"Old winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night;
If the land, and the air, and the sea
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra!"
--Shelley.
Riffrath, besides its natives and its regular English colony of
residents, had a floating population that constantly changed. And
every day new faces were to be found drinking tea with Mr. Beresford
Duff--and all these faces were well known in society at home, you
may be sure; and Barty made capital caricatures of them all, which
were treasured up and carried back to England; one or two of them
turn up now and then at a sale at Christie's and fetch a great
price. I got a little pen-and-ink outline of Captain Reece there,
drawn before he came into the title. I had to give forty-seven
pounds ten for it, not only because it was a speaking likeness of
the late Lord Ironsides as a young man, but on account of the little
"B. J." in the corner.
And only the other evening I sat at dinner next to the Dowager
Countess. Heavens! what a beautiful creature she still is, with her
prematurely white hair and her long thick neck!
And after dinner we talked of Barty--she with that delightful
frankness that always characterized her through life, I am told:
"Dear Barty Josselin! how desperately in love I was with that man,
to be sure! Everybody was--he might have thrown the handkerchief as
he pleased in Riffrath, I can tell you, Sir Robert! He was the
handsomest man I ever saw, and wore a black pork-pie hat and a
little yellow Vandyck beard and mustache; just the color of Turkish
tobacco, like his hair! All that sounds odd now, doesn't it?
Fashions have changed--but not for the better! And what a figure!
and such fun he was! and always in such good spirits, poor boy! and
now he's dead, and it's one of the greatest names in all the world!
Well, if he'd thrown that handkerchief at me just about then, I
should have picked it up--and you're welcome to tell all the world
so, Sir Robert!"
* * * * *
And next day I got a kind and pretty little letter:
"Dear Sir Robert,--I was quite serious last night. Barty Josselin
was _mes premieres amours_! Whether he ever guessed it or not, I
can't say. If not, he was very obtuse! Perhaps he feared to fall,
and didn't feel fain to climb in consequence. I all but proposed to
him, in fact! Anyhow, I am proud my girlish fancy should have fallen
on such a man!
"I told him so myself only last year, and we had a good laugh over
old times; and then I told his wife, and she seemed much pleased. I
can understand his preference, and am old enough to forgive it and
laugh--although there is even now a tear in the laughter. You know
his daughter, Julia Mainwaring, is my godchild; sometimes she sings
her father's old songs to me:
"'Petit chagrin de notre enfance
Coute un soupir!'
"Do you remember?
"Poor Ironsides knew all about it when he married me, and often
declared I had amply made up to him for that and many other
things--over and over again. Il avait bien raison; and made of me a
very happy wife and a most unhappy widow.
"Put this in your book, if you like.
"Sincerely yours,
"Julia Ironsides."
Thus time flowed smoothly and pleasantly for Barty all through the
summer. In August the Royces left, and also Captain Reece--they for
Scotland, he for Algiers--and appointed to meet again in Riffrath
next spring.
In October Lady Caroline took her niece to Rome, and Barty was left
behind to his work, very much to her grief and Daphne's.
He wrote to them every Monday, and always got a letter back on the
Saturday following.
Barty spent the winter hard at work, but with lots of play between,
and was happy among his painter fellows--and sketching and
caricaturing, and skating and sleighing with the English who
remained in Duesseldorf, and young von this and young von that. I
have many of his letters describing this genial, easy life--letters
full of droll and charming sketches.
[Illustration: "HE MIGHT HAVE THROWN THE HANDKERCHIEF AS HE
PLEASED"]
He does not mention the fair Julia much, but there is no doubt that the
remembrance of her much preoccupied him, and kept him from losing his
heart to any of the fair damsels, English and German, whom he skated and
danced with, and sketched and sang to.
As a matter of fact, he had never yet lost his heart in his
life--not even to Julia. He never said much about his love-making
with Julia to me. But his aunt did--and I listened between the
words, as I always do. His four or five years' career in London as a
thoroughgoing young rake had given him a very deep insight into
woman's nature--an insight rare at his age, for all his perceptions
were astonishingly acute, and his unconscious faculty of sympathetic
observation and induction and deduction immense.
And, strange to say, if that heart had never been touched, it had
never been corrupted either, and probably for that very reason--that
he had never been in love with these sirens. It is only when true
love fades away at last in the arms of lust that the youthful, manly
heart is wrecked and ruined and befouled.
He made up his mind that art should be his sole mistress
henceforward, and that the devotion of a lifetime would not be price
enough to pay for her favors, if but she would one day be kind. He
had to make up for so much lost time, and had begun his wooing so
late! Then he was so happy with his male friends! Whatever void
remained in him when his work was done for the day could be so
thoroughly filled up by Henley and Bancroft and Armstrong and du
Maurier and the rest that there was no room for any other and warmer
passion. Work was a joy by itself; the rest from it as great a joy;
and these alternations were enough to fill a life. To how many great
artists had they sufficed! and what happy lives had been led, with
no other distraction, and how glorious and successful! Only the
divine Julia, in all the universe, was worthy to be weighed in the
scales with these, and she was not for the likes of Mr. Nobody of
Nowhere.
Besides, there was the faithful Martia. Punctually every evening the
ever-comforting sense of the north filled him as he jumped into bed;
and he whispered his prayers audibly to this helpful spirit, or
whatever it might be, that had given him a sign and saved him from a
cowardly death, and filled his life and thoughts as even no Julia
could.
And yet, although he loved best to forgather with those of his own
sex, woman meant much for him! There _must_ be a woman somewhere in
the world--a needle in a bottle of hay--a nature that could dovetail
and fit in with his own; but what a life-long quest to find her! She
must be young and beautiful, like Julia--rien que ca!--and as kind
and clever and simple and well-bred and easy to live with as Aunt
Caroline, and, heavens! how many things besides, before poor Mr.
Nobody of Nowhere could make her happy, and be made happy by her!
So Mr. Nobody of Nowhere gave it up, and stuck to his work, and made
much progress, and was well content with things as they were.
He had begun late, and found many difficulties in spite of his great
natural facility. His principal stock in trade was his keen
perception of human beauty, of shape and feature and expression,
male or female--of face or figure or movement; and a great love and
appreciation of human limbs, especially hands and feet.
With a very few little pen-strokes he could give the most
marvellously subtle likenesses of people he knew--beautiful or
ordinary or plain or hideous; and the beauty of the beautiful
people, just hinted in mere outline, was so keen and true and
fascinating that this extraordinary power of expressing it amounted
to real genius.
It is a difficult thing, even for a master, to fully render with an
ordinary steel pen and a drop of common ink (and of a size no bigger
than your little finger nail) the full face of a beautiful woman,
let us say; or a child, in sadness or merriment or thoughtful
contemplation; and make it as easily and unmistakably recognizable
as a good photograph, but with all the subtle human charm and
individuality of expression delicately emphasized in a way that no
photograph has ever achieved yet.
And this he could always do in a minute from sheer memory and
unconscious observation; and in another few minutes he would add on
the body, in movement or repose, and of a resemblance so wonderful
and a grace so enchanting, or a humor so happily, naively droll,
that one forgot to criticise the technique, which was quite that of
an amateur; indeed, with all the success he achieved as an artist,
he remained an amateur all his life. Yet his greatest admirers were
among the most consummate and finished artists of their day, both
here and abroad.
It was with his art as with his singing: both were all wrong, yet
both gave extraordinary pleasure; one almost feared that regular
training would mar the gift of God, so much of the charm we all so
keenly felt lay in the very imperfections themselves--just as one
loved him personally as much for his faults as for his virtues.
"Il a les qualites de ses defauts, le beau Josselin," said M. Taine
one day.
"Mon cher," said M. Renan, "ses defauts sont ses meilleures
qualites."
So he spent a tranquil happy winter, and wrote of his happiness and
his tranquillity to Lady Caroline and Daphne and Ida and me; and
before he knew where he was, or we, the almond-trees blossomed
again, and then the lilacs and limes and horse-chestnuts and
syringas; and the fireflies flew in and out of his bedroom at night,
and the many nightingales made such music in the Hof gardens that he
could scarcely sleep for them; and other nightingales came to make
music for him too--most memorable music! Stockhausen, Jenny Ney,
Joachim, Madame Schumann; for the triennial Musik festival was held
in Duesseldorf that year (a month later than usual); and musical
festivals are things they manage uncommonly well in Germany. Barty,
unseen and unheard, as becomes a chorus-singer, sang in the choruses
of Gluck's _Iphigenia_, and heard and saw everything for nothing.
But, before this, Captain Reece came back to Riffrath, and,
according to appointment, Admiral Royce and Lady Jane, and Julia,
lovelier than ever; and all the sweetness she was so full of rose in
her heart and gathered in her eyes as they once more looked on Barty
Josselin.
He steeled and stiffened himself like a man who knew that the divine
Julias of this world were for his betters--not for him!
Nevertheless, as he went to bed, and thought of the melting gaze
that had met his, he was deeply stirred; and actually, though the
north was in him, he forgot, for the first time in all that
twelvemonth, for the first time since that terrible night in
Malines, to say his prayers to Martia--and next morning he found a
letter by his bedside in pencil-written blaze of his own
handwriting:
"Barty my Beloved,--A crisis has come in your affairs, which are
mine; and, great as the cost is to me, I must write again, at the
risk of betraying what amounts to a sacred trust; a secret that I
have innocently surprised, the secret of a noble woman's heart.
"One of the richest girls in England, one of the healthiest and most
beautiful women in the whole world, a bride fit for an emperor, is
yours for the asking. It is my passionate wish, and a matter of life
and death to me, that you and Julia Royce should become man and
wife; when you are, you shall both know why.
"Mr. Nobody of Nowhere--as you are so fond of calling yourself--you
shall be such, some day, that the best and highest in the land will
be only too proud to be your humble friends and followers; no woman
is too good for you--only one good enough! and she loves you: of
that I feel sure--and it is impossible you should not love her back
again.
"I have known her from a baby, and her father and mother also; I
have inhabited her, as I have inhabited you, although I have never
been able to give her the slightest intimation of the fact. You are
both, physically, the most perfect human beings I was ever in; and
in heart and mind the most simply made, the most richly gifted, and
the most admirably balanced; and I have inhabited many thousands,
and in all parts of the globe.
"You, Barty, are the only one I have ever been able to hold
communication with, or make to feel my presence; it was a strange
chance, that--a happy accident; it saved your life. I am the only
one, among many thousands of homeless spirits, who has ever been
able to influence an earthly human being, or even make him feel the
magnetic current that flows through us all, and by which we are able
to exist; all the rappings and table-turnings are mere hysterical
imaginations, or worse--the cheapest form of either trickery or
self-deception that can be. Barty, your unborn children are of a
moment to me beyond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia
must be their mother; Julia Royce, and no other woman in the world.
"It is in you to become so great when you are ripe that she will
worship the ground you walk upon; but you can only become as great
as that through her and through me, who have a message to deliver
to mankind here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice--not
one. But I must have my reward, and that can only come through your
marriage with Julia.
"When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riffrath, and see
Julia if you can, and be to her as you have so often been to any
women you wished to please, and who were not worth pleasing. Her
heart is her own to give, like her fortune; she can do what she
likes with them both, and will--her mother notwithstanding, and in
the teeth of the whole world.
"Poor as you are, maimed as you are, irregularly born as you are, it
is better for her that she should be your wife than the wife of any
man living, whoever he be.
"Look at yourself in the glass, and say at once,
"'Martia, I'm off to Riffrath as soon as I've swallowed my
breakfast!'
"And then I'll go about my business with a light heart and an easy
mind.
"Martia."
Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass and did as he was
bid, and the north left him; and Johanna brought him his breakfast,
and he started for Riffrath.
* * * * *
All through this winter that was so happily spent by Barty in
Duesseldorf things did not go very happily in London for the Gibsons.
Mr. Gibson was not meant for business; nature intended him as a
rival to Keeley or Buckstone.
He was extravagant, and so was his wife; they were both given to
frequent and most expensive hospitalities; and he to cards, and she
to dressing herself and her daughter more beautifully than quite
became their position in life. The handsome and prosperous shop in
Cheapside--the "emporium," as he loved to call it--was not enough to
provide for all these luxuries; so he took another in Conduit
Street, and decorated it and stocked it at immense expense, and
called it the "Universal Fur Company," and himself the "Head of a
West End firm."
Then he speculated, and was not successful, and his affairs got into
tangle.
And a day came when he found he could not keep up these two shops
and his private house in Tavistock Square as well; the carriage was
put down first--a great distress to Mrs. Gibson; and finally, to her
intense grief, it became necessary to give up the pretty house
itself.
It was decided that their home in future most be over the new
emporium in Conduit Street; Mrs. Gibson had a properly constituted
English shopkeeper's wife's horror of living over her husband's
shop--the idea almost broke her heart; and as a little consolation,
while the necessary changes were being wrought for their altered
mode of life, Mr. Gibson treated her and Leah and my sister to a
trip up the Rhine--and Mrs. Bletchley, the splendid old Jewess
(Leah's grandmother), who suffered, or fancied she suffered, in her
eyesight, took it into her head that she would like to see the
famous Dr. Hasenclever in Riffrath, and elected to journey with
them--at all events as far as Duesseldorf. I would have escorted
them, but that my father was ill, and I had to replace him in Barge
Yard; besides, I was not yet quite cured of my unhappy passion,
though in an advanced stage of convalescence; and I did not wish to
put myself under conditions that might retard my complete recovery,
or even bring on a relapse. I wished to love Leah as a sister; in
time I succeeded in doing so; she has been fortunate in her brother,
though I say it who shouldn't--and, O heavens! haven't I been
fortunate in my sister Leah?
My own sister Ida wrote to Barty to find rooms and meet them at the
station, and fixed the day and hour of their arrival; and
commissioned him to take seats for Gluck's _Iphigenia_.
She thought more of _Iphigenia_ than of the Drachenfels or
Ehrenbreitstein; and was overjoyed at the prospect of once more
being with Barty, whom she loved as well as she loved me, if not
even better. He was fortunate in his sister, too!
And the Rhine in May did very well as a background to all these
delights.
So Mr. Babbage (the friend of the family) and I saw them safely on
board the _Baron Osy_ ("the Ank-works package," as Mrs. Gamp called
it), which landed them safely in the Place Verte at Antwerp; and
then they took train for Duesseldorf, changing at Malines and
Verviers; and looked forward eagerly, especially Ida, to the meeting
with Barty at the little station by the Rhine.
* * * * *
Barty, as we know, started for Riffrath at Martia's written command,
his head full of perplexing thoughts.
Who was Martia? What was she? "A disembodied conscience?" Whose? Not
his own, which counselled the opposite course.
He had once seen a man at a show with a third rudimentary leg
sticking out behind, and was told this extra limb belonged to a
twin, the remaining portions of whom had not succeeded in getting
themselves begotten and born. Could Martia be a frustrated and
undeveloped twin sister of his own, that interested herself in his
affairs, and could see with his eyes and hear with his ears, and had
found the way of communicating with him during his sleep--and was
yet apart from him, as phenomenal twins are apart from each other,
however closely linked--and had, moreover, not managed to have any
part of her body born into this world at all?
She wrote like him; her epistolary style was his very own, every
turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it
overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to
the idea during the last twelvemonth. _Why_ was she so anxious he
should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the
love of this splendid creature, in the face of the world's
opposition and her family's--he, a beggar and a bastard? Would it be
right and honest and fair to her?
And then, again, was he so desperately in love with her, after all,
that he should give up the life of art and toil he had planned for
himself and go through existence as the husband of a rich and
beautiful woman belonging, first of all, to the world and society,
of which she was so brilliant an ornament that her husband must
needs remain in the background forever, even if he were a gartered
duke or a belted earl?
What success of his own would he ever hope to achieve, handicapped
as he would be by all the ease and luxury she would bring him? He
had grown to love the poverty which ever lends such strenuousness to
endeavor. He thought of an engraving he had once taken a fancy to in
Brussels, and purchased and hung up in his bedroom. _I_ have it now!
It is after Gallait, and represents a picturesquely poor violinist
and his violin in a garret, and underneath is written "Art et
liberte."
Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent body--and all
his manhood thrilled as he recalled the look in her eyes when they
met his the day before.
This was the strongest kind of temptation by which his nature could
ever be assailed--he knew himself to be weak as water when that came
his way, the ten-thousandth face (and the figure to match)! He had
often prayed to Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was
Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy!
The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal, and he thought
he could think better if he got out and walked in that beautiful
valley an hour or two--there was no hurry; he would take another
train later, in time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she
was sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely rocks, and
sat and pondered in the famous cave where the skull was found--that
simple prehistoric cranium which could never have been so
pathetically nonplussed by such a dilemma as this when it was a
human head!
And the more he pondered the less he came to a conclusion. It seemed
as though there were the "tug of war" between Martia and all that he
felt to be best in himself--his own conscience, his independence as
a man, his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his pocket to
re-read, and with it came another letter; it was from my sister, Ida
Maurice. It told him when they would arrive in Duesseldorf.
He jumped up in alarm--it was that very day. He had quite forgotten!
He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and had to wait an
hour for another; but he got himself to the Rhine station in
Duesseldorf a few minutes before the train from Belgium arrived.
Everything was ready for the Gibson party--lodgings and tea and
supper to follow--he had seen to all that before; so there he walked
up and down, waiting, and still revolving over and over again in his
mind the troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed him.
Who was Martia? what was she--that he should take her for a guide in
the most momentous business of his life; and what were her
credentials?
And what was love? Was it love he felt for this young goddess with
yellow hair and light-blue eyes so like his own, who towered in her
full-blown frolicsome splendor among the sons and daughters of men,
with her moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and
laughter--that royal milk-white fawn that had only lain in the roses
and fed on the lilies of life?
"Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you
the basest thing an able-bodied man can become, a fortune-hunting
adventurer!"
Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train was visible--ten
minutes late. The tickets were taken, and it slowed into the station
and stopped. Ida's head and face were seen peering through one of
the second-class windows, on the lookout, and Barty opened the door
and there was a warm and affectionate greeting between them; the
meeting was joy to both.
Then he was warmly greeted by Mrs. Gibson, who introduced him to her
mother; then he was conscious of somebody he had not seen yet
because she stood at his blind side (indeed, he had all but
forgotten her existence); namely, the presence of a very tall and
most beautiful dark-haired young lady, holding out her slender
gloved hand and gazing up into his face with the most piercing and
strangest and blackest eyes that ever were; yet so soft and quick
and calm and large and kind and wise and gentle that their
piercingness was but an added seduction; one felt they could never
pierce too deep for the happiness of the heart they pronged and
riddled and perforated through and through!
Involuntarily came into Barty's mind, as he shook the slender hand,
a little song of Schubert's he had just learnt:
"Du dist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
And wasn't it odd?--all his doubts and perplexities resolved
themselves at once, as by some enchantment, into a lovely,
unexpected chord of extreme simplicity; and Martia was gently but
firmly put aside, and the divine Julia quietly relegated to the
gilded throne which was her fit and proper apanage.
Barty saw to the luggage, and sent it on, and they all went on foot
behind it.
The bridge of boats across the Rhine was open in the middle to let a
wood-raft go by down stream. This raft from some distant forest was
so long they had to wait nearly twenty minutes; and the prow of it
had all but lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of
sky and river while it was still passing the bridge.
All this was new and delightful to the Londoners, who were also
delighted with the rooms Barty had taken for them in the Koenig's
Allee and the tea that awaited them there. Leah made tea, and gave a
cup to Barty. That was a good cup of tea, better even than the tea
Julia was making (that very moment, no doubt) at Beresford Duff's.
Then the elder ladies rested, and Barty took Leah and Ida for a walk
in the Hof gardens. They were charmed with everything--especially
the fire-flies at dusk. Leah said little; she was not a very
talkative person outside her immediate family circle. But Ida and
Barty had much to say.
Then home to supper at the Gibsons' lodgings, and Barty sat opposite
Leah, and drank in the beauty of her face, which had so wonderfully
ripened and accentuated and individualized itself since he had seen
her last, three years before.
As he discreetly gazed, whenever she was not looking his way, saying
to himself, like Geraint: "'Here by God's rood is the one maid for
me,'" he suddenly felt the north, and started with a kind of terror
as he remembered Martia. He bade the company a hasty good-night, and
went for a long walk by the Rhine, and had a long talk with his
Egeria.
"Martia," said he, in a low but audible voice, "it's no good, I
_can't_; c'est plus fort que moi. I can't sell myself to a woman for
gold; besides, I can't fall in love with Julia; I don't know why,
but I _can't_; I will never marry her. I don't deserve that she
should care for me; perhaps she doesn't, perhaps you're quite
mistaken, and if she does, it's only a young girl's fancy. What does
a girl of that age really know about her own heart? and how base I
should be to take advantage of her innocence and inexperience!"
And then he went on in a passionate and eager voice to explain all
he had thought of during the day and still further defend his
recalcitrancy.
"Give me at least your reasons, Martia; tell me, for God's sake, who
you are and what! Are you _me_? are you the spirit of my mother? Why
do you love me, as you say you do, with a love passing the love of
woman? What am I to you? Why are you so bent on worldly things?"
This monologue lasted more than an hour, and he threw himself on to
his bed quite worn out, and slept at once, in spite of the
nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy, balmy night with their
shrill, sweet clamor.
Next morning, as he expected, he found a letter:
"Barty, you are ruining me and breaking my life, and wrecking the
plans of many years--plans made before you were, born or thought of.
"Who am I, indeed? Who is this demure young black-eyed witch that
has come between us, this friend of Ida Maurice's?
"She's the cause of all my misery, I feel sure; with Ida's eyes I
saw you look at her; you never yet looked at Julia like that!--never
at any woman before!
"Who is she? No mate for a man like you, I feel sure. In the first
place, she is not rich; I could tell that by the querulous
complaints of her middle-class mother. She's just fit to be some
pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a
hospital nurse, or a nun--no companion for a man destined to move
the world!
"Barty, you don't _know_ what you are; you have never _thought_; you
have never yet looked _within_!
"Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back, you will be a
leader of men, and sway the destinies of your country, and raise it
above all other nations, and make it the arbiter of Europe--of the
whole world--and your seed will ever be first among the foremost of
the earth.
"Will you give up all this for a pair of bright black eyes and a
pretty white skin? Isn't Julia white enough for you?
"A painter? What a trade for a man built like you! Take the greatest
of them; what have they ever really mattered? What do they matter
now, except to those who want to imitate them and can't, or to those
who live by buying cheap the fruits of their long labors, and
selling them dear as so much wall furniture for the vulgar rich?
Besides, you will never be a great painter; you've begun too late!
"Think of yourself ten years hence--a king among men, with the world
at your feet, and at those of the glorious woman who will have
smoothed your path to greatness and fame and power! Mistress and
wife--goddess and queen in one!
"Think of the poor struggling painter, painting his poor little
pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a dozen hungry children
and the anxious, careworn wife, whose beauty has long faded away in
the petty, sordid, hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's
little talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched
pot-boilers for mere bread; think of poverty, debt, and degradation,
and all the miserable ugliness of life--the truest, tritest, and
oldest story in the world! Love soon flies out of the window when
these wolves snarl at the door.
"Think of all this, Barty, and think of the despair you are bringing
on one lost lonely soul who loves you as a mother loves her
first-born, and has founded such hopes on you; dismiss this pretty
little middle-class puritan from your thoughts and go back to Julia.
"I will not hurry your decision; I will come back in exactly a week
from to-night. I am at your mercy.
"Martia."
This letter made Barty very unhappy. It was a strange dilemma.
What is it that now and again makes a woman in a single moment take
such a powerful grip of a man's fancy that he can never shake
himself free again, and never wants to?
Tunes can be like that, sometimes. Not the pretty little tinkling
tunes that please everybody at once; the pleasure of them can fade
in a year, a month--even a week, a day! But those from a great mint,
and whose charm will last a man his lifetime!
Many years ago a great pianist, to amuse some friends (of whom I was
one), played a series of waltzes by Schubert which I had never heard
before--the "Soirees de Vienne," I think they were called. They were
lovely from beginning to end; but one short measure in particular
was full of such extraordinary enchantment for me that it has really
haunted me through life. It is as if it were made on purpose for me
alone, a little intimate aside a mon intention--the gainliest,
happiest thought I had ever heard expressed in music. For nobody
else seemed to think those particular bars were more beautiful than
all the rest; but, oh! the difference to me!
And said I to myself: "That's Leah; and all the rest is some
heavenly garden of roses she's walking in!"
Tempo di valsa:
_Rum_--tiddle-iddle _um_ tum tum,
_Tid_dle-tiddle-iddle-iddle _um_ tum, tum
_Tum_ tiddle iddle-iddle _um_ tum, tum
_Tid_dle-iddle, iddle-_hay!_ ... etc., etc.
That's how the little measure begins, and it goes on just for a
couple of pages. I can't write music, unfortunately, and I've nobody
by me at just this moment who can; but if the reader is musical and
knows the "Soirees de Vienne," he will guess the particular waltz I
mean.
Well, the Duesseldorf railway station is not a garden of roses; but
when Leah stepped out of that second-class carriage and looked
straight at Barty, _dans le blanc des yeux_, he fitted her to the
tune _he_ loved best just then (not knowing the "Soirees de
Vienne"), and it's one of the tunes that last forever:
"Du bist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
Barty's senses were not as other men's senses. With his one eye he
saw much that most of _us_ can't see with two; I feel sure of this.
And he suddenly saw in Leah's face, now she was quite grown up, that
which bound him to her for life--some veiled promise, I suppose; we
can't explain these things.
* * * * *
Barty escorted the Gibson party to Riffrath, and put down Mrs.
Bletchley's name for Dr. Hasenclever, and then took them to the
woods of Hammerfest, close by, with which they were charmed. On the
way back to the hotel they met Lady Jane and Miss Royce and the good
Beresford Duff, who all bowed to Barty, and Julia's blue glance
crossed Leah's black one.
"Oh, what a lovely girl!" said Leah to Barty. "What a pity she's so
tall; why, I'm sure she's half a head taller than even I, and they
make _my_ life a burden to me at home because I'm such a giantess!
Who is she? You know her well, I suppose?"
"She's a Miss Julia Royce, a great heiress. Her father's dead; he
was a wealthy Norfolk Squire, and she was his only child."
"Then I suppose she's a very aristocratic person; she looks so, I'm
sure!"
"Very much so indeed," said Barty.
"Dear me! it seems unfair, doesn't it, having everything like that;
no wonder she looks so happy!"
[Illustration: DR. HASENCLEVER AND MRS. BLETCHLEY]
Then they went back to the hotel to lunch; and in the afternoon Mrs.
Bletchley saw the doctor, who gave her a prescription for
spectacles, and said she had nothing to fear; and was charming to
Leah and to Ida, who spoke French so well, and to the pretty and
lively Mrs. Gibson, who lost her heart to him and spoke the most
preposterous French he had ever heard.
He was fond of pretty English women, the good German doctor,
whatever French they spoke.
They were quite an hour there. Meanwhile Barty went to Beresford
Duff's, and found Julia and Lady Jane drinking tea, as usual at that
hour.
"Who are your uncommonly well-dressed friends, Barty?" said Mr.
Duff. "I never met any of them that _I_ can remember."
"Well--they're just from London--the elder lady is a Mrs.
Bletchley."
"Not one of the Berkshire Bletchleys, eh?"
"Oh no--she's the widow of a London solicitor."
"Dear me! And the lovely, tall, black-eyed _damigella_--who's she?"
"She's a Miss Gibson, and her father's a furrier in Cheapside."
"And the pretty girl in blue with the fair hair?"
"She's the sister of a very old friend of mine, Robert Maurice--he's
a wine merchant."
"You don't say so! Why, I took them for people of condition!" said
Mr. Beresford Duff, who was a trifle old-fashioned in his ways of
speech. "Anyhow, they're uncommonly nice to look at."
"Oh yes," said the not too priggishly grammatical Lady Jane;
"nowadays those sort of people dress like duchesses, and think
themselves as good as any one."
"They're good enough for _me_, at all events," said Barty, who was
not pleased.
"I'm sure Miss Gibson's good enough for _anybody in the world_!"
said Julia. "She's the most beautiful girl I ever saw!" and she gave
Barty a cup of tea.
Barty drank it, and felt fond of Julia, and bade them all good-bye,
and went and waited in the hall of the Koenig's Hotel for his
friends, and took them back to Duesseldorf.
Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up the Rhine, and
Barty was left to his own reflections, and he reflected a great
deal; not about what he meant to do himself, but about how he should
tell Martia what he meant to do.
As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up: he would break at
once and forever with a world he did not properly belong to, and
fight his own little battle unaided, and be a painter--a good one,
if he could. If not, so much the worse for him. Life is short.
When he would have settled his affairs and paid his small debts in
Duesseldorf, he would have some ten or fifteen pounds to the good. He
would go back to London with the Gibsons and Ida Maurice. There were
no friends for him in the world like the Maurices. There was no
woman for him in the world like Leah, whether she would ever care
for him or not.
Rich or poor, he didn't mind! she was Leah; she had the hands, the
feet, the lips, the hair, the eyes! That was enough for him! He was
absolutely sure of his own feelings; absolutely certain that this
path was not only the pleasant path he liked, but the right one for
a man in his position to follow: a thorny path indeed, but the
thorns were thorns of roses!
All this time he was busily rehearsing his part in the chorus of
_Iphigenia_; he had applied for the post of second tenor chorister;
the conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight.
This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the
Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty
failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a
little tune of his own, an improvisation.
The conductor laughed too; but Barty was admitted all the same; his
voice was good, and he must learn his part by heart--that was all;
anybody could teach him.
The Gibsons came back to Duesseldorf in time for the performance,
which was admirable, in spite of Barty. From his coign of vantage,
amongst the second tenors, he could see Julia's head with its golden
fleece; Julia, that rose without a thorn--
"Het Roosje uit de dorne!"
She was sitting between Lady Jane and the Captain.
He looked in vain for the Gibsons, as he sang his loudest, yet
couldn't hear himself sing (he was one of a chorus of avenging
furies, I believe).
But there were three vacant seats in the same row as the Royces'.
Presently three ladies, silken hooded and cloaked--one in yellow,
one in pink, and one in blue--made their way to the empty places,
just as the chorus ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes
(Stockhausen) stood up and lifted his noble barytone.
"Die Ruhe kehret mir zurueck"--
And the yellow-hooded lady unhooded a shapely little black head, and
it was Leah's.
"_Prosit omen!_" thought Barty--and it seemed as if his whole heart
melted within him.
He could see that Leah and Julia often looked at each other; he
could also see, during the intervals, how many double-barrelled
opera-glasses were levelled at both; it was impossible to say which
of these two lovely women was the loveliest; probably most votes
would have been for Julia, the fair-haired one, the prima donna
assoluta, the soprano, the Rowena, who always gets the biggest
salary and most of the applause.
The brunette, the contralto, the Rebecca, dazzles less, but touches
the heart all the more deeply, perhaps; anyhow, Barty had no doubt
as to which of the two voices was the voice for him. His passion was
as that of Brian de Bois-Guilbert for mere strength, except that he
was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics
about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and
romance of a knight-errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was
a good knight, though not Sir Galahad!
Also he felt very patriotic, as a good knight should ever feel, and
proud of a country which could grow such a rose as Julia, and such a
lily as Leah Gibson.
Next to Julia sat Captain Reece, romantic and handsome as ever, with
manly love and devotion expressed in every line of his face, every
movement of his body; and the heaviest mustache and the most
beautiful brown whiskers in the world. He was either a hussar or a
lancer; I forget which.
"By my halidom," mentally ejaculated Barty, "I sincerely wish thee
joy and life-long happiness, good Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Thou art a
right fit mate for her, peerless as she may be among women! A
benison on you both from your poor Wamba, the son of Witless."
As he went home that night, after the concert, to his tryst with
Martia, the north came back to him--through the open window as it
were, with the fire-flies and fragrances, and the song of fifty
nightingales. It was for him a moment of deep and harassing emotion
and keen anxiety. He leaned over the window-sill and looked out on
the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little speech he had
prepared:
"Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey
you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts
me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor
and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to
help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her--even
with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more!
"One can't help these things. They may be fancies, and one may live
to repent them; but while they last they are imperious, not to be
resisted. It's an instinct, I suppose; perhaps even a form of
insanity! But I love Leah's little-finger nail better than Julia's
lovely face and splendid body and all her thousands.
"Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high position in the
world's eye, even for a day, nor owe anything to either man or woman
except love and fidelity! It grieves me deeply to disappoint you,
though I cannot understand your motives. If you love me as you say
you do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before my
worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't care a button,
except for Leah's sake.
"Besides, I know myself better than you know me. I'm not one of
those hard, strong, stern, purposeful, Napoleonic men, with wills of
iron, that clever, ambitious women conceive great passions for!
[Illustration: "'MARTIA, I HAVE DONE MY BEST'"]
"I'm only a 'funny man'--a _gringalet-jocrisse!_ And now that I'm quite
grown up, and all my little funniments are over, I'm only fit to sit
and paint, with my one eye, in my little corner, with a contented little
wife, who won't want me to do great things and astonish the world.
There's no place like home; faire la popotte ensemble au coin du
feu--c'est le ciel!
"And if I'm half as clever as you say, it'll all come out in my
painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and all off my own bat.
I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Landseer than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or
Dizzy!
"Even to retain your love and protection and interest in me, which I
value almost as much as I value life itself, I can't do as you wish.
Don't desert me, Martia. I may be able to make it all up to you some
day; after all, you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I.
It wouldn't be worth living for if we could! It would all be
discounted in advance!
"I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life; and that should
be enough for you if it's enough for me, since I am your beloved,
and as you love me as your son.... Anyhow, my mind is made up for
good and all, and...."
Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and he went to
his bed with the sense of bereavement that had punished him all the
preceding week: desperately sad, all but heart-broken, and feeling
almost like a culprit, although his conscience, whatever that was
worth, was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.
A day or two after this he must have received a note from Julia,
making an appointment to meet him at the Ausstellung, in the Allee
Strasse, a pretty little picture-gallery, since he was seen there
sitting in deep conversation with Miss Royce in a corner, and both
seeming much moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with them,
and there was some gossip about it in the British colony both in
Duesseldorf and Riffrath.
Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much, and with such
affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her,
never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very
reticent about his love-makings, especially about any love that was
made to him.
I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides, and ask her if
it were true they had met like this, and if I might print her
answer, and received almost by return of post the following kind and
characteristic letter:
"96 Grosvenor Square.
"Dear Sir Robert,--You're quite right; I did meet him, and I've no
objection whatever to telling you how it all happened--and you may
do as you like.
"It happened just like this (you must remember that I was only just
out, and had always had my own way in everything).
"Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and Freddy Reece
(Ironsides, you know) went to the Musikfest in Duesseldorf. Barty was
singing in the chorus. I saw him opening and shutting his mouth and
could almost fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.
"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with her mother and
your sister. Leah Gibson looked like--well, _you_ know what she
looked like in those days. By-the-way, I can't make out how it is
you weren't over head and ears in love with her yourself! I thought
her the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and felt very unhappy.
"We slept at the hotel that night, and on the way back to Riffrath
next morning Freddy Reece proposed to me.
"I told him I couldn't marry him--but that I loved him as a sister,
and all that; I really was very fond of him indeed, but I didn't
want to marry him; I wanted to marry Barty, in fact; and make him
rich and famous, as I felt sure he would be some day, whether I
married him or not.
"But there was that lovely Leah Gibson, the furrier's daughter!
"When we got home to Riffrath mamma found she'd got a cold, and had
a fancy for a French thing called a 'loch'; I think her cold was
suddenly brought on by my refusing poor Freddy's offer!
"I went with Grissel, the maid (who knew about _lochs_), to the
Riffrath chemist's, but he didn't even know what we meant--so I told
mamma I would go and get a _loch_ in Duesseldorf next day if she
liked, with Uncle James. Mamma was only too delighted, for next day
was Mr. Josselin's day for coming to Riffrath; but he didn't, for I
wrote to him to meet me at twelve at a little picture-gallery I knew
of in the Allee Strasse--as I wanted to have a talk with him.
"Uncle James had caught a cold too, so I went with Grissel; and
found a chemist who'd been in France, and knew what a loch was and
made one for me; and then I went to the gallery, and there was poor
Barty sitting on a crimson velvet couch, under a picture of Milton
dictating _Paradise Lost_ to his daughters (I bought it afterwards,
and I've got it now).
"We said how d'ye do, and sat on the couch together, and I felt
dreadfully nervous and ashamed.
"Then I said:
"'You must think me very odd, Mr. Josselin, to ask you to meet me
like this!'
"'I think it's a very great honor!' he said; 'I only wish I deserved
it.'
"And then he said nothing for quite five minutes, and I think he
felt as uncomfortable as I did.
[Illustration: AM RHEIN "LED WE NOT THERE A JOLLY LIFE BETWIXT THE
SUN AND SHADE?"]
"'Captain Graham-Reece has asked me to be his wife, and I refused,'
I said.
"'Why did you refuse? He's one of the best fellows I've ever met,'
said Barty.
"'He's to be so rich, and so am I,' I said.
"No answer.
"'It would be right for me to marry a _poor_ man--man with brains
and no money, you know, and help him to make his way.'
"'Reece has plenty of brains too,' said Barty.
"'Oh, Mr. Josselin--don't misunderstand me'--and then I began to
stammer and look foolish.
"'Miss Royce--I've only got L15 in the world, and with that I mean
to go to London and be an artist; and comfort myself during the
struggle by the delightful remembrance of Riffrath and Reece and
yourself--and the happy hope of meeting you both again some day,
when I shall no longer be the poor devil I am now, and am quite
content to be! And when you and he are among the great of the earth,
if you will give me each a commission to paint your portraits I will
do my very best!' (and he smiled his irresistible smile). 'You will
be kind, I am sure, to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, the famous
portrait-painter--who doesn't even bear his father's name--as he has
no right to it.'
"I could have flung my arms round his neck and kissed him! What did
_I_ care about his father's name?
"'Will you think me dreadfully bold and indiscreet, Mr. Josselin, if
I--if I--' (I stammered fearfully.)
"'If you _what_, Miss Royce?'
"'If I--if I ask you if you--if you--think Miss Gibson the most
beautiful girl you ever saw?'
"'Honestly, I think _you_ the most beautiful girl I ever saw!'
"'Oh, that's _nonsense_, Mr. Josselin, although I ought to have
known you would say that! I'm not fit to tie her shoes. What I mean
is--a--a--oh! forgive me--are you very _fond_ of her, as I'm sure
she deserves, you know?'
"'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of
no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I
am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name--'
"'Does she _know_ you're very fond of her?'
"'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.'
"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to
cry, but I managed to keep in my tears.
"Then I got up, and so did he--and he made some joke about Grissel
and the loch-bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked
at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the
Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest
in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it--and talked so
funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't
think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the
while; I got back all my self-respect; I felt so grateful to him
that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically
in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with
him, and laughed me out of it.
"Then I bade him good-bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart,
and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson
and be her friend if she would let me.
"Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no
longer wanted it, for I told her I had changed my mind about Freddy,
and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and
called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma!
"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment
made up for them all.
"She was eighty-two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's
works in the cheap edition without spectacles--thanks, no doubt, to
the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else!
"Et voila comment ca s'est passe.
"It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed,
in your life of Josselin.
"Yours sincerely,
"Julia Ironsides.
"P. S.--I've actually just told mamma--and I'm still her dear,
darling, divine Julia!"
* * * * *
Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Duesseldorf, the most
charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little
steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old
Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.
The little boat was crowded; the ladies found what accommodation
they could in what served for a ladies' cabin, and expostulated and
bribed their best; fortunately for them, no doubt, there were no
English on board to bribe against them.
Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet-bag for a
pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Duesseldorf to
Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine
steamboat, except the Rhine--especially at night.
[Illustration: "'DOES SHE _KNOW_ YOU'RE VERY FOND OF HER?'"]
Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as comfortable as he could
on the after-deck, and read to them from _Maud_, from the _Idylls of the
King_, from the _Mill on the Floss_. Then windmills came into
sight--Dutch windmills; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to
the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored Rotterdam, and
found it a most delightful city.
Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for St. Katharine's
wharf; the wind had freshened and they soon separated, and met at
breakfast next morning in the Thames.
Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as one can smell
a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an Irish stew, and the old
familiar smell made him glad. However little you may be English, if
you are English at all you are more English than anything else, _et
plus royaliste que le Roi_!
According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband
loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at
all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming
Briton, especially if he comes home by the Thames.
It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps; but it is
singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal relations have not been
strained in the meanwhile. And as the Thames narrows itself, the
closer, the more genial, the more grateful and comforting this
long-anticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems to
grow.
Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bulwarks in the
sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked at Rotherhithe, and
promised himself he would paint it some day, and even sell the
picture!
Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom-house officers that
they all but forgot to examine the Gibson luggage.
Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's wharf, after so
many months? Ah!...
Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons went home with
him to Conduit Street in a hired fly. Alas! poor Mrs. Gibson's
home-coming was the saddest part for her of the delightful little
journey.
And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a four-wheeler to eat
the fatted calf in Brunswick Square, washed down with I will not say
what vintage. There were so many available from all the wine-growing
lands of Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate
the wanderers' return!
Let us say Romane-Conti, which is the "cru" that Barty loved best.
* * * * *
Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of sketches under
his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the
day in Fleet Street, or there-abouts, calling on publishers of
illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at
dinner-time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll
story of his ignominious non-success: his weary waitings in dull,
dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he
and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to
learn--he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by
storm.
Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after
that--every day of the week he spent under our roof.
Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in
Newman Street--a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant
smoking-room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for
all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from
Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.
Gradually boxing-gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the
faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium
tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).
And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular
actors--all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's
Street.
But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer
the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket
he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't
find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he
could not bear to be alone.
Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got
invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his
old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who
welcomed him with open arms--almost hugged him--and made him two or
three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for
nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of
payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole
Household Brigade!--the idea!"
Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and
thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the
manner of John Leech, which he took to the _British Lion_, just
started as a rival to _Punch_. The _British Lion_ died before the
sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beautiful
volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti,
and others, and made a sketch on the fly-leaf of a lovely female
with black hair and black eyes, and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was
his old female face of ten years ago; yet, strange to say, the very
image of Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).
The great happiness of his life just then was to go to the opera
with Mrs. Gibson and Leah and Mr. Babbage (the family friend), who
could get a box whenever he liked, and then to sup with them
afterwards in Conduit Street, over the Emporium of the "Universal
Fur Company," and to imitate Signor Giuglini for the delectation of
Mr. Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into absolute
worship!
And Leah, so reserved and self-contained in general company, would
laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her
laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear
than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti--the last of the
great prime donne of our time, I think--whose voice still stirs me
to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence
turned into sound.
Long life to her and to her voice! Lovely voices should never fade,
nor pretty faces either!
Sometimes I replaced Mr. Babbage and escorted Mrs. Gibson to the
opera, leaving Leah to Barty; for on fine nights we walked there,
and the ladies took off their bonnets and shawls in the box, which
was generally on the upper tier, and we looked down on Scatcherd and
my mother and sister in the stalls. Then back to Conduit Street to
supper. It was easy with half an eye to see the way things were
going. I can't say I liked it. No man would, I suppose. But I
reconciled myself to the inevitable, and bore up like a stoic.
L'amitie est l'amour sans ailes! A happy intimate friendship, a
wingless love that has lasted more than thirty years without a
break, is no bad substitute for tumultuous passions that have missed
their mark! I have been as close a friend to Barty's wife as to
Barty himself, and all the happiness I have ever known has come from
them and theirs.
Walking home, poor Mrs. Gibson would confide to me her woes and
anxieties, and wail over the past glories of Tavistock Square and
all the nice people who lived there, and in Russell Square and
Bedford Street and Gower Street, many of whom had given up calling
on her now that she lived over a shop. Not all the liveliness of
Bond Street and Regent Street combined (which Conduit Street so
broadly and genially connected with each other) could compensate her
for the lost gentility, the aristocratic dulness and quiet and
repose, "almost equal to that of a West End square."
Then she believed that business was not going on well, since Mr.
Gibson talked of giving up his Cheapside establishment; he said it
was too much for him to look after. But he had lost much of his fun,
and seemed harassed and thin, and muttered in his sleep; and the
poor woman was full of forebodings, some of which were to be
justified by the events that followed.
About this time Leah, who had forebodings too, took it into her head
to attend a class for book-keeping, and in a short time thoroughly
mastered the science in all its details. I'm afraid she was better
at this kind of work than at either drawing or music, both of which
she had been so perseveringly taught. She could read off any music
at sight quite glibly and easily, it is true--the result of hard
plodding--but could never play to give real pleasure, and she gave
it up. And with singing it was the same; her voice was excellent and
had been well trained, but when she heard the untaught Barty she
felt she was no singer, and never would be, and left off trying. Yet
nobody got more pleasure out of the singing of others--especially
Barty's and that of young Mr. Santley, who was her pet and darling,
and whom she far preferred to that sweetest and suavest of tenors,
Giuglini, about whom we all went mad. I agreed with her. Giuglini's
voice was like green chartreuse in a liqueur-glass; Santley's like a
bumper of the very best burgundy that ever was! Oh that high G!
Romane-Conti, again; and in a quart-pot! En veux-tu? en voila!
And as for her drawing, it was as that of all intelligent young
ladies who have been well taught, but have no original talent
whatever; nor did she derive any special pleasure from the
masterpieces in the National Gallery; the Royal Academy was far more
to her taste; and to mine, I frankly admit; and, I fear, to Barty's
taste also, in those days. Enough of the Guardsman still remained in
him to quite unfit his brain and ear and eye for what was best in
literature and art. He was mildly fond of the "Bacchus and Ariadne,"
and Rembrandt's portrait of himself, and a few others; as he was of
the works of Shakespeare and Milton. But Mantegna and Botticelli and
Signorelli made him sad, and almost morose.
The only great things he genuinely loved and revered were the Elgin
Marbles. He was constantly sketching them. And I am told that they
have had great influence on his work and that he owes much to them.
I have grown to admire them immensely myself in consequence, though
I used to find that part of the British Museum a rather dreary
lounge in the days when Barty used to draw there.
I am the proud possessor of a Velasquez, two Titians, and a
Rembrandt; but, as a rule, I like to encourage the art of my own
time and country and that of modern France.
And I suppose there's hardly a great painter living, or recently
dead, some of whose work is not represented on my walls, either in
London, Paris, or Scotland; or at Marsfield, where so much of my
time is spent; although the house is not mine, it's my real home;
and thither I have always been allowed to send my best pictures, and
my best bric-a-brac, my favorite horses and dogs, and the oldest and
choicest liquors that were ever stored in the cellars of
Vougeot-Conti & Co. Old bachelor friends have their privileges, and
Uncle Bob has known how to make himself at home in Marsfield.
Barty soon got better off, and moved into better lodgings in Berners
Street; a sitting-room and bedroom at No. 12B, which has now
disappeared.
And there he worked all day, without haste and without rest, and at
last in solitude; and found he could work twice as well with no
companion but his pipe and his lay figure, from which he made most
elaborate studies of drapery, in pen and ink; first in the manner of
Sandys and Albert Duerer! later in the manner of Millais, Walker, and
Keene.
Also he acquired the art of using the living model for his little
illustrations. It had become the fashion; a new school had been
founded with _Once a Week_ and the _Cornhill Magazine_, it seems;
besides those already named, there were Lawless, du Maurier,
Poynter, not to mention Holman Hunt and F. Leighton; and a host of
new draughtsmen, most industrious apprentices, whose talk and
example soon weaned Barty from a mixed and somewhat rowdy crew.
And all became more or less friends of his; a very good thing, for
they were admirable in industry and talent, thorough artists and
very good fellows all round. Need I say they have all risen to fame
and fortune--as becomes poetical justice?
He also kept in touch with his old brother officers, and that was a
good thing too.
But there were others he got to know, rickety, unwholesome geniuses,
whose genius (such as it was) had allied itself to madness; and who
were just as conceited about the madness as about the genius, and
took more pains to cultivate it. It brought them a quicker kudos,
and was so much more visible to the naked eye.
At first Barty was fascinated by the madness, and took the genius on
trust, I suppose. They made much of him, painted him, wrote music
and verses about him, raved about his Greekness, his beauty, his
yellow hair, and his voice and what not, as if he had been a woman.
He even stood that, he admired them so! or rather, this genius of
theirs.
He introduced me to this little clique, who called themselves a
school, and each other "master": "the neo-priapists," or something
of that sort, and they worshipped the tuberose.
They disliked me at sight, and I them, and we did not dissemble!
Like Barty, I am fond of men's society; but at least I like them to
be unmistakably men of my own sex, manly men, and clean; not little
misshapen troglodytes with foul minds and perverted passions, or
self-advertising little mountebanks with enlarged and diseased
vanities; creatures who would stand in a pillory sooner than not be
stared at or talked about at all.
Whatever their genius might be, it almost made me sick--it almost
made me kick, to see the humorous and masculine Barty prostrate in
admiration before these inspired epicenes, these gifted epileptoids,
these anaemic little self-satisfied nincompoops, whose proper place,
it seemed to me, was either Earlswood, or Colney Hatch, or
Broadmoor. That is, if their madness was genuine, which I doubt. He
and I had many a quarrel about them, till he found them out and cut
them for good and all--a great relief to me; for one got a bad name
by being friends with such nondescripts.
"Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai ce que tu es!"
Need I say they all died long ago, without leaving the ghost of a
name?--and nobody cared. Poetical justice again! How encouraging it
is to think there are no such people now, and that the breed has
been thoroughly stamped out![1]
[Footnote 1: Editor.]
Barty never succeeded as an illustrator on wood. He got into a way
of doing very slight sketches of pretty people in fancy dress and
coloring them lightly, and sold them at a shop in the Strand, now no
more. Then he made up little stories, which he illustrated himself,
something like the picture-books of the later Caldecott, and I found
him a publisher, and he was soon able to put aside a few pounds and
pay his debts.