"Cara deum soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum."
--Virgil.
The immense fame and success that Barty Josselin achieved were to
him a source of constant disquiet. He could take neither pride nor
pleasure in what seemed to him not his; he thought himself a fraud.
Yet only the mere skeleton of his work was built up for him by his
demon; all the beauty of form and color, all the grace of movement
and outer garb, are absolutely his own.
It has been noticed how few eminent men of letters were intimate
with the Josselins, though the best among them--except, of course,
Thomas Carlyle--have been so enthusiastic and outspoken in their
love and admiration of his work.
He was never at his ease in their society, and felt himself a kind
of charlatan.
The fact is, the general talk of such men was often apt to be over
his head, as it would have been over mine, and often made him
painfully diffident and shy. He needn't have been; he little knew
the kind of feeling he inspired among the highest and best.
Why, one day at the Marathonaeum, the first and foremost of them
all, the champion smiter of the Philistines, the apostle of culture
and sweetness and light, told me that, putting Barty's books out of
the question, he always got more profit and pleasure out of Barty's
society than that of any man he knew.
"It does me good to be in the same room with him; the freshness of
the man, his voice, his aspect, his splendid vitality and
mother-wit, his boyish spirit, and the towering genius behind it
all. I only wish to goodness I was an intimate friend of his as you
are; it would be a liberal education to me!"
But Barty's reverence and admiration for true scholarship and great
literary culture in others amounted to absolute awe, and filled him
with self-distrust.
There is no doubt that until he was universally accepted, the
crudeness of his literary method was duly criticised with great
severity by those professional literary critics who sometimes carp
with such a big mouth at their betters, and occasionally kill the
Keatses of this world!
In writing, as in everything else, he was an amateur, and more or
less remained one for life; but the greatest of his time accepted
him at once, and laughed and wept, and loved him for his obvious
faults as well as for his qualities. Tous les genres sont bons,
hormis le genre ennuyeux! And Barty was so delightfully the reverse
of a bore!
Dear me! what matters it how faultlessly we paint or write or sing
if no one will care to look or read or listen? He is all fault that
hath no fault at all, and we poor outsiders all but yawn in his face
for his pains.
They should only paint and write and sing for each other, these
impeccables, who so despise success and revile the successful. How
do they live, I wonder? Do they take in each other's washing, or
review each other's books?
It edifies one to see what a lot of trouble these deriders of other
people's popularity will often take to advertise themselves, and how
they yearn for that popular acclaim they so scornfully denounce.
Barty was not a well-read man by any means; his scholarship was that
of an idle French boy who leaves school at seventeen, after having
been plucked for a cheap French degree, and goes straightway into
her Majesty's Household Brigade.
At the beginning of his literary career it would cut him to the
quick to find himself alluded to as that inspired Anglo-Gallic
buffoon, the ex-Guardsman, whose real vocation, when he wasn't
twaddling about the music of the spheres, or writing moral French
books, was to be Mr. Toole's understudy.
He was even impressed by the smartness of those second-rate
decadents, French and English, who so gloried in their own
degeneracy--as though one were to glory in scrofula or rickets;
those unpleasant little anthropoids with the sexless little muse and
the dirty little Eros, who would ride their angry, jealous little
tilt at him in the vain hope of provoking some retort which would
have lifted them up to glory! Where are they now? He has improved
them all away! Who ever hears of decadents nowadays?
Then there were the grubs of Grub Street, who sometimes manage to
squirt a drop from their slime-bags on to the swiftly passing boot
that scorns to squash them. He had no notion of what manner of
creatures they really were, these gentles! He did not meet them at
any club he belonged to--it was not likely. Clubs have a way of
blackballing grubs--especially grubs that are out of the common
grubby; nor did he sit down to dinner with them at any dinner-table,
or come across them at any house he was by way of frequenting; but
he imagined they were quite important persons because they did not
sign their articles! and he quite mistook their place in the economy
of creation. C'etait un naif, le beau Josselin!
Big fleas have little fleas, and they've got to put up with them!
There is no "poudre insecticide" for literary vermin--and more's the
pity! (Good heavens! what would the generous and delicate-minded
Barty say, if he were alive, at my delivering myself in this
unworthy fashion about these long-forgotten assailants of his, and
at my age too--he who never penned a line in retaliation! He would
say I was the most unseemly grub of them all, and he would be quite
right; so I am just now, and ought to know better--but it amuses
me.)
Then there were the melodious bardlets who imitate those who imitate
those who imitate the forgotten minor poets of the olden time and
log-roll each other in quaint old English. They did not log-roll
Barty, whom they thought coarse and vulgar, and wrote to that effect
in very plain English that was not old, but quite up to date.
"How splendidly they write verse!" he would say, and actually once
or twice he would pick up one or two of their cheap little archaic
mannerisms and proudly use them as his own, and be quite angry to
find that Leah had carefully expunged them in her copy.
"A _fair_ and _gracious_ garden indeed!" says Leah. "I _won't_ have
you use such ridiculous words, Barty--you mean a _pretty_ garden,
and you shall say so; or even a _beautiful_ garden if you like!--and
no more '_manifolds_,' and '_there-anents_,' and '_in veriest
sooths_,' and '_waters wan_,' and '_wan waters_,' and all that. I
won't stand it; they don't suit your style at all!"
She and Scatcherd and I between us soon laughed him out of these
innocent little literary vagaries, and he remained content with the
homely words he had inherited from his barbarian ancestors in
England (they speak good English, our barbarians), and the simple
phrasing he had learnt from M. Durosier's classe de litterature at
the Institution Brossard.
One language helps another; even the smattering of a dead language is
better than no extra language at all, and that's why, at such cost of
time and labor and paternal cash, we learn to smatter Greek and Latin, I
suppose. "Arma virumque cano"--"Tityre tu patulae?"--"Maecenas
atavis"--"[Greek: Menin aeide]"--and there you are! It sticks in the
memory, and it's as simple as "How d'ye do?"
Anyhow, it is pretty generally admitted, both here and in France,
that for grace and ease and elegance and absolute clearness
combined, Barty Josselin's literary style has never been surpassed
and very seldom equalled; and whatever his other faults, when he was
at his ease he had the same graceful gift in his talk, both French
and English.
It might be worth while my translating here the record of an
impression made by Barty and his surroundings on a very accomplished
Frenchman, M. Paroly, of the _Debats_, who paid him a visit in the
summer of 1869, at Campden Hill.
I may mention that Barty hated to be interviewed and questioned
about his literary work--he declared he was afraid of being found
out.
But if once the interviewer managed to evade the lynx-eyed Leah, who
had a horror of him, and get inside the studio, and make good his
footing there, and were a decently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty
would soon get over his aversion--utterly forget he was being
interviewed--and talk as to an old friend; especially if the
reviewer were a Frenchman or an American.
The interviewer is an insidious and wily person, and often presents
himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic
guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come
such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function
he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached at a
single bound! And he is supposed to be a "gentleman," and has no
other means of keeping body and soul together! Then he is so
prostrate in admiration before your Immensity....
So you give way, and out comes the little note-book, and out comes
the little cross-examination.
As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none the better;
we know all about you already--all, at least, that we want to know;
we have heard it all before, over and over again. But a poor
fellow-creature has earned his crust, and goes home the happier for
having talked to you about yourself and been treated like a man and
a brother.
But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in his jaunty
vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to
wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and
live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you
and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you
say; and on what free and easy terms _he_ is with you, of all people
in the world!
But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman from America,
who has yearned to know you for _so_ many years, and comes perhaps
with a letter of introduction--or even without!--not to interview
you or write about you (good heavens! he hates and scorns that
modern pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and worship
at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have done him and
his, all the happiness you have given them all--"the debt of a
lifetime!"
And you let yourself go before him, and so do your family, and so do
your old friends; is _he_ not also a friend, though not an old one?
You part with him almost in sorrow, he's so nice! And in three weeks
some kind person sends you from the other side such a printed
account of you and yours--so abominably true, so abominably
false--that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in the dead of
night, and most unjustly loathe an entire continent for breeding and
harboring such a shameless type of press reptile!
I feel hard-hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I wish him, and
those who employ him, a better trade; and a better taste to whoever
reads what he writes. But Barty could be hard-hearted to nobody, and
always regretted having granted the interview when he saw the
published outcome of it.
Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet.
"I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon--a tremendous swell,"
said Barty, at lunch.
* * * * *
_Leah._ "Who is he?"
_Barty._ "M. Paroly, of the _Debats_."
_Leah._ "What is he when he's at home?"
_Barty._ "A famous journalist; as you'd know if you'd read the
French newspapers sometimes, which you never do."
_Leah._ "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I
suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you."
_Barty._ "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my
acquaintance?"
_Leah._ "And mine--I'll be there and talk to him, too!"
_Barty._ "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and
your French, you know! You never _would_ learn French properly,
although you've had me to practise on for so many years--not to
mention Bob and Ida."
_Leah._ "How unkind of you, Barty! When have I had time to trouble
about French? Besides, you always laugh at my French accent and
mimic it--and _that's_ not encouraging!"
_Barty._ "My dear, I _adore_ your French accent; it's so unaffected!
I only wish I heard it a little oftener."
_Leah._ "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what o'clock is he
coming, your Monsieur Paroly?"
_Barty._ "At four-thirty."
_Leah._ "Oh, Barty, _don't_ give yourself away--don't talk to him about
your writings, or about yourself, or about your family. He'll vulgarize
you all over France. Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman'
from America who came to see you, and who told you that _he_ was no
interviewer, not _he_! but came merely as a friend and admirer--a
distant but constant worshipper for many years! and how you talked to
him like a long-lost brother, in consequence! 'There's nobody in the
world like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them _all_, and
wanted to be an American yourself--till a month after, when he published
every word you said, and more, and what sort of cravat you had on, and
how silent and cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English wife
was--you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin, who should have
mated with a countrywoman of his own! and how your bosom friend was a
huge, overgrown everyday Briton with a broken nose! _I_ saw what he was
at, from the low cunning in his face as he listened; and felt that every
single unguarded word you dropped was a dollar in his pocket! How we've
all had to live down that dreadfully facetious and grotesque and
familiar article he printed about us all in those twenty American
newspapers that have got the largest circulation in the world! and how
you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that never another American
'gentleman' should enter your house! What names you called him: 'cad!'
'sweep!' 'low-bred, little Yankee penny-a-liner!' Don't you remember?
Why, he described you as a quite nice-looking man somewhat over the
middle height!"
"Oh yes; damn him, _I_ remember!" said Barty, who was three or four
inches over six feet, and quite openly vain of his good looks.
_Leah._ "Well, then, pray be cautious with this Monsieur Paroly you
think so much of because he's French. Let _him_ talk--interview
_him_--ask him all about his family, if he's got one--his children,
and all that; play a game of billiards with him--talk French
politics--dance 'La Paladine'--make him laugh--make him smoke one of
those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the tops of
omnibuses--make him feel your biceps--teach him how to play cup and
ball--give him a sketch--then bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys
will be there, and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by
the yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Minerva, and I'll
give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon roses, and shake him warmly by
the hand, so that he won't feel ill-natured towards us; and we'll
get him out of the house as quick as possible."
* * * * *
Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is a free rendering
of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote about him:
"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and define, I bade
adieu to the sage and philosopher of Cheyne Row, and had myself
transported in my hansom to the abode of the other great _sommite
litteraire_ in London, the light one--M. Josselin, to whom we in
France also are so deeply in debt.
"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached a bright
historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my invisible Jehu guided
me at the great trot by verdant country lanes. We turned through
lodge gates into a narrow drive in a well-kept garden where there
was a lawn of English greenness, on which were children and nurses
and many dogs, and young people who played at the lawn-tennis.
"The door of the house was opened by a charming young woman in black
with a white apron and cap, like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval,
who guided me through a bright corridor full of pictures and
panoplies, and then through a handsome studio to a billiard-room,
where M. Josselin was playing at _the_ billiard to himself all
alone.
"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he is enormously
tall, enormously handsome, like a drum-major of the Imperial Guard,
except that his lip and chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers;
very well dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and
a singularly sympathetic voice: he is about thirty-five.
"I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a cigar, a very
formidable cigar, very black and very thick and very long. I don't
smoke, and am no hand at a cue. Besides, I want to talk about
_Etoiles Mortes_, about _Les Trepassees de Francois Villon_, about
_Dejanire et Dalila_!
[Illustration: "'HE PRESENTS ME FIRST TO MADAME JOSSELIN'"]
"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection;
his mother, he tells me, was from Normandy--the daughter of
fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there
as an art student.
"He does not care to talk about _Les Trepassees_ or _Les Etoiles_,
or any of his immortal works.
"He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do _la coupe_ properly;
and leaning over his billiard-table he shows me how it ought to be
done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the
water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible
nostalgia--a consuming desire to do _la coupe_ in the swimming-baths
of Passy against the current; to take a header _a la hussarde_ with
his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and
the Ile des Cygnes--as he used to do when he was a school-boy--and
pick up mussels with his teeth.
"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is
almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can
regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree
centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit--just as he prefers
metres and centimetres to inches and feet--and ten to twelve!
"After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard-balls;
juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to
me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of
one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye
shut.
"I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with
honest satisfaction--and this is the man who wrote _La quatrieme
Dimension_!
"Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he
delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had
heard them all before--when I was at school.
"'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'a propos of that last story you've
just told me; in the _Trepassees de Francois Villon_ you have
omitted "la tres-sage Heloise" altogether.'
"'Oh, have I? How stupid of me!--Abelard and all that! Ah
well--there's plenty of time--nous allons arranger tout ca! All that
sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half
asleep in bed--a--a--I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I
take my siesta.'
"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from
the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression--things
that haunt the memory.
"'Show me a study for Dejanire,' I say.
"'Oh! I'll draw Dejanire for you,' and he takes a soft pencil and a
piece of smooth card-board, and in five minutes draws me an outline
of a naked woman on a centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty
no other hand in the world could produce--so aristocratically
delicately English and of to-day--so severely, so nobly and
classically Greek. C'est la chastete meme--mais ce n'est pas
Dejanire!
"He gives me this sketch, which I rechristen Godiva, and value as I
value few things I possess.
"Then he shows me pencil studies of children's heads, from nature,
and I exclaim:
"'O Heaven, what a dream of childhood! Childhood is never so
beautiful as that.'
"'Oh yes it is, in England, I assure you,' says he. 'I'll show you
_my_ children presently; and you, have you any children?'
"'Alas! no,' I reply; 'I am a bachelor.'
"I remark that from time to time, just as the moon veils itself
behind a passing cloud, the radiance of his brilliant and jovial
physiognomy is eclipsed by the expression of a sadness immense,
mysterious, infinite; this is followed by a look of angelic candor
and sweetness and gentle heroism, that moves you strangely, even to
the heart, and makes appeal to all your warmest and deepest
sympathies--the look of a very masculine Joan of Arc! You don't know
why, but you feel you would make any sacrifice for a man who looks
at you like that, follow him to the death--lead a forlorn hope at
his bidding.
"He does not exact from me anything so arduous as this, but passing
round my neck his powerful arm, he says:
"'Come and drink some tea; I should like to present you to my wife.'
"And he leads me through another corridor to a charming drawing-room
that gives on to the green lawn of the garden.
"There are several people there taking the tea.
"He presents me first to Madame Josselin. If the husband is
enormously handsome, the wife is a beauty absolutely divine; she,
also, is very tall--tres elegante; she has soft wavy black hair, and
eyes and eyebrows d'un noir de jais, and a complexion d'une
blancheur de lis, with just a point of carmine in the cheeks. She
does not say much--she speaks French with difficulty; but she
expresses with her smiling eyes so cordial and sincere a welcome
that one feels glad to be in the same room with her, one feels it is
a happy privilege, it does one good--one ceases to feel one may
possibly be an intruder--one almost feels one is wanted there.
"I am then presented to three or four other ladies; and it would
seem that the greatest beauties of London have given each other
rendezvous in Madame Josselin's salon--this London, where are to be
found the most beautiful women in the world and the ugliest.
"First, I salute the Countess of Ironsides--ah, mon Dieu, la Diane
chasseresse--la Sapho de Pradier! Then Madame Cornelys, the wife of
the great sculptor, who lives next door--a daughter of the ancient
gods of Greece! Then a magnificent blonde, an old friend of theirs,
who speaks French absolutely like a Frenchwoman, and says thee and
thou to M. Josselin, and introduces me to her brother, un vrai type
de colosse bon enfant, d'une tenue irreprochable [thank you, M.
Paroly], who also speaks the French of France, for he was at school
there--a school-fellow of our host.
"There are two or three children, girls, more beautiful than
anything or anybody else in the house--in the world, I think! They
give me tea and cakes, and bread and butter; most delicious
tartines, as thin as wafers, and speak French well, and relate to me
the biographies of their animals, une vraie menagerie which I
afterwards have to visit--immense dogs, rabbits, hedgehogs,
squirrels, white mice, and a gigantic owl, who answers to the name
of Minerva.
"I find myself, ma foi, very happy among these wonderful people, and
preserve an impression of beauty, of bonhomie, of naturalness and
domestic felicity quite unlike anything I have ever been privileged
to see--an impression never to be forgotten.
"But as for _Etoiles Mortes_ and _Les Trepassees de Francois
Villon_, I really have to give them up; the beautiful big dogs are
more important than all the books in the world, even the
master's--even the master himself!
"However, I want no explanation to see and understand how M.
Josselin has written most of his chefs-d'oeuvre from the depths of a
happy consciousness habituated to all that is most graceful and
charming and seductive in real life--and a deeply sympathetic,
poignant, and compassionate sense of the contrast to all this.
"Happy mortal, happy family, happy country where grow (poussent)
such people, and where such children flourish! The souvenir of that
so brief hour spent at Gretna Lodge is one of the most beautiful
souvenirs of my life--and, above all, the souvenir of the belle
chatelaine who filled my hansom with beautiful roses culled by her
own fair hand, which gave me at parting that cordial English
pressure so much more suggestive of _Au revoir_ than _Adieu_!
"It is with sincere regret one leaves people who part with one so
regretfully.
"Alphonse Paroly."
* * * * *
Except that good and happy women have no history, I should almost
like to write the history of Barty's wife, and call it the history
of the busiest and most hard-working woman in Great Britain.
Barty left everything to her--to the very signing of cheques. He
would have nothing to do with any business of any kind.
He wouldn't even carve at lunch or dinner. Leah did, unless _I_ was
there.
It is but fair to say he worked as hard as any man I know. When he
was not writing or drawing, he was thinking about drawing or
writing; when they got to Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside
the grounds.
There he would garden with gardeners or cut down trees, or do
carpenter's work at his short intervals of rest, or groom a horse.
How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or
curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built
himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy
thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his
gardening or the rest!
I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue-books and wrote
my endless correspondence with the help of a secretary--only too
glad, both of us, to be disturbed by festive and frolicsome young
Bartys of either sex--by their dogs--by their mother!
Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery by which life
was carried on in this big house, and social intercourse, and the
education of the young, and endless hospitalities.
She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and Euclid during
their preparation times for the school where they spent the day, two
miles off. Such Latin! such geometry! She could never master the
ablative absolute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's _le que
retranche_, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B what was
sufficiently obvious to her without.
"Who helps you in your Latin, my boy?" says the master, with a grin.
"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was his mother who
had coached him wrong.
"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also?" says the master,
with a broader grin still.
"Yes, sir," says Geoffrey.
"Your father's French, I suppose?"
"I dare say, sir," says Geoffrey.
"Ah, I thought so!"
All of which was very unfair to Barty, whose Latin, like that of
most boys who have been brought up at a French school, was probably
quite as good as the English school-master's own, except for its
innocence of quantities; and Blanchet and Legendre are easier to
learn than Euclid, and stick longer in the memory; and Barty
remembered well.
Then, besides the many friends who came to the pleasant house to
stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there were pious pilgrims
from all parts of the world, as to a shrine--from Paris, from
Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah
had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off
her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind
legs--a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown
off, unless the pilgrims were pretty and of the female sex.
Barty was a man's man par excellence, and loved to forgather with
men. The only men he couldn't stand were those we have agreed to
call in modern English the Philistines and the prigs--or both
combined, as they can sometimes be; and this objection of his would
have considerably narrowed his circle of male acquaintances but that
the Philistines and the prigs, who so detest each other, were so
dotingly fond of Barty, and ran him to earth in Marsfield.
The Philistines loved him for his world-wide popularity; the prigs
in spite of it! They loved him for himself alone--because they
couldn't help it, I suppose--and lamented over him as over a fallen
angel.
He was happiest of all with the good denizens of Bohemia, who have
known want and temptation and come unscathed out of the fire, but
with their affectations and insincerities and conventionalities all
burnt away.
Good old Bohemia--alma mater dolorosa; stern old gray she-wolf with
the dry teats--maratre au coeur de pierre! It is not a bad school
in which to graduate, if you can do so without loss of principle or
sacrifice of the delicate bloom of honor and self-respect.
Next to these I think he loved the barbarians he belonged to on his
father's side, who, whatever their faults, are seldom prigs or
Philistines; and then he loved the proletarians, who had good,
straightforward manners and no pretension--the laborer, the skilled
artisan, especially the toilers of the sea.
In spite of his love of his own sex, he was of the kind that can go
to the devil for a pretty woman.
He did not do this; he married one instead, fortunately for himself
and for his children and for her, and stuck to her and preferred her
society to any society in the world. Her mere presence seemed to
have an extraordinarily soothing influence on him; it was as though
life were short, and he could never see enough of her in the
allotted time and space; the chronic necessity of her nearness to
him became a habit and a second nature--like his pipe, as he would
say.
Still, he was such a slave to his own aesthetic eye and ever-youthful
heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased him more than the sight
of anything else on earth; he delighted in her proximity, in the
rustle of her garments, in the sound of her voice; and lovely
woman's instinct told her this, so that she was very fond of Barty
in return.
He was especially popular with sweet, pretty young girls, to whom
his genial, happy, paternal manner always endeared him. They felt as
safe with Barty as with any father or uncle, for all his facetious
love-making; he made them laugh, and they loved him for it, and they
forgot his Apolloship, and his Lionhood, and his general Immensity,
which he never remembered himself.
It is to be feared that women who lacked the heavenly gift of good
looks did not interest him quite so much, whatever other gifts they
might possess, unless it were the gift of making lovely music. The
little brown nightingale outshone the brilliant bird of paradise if
she were a true nightingale; if she were very brown indeed, he would
shut his eyes and listen with all his ears, rapt, as in a heavenly
dream. And the closed lids would moisten, especially the lid that
hid the eye that couldn't see--the emotional one!--although he was
the least lachrymose of men, since it was with such a dry eye he
wrote what I could scarcely read for my tears.
But his natural kindliness and geniality made him always try and
please those who tried to please him, beautiful or the reverse,
whether they succeeded or not; and he was just as popular with the
ducks and geese as with the swans and peacocks and nightingales and
birds of paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and buzzed
and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life
but what they had read--or written--in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly
rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that
in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc.
His playful amenity disarmed the most aggressive bluestocking, orthodox
or Unitarian, Catholic or Hebrew--radicals, agnostics, vegetarians,
teetotalers, anti-vaccinationists, anti-vivisectionists--even
anti-things that don't concern decent women at all, whether married or
single.
It was only when his privacy was invaded by some patronizing,
loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physiognomy that no
millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some
foolish, fashionable, would-be worldling, who combined the arch
little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty
with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old
frump who frankly ignored his tea-making wife and daughters and
talked to _him_ only--and only about her grotesque and ugly
self--and told him of all the famous painters who had wanted to
paint her for the last hundred years--it was only then he grew glum
and reserved and depressed and made an unfavorable impression on the
other sex.
What it must have cost him not to express his disgust more frankly!
for reticence on any matter was almost a torture to him.
Most of us have a mental sanctum to which we retire at times,
locking the door behind us; and there we think of high and beautiful
things, and hold commune with our Maker; or count our money, or
improvise that repartee the gods withheld last night, and shake
hands with ourselves for our wit; or caress the thought of some
darling, secret wickedness or vice; or revel in dreams of some
hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own; and curse those we have to
be civil to whether we like them or not, and nurse our little envies
till we almost get to like them.
There we remember all the stupid and unkind things we've ever said
or thought or done, and all the slights that have ever been put on
us, and secretly plan the revenge that never comes off--because time
has softened our hearts, let us hope, when opportunity serves at
last!
That Barty had no such holy of holies to creep into I feel pretty
sure--unless it was the wifely heart of Leah; whatever came into his
head came straight out of his mouth; he had nothing to conceal, and
thought aloud, for all the world to hear; and it does credit, I
think, to the singular goodness and guilelessness of his nature that
he could afford to be so outspoken through life and yet give so
little offence to others as he did. His indiscretion did very little
harm, and his naive self-revelation only made him the more lovable
to those who knew him well.
They were poor creatures, the daws who pecked at that manly heart,
so stanch and warm and constant.
As for Leah, it was easy to see that she looked upon her husband as
a fixed star, and was well pleased to tend and minister and revolve,
and shine with no other light than his; it was in reality an
absolute adoration on her part. But she very cleverly managed to
hide it from him; she was not the kind of woman that makes a doormat
of herself for the man she loves. She kept him in very good order
indeed.
It was her theory that female adoration is not good for masculine
vanity, and that he got quite enough of it outside his own home; and
she would make such fun of him and his female adorers all over the
world that he grew to laugh at them himself, and to value a pat on
the back and a hearty "Well done, Barty!" from his wife more than
"The blandishments of all the womankind
In Europe and America combined."
Gentle and kind and polite as she was, however, she could do battle
in defence of her great man, who was so backward at defending
himself; and very effective battle too.
As an instance among many, illustrating her method of warfare: Once
at an important house a very immense personage (who had an eye for a
pretty woman) had asked to be introduced to her and had taken her
down to supper; a very immense personage indeed, whose fame had
penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth and deservedly made
his name a beloved household word wherever our tongue is spoken, so
that it was in every Englishman's mouth all over the world--as
Barty's is now.
Leah was immensely impressed, and treated his elderly Immensity to a
very full measure of the deference that was his due; and such open
homage is not always good for even the Immensest Immensities--it
sometimes makes them give themselves immense airs. So that this
particular Immensity began mildly but firmly to patronize Leah. This
she didn't mind on her own account, but when he said, quite
casually:
"By-the-way, I forget if I _know_ your good husband; _do_ I?"
--she was not pleased, and immediately answered:
"I really can't say; I don't think I ever heard him mention your
name!"
This was not absolutely veracious on Leah's part; for to Barty in
those days this particular great man was a god, and he was always
full of him. But it brought the immense one back to his bearings at
once, and he left off patronizing and was almost humble.
Anyhow, it was a lie so white that the recording angel will probably
delete what there is of it with a genial smile, and leave a little
blank in its place.
* * * * *
In an old diary of Leah's I find the following entry:
"March 6th, 1874.--Mamma and Ida Scatcherd came to stay. In the
evening our sixth daughter and eighth child was born."
Julia (Mrs. Mainwaring) was this favored person--and is still. Julia
and her predecessors have all lived and flourished up to now.
The Josselins had been exceptionally fortunate in their children;
each new specimen seemed an even finer specimen than the last. The
health of this remarkable family had been exemplary--measles, and
mumps, and whooping-cough their only ailments.
During the month of Leah's confinement Barty's nocturnal literary
activity was unusually great. Night after night he wrote in his
sleep, and accumulated enough raw material to last him a lifetime;
for the older he grew and the more practised his hand the longer it
took him to give his work the shape he wished; he became more
fastidious year by year as he became less of an amateur.
One morning, a day or two before his wife's complete recovery, he
found a long personal letter from Martia by his bedside--a letter
that moved him very deeply, and gave him food for thought during
many weeks and months and years:
* * * * *
"My Beloved Barty,--The time has come at last when I must bid you
farewell.
"I have outstayed my proper welcome on earth as a disembodied
conscience by just a hundred years, and my desire for reincarnation
has become an imperious passion not to be resisted.
"It is more than a desire--it is a duty as well, a duty far too long
deferred.
"Barty, I am going to be your next child. I can conceive no greater
earthly felicity than to be a child of yours and Leah's. I should
have been one long before, but that you and I have had so much to do
together for this beautiful earth--a great debt to pay: you, for
being as you are; I, for having known you.
"Barty, you have no conception what you are to me and always have
been.
[Illustration: "'I DON'T THINK I EVER HEARD HIM MENTION YOUR NAME'"]
"I am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious inspiration;
sometimes a questionable guide, I fear. You don't even believe all I
have told you about myself--you think it all a somnambulistic
invention of your own; and so does your wife, and so does your
friend.
"O that I could connect myself in your mind with the shape I wore
when I was last a living thing! No shape on earth, not either yours
or Leah's or that of any child yet born to you both, is more
beautiful to the eye that has learned how to see than the fashion of
that lost face and body of mine.
"_You_ wore the shape once, and so did your father and mother, for
you were Martians. Leah was a Martian, and wore it too; there are
many of them here--they are the best on earth, the very salt
thereof. I mean to be the best of them all, and one of the happiest.
Oh, help me to that!
"Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely
daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped
out of me until I die. But _you_ will remember, and so will Leah,
and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have
ever felt for any child of theirs yet.
"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that
will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent
eyes!
"How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere you don't know,
and never will, till the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed;
and I am going to forget it myself for a few decades--sixty,
seventy, eighty years perhaps; such happy years, I hope--with you
for my father and Leah for my mother during some of them at
least--and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my sons and
daughters! Why, life to me now will be almost a holiday.
"Oh, train me up the way I should go! Bring me up to be healthy and
chaste and strong and brave--never to know a mean ambition or think
an ungenerous thought--never to yield to a base or unworthy
temptation.
"If I'm a boy--and I want to be a boy very much (although, perhaps,
a girl would be dearer to your heart)--don't let me be either a
soldier or a sailor, however much I may wish it as a Josselin or a
Rohan; don't bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in
law like a Bletchley.
"Bring me up to invent, or make something useful, if it's only
pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them; bring me up to build
or heal or paint or write or make music--to help or teach or please.
"If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah as you can, and
marry me to just such another as yourself, if you can find him.
Whether I'm a girl or a boy, call me Marty, that my name may rhyme
with yours.
"When my conscience re-embodies itself, I want it never to know
another pang of self-reproach. And when I'm grown up, if you think
it right to do so, tell me who and what I once was, that I may love
you both the more; tell me how fondly I loved you when I was a
bland and fleeting little animalcule, without a body, but making my
home in yours--so that when you die I may know how irrevocably bound
up together we must forever be, we three; and rejoice the more in
your death and Leah's and my own. Teach me over again all I've ever
taught you, Barty--over and over again!
"Alas! perhaps you don't believe all this! How can I give you a
sign.
"There are many ways; but a law, of necessity inexorable, forbids
it. Such little entity as I possess would cease to be; it was all
but lost when I saved your life--and again when I told you that you
were the beloved of Julia Royce. It would not do for us Martians to
meddle with earthly things; the fat would soon be in the fire, I can
tell you!
"Try and trust me, Barty, and give me the benefit of any doubt.
"You have work planned out for many years to come, and are now
yourself so trained that you can do without me. You know what you
have still to say to mankind; never write a line about which you are
not sure.
"For another night or two you will be my host, and this splendid
frame of yours my hostelry; on y est tres bien. Be hospitable still
for a little while--make the most of me; hug me tight, squeeze me
warm!
"As soon as Leah is up and about and herself again you will know me
no more, and no more feel the north.
"Ah! you will never realize what it is for me to bid you good-bye,
my Barty, my Barty! All that is in your big heart and powerful brain
to feel of grief belongs to me, now that you are fast asleep. And
your genius for sorrow, which you have never really tested yet, is
as great as any gift you possess.
"Happy Barty, who have got to forty years without sounding the great
depths, and all through me! what will you do without your poor
devoted unknown Martia to keep watch over you and ward--to fight for
you like a wild-cat, if necessary?
"Leah must be your wild-cat now. She has it in her to be a tigress
when you are concerned, or any of her children! Next to you, Leah is
the darling of my heart; for it's your heart I make use of to love
her with.
"I want you to tell the world all about your Martia some day. They
may disbelieve, as you do; but good fruit will come of it in the
future. Martians will have a freer hand with you all, and that will
be a good thing for the earth; they were trained in a good hard
school--they are the Spartans of our universe.
"Such things will come to pass, before many years are over, as are
little dreamt of now, and all through your wanting to swallow that
dose of cyanide at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches, and my having
the gumption to prevent you!
"It's a good seed that we have sown, you and I. It was not right
that this beautiful planet should go much longer drifting through
space without a single hope that is not an illusion, without a
single hint of what life should really be, without a goal.
"Why such darkness under so bright a sun! such blindness to what is
so patent! such a deaf ear to the roaring of that thunderous harmony
which you call the eternal silence!--you of the earth, earthy, who
can hear the little trumpet of the mosquito so well that it makes
you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of your rest.
Then the sun rises and frightens the mosquitoes away, and you think
that's what the sun is for and are thankful; but why the deuce a
mosquito should sting you, you can't make out!--mystery of
mysteries!
"At the back of your brain is a little speck of perishable matter,
Barty; it is no bigger than a needle's point, but it is bigger in
you than in anybody else I know, except in Leah; and in your
children it is bigger still--almost as big as the point of a pin!
"If they pair well, and it is in them to do so if they follow their
inherited instinct, their children and their children's children
will have that speck still bigger. When that speck becomes as big as
a millet-seed in your remote posterity, then it will be as big as in
a Martian, and the earth will be a very different place, and man of
earth greater and even better than the Martian by all the greatness
of his ampler, subtler, and more complex brain; his sense of the
Deity will be as an eagle's sense of the sun at noon in a cloudless
tropical sky; and he will know how to bear that effulgence without a
blink, as he stands on his lonely summit, ringed by the azure world.
"Indeed, there will be no more Martians in Mars by that time; they
are near the end of their lease; all good Martians will have gone to
Venus, let us hope; if not, to the Sun itself!
"Man has many thousands of years before him yet ere his little ball
of earth gets too cold for him; the little speck in his brain may
grow to the size of a pea, a cherry, a walnut, an egg, an orange!
He will have in him the magnetic consciousness of the entire solar
system, and hold the keys of time and space as long and as far as
the sun shines for us all--and then there will be the beginning of
everything. And all through that little episode in the street of
those White Ursulines! And the seed of Barty and Leah will overflow
to the uttermost ends of the earth, and finally blossom and bear
fruit for ever and ever beyond the stars.
"What a beginning for a new order of things! what a getting
up-stairs! what an awakening! what an annunciation!
"Do you remember that knock at the door?
"'Il est dix heures, savez-vous? Voulez-vous votre cafe dans votre
chambre?'
"She little knew, poor little Frau! humble little Finche Torfs,
lowly Flemish virgin, who loved you as the moth loves the star;
vilain mangeur de coeurs que vous etes!
"Barty, I wish your wife to hear nothing of this till the child who
once was your Martia shall have seen the light of day with eyes of
its own; tell her that I have left you at last, but don't tell her
why or how; tell her some day, years hence, if you think she will
love me the better for it; not otherwise.
"When you wake, Barty, I shall still be inside you; say to me in
your mezza voce all the kind things you can think of--such things as
you would have said to your mother had she lived till now, and you
were speeding her on a long and uncertain journey.
"How you would have loved your mother! She was most beautiful, and
of the type so dear to you. Her skin was almost as white as Leah's,
her eyes almost as black, her hair even blacker; like Leah, she was
tall and slim and lithe and graceful. She might have been Leah's
mother, too, for the likeness between them. How often you remind me
of her when you laugh or sing, and when you're funny in French;
those droll, quick gestures and quaint intonations, that ease and
freedom and deftness as you move! And then you become English in a
moment, and your big, burly, fair-haired father has come back with
his high voice, and his high spirits, and his frank blue eyes, like
yours, so kind and brave and genial.
"And _you_, dear, what a baby you were--a very prince among babies;
ah! if I can only be like that when I begin again!
"The people in the Tuileries garden used to turn round and stare and
smile at you when Rosalie with the long blue streamers bore you
along as proudly as if Louis Philippe were your grandfather and she
the royal wet-nurse; and later, after that hideous quarrel about
nothing, and the fatal fight by the 'mare aux biches,' how the good
fisher people of Le Pollet adored you! 'Un vrai petit St. Jean! il
nous portera bonheur, bien sur!'
"You have been thoroughly well loved all your life, my Barty, but
most of all by me--never forget that!
"I have been your father and your mother when they sat and watched
your baby-sleep; I have been Rosalie when she gave you the breast; I
have been your French grandfather and grandmother quarrelling as to
which of the two should nurse you as they sat and sunned themselves
on their humble doorstep in the Rue des Guignes!
"I have been your doting wife when you sang to her, your children
when you made them laugh till they cried. I've been Lady Archibald
when you danced the Dieppoise after tea, in Dover, with your little
bare legs; and Aunt Caroline, too, as she nursed you in Malines
after that silly duel where you behaved so well; and I've been by
turns Merovee Brossard, Bonzig, old Laferte, Mlle. Marceline, Finche
Torfs, poor little Marianina, Julia Royce, Father Louis, the old
Abbe, Bob Maurice--all the people you've ever charmed, or amused, or
been kind to--a legion; good heavens! I have been them all! What a
snowball made up of all these loves I've been rolling after you all
these years! and now it has all got to melt away in a single night,
and with it the remembrance of all I've ever been during ages
untold.
"And I've no voice to bid you good-bye, my beloved; no arms to hug
you with, no eyes to weep--I, a daughter of the most affectionate,
and clinging, and caressing race of little people in existence! Such
eyes as I once had, too; such warm, soft, furry arms, and such a
voice--it would have wanted no words to express all that I feel now;
that voice--nous savons notre orthographie en musique la bas!
"How it will please, perhaps, to remember even this farewell some
day, when we're all together again, with nothing to come between!
"And now, my beloved, there is no such thing as good-bye; it is a
word that has no real meaning; but it is so English and pretty and
sweet and child-like and nonsensical that I could write it over and
over again--just for fun!
"So good-bye! good-bye! good-bye! till I wake up once more after a
long living sleep of many years, I hope; a sleep filled with happy
dreams of you, dear, delightful people, whom I've got to live with
and love, and learn to lose once more; and then--no more good-byes!
"Martia."
* * * * *
So much for Martia--whoever or whatever it was that went by that
name in Barty's consciousness.
After such close companionship for so many years, the loss of
her--or it--was like the loss of a sixth and most valuable sense,
worse almost than the loss of his sight would have been; and with
this he was constantly threatened, for he most unmercifully taxed
his remaining eye, and the field of his vision had narrowed year by
year.
But this impending calamity did not frighten him as in the old days.
His wife was with him now, and as long as she was by his side he
could have borne anything--blindness, poverty, dishonor--anything in
the world. If he lost her, he would survive her loss just long
enough to put his affairs in order, and no more.
But most distressfully he missed the physical feeling of the
north--even in his sleep. This strange bereavement drew him and Leah
even more closely together, if that were possible; and she was well
content to reign alone in the heart of her fractious, unreasonable
but most affectionate, humorous, and irresistible great man.
Although her rival had been but a name and an idea, a mere
abstraction in which she had never really believed, she did not find
it altogether displeasing to herself that the lively Martia was no
more; she has almost told me as much.
And thus began for them both the happiest and most beautiful period
of their joint lives, in spite of sorrows yet to come. She took such
care of him that he might have been as blind as Belisarius himself,
and he seemed almost to depend upon her as much--so wrapt up was he
in the work of his life, so indifferent to all mundane and practical
affairs. What eyesight was not wanted for his pen and pencil he
reserved to look at her with--at his beloved children, and the
things of beauty in and outside Marsfield: pictures, old china,
skies, hills, trees, and river; and what wits remained he kept to
amuse his family and his friends--there was enough and to spare.
The older he grew the more he teemed and seethed and bubbled and
shone--and set others shining round him--even myself. It is no
wonder Marsfield became such a singularly agreeable abode for all
who dwelt there, even for the men-servants and the maid-servants,
and the birds and the beasts, and the stranger within its gates--and
for me a kind of earthly paradise.
* * * * *
And now, gentle reader, I want very badly to talk about myself a
little, if you don't mind--just for half a dozen pages or so, which
you can skip if you like. Whether you do so or not, it will not hurt
you--and it will do me a great deal of good.
I feel uncommonly sad, and very lonely indeed, now that Barty is
gone; and with him my beloved comrade Leah.
[Illustration: "'I'M A PHILISTINE, AND AM NOT ASHAMED'"]
The only people left to me that I'm really fond of--except my dear
widowed sister, Ida Scatcherd--are all so young. They're Josselins, of
course--one and all--and they're all that's kind and droll and
charming, and I adore them. But they can't quite realize what this sort
of bereavement means to a man of just my age, who has still got some
years of life before him, probably--and is yet an old man.
The Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M. P., etc., etc.,
etc. That's me. I take up a whole line of manuscript. I might be a
noble lord if I chose, and take up two!
I'm a liberal conservative, an opportunist, a pessi-optimist, an
in-medio-tutissimist, and attend divine service at the Temple
Church.
I'm a Philistine, and not ashamed; so was Moliere--so was Cervantes.
So, if you like, was the late Martin Farquhar Tupper--and those who
read him; we're of all sorts in Philistia, the great and the small,
the good and the bad.
I'm in the sixties--sound of wind and limb--only two false
teeth--one at each side, bicuspids, merely for show. I'm rather
bald, but it suits my style; a little fat, perhaps--a pound and a
half over sixteen stone! but I'm an inch and a half over six feet,
and very big-boned. Altogether, diablement bien conserve! I sleep
well, the sleep of the just; I have a good appetite and a good
digestion, and a good conceit of myself still, thank Heaven--though
nothing like what it used to be! One can survive the loss of one's
self-respect; but of one's vanity, never.
What a prosperous and happy life mine has been, to be sure, up to a
few short months ago--hardly ever an ache or a pain!--my only real
griefs, my dear mother's death ten years back, and my father's in
1870. Yes, I have warmed both hands at the fire of life, and even
burnt my fingers now and then, but not severely.
One love disappointment. The sting of it lasted a couple of years,
the compensation more than thirty! I loved her all the better,
perhaps, that I did not marry her. I'm afraid it is not in me to
love a very good wife of my own as much as I really ought!
And I love her children as well as if they'd been mine, and her
grandchildren even better. They are irresistible, these
grandchildren of Barty's and Leah's--mine wouldn't have been a patch
on them; besides, I get all the fun and none of the bother and
anxiety. Evidently it was my true vocation to remain single--and be
a tame cat in a large, warm house, where there are lots of nice
children.
O happy Bob Maurice! O happy sexagenarian!
"O me fortunatum, mea si bona norim!" (What would Pere Brossard say
at this? he would give me a twisted pinch on the arm--and serve me
right!)
I'm very glad I've been successful, though it's not a very high
achievement to make a very large fortune by buying and selling that
which put into a man's mouth is said to steal away his brains!
But it does better things than this. It reconciles and solves and
resolves mental discords, like music. It makes music for people who
have no ear--and there are so many of these in the world that I'm a
millionaire, and Franz Schubert died a pauper. So I prefer to drink
beer--as _he_ did; and I never miss a Monday Pop if I can help it.
_I_ have done better things, too. I have helped to govern my country
and make its laws; but it all came out of wine to begin with--all
from learning how to buy and sell. We're a nation of shopkeepers,
although the French keep better shops than ours, and more of them.
I'm glad I'm successful because of Barty, although success, which
brings the world to our feet, does not always endear us to the
friend of our bosom. If I had been a failure Barty would have stuck
to me like a brick, I feel sure, instead of my sticking to him like
a leech! And the sight of his success might have soured me--that
eternal chorus of praise, that perpetual feast of pudding in which I
should have had no part but to take my share as a mere guest, and
listen and look on and applaud, and wish I'd never been born!
As it is, I listened and looked on and clapped my hands with as much
pride and pleasure as if Barty had been my son--and my share of the
pudding never stuck in my throat!
I should have been always on the watch to take him down a peg when
he was pleased with himself--to hold him cheap and overpraise some
duffer in his hearing--so that I might save my own self-esteem; to
pay him bad little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I
was out of humor; and I should have been always out of humor, having
failed in life.
And then I should have gone home wretched--for I have a
conscience--and woke up in the middle of the night and thought of
Barty; and what a kind, genial, jolly, large-minded, and
generous-hearted old chap he was and always had been--and buried my
face in my pillow, and muttered:
"Ach! what a poor, mean, jealous beast I am--un fruit sec! un
malheureux rate!"
With all my success, this life-long exclusive cultivation of Barty's
society, and that of his artistic friends, which has somehow
unfitted me for the society of my brother-merchants of wine--and
most merchants of everything else--has not, I regret to say, quite
fitted me to hold my own among the "leaders of intellectual modern
thought," whose company I would fain seek and keep in preference to
any other.
My very wealth seems to depress and disgust them, as it does me--and
I'm no genius, I admit, and a poor conversationalist.
To amass wealth is an engrossing pursuit--and now that I have
amassed a good deal more than I quite know what to do with, it seems
to me a very ignoble one. It chokes up everything that makes life
worth living; it leaves so little time for the constant and regular
practice of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned is
said to soften the manners, and make one an agreeable person all
round.
It is even more _abrutissant_ than the mere pursuit of sport or
pleasure.
How many a noble lord I know who's almost as beastly rich as myself,
and twice as big a fool by nature, and perhaps not a better fellow
at bottom--yet who can command the society of all there is of the
best in science, literature, and art!
Not but what they will come and dine with me fast enough, these
shining lights of culture and intellect--my food is very good,
although I say it, and I get noble lords to meet them.
But they talk their real talk to each other--not to me--and to the
noble lords who sit by them at my table, and who try to understand
what they say. With me they fall back on politics and bimetallism,
for all the pains I've taken to get up the subjects that interest
them, and keep myself posted in all they've written and done.
Precious little they know about bimetallism or politics!
Is it only on account of their pretty manners that my titled friends
are such favorites with these highly intellectual guests of
mine--and with me? If so, then pretty manners should come before
everything else in the world, and be taught instead of Latin and
Greek.
But if it's only because they're noble lords, then I'm beginning to
think with Mr. Labouchere that it's high time the Upper House were
abolished, and its denizens wafted into space, since they make such
snobs of us all--including your humble servant, of course, who at
least is not quite so snobbish as to know himself for a damned snob
and pretend he isn't one.
Anyhow, I'm glad my life has been such a success. But would I live
it all over again? Even the best of it? The "forty year"?
Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly not.
I have only met two men of my own age who would live their lives
over again. They both cared more for their meals than for anything
else in the world--and they have always had four of these every day;
sometimes even five! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree
with them! affaire d'estomac! They simply want to eat all those
meals once more. They lived to feed, and to refeed would re-live!
My meals have never disagreed with me either--but I have always
found them monotonous; they have always been so simple and so
regular when I've had the ordering of them! Fried soles, chops or
steaks, and that sort of thing, and a pint of lager-beer--no wine
for me, thank you; I sell it--and all this just to serve as a mere
foundation for a smoke--and a chat with Barty, if possible!
Hardly ever an ache or a pain, and I wouldn't live it all over
again! yet I hope to live another twenty years, if only to take
Leah's unborn great-grandchildren to the dentist's, and tip them at
school, and treat them to the pantomime and Madame Tussaud's, as I
did their mothers and grandmothers before them--or their fathers and
grandfathers.
This seems rather inconsistent! For would I care, twenty years
hence, to re-live these coming twenty years? Evidently not--it's out
of the question.
So why don't I give up at once? I know how to do it, without pain,
without scandal, without even invalidating my life-insurance, about
which I don't care a rap!
Why don't I? why don't _you_, O middle-aged reader--with all the
infirmities of age before you and all the pleasures of youth behind?
Anyhow, we don't, either you or I--and so there's an end on't.
O Pandora! I have promised myself that I would take a
great-grandchild of Barty's on a flying-machine from Marsfield to
London and back in half an hour--and that great-grandchild can't
well be born for several years--perhaps not for another twenty!
And now, gentle reader, I've had my little say, and I'm a good deal
better, thanks, and I'll try not to talk about myself any more.
Except just to mention that in the summer of 1876 I contested East
Rosherville in the Conservative interest and was successful--and
owed my success to the canvassing of Barty and Leah, who had no
politics of their own whatever, and would have canvassed for me just
as conscientiously if I'd been a Radical, probably more so! For if
Barty had permitted himself any politics at all, he would have been
a red-hot Radical, I fear--and his wife would have followed suit.
And so, perhaps, would I!