"Je suis alle de bon matin
Cueillir la violette,
Et l'aubepine, et le jasmin,
Pour celebrer ta fete.
J'ai lie de ma propre main
Bouton de rose et romarin
Pour couronner ta blonde tete.
"Mais de ta royale beaute
Sois humble, je te prie.
Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'ete,
La jeunesse et la vie:
Bientot, bientot ce jour sera,
Ma belle, ou l'on te portera
Dans un linceul, pale et fletrie."
--A _Favorite Song of_ Mary Trevor's.
That was a pleasant summer.
First of all we went to Ste. Adresse, a suburb of Havre, where there
is very good bathing--with rafts, _perissoires_, _pique-tetes_ to
dive from--all those aquatic delights the French are so clever at
inventing, and which make a "station balneaire" so much more amusing
than a mere British watering-place.
We made a large party and bathed together every morning; and Barty
and I taught the young ones to dive and do "la coupe" in the true
orthodox form, with that free horizontal sweep of each alternate arm
that gives it such distinction.
It was very good fun to see those rosy boys and girls taking their
"hussardes" neatly without a splash from the little platform at the
top of the pole, and solemnly performing "la coupe" in the wake of
their papa; one on his back. Right out to sea they went, I bringing
up the rear--and the faithful Jean-Baptiste in attendance with his
boat, and Leah inside it--her anxious eyes on the stretch to count
those curly heads again and again. She was a good mathematician, and
the tale always came right in the end; and home was reached at last,
and no one a bit the worse for a good long swim in those well-aired,
sunlit waves.
Once we went on the top of the diligence to Etretat for the day, and
there we talked of poor Bonzig and his first and last dip in the
sea; and did "la coupe" in the waters that had been so fatal to him,
poor fellow!
Then we went by the steamer _Jean Bart_ to Trouville and Deauville,
and up the Seine in a steam-launch to Rouen.
In the afternoons and evenings we took long country walks and caught
moths, or went to Havre by tramway and cleared out all the
pastry-cooks in the Rue de Paris, and watched the transatlantic
steamers, out or home, from that gay pier which so happily combines
business with pleasure--utile dulci, as Pere Brossard would have
said--and walked home by the charming Cote d'Ingouville, sacred to
the memory of Modeste Mignon.
And then, a little later on, I was a good Uncle Bob, and took the
whole party to Auteuil, near Paris, and hired two lordly mansions
next door to each other in the Villa Montmorency, and turned their
gardens into one.
Altogether, with the Scatcherds and ourselves, eight children,
governesses, nurses, and other servants, and dogs and the smaller
animals, we were a very large party, and a very lively one. I like
this sort of thing better than anything else in the world.
I hired carriages and horses galore, and for six weeks we made
ourselves thoroughly comfortable and at home in Paris and around.
That was the happiest holiday I ever had since the vacation Barty
and I spent at the Lafertes' in the Gue des Aulnes when we were
school-boys.
And such was our love for the sport he called "_la chasse aux
souvenirs_" that one day we actually went there, travelling by train
to La Tremblaye, where we spent the night.
It was a sad disenchantment!
The old Lafertes were dead, the young ones had left that part of the
country; and the house and what remained of the gardens now belonged
to another family, and had become formal and mean and business-like
in aspect, and much reduced in size.
Much of the outskirts of the forest had been cleared and was being
cleared still, and cheap little houses run up for workmen; an
immense and evil-smelling factory with a tall chimney had replaced
the old home-farm, and was connected by a single line of rails with
the station of La Tremblaye. The clear, pellucid stream where we
used to catch crayfish had been canalized--"s'est encanaille," as
Barty called it--its waters fouled by barge traffic and all kinds of
horrors.
We soon found the haunted pond that Barty was so fond of--but quite
in the open, close to an enormous brick-field, and only half full;
and with all its trees cut down, including the tree on which they
had hanged the gay young Viscount who had behaved so badly to
Seraphine Doucet, and on which Seraphine Doucet afterwards hanged
herself in remorse.
No more friendly charcoal-burners, no more wolves or boars or
cerfs--dix-cors; and as for were-wolves, the very memory of them had
died out.
There seems no greater desecration to me than cutting down an old
and well-remembered French forest I have loved; and solving all its
mystery, and laying bare the nakedness of the land in a way so
brutal and expeditious and unexpected. It reminds one of the manner
in which French market-women will pluck a goose before it's quite
dead; you bristle with indignation to see it, but you mustn't
interfere.
La Tremblaye itself had become a flourishing manufacturing town, and
to our jaundiced and disillusioned eyes everybody and everything was
as ugly as could be--and I can't say we made much of a bag in the
way of souvenirs.
We were told that young Laferte was a barrister at Angers,
prosperous and married. We deliberated whether we would hunt him up
and talk of old times. Then we reflected how curiously cold and
inhospitable Frenchmen can sometimes be to old English friends in
circumstances like these--and how little they care to talk of old
times and all that, unless it's the Englishman who plays the host.
Ask a quite ordinary Frenchman to come and dine with you in London,
and see what a genial and charming person he can be--what a quick
bosom friend, and with what a glib and silver tongue to praise the
warmth of your British welcome.
Then go and call on him when you find yourself in Paris--and you
will soon learn to leave quite ordinary Frenchmen alone, on their
own side of the Channel.
Happily, there are exceptions to this rule!
Thus the sweet Laferte remembrance, which had so often come back to
me in my dreams, was forever spoiled by this unlucky trip.
It had turned that leaf from the tablets of my memory into a kind of
palimpsest, so that I could no longer quite make out the old
handwriting for the new, which would not be obliterated, and these
were confused lines it was hard to read between--with all my skill!
Altogether we were uncommonly glad to get back to the Villa
Montmorency--from the distorted shadows of a nightmare to happy
reality.
There, all was fresh and delightful; as boys we had often seen the
outside walls of that fine property which had come to the
speculative builder at last, but never a glimpse within; so that
there was no desecration for us in the modern laying out of that
beautiful double garden of ours, whatever there might have been for
such ghosts of Montmorencys as chose to revisit the glimpses of the
moon.
We haunted Auteuil, Passy, Point du Jour, Suresnes, Courbevoie,
Neuilly, Meudon--all the familiar places. Especially we often
haunted the neighborhood of the rond point de l'Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne.
One afternoon, as he and I and Leah and Ida were driving round what
once was our old school, we stopped in the lane not far from the
porte-cochere, and Barty stood up on the box and tried to look over
the wall.
Presently, from the grand stone loge which had replaced Jaurion's
den, a nice old concierge came out and asked if we desired anything.
We told him how once we had been at school on that very spot, and
were trying to make out the old trees that had served as bases in
"la balle au camp," and that if we really desired anything just then
it was that we might become school-boys once more!
"Ah, ma foi! je comprends ca, messieurs--moi aussi, j'ai ete
ecolier, et j'aimais bien la balle au camp," said the good old man,
who had been a soldier.
He informed us the family were away, but that if we liked to come
inside and see the garden he was sure his master would have no
objection. We jumped at this kind offer and spent quite an hour
there, and if I were Barty I could so describe the emotions of that
hour that the reader would feel quite as tearfully grateful to me as
to Barty Josselin for Chapters III. and IV. in _Le Fil de la
Vierge_, which are really founded, _mutatis mutandis_, on this
self-same little adventure of ours.
Nothing remained of our old school--not even the outer walls;
nothing but the big trees and the absolute ground they grew out of.
Beautiful lawns, flower-beds, conservatories, summer-houses, ferns,
and evergreen shrubs made the place seem even larger than it had
once been--the very reverse of what usually happens--and softened
for us the disenchantment of the change.
Here, at least, was no desecration of a hallowed spot. When the past
has been dead and buried a long while ago there is no sweeter
decking for its grave than a rich autumn tangle, all yellow and
brown and pale and hectic red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp
moss to keep up the illusion of spring and summer all the year
round.
Much to the amusement of the old concierge and his wife, Barty
insisted on climbing into a huge horse-chestnut tree, in which was a
natural seat, very high up, where, well hidden by the dense foliage,
he and I used to color pipes for boys who couldn't smoke without
feeling sick.
Nothing would suit him now but that he must smoke a pipe there while
we talked to the good old couple below.
"Moi aussi, je fumais quand c'etait defendu; que voulez-vous? Il
faut bien que jeunesse se passe, n'est ce pas?" said the old
soldier.
"Ah, dame!" said his old wife, and sighed.
Every tree in this enchanted place had its history--every corner,
every square yard of soil. I will not inflict these histories on the
reader; I will restrain myself with all my might, and merely state
that just as the old school had been replaced by this noble dwelling
the noble dwelling itself has now been replaced, trees and garden
and all, by a stately palace many stories high, which rears itself
among so many other stately palaces that I can't even identify the
spot where once stood the Institution F. Brossard!
Later, Barty made me solemnly pledge my word that if he and Leah
should pre-decease me I would see to their due cremating and the
final mingling of their ashes; that a portion of these--say
half--should be set apart to be scattered on French soil, in places
he would indicate in his will, and that the lion's share of that
half should be sprinkled over the ground that once was our
play-ground, with--or without--the legitimate owner's permission.
(Alas! and ah me! These instructions would have been carried out to
the letter but that the place itself is no more; and, with a
conviction that I should be merely acting just as they would have
wished, I took it on myself to mingle with their ashes those of a
very sweet and darling child of theirs, dearer to them and to me and
to us all than any creature ever born into this cruel universe; and
I scattered a portion of these precious remains to the four winds,
close by the old spot we so loved.)
* * * * *
Yes, that was a memorable holiday; the charming fete de St. Cloud
was in full swing--it was delightful to haunt it once more with
those dear young people so little dreamt of when Barty and I first
got into scrapes there, and were duly punished by Latin verbs to
conjugate in our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.
Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de Boulogne for the
little "Mare aux Biches," where his father had fallen under the
sword of Lieutenant Rondelys; but we never managed to find it:
perhaps it had evaporated; perhaps the does had drunk it all up,
before they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German
invader--or inside him; for he was fond of French venison, as well
as of French clocks! He was a most omnivorous person.
Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we relieved ourselves
at last of that long homesickness of years, and could almost believe
we were boys again, as we dived into such old and well-remembered
streets as yet remained.
There were still some slums we had loved; one or two of them exist
even now. Only the other day I saw the Rue de Clery, the Rue de la
Lune, the Rue de la Montagne--all three on the south side of the
Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle: they are still terrible to look at from
the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight--the houses so tall, so
irregular, the streets so narrow and winding and black. They seemed
to us boys terrible, indeed, between eight and nine on a winter's
evening, with just a lamp here and there to make their darkness
visible. Whither they led I can't say; we never dared explore their
obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have ended in the _cour
des miracles_ for all we knew--it was nearly fifty years ago--and
they may be quite virtuous abodes of poverty to-day; but they seemed
to us then strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of
infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of long winter
nights. Evidently, to us in those days, whoever should lose himself
there would never see daylight again; so we loved to visit them
after dark, with our hearts in our mouths, before going back to
school.
We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch
mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into
light and back again, poor creatures--dingy moths, silent but ominous
night-jars, forlorn women of the town--ill-favored and ill-dressed, some
of them all but middle-aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton
umbrellas, like cooks looking for a situation.
They never spoke to us, and seemed to be often brutally repulsed by
whatever men they did speak to--mostly men in blouses.
"O dis-donc, _Hor_tense! qu'y _fait_ froid! quand donc qu'y s'ra
_onze_ heures, q'nous allions nous _cou_cher?"
So said one of them to another one cold, drizzly night, in a raucous
voice, with low intonations of the gutter. The dimly felt horror and
despair and pathos of it sent us away shivering to our Passy omnibus
as fast as our legs could carry us.
That phrase has stuck in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the
eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend
must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now--they need walk
those evil streets no more....
When we had exhausted it all, and we felt homesick for England
again, it was good to get back to Marsfield, high up over the
Thames--so beautiful in its rich October colors which the river
reflected--with its old trees that grew down to the water's edge,
and brooded by the boat-house there in the mellow sunshine.
And then again when it became cold and dreary, at Christmas-time
there was my big house at Lancaster Gate, where Josselins were fond
of spending some of the winter months, and where I managed to find
room for them all--with a little squeezing during the Christmas
holidays when the boys came home from school. What good times they
were!
* * * * *
"On May 24th, at Marsfield, Berks, the wife of Bartholomew Josselin,
of a daughter"--or, as Leah put it in her diary, "our seventh
daughter and ninth child--to be called Martia, or Marty for short."
It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for this life,
and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's motherly lap, was of a
different type to her predecessors--much whiter, and lighter, and
slighter; and she made no exhibition of that lusty lung-power which
had so characterized the other little Barties on their introduction
to this vale of tears.
Her face was more regularly formed and more highly finished, and in
a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn and pathetic that it would
sometimes make Mrs. Jones, who had lost babies of her own, shed
motherly tears merely to look at her.
Even _I_ felt sentimental about the child; and as for Barty, he
could talk of nothing else, and made those rough and hasty
silver-point studies of her head and face--mere sketches--which,
being full of obvious faults, became so quickly famous among
aesthetic and exclusive people who had long given up Barty as a
writer on account of his scandalous popularity.
Alas! even those silver-points have become popular now, and their
photogravures are in the shop-windows of sea-side resorts and in the
back parlors of the lower middle-class; so that the aesthetic
exclusives who are up to date have had to give up Barty altogether.
No one is sacred in those days--not even Shakespeare and Michael
Angelo.
We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the piano-organ, and
"_nous autres_" of the cultured classes will have to fall back on
Balfe and Byron and Landseer.
In a few months little Marty became famous for this extra beauty all
over Henley and Maidenhead.
She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and her
mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there was one person
who idolized her more than all the rest, it was I, Bob Maurice.
She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety and many
alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant visitor at Marsfield
Lodge. It was fortunate, for her sake, that the Josselins had left
Campden Hill and made their home in Marsfield.
Nine of these children--including one not yet born then--developed
there into the finest and completest human beings, take them for all
in all, that I have ever known; nine--a good number!
"Numero Deus impare gaudet."
Or, as poor Rapaud translated this (and was pinched black and blue
by Pere Brossard in consequence):
"Le numero deux se rejouit d'etre impair!" (Number two takes a
pleasure in being odd!)
The three sons--one of them now in the army, as becomes a Rohan; and
one a sailor, as becomes a Josselin; and one a famous actor, the
true Josselin of all--are the very types of what I should like for
the fathers of my grandchildren, if I had marriageable daughters of
my own.
And as for Barty's daughters, they are all--but one--so well known
in society and the world--so famous, I may say--that I need hardly
mention them here; all but Marty, my sweet little "maid of Dove."
When Barty took Marsfield he and I had entered what I have ever
since considered the happiest decade of a successful and healthy
man's life--the forties.
"Wait till you get to _forty year_!"
So sang Thackeray, but with a very different experience to mine. He
seemed to look upon the fifth decade as the grave of all tender
illusions and emotions, and exult!
My tender illusions and emotions became realties--things to live by
and for. As Barty and I "dipped our noses in the Gascon
wine"--Vougeot-Conti & Co.--I blessed my stars for being free of
Marsfield, which was, and is still, my real home, and for the warm
friendship of its inhabitants who have been my real family, and for
several years of unclouded happiness all round.
Even in winter what a joy it was, after a long solitary walk, or
ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk
in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a
contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or
Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast,
what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun;
and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so
cultivated! Music was a special inherited gift of the entire family,
and no trouble or expense was ever spared to make the best and the
most of it.
Roberta became the most finished and charming amateur pianist I ever
heard, and as for Mary _la rossignolle_--Mrs. Trevor--she's almost
as famous as if she had made singing her profession, as she once so
wished to do. She married happily instead, a better profession
still; and though her songs are as highly paid for as any--except,
perhaps, Madame Patti's--every penny goes to the poor.
She can make a nigger melody sound worthy of Schubert and a song of
Schumann go down with the common herd as if it were a nigger melody,
and obtain a genuine encore for it from quite simple people.
Why, only the other night she and her husband dined with me at the
Bristol, and we went to Baron Schwartzkind's in Piccadilly to meet
Royal Highnesses.
Up comes the Baron with:
"Ach, Mrs. Drefor! vill you not zing zomzing? ze Brincess vould be
so jarmt."
"I'll sing as much as you like, Baron, if you promise me you'll send
a checque for L50 to the Foundling Hospital to-morrow morning," says
Mary.
"_I_'ll send _another_ fifty, Baron," says Bob Maurice. And the
Baron had to comply, and Mary sang again and again, and the Princess
was more than charmed.
She declared herself enchanted, and yet it was Brahms and Schumann
that Mary sang; no pretty little English ballad, no French, no
Italian.
"Aus meinen Thraenen spriessen
Viel' bluehende Blumen hervor;
Und meine Seufze werden
Ein Nachtigallen Chor...."
So sang Mary, and I declare some of the royal eyes were moist.
They all sang and played, these Josselins; and tumbled and acted,
and were droll and original and fetching, as their father had been
and was still; and, like him, amiable and full of exuberant life;
and, like their mother, kind and appreciative and sympathetic and
ever thoughtful of others, without a grain of selfishness or
conceit.
[Illustration: "'ZE BRINCESS VOULD BE SO JARMT'"]
They were also great athletes, boys and girls alike; good swimmers
and riders, and first-rate oars. And though not as good at books and
lessons as they might have been, they did not absolutely disgrace
themselves, being so quick and intelligent.
Amid all this geniality and liveliness at home and this beauty of
surrounding nature abroad, little Marty seemed to outgrow in a
measure her constitutional delicacy.
It was her ambition to become as athletic as a boy, and she was
persevering in all physical exercises--and throw stones very
straight and far, with a quite easy masculine sweep of the arm; I
taught her myself.
It was also her ambition to draw, and she would sit for an hour or
more on a high stool by her father, or on the arm of his chair, and
watch him at his work in silence. Then she would get herself paper
and pencil, and try and do likewise; but discouragement would
overtake her, and she would have to give it up in despair, with a
heavy sigh and a clouded look on her lovely little pale face; and
yet they were surprisingly clever, these attempts of hers.
Then she took to dictating a novel to her sisters and to me: it was
all about an immense dog and three naughty boys, who were awful
dunces at school and ran away to sea, dog and all; and performed
heroic deeds in Central Africa, and grew up there, "booted and
bearded, and burnt to a brick!" and never married or fell in love,
or stooped to any nonsense of that kind.
This novel, begun in the handwriting of all of us, and continued in
her own, remained unfinished; and the precious MS. is now in my
possession. I have read it oftener than any other novel, French or
English, except, perhaps, _Vanity Fair_!
I may say that I had something to do with the development of her
literary faculty, as I read many good books to her before she could
read quite comfortably for herself: _Evenings at Home_, _The Swiss
Family Robinson_, _Gulliver_, _Robinson Crusoe_, books by
Ballantyne, Marryat, Mayne Reid, Jules Verne, etc., and _Treasure
Island_, _Tom Sawyer_, _Huckleberry Finn_, _The Wreck of the
Grosvenor_, and then her father's books, or some of them.
But even better than her famous novel were the stories she
improvised to me in a small boat which I often rowed up-stream while
she steered--one story, in particular, that had no end; she would
take it up at any time.
She had imagined a world where all trees and flowers and vegetation
(and some birds) were the size they are now; but men and beasts no
bigger than Lilliputians, with houses and churches and buildings to
match--and a family called Josselin living in a beautiful house
called Marsfield, as big as a piano organ.
Endless were the adventures by flood and field of these little
people: in the huge forest and on the gigantic river which it took
them nearly an hour to cross in a steam-launch when the wind was
high, or riding trained carrier-pigeons to distant counties, and the
coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy, where everything was on a
similar scale.
It would astonish me to find how vivid and real she could make these
imaginations of hers, and to me how fascinating--oddly enough she
reserved them for me only, and told no one else.
There was always an immensely big strong man, one Bobby Maurice, a
good-natured giant, nearly three inches high and over two ounces in
weight, who among other feats would eat a whole pea at a sitting,
and hold out an acorn at arm's-length, and throw a pepper-corn over
two yards--which has remained the record.
Then, coming back down-stream, she would take the sculls and I the
tiller, and I would tell her (in French) all about our school
adventures at Brossard's and Bonzig, and the Lafertes, and the
Revolution of February; and in that way she picked up a lot of
useful and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished Fraeulein
Werner, the German governess, who yet knew French almost as well as
her own language--almost as well as Mr. Ollendorff himself.
She also changed one of the heroes in her famous novel, _Tommy
Holt_, into a French boy, and called him _Rapaud_!
She was even more devoted to animals than the rest of the family:
the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an
abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange
bull-terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph in a beautiful
round hand--
"Here lies Kitty, full of grace;
Died of an _abbess_ in her face!"
This was her first attempt at verse-making, and here's her last,
from the French of Sully-Prudhomme:
"If you but knew what tears, alas!
One weeps for kinship unbestowed,
In pity you would sometimes pass
My poor abode!
"If you but knew what balm, for all
Despond, lies in an angel's glance,
Your looks would on my window fall
As though by chance!
"If you but knew the heart's delight
To feel its fellow-heart is by,
You'd linger, as a sister might,
These gates anigh!
"If you but knew how oft I yearn
For one sweet voice, one presence dear,
Perhaps you'd even simply turn
And enter here!"
She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word,
I think they're almost as good as the original!
Her intimate friendship with Chucker-out, the huge St. Bernard,
lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both
weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he
died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me.
It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls,
and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the
print-sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at
these works of art, although--and I hope it is not libellous to say
so--the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity
and charm to Chucker-out, who was champion of his day. And as for
the little girls--_Ah, mon Dieu!_
Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't
possess one, as I've got an aesthetic character to keep up; but why they
shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist--except Briton
Riviere--will stoop to so easily understood a subject?
A great master would not be above painting a small child or a big
dog separately--why should he be above putting them both in the same
picture? It would be too obvious, I suppose--like a melody by
Mozart, or Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Serenade,
and other catchpenny tunes of the same description.
_I_ was also very intimate with Chucker-out, who made more of me
than he even did of his master.
One night I got very late to Marsfield by the last train, and,
letting myself in with my key, I found Chucker-out waiting for me in
the hall, and apparently in a very anxious frame of mind, and
extremely demonstrative, wanting to say something more than
usual--to confide a trouble, to confess!
We went up into the big music-room, which was still lighted, and lay
on a couch together; he, with his head on my knees, whimpering
softly as I smoked and read a paper.
Presently Leah came in and said:
"Such an unfortunate thing happened; Marty and Chucker-out were
playing on the slope, and he knocked her down and sprained her
knee."
As soon as Chucker-out heard Marty's name he sat up and whined
piteously, and pawed me down with great violence; pawed three
buttons off my waistcoat and broke my watch-chain--couldn't be
comforted; the misadventure had been preying on his mind for
hours.
I give this subject to Mr. Briton Riviere, who can paint both dogs and
children, and everything else he likes. I will sit for him myself, if he
wishes, and as a Catholic priest! He might call it a confession--and an
absolution! or, "The Secrets of the Confessional."
The good dog became more careful in future, and restrained his
exuberance even going down-stairs with Marty on the way to a ramble
in the woods, which excited him more than anything; if he came
down-stairs with anybody else, the violence of his joy was such that
one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and
a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland
rambles--never left her side for a second. I have often watched him
from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his
responsibility--almost fussy about it.
I have been fond of many dogs, but never yet loved a dog as I loved
big Chucker-out--or _Choucroute_, as Coralie, the French maid,
called him, to Fraeulein Werner's annoyance (Choucroute is French for
sauerkraut); and I like to remember him in his splendid prime,
guarding his sweet little mistress, whom I loved better than
anything else on earth. She was to me a kind of pet Marjorie, and
said such droll and touching things that I could almost fill a book
with them. I kept a diary on purpose, and called it Martiana.
She was tall, but lamentably thin and slight, poor dear, with her
mother's piercing black eyes and the very fair curly locks of her
papa--a curious and most effective contrast--and features and a
complexion of such extraordinary delicacy and loveliness that it
almost gave one pain in the midst of the keen pleasure one had in
the mere looking at her.
Heavens! how that face would light up suddenly at catching the
unexpected sight of some one she was fond of! How often it has
lighted up at the unexpected sight of "Uncle Bob"! The mere
remembrance of that sweet illumination brightens my old age for me
now; and I could almost wish her back again, in my senile
selfishness and inconsistency. Pazienza!
Sometimes she was quite embarrassing in her simplicity, and reminded
me of her father.
Once in Dieppe--when she was about eight--she and I had gone through
the Etablissement to bathe, and people had stared at her even more
than usual and whispered to each other.
"I bet you don't know why they all stare so, Uncle Bob?"
"I give it up," said I.
"It's because I'm so _handsome_--we're _all_ handsome, you know, and
I'm the handsomest of the lot, it seems! _You_'re _not_ handsome,
Uncle Bob. But oh! aren't you _strong_! Why, you could tuck a
piou-piou under one arm and a postman under the other and walk up to
the castle with them and pitch them into the sea, _couldn't_ you?
And that's better than being handsome, _isn't_ it? I wish _I_ was
like that."
And here she cuddled and kissed my hand.
When Mary began to sing (under Signor R.) it was her custom of an
afternoon to lock herself up alone with a tuning-fork in a large
garret and practise, as she was shy of singing exercises before any
one else.
Her voice, even practising scales, would give Marty extraordinary
pleasure, and me, too. Marty and I have often sat outside and
listened to Mary's rich and fluent vocalizings; and I hoped that
Marty would develop a great voice also, as she was so like Mary in
face and disposition, except that Mary's eyes were blue and her hair
very black, and her health unexceptionable.
Marty did not develop a real voice, although she sang very prettily
and confidentially to me, and worked hard at the piano with Roberta;
she learned harmony and composed little songs, and wrote words to
them, and Mary or her father would sing them to her and make her
happy beyond description.
Happy! she was always happy during the first few years of her
life--from five or six to twelve.
I like to think her happiness was so great for this brief period,
that she had her full share of human felicity just as if she had
lived to the age of the Psalmist.
It seemed everybody's business at Marsfield to see that Marty had a
good time. This was an easy task, as she was so easy to amuse; and
when amused, herself so amusing to others.
As for me, it is hardly too much to say that every hour I could
spare from business and the cares of state was spent in organizing
the amusement of little Marty Josselin, and I was foolish enough to
be almost jealous of her own father and mother's devotion to the
same object.
Unlike her brothers and sisters, she was a studious little person,
and fond of books--too much so indeed, for all she was such a
tomboy; and all this amusement was designed by us with the purpose
of winning her away from the too sedulous pursuit of knowledge. I
may add that in temper and sweetness of disposition the child was
simply angelic, and could not be spoiled by any spoiling.
It was during these happy years at Marsfield that Barty, although
bereft of his Martia ever since that farewell letter, managed,
nevertheless, to do his best work, on lines previously laid down for
him by her.
For the first year or two he missed the feeling of the north most
painfully--it was like the loss of a sense--but he grew in time
accustomed to the privation, and quite resigned; and Marty, whom he
worshipped--as did her mother--compensated him for the loss of his
demon.
_Inaccessible Heights_, _Floreal et Fructidor_, _The Infinitely
Little_, _The Northern Pactolus_, _Pandore et sa Boite_, _Cancer and
Capricorn_, _Phoebus et Selene_ followed each other in leisurely
succession. And he also found time for those controversies that so
moved and amused the world; among others, his famous and triumphant
confutation of Canon ----, on one hand, and Professor ----, the
famous scientist, on the other, which has been compared to the
classic litigation about the oyster, since the oyster itself fell to
Barty's share, and a shell to each of the two disputants.
Orthodox and agnostic are as the poles asunder, yet they could not
but both agree with Barty Josselin, who so cleverly extended a hand
to each, and acted as a conductor between them.
That irresistible optimism which so forces itself upon all
Josselin's readers, who number by now half the world, and will
probably one day include the whole of it--when the whole of it is
civilized--belonged to him by nature, by virtue of his health and
his magnificent physique and his happy circumstances, and an
admirably balanced mind, which was better fitted for his particular
work and for the world's good than any special gift of genius in one
direction.
His literary and artistic work never cost him the slightest effort.
It amused him to draw and write more than did anything else in the
world, and he always took great pains, and delighted in taking them;
but himself he never took seriously for one moment--never realized
what happiness he gave, and was quite unconscious of the true value
of all he thought and wrought and taught!
He laughed good-humoredly at the passionate praise that for thirty
years was poured upon him from all quarters of the globe, and
shrugged his shoulders at the coarse invective of those whose
religious susceptibilities he had so innocently wounded; left all
published insults unanswered; never noticed any lie printed about
himself--never wrote a paragraph in explanation or self-defence, but
smoked many pipes and mildly wondered.
Indeed he was mildly wondering all his life: at his luck--at all the
ease and success and warm domestic bliss that had so compensated him
for the loss of his left eye and would almost have compensated him
for the loss of both.
"It's all because I'm so deuced good-looking!" says Barty--"and so's
Leah!"
And all his life he sorrowed for those who were less fortunate than
himself. His charities and those of his wife were immense--he gave
all the money, and she took all the trouble.
"C'est papa qui paie et maman qui regale," as Marty would say; and
never were funds distributed more wisely.
But often at odd moments the Weltschmerz, the sorrow of the world,
would pierce this man who no longer felt sorrows of his own--stab
him through and through--bring the sweat to his temples--fill his
eyes with that strange pity and trouble that moved you so deeply
when you caught the look; and soon the complicated anguish of that
dim regard would resolve itself into gleams of a quite celestial
sweetness--and a heavenly message would go forth to mankind in such
simple words that all might read who ran....
All these endowments of the heart and brain, which in him were
masculine and active, were possessed in a passive form by his wife;
instead of the buoyant energy and boisterous high spirits, she had
patience and persistency that one felt to be indomitable, and a
silent sympathy that never failed, and a fund of cheerfulness and
good sense on which any call might be made by life without fear of
bankruptcy; she was of those who could play a losing game and help
others to play it--and she never had a losing game to play!
These gifts were inherited by their children, who, more-over, were
so fed on their father's books--so imbued with them--that one felt
sure of their courage, endurance, and virtue, whatever misfortunes
or temptations might assail them in this life.
One felt this especially with the youngest but one, Marty, who, with
even more than her due share of those gifts of the head and heart
they had all inherited from their two parents, had not inherited
their splendid frames and invincible health.
Roderick, _alias_ Mark Tapley, _alias_ Chips, who is now the sailor,
was, oddly enough, the strongest and the hardiest of the whole
family, and yet he was born two years after Marty. She always
declared she brought him up and made a man of him, and taught him
how to throw stones, and how to row and ride and swim; and that it
was entirely to her he owed it that he was worthy to be a
sailor--her ideal profession for a man.
He was devoted to her, and a splendid little chap, and in the
holidays he and she and I were inseparable, and of course
Chucker-out, who went with us wherever it was--Havre, Dieppe,
Dinard, the Highlands, Whitby, etc.
Once we were privileged to settle ourselves for two months in Castle
Rohan, through the kindness of Lord Whitby; and that was the best
holiday of all--for the young people especially. And more especially
for Barty himself, who had such delightful boyish recollections of
that delightful place, and found many old friends among the sailors
and fisher people--who remembered him as a boy.
Chips and Marty and I and the faithful Chucker-out were never
happier than on those staiths where there is always such an ancient
and fishlike smell; we never tired of watching the miraculous
draughts of silver herring being disentangled from the nets and
counted into baskets, which were carried on the heads of the
stalwart, scaly fishwomen, and packed with salt and ice in
innumerable barrels for Billingsgate and other great markets; or
else the sales by auction of huge cod and dark-gray dog-fish as they
lay helpless all of a row on the wet flags amid a crowd of sturdy
mariners looking on, with their hands in their pockets and their
pipes in their mouths.
Then over that restless little bridge to the picturesque old town,
and through its long, narrow street, and up the many stone steps to
the ruined abbey and the old church on the East Cliff; and the old
churchyard, where there are so many stones in memory of those who
were lost at sea.
It was good to be there, in such good company, on a sunny August
morning, and look around and about and down below: the miles and
miles of purple moor, the woods of Castle Rohan, the wide North Sea,
which turns such a heavenly blue beneath a cloudless sky; the two
stone piers, with each its lighthouse, and little people patiently
looking across the waves for Heaven knows what! the busy harbor full
of life and animation; under our feet the red roofs of the old town
and the little clock tower of the market-place; across the stream
the long quay with its ale-houses and emporiums and jet shops and
lively traffic; its old gabled dwellings and their rotting wooden
balconies. And rising out of all this, tier upon tier, up the
opposite cliff, the Whitby of the visitors, dominated by a gigantic
windmill that is--or was--almost as important a landmark as the old
abbey itself.
To the south the shining river ebbs and flows, between its big
ship-building yards and the railway to York, under endless moving
craft and a forest of masts, now straight on end, now slanting
helplessly on one side when there's not water enough to float their
keels; and the long row of Cornish fishing-smacks, two or three
deep.
How the blue smoke of their cooking wreathes upward in savory whiffs
and whirls! They are good cooks, these rovers from Penzance, and do
themselves well, and remind us that it is time to go and get lunch
at the hotel.
We do, and do ourselves uncommonly well also; and afterwards we take
a boat, we four (if the tide serves), and row up for a mile or so to
a certain dam at Ruswarp, and there we take another boat on a lovely
little secluded river, which is quite independent of tides, and
where for a mile or more the trees bend over us from either side as
we leisurely paddle along and watch the leaping salmon-trout,
pulling now and then under a drooping ash or weeping-willow to gaze
and dream or chat, or read out loud from _Sylvia's Lovers_; Sylvia
Robson once lived in a little farm-house near Upgang, which we know
well, and at Whitby every one reads about Sylvia Robson; or else we
tell stories, or inform each other what a jolly time we're having,
and tease old Chucker-out, who gets quite excited, and we admire the
discretion with which he disposes of his huge body as ballast to
trim the boat, and remains perfectly still in spite of his
excitement for fear he should upset us. Indeed, he has been learning
all his life how to behave in boats, and how to get in and out of
them.
And so on till tea-time at five, and we remember there's a little
inn at Sleights, where the scones are good; or, better still, a
leafy garden full of raspberry-bushes at Cock Mill, where they give
excellent jam with your tea, and from which there are three ways of
walking back to Whitby when there's not enough water to row--and
which is the most delightful of those three ways has never been
decided yet.
Then from the stone pier we watch a hundred brown-sailed Cornish
fishing-smacks follow each other in single file across the harbor
bar and go sailing out into the west as the sun goes down--a most
beautiful sight, of which Marty feels all the mystery and the charm
and the pathos, and Chips all the jollity and danger and romance.
Then to the trap, and home all four of us _au grand trot_, between
the hedge-rows and through the splendid woods of Castle Rohan; there
at last we find all the warmth and light and music and fun of
Marsfield, and many good things besides: supper, dinner, tea--all in
one; and happy, healthy, hungry, indefatigable boys and girls who've
been trapesing over miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful
mills and dells and waterfalls--too many miles for slender Marty or
little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker-out--who weigh thirty-two
stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat
and scant of breath.
Whitby is an ideal place for young people; it almost makes old
people feel young themselves there when the young are about; there
is so much to do.
I, being the eldest of the large party, chummed most of the time
with the two youngest and became a boy again; so much so that I felt
myself almost a sneak when I tactfully tried to restrain such
exuberance of spirits on their part as might have led them into
mischief: indeed it was difficult not to lead them into mischief
myself; all the old inventiveness (that had got me and others into
so many scrapes at Brossard's) seemed to come back, enhanced by
experience and maturity.
At all events, Marty and Chips were happier with me than without--of
that I feel quite sure, for I tested it in many ways.
I always took immense pains to devise the kinds of excursion that
would please them best, and these never seemed to fail of their
object; and I was provident and well skilled in all details of the
commissariat (Chips was healthily alimentative); I was a very
_Bradshaw_ at trains and times and distances, and also, if I am not
bragging too much, and making myself out an Admirable Crichton,
extremely weatherwise, and good at carrying small people pickaback
when they got tired.
Marty was well up in local folk-lore, and had mastered the history
of Whitby and St. Hilda, and Sylvia Robson; and of the old obsolete
whaling-trade, in which she took a passionate interest; and fixed
poor little Chips's mind with a passion for the Polar regions (he is
now on the coast of Senegambia).
We were much on the open sea ourselves, in cobles; sometimes the big
dog with us--"Joomboa," as the fishermen called him; and they
marvelled at his good manners and stately immobility in a boat.
One afternoon--a perfect afternoon--we took tea at Runswick, from
which charming little village the Whitbys take their second title,
and had ourselves rowed round the cliffs to Staithes, which we
reached just before sunset; Chips and his sister also taking an oar
between them, and I another. There, on the brink of the little bay,
with the singularly quaint and picturesque old village behind it,
were fifty fishing-boats side by side waiting to be launched, and
all the fishing population of Staithes were there to launch
them--men, women and children; as we landed we were immediately
pressed into the service.
Marty and Chips, wild with enthusiasm, pushed and yo-ho'd with the
best; and I also won some commendation by my hearty efforts in the
common cause. Soon the coast was clear of all but old men and boys,
women and children, and our four selves; and the boats all sailed
westward, in a cluster, and lost themselves in the golden haze. It
was the prettiest sight I ever saw, and we were all quite romantic
about it.
Chucker-out held a small court on the sands, and was worshipped and
fed with stale fish by a crowd of good-looking and agreeable little
lasses and lads who called him "Joomboa," and pressed Chips and
Marty for biographical details about him, and were not disappointed.
And I smoked a pipe of pipes with some splendid old salts, and
shared my Honeydew among them.
Nous etions bien, la!
So sped those happy weeks--with something new and exciting every
day--even on rainy days, when we wore waterproofs and big
india-rubber boots and sou'westers, and Chucker-out's coat got so
heavy with the soak that he could hardly drag himself along: and we
settled, we three at least, that we would never go to France or
Scotland--never any more--never anywhere in the world but Whitby,
jolly Whitby--
Ah me! l'homme propose....
Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that hung down
behind over the waving masses of her long, thick yellow hair--a blue
jersey of the elaborate kind women knit on the Whitby quay--a short,
striped petticoat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown
stockings on her long, thin legs.
I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimping-net; with
a magnifying-glass, I can see the little high-light in the middle of
each jet-black eye--and every detail and charm and perfection of her
childish face. Of all the art-treasures I've amassed in my long
life, that is to me the most beautiful, far and away--but I can't
look at it yet for more than a second at a time....
"O tempo passato, perche non ritorni?"
As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've
got the blues. As if I haven't always got the blues!
All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that he's not here
himself to point his moral--
"Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deca, dela,
Pareil a la
Feuille morte...."
Heaven bless thee, Mary dear, rossignolet de mon ame! Would thou
wert ever by my side! fain would I keep thee for myself in a golden
cage, and feed thee on the tongues of other nightingales, so thou
mightst warble every day, and all day long. By some strange
congenital mystery the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me,
that all the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing
in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks again, thy gay young
father rollicks and jokes and sings, and little Marty laughs her
happy laugh.
_Da capo, e da capo_, Mary--only at night shouldst thou cease from
thy sweet pipings, that I might smoke myself to sleep, and dream
that all is once more as it used to be.
* * * * *
The writing, such as it is, of this life of Barty Josselin--which
always means the writing of so much of my own--has been to me, up to
the present moment, a great source of consolation, almost of
delight, when the pen was in my hand and I dived into the past.
But now the story becomes such a record of my own personal grief
that I have scarcely the courage to go on; I will get through it as
quickly as I can.
It was at the beginning of the present decade that the bitter thing
arose--medio de fonte leporum; just as all seemed so happy and
secure at Marsfield.
One afternoon in May I arrived at the house, and nobody was at home;
but I was told that Marty was in the wood with old Chucker-out, and
I went thither to find her, loudly whistling a bar which served as a
rallying signal to the family. It was not answered, but after a long
hunt I found Marty lying on the ground at the foot of a tree, and
Chucker-out licking her face and hands.
She had been crying, and seemed half-unconscious.
When I spoke to her she opened her eyes and said:
"Oh, Uncle Bob, I _have_ hurt myself so! I fell down that tree. Do
you think you could carry me home?"
Beside myself with terror and anxiety, I took her up as gently as I
could, and made my way to the house. She had hurt the base of her
spine as she fell on the roots of the tree; but she seemed to get
better as soon as Sparrow, the nurse, had undressed her and put her
to bed.
I sent for the doctor, however, and he thought, after seeing her,
that I should do well to send for Dr. Knight.
Just then Leah and Barty came in, and we telegraphed for Dr. Knight,
who came at once.
Next day Dr. Knight thought he had better have Sir ---- ----, and
there was a consultation.
Marty kept her bed for two or three days, and then seemed to have
completely recovered but for a slight internal disturbance, brought
on by the concussion, and which did not improve.
One day Dr. Knight told me he feared very much that this would end
in a kind of ataxia of the lower limbs--it might be sooner or later;
indeed, it was Sir ---- ----'s opinion that it would be sure to do
so in the end--that spinal paralysis would set in, and that the
child would become a cripple for life, and for a life that would not
be long.