"I couldn't think where I'd seen him before, and now I remember--and
there's a photograph of him in a stall at the Crystal Palace. Have
you seen it? Not that he looks like a girl now! Not a bit! I suppose
you're very fond of him? Ida is! She talks as much about Mr.
Josselin as she does about you! _Barty_, she calls him."
"Yes, indeed; he's like our brother. We were boys at school together
in France. My sister calls him _thee_ and _thou_; in French, you
know."
[Illustration: "A LITTLE WHITE POINT OF INTERROGATION"]
"And was he always like that--funny and jolly and good-natured?"
"Always; he hasn't changed a bit."
"And is he very sincere?"
Just then Barty came on to the balcony: it was time to go. My sister
had been fetched away already (in her gondola).
So Barty made his farewells, and bent his gallant, irresistible look
of mirthful chivalry and delicate middle-aged admiration on Leah's
upturned face, and her eyes looked up more piercing and blacker than
ever; and in each of them a little high light shone like a point of
interrogation--the reflection of some white window-curtain, I
suppose; and I felt cold all down my back.
(Barty's daughter, Mary Trevor, often sings a little song of De
Musset's. It is quite lovely, and begins:
"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre,
Qu'allez-vous faire
Si loin d'ici?
Voyez-vous pas que la nuit est profonde,
Et que le monde
N'est que souci?"
It is called "La Chanson de Barberine," and I never hear it but I
think of that sweet little white virginal _point d'interrogation_,
and Barty going away to France.)
Then he thanked Mrs. Gibson and said pretty things, and finally called
Mr. Gibson dreadful French fancy-names: "Cascameche--moutardier du pape,
tromblon-bolivard, vieux coquelicot"; to each of which the delighted Mr.
G. answered:
"Voos ayt oon oter--voos ayt oon oter!"
And then Barty whisked himself away in a silver cloud of glory. A
good exit!
Outside was a hansom waiting, with a carpet-bag on the top, and we
got into it and drove up to Hampstead Heath, to some little inn
called the Bull and Bush, near North-end.
Barty lit his pipe, and said:
"What capital people! Hanged if they're not the nicest people I ever
met!"
"Yes," said I.
And that's all that was said during that long drive.
At North-end we found two or three other hansoms, and Pepys and
Ticklets and the little Hebrew tenor art student whose name I've
forgotten, and several others.
We had another supper, and made a night of it. There was a piano in
a small room opening on to a kind of little terrace, with geraniums,
over a bow-window. We had music and singing of all sorts. Even _I_
sang--"The Standard-bearer"--and rather well. My sister had coached
me; but I did not obtain an encore.
The next day dawned, and Barty had a wash and changed his clothes,
and we walked all over Hampstead Heath, and saw London lying in a
dun mist, with the dome and gilded cross of St. Paul's rising into
the pale blue dawn; and I thought what a beastly place London would
be without Barty--but that Leah was there still, safe and sound
asleep in Tavistock Square!
Then back to the inn for breakfast. Barty, as usual, fresh as paint.
Happy Barty, off to Paris!
And then we all drove down to London Bridge to see him safe into the
Boulogne steamer. All his luggage was on board. His late
soldier-servant was there--a splendid fellow, chosen for his length
and breadth as well as his fidelity; also the Snowdrop, who was
lachrymose and in great grief. It was a most affectionate farewell
all round.
"Good-bye, Bob. _I_ won that toss--_didn't_ I?"
Oddly enough, _I_ was thinking of that, and didn't like it.
"What rot! it's only a joke, old fellow!" said Barty.
All this about an innocent little girl just fifteen, the daughter of
a low-comedy John Gilpin: a still somewhat gaunt little girl, whose
budding charms of color, shape, and surface were already such that
it didn't matter whether she were good or bad, gentle or simple,
rich or poor, sensible or an utter fool.
C'est toujours comme ca!
We watched the steamer pick its sunny way down the Thames, with
Barty waving his hat by the man at the wheel; and I walked westward
with the little Hebrew artist, who was so affected at parting with
his hero that he had tears in his lovely voice. It was not till I
had complimented him on his wonderful B-flat that he got consoled;
and he talked about himself, and his B-flat, and his middle G, and
his physical strength, and his eye for color, all the way from the
Mansion House to the Foundling Hospital; when we parted, and he went
straight to his drawing-board at the British Museum--an anticlimax!
I found my mother and sister at their late breakfast, and was
scolded; and I told them Barty had got off, and wouldn't come back
for long--it might not be for years!
"Thank Heaven!" said my dear mother, and I was not pleased.
Says my sister:
"Do you know, he's actually stolen Leah's photograph, that she gave
me for my birthday. He asked me for it and I wouldn't give it
him--and it's gone!"
Then I washed and put on my work-a-day clothes, and went straight to
Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, and made myself a bed on the floor with my
great-coat, and slept all day.
* * * * *
Oh heavens! what a dull book this would be, and how dismally it
would drag its weary length along, if it weren't all about the
author of _Sardonyx_!
But is there a lost corner anywhere in this planet where English is
spoken (or French) in which _The Martian_ won't be bought and
treasured and spelt over and over again like a novel by Dickens or
Scott (or Dumas)--for Josselin's dear sake! What a fortune my
publishers would make if I were not a man of business and they were
not the best and most generous publishers in the world! And all
Josselin's publishers--French, English, German, and what not--down
to modern Sanscrit! What millionaires--if it hadn't been for this
little busy bee of a Bob Maurice!
Poor Barty! I am here! a bon chat, bon rat!
And what on earth do _I_ want a fortune for? Barty's dead, and I've
got so much more than I need, who am of a frugal mind--and what I've
got is all going to little Josselins, who have already got so much
more than _they_ need, what with their late father and me; and my
sister, who is a widow and childless, and "riche a millions" too!
and cares for nobody in all this wide world but little Josselins,
who don't care for money in the least, and would sooner work for
their living--even break stones on the road--anything sooner than
loaf and laze and loll through life. We all have to give most of it
away--not that I need proclaim it from the house-tops! It is but a
dull and futile hobby, giving away to those who deserve; they soon
leave off deserving.
How fortunate that so much money is really wanted by people who
don't deserve it any more than I do; and who, besides, are so weak
and stupid and lazy and honest--or so incurably dishonest--that they
can't make it for themselves! I have to look after a good many of
these people. Barty was fond of them, honest or not. They are so
incurably prolific; and so was he, poor dear boy! but, oh, the
difference! Grapes don't grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles!
I'm a thorn, alas! in my own side, more often than not--and a
thistle in the sides of a good many donkeys, whom I feed because
they're too stupid or too lazy to feed themselves! But at least I
know my place, and the knowledge is more bother to me than all my
money, and the race of Maurice will soon be extinct.
* * * * *
When Barty went to foreign parts, on the 2d of May, 1856, I didn't
trouble myself about such questions as these.
Life was so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a
quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the
floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed
character: from sheer grief, I really believe!
I thought of many things--ugly things--very ugly things indeed--and
meant to have done with them. I thought of some very handsome things
too--a pair of beautiful crown-jewels, each rare as the black
tulip--and in each of them a bright little sign like this:?
I don't believe I ever gave my father another bad quarter of an hour
from that moment. I even went to church on Sunday mornings quite
regularly; not his own somewhat severe place of worship, it is true!
But the Foundling Hospital. There, in the gallery, would I sit with
my sister, and listen to Miss Dolby and Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr.
Lawler the bass--and a tenor and alto whose names I cannot recall;
and I thought they sang as they ought to have sung, and was deeply
moved and comforted--more than by any preachments in the world; and
just in the opposite gallery sat Leah with her mother; and I grew
fond of nice clean little boys and girls who sing pretty hymns in
unison; and afterwards I watched them eat their roast beef, small
mites of three and four or five, some of them, and thought how
touching it all was--I don't know why! Love or grief? or that touch
of nature that makes the whole world kin at about 1 P.M. on Sunday?
One would think that Barty had exerted a bad influence on me, since
he seems to have kept me out of all this that was so sweet and new
and fresh and wholesome!
He would have been just as susceptible to such impressions as I;
even more so, if the same chance had arisen for him--for he was
singularly fond of children, the smaller and the poorer the better,
even gutter children! and their poor mothers loved him, he was so
jolly and generous and kind.
Sometimes I got a letter from him in Blaze, my father's shorthand
cipher; it was always brief and bright and hopeful, and full of
jokes and funny sketches. And I answered him in Blaze that was long
and probably dull.
All that I will tell of him now is not taken from his Blaze letters,
but from what he has told me later, by word of mouth--for he was as
fond of talking of himself as I of listening--since he was droll and
sincere and without guile or vanity; and would have been just as
sympathetic a listener as I, if I had cared to talk about Mr. Robert
Maurice, of Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Besides, I am good at hearing
between the words and reading between the lines, and all that--and
love to exercise this faculty.
* * * * *
Well, he reached Paris in due time, and took a small bedroom on a
third floor in the Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere--over a cheap
hatter's--opposite the Conservatoire de Musique.
On the first night he was awoke by a terrible invasion--such
malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a
full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the
tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water
all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of
nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders
with _poudre insecticide_ ... "mort aux punaises!"
In the daytime he first of all went for a swim at the Passy
baths--an immense joy, full of the ghosts of bygone times; then he
would spend the rest of his day revisiting old haunts--often sitting
on the edge of the stone fountain in the rond-point of the Avenue du
Prince Imperial, or de l'Imperatrice, or whatever it was--to gaze
comfortably at the outside of the old school, which was now a
pensionnat de demoiselles: soon to be pulled down and make room for
a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts
of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and
realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a
strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no
name. Je connais ca! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the haunts
of my childhood.
When the joy of this faded, as it always must when indulged in too
freely, he amused himself by sitting in his bedroom and painting
Leah's portrait, enlarged and in oils; partly from the very vivid
image he had preserved of her in his mind, partly from the stolen
photograph. At first he got it very like; then he lost all the
likeness and could not recover it; and he worked and worked till he
got stupid over it, and his mental image faded quite away.
But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a
powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into
his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of
every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him
realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some
day--and what its owner might become.
And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation--a
blast--a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and _so_
beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and
Barty was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh,
poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner--whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly
unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill
man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! What a hellish
after-math!
Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about
becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go
and consult, although there were many people he might have
discovered whom he had known: old school-fellows, and friends of the
Archibald Rohans--who would have been only too glad.
So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at
cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks, sitting on benches,
leaning over parapets, and longing to tell people who he was, his
age, how little money he'd got, what lots of friends he had in
England, what a nice little English girl he knew, whose portrait he
didn't know how to paint--any idiotic nonsense that came into his
head, so at least he might talk about something or somebody that
interested him.
There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian crowd, to make
you feel your solitude if you are alone in its midst!
At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau sucree and
smoked till he was sleepy; then he cunningly put out his light, and
lit it again in a quarter of an hour or so, and exploded what
remained of the invading hordes as they came crawling down the wall
from above. Their numbers were reduced at last; they were
disappearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and went to sleep
happy--having at least scored for once in the twenty-four hours.
Mort aux punaises!
Twice he went to the Opera Comique, and saw _Richard Coeur de Lion_
and _le Pre aux Clercs_ from the gallery, and was disappointed, and
couldn't understand why _he_ shouldn't sing as well as that--he
thought he could sing much better, poor fellow! he had a delightful
voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm, and could please
quite wonderfully--but he had no technical knowledge whatever, and
couldn't be depended upon to sing a song twice the same! He trusted
to the inspiration of the moment--like an amateur.
Of course he had to be very economical, even about candle ends, and
almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his
loneliness, beyond expression--he was a fish out of water.
Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the
Louvre--an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He
obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high,
and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a
group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to
heaven.
They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others.
His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be
very beautiful--since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any
other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great
masters. At least, _he_ thought not. These are matters of taste, of
course.
He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares--a device
by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion,
it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman
roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin
painting it at once--he was so impatient.
Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves
in his work, and some _rapins_ asked him questions, and tried to
help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more
helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was
becoming quite a funny man again--a centre of interest--in a new
line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever.
After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one
afternoon on a bench in the Champs Elysees and watched the gay
people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and
hot and miserable--it was the beginning of July. If he had known
how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be
borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a
chronic ache.
A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself
a cigarette, and hummed a tune--a well-known quartier-latin
song--about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."
Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look
jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows--by no
means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would
have much to say to.
Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes,
when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and
sideways, as if they had the "gigs."
Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the
stranger, and said:
"Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez-vous?"
Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for Barty had
clothes to last him a French lifetime).
"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur--mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous
remettre!"
"Je m'appelle Josselin--de chez Brossard!"
"Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon tres-cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and
seized Barty's both hands--and all but hugged him.
"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense a vous si souvent, et a
Ouittebe! comme vous etes change--et quel beau garcon vous etes! Qui
vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu--c'est un reve! Je n'en reviens
pas!" etc., etc....
And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of
his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent
a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many
cigarettes--from the Madeleine to the Porte St.-Martin and
back--again and again.
[Illustration: "'BONJOUR, MONSIEUR BONZIG'"]
"Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of
Barty's--"non, I hare not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But
at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacre pion d'etudes); I am an
artist--un peintre de marines--at last! It is a happy existence. I fear
my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and
I am only forty-five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself--not in
splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I
will put you up to many things, my dear boy.... We will storm the
citadel of fame together...."
Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a
friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was
a very clever young man--a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew
illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and
verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life--a garde
champetre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road,
or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog
was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty,
thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He
was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and
refined, and full of self-respect.
Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a
younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment
that kept him at work all day, in some ministere. In this studio
Bonzig painted his marines--still helping himself from _La France
Maritime_, as he used to do at Brossard's.
He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky--"l'heure ou
le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was
also excellent at foam, and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but
very bad at the human figure--sailors and fishermen and their wives.
Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs.
As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very
long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing
it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there
were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for
it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the
day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally
humming that amorous refrain.
But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor fellow--no supper,
no song!
Lirieux conceived such a liking for Barty that he insisted on taking
him into his studio as a pupil-assistant, and setting him to draw
things under his own eye; and Barty would fill Bonzig's French sea
pieces with Whitby fishermen, and Bonzig got to sing "Mon Aldegonde"
much oftener than before.
And chumming with these two delightful men, Barty grew to know a
clean, quiet happiness which more than made up for lost past
splendors and dissipations and gay dishonor. He wasn't even funny;
they wouldn't have understood it. Well-bred Frenchmen don't
understand English fun--not even in the quartier latin, as a general
rule. Not that it's too subtle for them; _that's_ not why!
Thus pleasantly August wore itself away, Bonzig and Barty nearly
always dining together for about a franc apiece, including the
waiter, and not badly. Bonzig knew all the cheap eating-houses in
Paris, and what each was specially renowned for--"bonne friture,"
"fricassee de lapin," "pommes sautees," "soupe aux choux," etc.,
etc.
Then, after dinner, a long walk and talk and cigarettes--or they
would look in at a cafe chantant, a bal de barriere, the gallery of
a cheap theatre--then a bock outside a cafe--et bonsoir la
compagnie!
On September the 1st, Lirieux and his brother went to see their
people in the south, leaving the studio to Bonzig and Barty, who
made the most of it, though greatly missing the genial young
painter, both as a companion and a master and guide.
One beautiful morning Bonzig called for Barty at his cremerie, and
proposed they should go by train to some village near Paris and
spend a happy day in the country, lunching on bread and wine and
sugar at some little roadside inn. Bonzig made a great deal of this
lunch. It had evidently preoccupied him.
Barty was only too delighted. They went on the imperiale of the
Versailles train and got out at Ville d'Avray, and found the kind of
little pothouse they wanted. And Barty had to admit that no better
lunch for the price could be than "small blue wine" sweetened with
sugar, and a hunch of bread sopped in it.
Then they had a long walk in pretty woods and meadows, sketching by
the way, chatting to laborers and soldiers and farm-people, smoking
endless cigarettes of caporal; and finally they got back to Paris
the way they came--so hungry that Barty proposed they should treat
themselves for once to a "prix-fixe" dinner at Carmagnol's, in the
Passage Choiseul, where they gave you hors-d'oeuvres, potage, three
courses and dessert and a bottle of wine, for two francs fifty--and
everything scrupulously clean.
So to the Passage Choiseul they went; but just on the threshold of
the famous restaurant (which filled the entire arcade with its
appetizing exhalations) Bonzig suddenly remembered, to his great
regret, that close by there lived a young married couple of the name
of Lousteau, who were great friends of his, and who expected him to
dine with them at least once a week.
"I haven't been near them for a fortnight, mon cher, and it is just
their dinner hour. I am afraid I must really just run in and eat an
_aile de poulet_ and a _peche au vin_ with them, and give them of my
news, or they will be mortally offended. I'll be back with you just
when you are '_entre la poire et le fromage_'--so, sans adieu!" and
he bolted.
Barty went in and selected his menu; and waiting for his
hors-d'oeuvre, he just peeped out of the door and looked up and
down the arcade, which was always festive and lively at that hour.
To his great surprise he saw Bonzig leisurely flaning about with his
cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his long
spectacled nose in the air--gazing at the shop windows. Suddenly the
good man dived into a baker's shop, and came out again in half a
minute with a large brown roll, and began to munch it--still gazing
at the shop windows, and apparently quite content.
Barty rushed after and caught hold of him, and breathlessly heaped
bitter reproaches on him for his base and unfriendly want of
confidence--snatched his roll and threw it away, dragged him by main
force into Carmagnol's, and made him order the dinner he preferred
and sit opposite.
"Ma foi, mon cher!" said Bonzig--"I own to you that I am almost at
the end of my resources for the moment--and also that the prospect
of a good dinner in your amiable company is the reverse of
disagreeable to me. I thank you in advance, with all my heart!"
"My dear M'sieur Bonzig," says Barty, "you will wound me deeply if
you don't look on me like a brother, as I do you; I can't tell you
how deeply you _have_ wounded me already! Give me your word of honor
that you will share ma mangeaille with me till I haven't a sou
left!"
And so they made it up, and had a capital dinner and a capital
evening, and Barty insisted that in future they should always mess
together at his expense till better days--and they did.
But Barty found that his own money was just giving out, and wrote to
his bankers in London for more. Somehow it didn't arrive for nearly
a week; and they knew at last what it was to dine for five sous each
(2-1/2_d._)--with loss of appetite just before the meal instead of
after.
Of course Barty might very well have pawned his watch or his
scarf-pin; but whatever trinkets he possessed had been given him by
his beloved Lady Archibald--everything pawnable he had in the world,
even his guitar! And he could not bear the idea of taking them to
the "Mont de Piete."
So he was well pleased one Sunday morning when his remittance
arrived, and he went in search of his friend, that they might
compensate themselves for a week's abstinence by a famous dejeuner.
But Bonzig was not to be found; and Barty spent that day alone, and
Gorged in solitude and guzzled in silence--moult tristement, a
l'anglaise.
He was aroused from his first sleep that night by the irruption of
Bonzig in a tremendous state of excitement. It seems that a certain
Baron (whose name I've forgotten), and whose little son the ex-usher
had once coached in early Latin and Greek, had written, begging him
to call and see him at his chateau near Melun; that Bonzig had
walked there that very day--thirty miles; and found the Baron was
leaving next morning for a villa he possessed near Etretat, and
wished him to join him there the day after, and stay with him for a
couple of months--to coach his son in more classics for a couple of
hours in the forenoon.
Bonzig was to dispose of the rest of his time as he liked, except
that he was commissioned to paint six "marines" for the baronial
dining-room; and the Baron had most considerately given him four
hundred francs in advance!
"So, then, to-morrow afternoon at six, my dear Josselin, you dine
with _me_, for once--not in the Passage Choiseul this time, good as
it is there! But at Babet's, en plein Palais Royal! un jour de
separation, vous comprenez! the dinner will be good, I promise you:
a calf's head a la vinaigrette--they are famous for that, at
Babet's--and for their Pauillac and their St.-Estephe; at least, I'm
told so! nous en ferons l'experience.... And now I bid you
good-night, as I have to be up before the day--so many things to buy
and settle and arrange--first of all to procure myself a 'maillot'
and a 'peignoir,' and shoes for the beach! I know where to get these
things much cheaper than at the seaside. Oh! la mer, la mer! Enfin
je vais piquer ma tete [take my header] la dedans--_et pas plus tard
qu'apres-demain soir_.... A demain, tres-cher camarade--six
heures--chez Babet!"
And, delirious with joyful anticipations, the good Bonzig ran
away--all but "piquant sa tete" down the narrow staircase, and
whistling "Mon Aldegonde" at the very top of his whistle; and even
outside he shouted:
"Ouile--me--sekile ro,
sekile ro,
sekile ro ...
Ouile--me--sekile ro
Tat brinn my ladde ome!"
He had to be silenced by a sergent de ville.
And next day they dined at Babet's, and Bonzig was so happy he had
to beg pardon for his want of feeling at seeming so exuberant "un
jour de separation! mais venez aussi, Josselin--nous piquerons nos
tetes ensemble, et nagerons de conserve...."
But Barty could not afford this little outing, and he was very
sad--with a sadness that not all the Pauillac and St.-Estephe in M.
Babet's cellars could have dispelled.
He made his friend a present of a beautiful pair of razors--English
razors, which he no longer needed, since he no longer meant to
shave--"en signe de mon deuil!" as he said. They had been the gift
of Lord Archibald in happier days. Alas! he had forgotten to give
his uncle Archie the traditional halfpenny, but he took good care to
extract a sou from le Grand Bonzig!
So ended this little episode in Barty's life. He never saw Bonzig
again, nor heard from him, and _of_ him only once more. That sou was
wasted.
It was at Blankenberghe, on the coast of Belgium, that he at last
had news of him--a year later--at the cafe on the plage, and in such
an odd and unexpected manner that I can't help telling how it
happened.
One afternoon a corner of the big coffee-room was being arranged for
private theatricals, in which Barty was to perform the part of a
waiter. He had just borrowed the real waiter's jacket and apron, and
was dusting the little tables for the amusement of Mlle. Solange, the
dame de comptoir, and of the waiter, Prosper, who had on Barty's own
shooting-jacket.
Suddenly an old gentleman came in and beckoned to Barty and ordered a
demi-tasse and petit-verre. There were no other customers at that
hour.
[Illustration: "'DEMI-TASSE--VOILA, M'SIEUR'"]
Mlle. Solange was horrified; but Barty insisted on waiting on the
Old gentleman in person, and helped him to his coffee and
pousse-cafe with all the humorous grace I can so well imagine, and
handed him the _Independance Belge_, and went back to superintend
the arrangements for the coming play.
Presently the old gentleman looked up from his paper and became
interested, and soon he grew uneasy, and finally he rose and went up
to Barty and bowed, and said (in French, of course):
"Monsieur, I have made a very stupid mistake. I am near-sighted, and
that must be my apology. Besides, you have revenged yourself 'avec
tant d'esprit,' that you will not bear me _rancune_! May I ask you to
accept my card, with my sincere excuses?..."
And lo! it was Bonzig's famous Baron! Barty immediately inquired
after his lost friend.
"Bonzig? Ah, monsieur--what a terrible tragedy! Poor Bonzig, the
Best of men--he came to me at Etretat. I invited him there from
Sheer friendship! He was drowned the very evening he arrived.
"He went and bathed after sunset--on his own responsibility and
without mentioning it to any one. How it happened I don't
know--nobody knows. He was a good swimmer, I believe, but very blind
without his glasses. He undressed behind a rock on the shore, which
is against the regulations. His body was not found till two days
after, three leagues down the coast.
"He had an aged mother, who came to Etretat. It was harrowing! They
were people who had seen better days," etc., etc., etc.
And so no more of le Grand Bonzig.
Nor did Barty ever again meet Lirieux, in whose existence a change
had also been wrought by fortune; but whether for good or evil I
can't say. He was taken to Italy and Greece by a wealthy relative.
What happened to him there--whether he ever came back, or succeeded
or failed--Barty never heard! He dropped out of Barty's life as
completely as if he had been drowned like his old friend.
These episodes, like many others past and to come in this biography,
had no particular influence on Barty Josselin's career, and no
reference to them is to be found in anything he has ever written. My
only reason for telling them is that I found them so interesting
when he told _me_, and so characteristic of himself. He was "bon
raconteur." I'm afraid I'm not, and that I've lugged these good
people in by the hair of the head; but I'm doing my best. "La plus
belle fille au monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a!"
I look to my editor to edit me--and to my illustrator to pull me
through.
* * * * *
That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six weeks, on
business. My sister Ida went with the Gibsons to Ramsgate, and I
remained in London with my mother. I did my best to replace my
father in Barge Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with
me (and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty pounds,
and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see Barty, and give him
this, with my love."
And "this" was another twenty-pound note. He had never given me such
a sum in my life--not a quarter of it; and "this" was the first time
he had ever tipped Barty.
Things were beginning at last to go well with him. He had arranged
to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and Champagne, as well as those of
Burgundy; and was dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and
Spain. Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours was to
become the largest wine business in the world--comme tout un chacun
sait.
I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at Barty's bedroom
door by six next morning; it was hardly daylight--a morning to be
remembered; and what a breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold
swim in the Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the
outside of the school that was once ours!
Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small sprouting beard
and mustache had quite altered the character of his face. I shall
distress my lady readers if I tell them the alteration was not an
improvement; so I won't.
What a happy week that was to me I leave to the reader's
imagination. We took a large double-bedded room at the Hotel de
Lille et d'Albion in case we might want to smoke and talk all night;
we did, I think, and had our coffee brought up to us in the morning.
I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young man going
back to his beloved Paris "after five years." Tout ca, c'est de
l'histoire ancienne. And Barty and Paris together--that is not for
such a pen as mine.
I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson--a very large one and
an excellent. He gazed at it a long time with his magnifying-glass
and without, all his keen perceptions on the alert; and I watched
his face narrowly.
"My eyes! She _is_ a beautiful young woman, and no mistake!" he
said, with a sigh. "You mustn't let her slip through your fingers,
Bob!"
"How about that toss?" said I, and laughed.
"Oh, I resign _my_ claim; she's not for the likes o' me. You're
going to be a great capitalist--a citizen of credit and renown. I'm
Mr. Nobody, of nowhere. Go in and win, my boy; you have my best
wishes. If I can scrape together enough money to buy myself a white
waistcoat and a decent coat, I'll be your best man; or some left-off
things of yours might do--we're about of a size, aren't we? You've
become tres bel homme, Bob, plutot bel homme que joli garcon, hein?
That's what women are fond of; English women especially. I'm nowhere
now, without my uniform and the rest. Is it still Skinner who builds
for you? Good old Skinner! Mes compliments!"
This simple little speech took a hidden weight off my mind and left
me very happy. I confided frankly to the good Barty that no Sally in
any alley had ever been more warmly adored by any industrious young
London apprentice than was Leah Gibson by me!
"Ca y est, alors! Je te felicite d'avance, et je garde mes larmes
pour quand tu seras parti. Allons diner chez Babet: j'ai soif de
boire a ton bonheur!"
Before I left we met an English artist he had known at the British
Museum--an excellent fellow, one Walters, who took him under his
wing, and was the means of his entering the atelier Troplong in the
Rue des Belges as an art student. And thus Barty began his art
studies in a proper and legitimate way. It was characteristic of him
that this should never have occurred to him before.
So when I parted with the dear fellow things were looking a little
brighter for him too.
All through the winter he worked very hard--the first to come, the
last to go; and enjoyed his studio life thoroughly.
Such readers as I am likely to have will not require to be told what
the interior of a French atelier of the kind is like, nor its
domestic economy; nor will I attempt to describe all the fun and the
frolic, although I heard it all from Barty in after-years, and very
good it was. I almost felt I'd studied there myself! He was a prime
favorite--"le Beau Josselin," as he was called.
He made very rapid progress, and had already begun to work in colors
by the spring. He made many friends, but led a quiet, industrious
life, unrelieved (as far as I know) by any of those light episodes
one associates with student life in Paris. His principal amusements
through the long winter evenings were the cafe and the brasserie,
mild ecarte, a game at billiards or dominoes, and long talks about
art and literature with the usual unkempt young geniuses of the
place and time--French, English, American.
Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Antwerp; I don't
know who influenced him in this direction, but I arranged to meet
him there at the end of April--and we spent a delightful week
together, staying at the "Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The
town was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and of a
picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never pall.
Twice or three times that week British tourists and travelers
Landed at the quai by the Place Verte from _The Baron Osy_--and this
landing was Barty's delight.
The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and
their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England
again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his
resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by _The
Baron_. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing
there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard!
and so thin and tall and slender--and his boyish face so grave. Good
heavens! How much alone he seemed, who was so little built to live
alone!
It is really not too much to say that I would have given up to him
everything I possessed in the world--every blessed thing! Except
Leah--and Leah was not mine to give!
Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so ineffably,
pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to
the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in
one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many
ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till he
died. All his life he never quite put away childish things!
I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world
with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!
He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and
worked harder than ever.
He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marche aux
oeufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a
fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half--and the whole
tune at midnight, fortissimo.
He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and
dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash
two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke
nothing else.
He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile
away--got to the academy at six--worked till eight--breakfasted on a
little roll called a pistolet, and a cup of coffee; then the academy
again from nine till twelve--when dinner, the cheapest he had ever
known, but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon, copying
old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap supper, a long walk along
the quais or ramparts or outside--a game of dominoes, and a glass or
two of "Malines" or "Louvain"--then bed, without invading hordes;
the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke
and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes--which lull you, when
once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be
funny: a villainous kind of fun--caught, I fear, in Barge Yard,
Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City--especially in the
Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.
It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than any life he
had led yet; besides, he improved rapidly, as his facility was
great--for painting as for everything he tried his hand at.
He also had a very agreeable social existence.
One morning at the academy, two or three days after his arrival, he
was accosted by a fellow-student--one Tescheles--who introduced
himself as an old pupil of Troplong's in the Rue des Belges. They
had a long chat in French about the old Paris studio. Among other
things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English there.
"Oui"--says Barty--"un nomme Valteres"....
Barty pronounced this name as if it were French; and noticed that
Tescheles smiled, exclaiming:
"Parbleu, ce bon Valteres--je l'connais bien!"
Next day Tescheles came up to an English student called Fox and
said:
"Well, old stick-in-the-mud, how are _you_ getting on?"
"Why, you don't mean to say _you're_ an Englishman?" says Barty to
Tescheles.
[Illustration: PETER THE HERMIT AU PIQUET]
"Good heavens! you don't mean to say _you_ are! fancy your calling
poor old Walters _Valteres_!"
And after that they became very intimate, and that was a good thing
for Barty.
The polyglot Tescheles was of a famous musical family, of mixed
German and Russian origin, naturalized in England and domiciled in
France--a true cosmopolite and a wonderful linguist, besides being
also a cultivated musician and excellent painter; and all the
musicians, famous or otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made his
rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And Barty was introduced
into a world as delightful to him as it was new--and to music that
ravished his soul with a novel enchantment: Chopin, Liszt, Wagner,
Schumann--and he found that Schubert had written a few other songs
besides the famous "Serenade"!
One evening he was even asked if he could make music himself, and
actually volunteered to sing--and sang that famous ballad of Balfe's
which seems destined to become immortal in this country--"When other
lips" ... _alias_, "Then you'll remember me!"
Strange to say, it was absolutely new to this high musical circle,
but they went quite mad over it; and the beautiful melody got
naturalized from that moment in Belgium and beyond, and Barty was
proclaimed the primo tenore of Antwerp--although he was only a
barytone!
A fortnight after this Barty heard "When other lips" played by the
"Guides" band in the park at Brussels. Its first appearance out of
England--and all through him.
Then he belonged to the Antwerp "Cercle Artistique," where he made
many friends and was very popular, as I can well imagine.
Thus he was happier than he had ever been in his life; but for one
thing that plagued him now and again: his oft-recurring desire to be
conscious once more of the north, which he had not felt for four or
five years.
The want of this sensation at certain periods--especially at
night--would send a chill thrill of desolation through him like a
wave; a wild panic, a quick agony, as though the true meaning of
absolute loneliness were suddenly realized by a lightning flash of
insight, and it were to last for ever and ever.
This would pass away in a second or two, but left a haunting
recollection behind for many hours. And then all was again sunshine,
and the world was made of many friends--and solitude was impossible
evermore.
One memorable morning this happiness received a check and a great
horror befell him. It was towards the end of summer--just before the
vacation.
With a dozen others, he was painting the head of an old man from the
life, when he became quite suddenly conscious of something strange
in his sight. First he shut his left eye and saw with his right
quite perfectly; then he shut the right, and lo! whatever he looked
at with the left dwindled to a vanishing point and became invisible.
No rubbing or bathing of his eye would alter the terrible fact, and
he knew what great fear really means, for the first time.
Much kind concern was expressed, and Van Lerius told him to go at
once to a Monsieur Noiret, a professor at the Catholic University of
Louvain, who had attended _him_ for the eyes, and had the reputation
of being the first oculist in Belgium.
Barty wrote immediately and an appointment was made, and in three
days he saw the great man, half professor, half priest, who took him
into a dark chamber lighted by a lamp, and dilated his pupil with
atropine, and looked into his eye with the newly discovered
"ophthalmoscope."
Professor Noiret told him it was merely a congestion of the
retina--for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be
cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the
back of his neck, dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and
morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also
that he must go to the seaside immediately--and he recommended
Ostend.
Barty told him that he was an impecunious art student, and that
Ostend was a very expensive place.
Noiret considerately recommended Blankenberghe, which was cheap;
asked for and took his full fee, and said, with a courtly priestly
bow:
"If you are not cured, come back in a month. _Au revoir!_"
So poor Barty had the seton put in by a kind of barber-surgeon, and
was told how to dress it night and morning; got his medicines and
his dry-cupping apparatus, and went off to Blankenberghe quite
hopeful.
And there things happened to him which I really think are worth
telling; in the first place, because, even if they did not concern
Barty Josselin, they should be amusing for their own sake--that is,
if I could only tell them as he told me afterwards; and I will do my
best!
And then he was nearing the end of the time when he was to remain as
other mortals are. His new life was soon to open, the great change
to which we owe the Barty Josselin who had changed the world for
_us_!
Besides, this is a biography--not a novel--not literature! So what
does it matter how it's written, so long as it's all true!