her up. The State in France, thrifty as the people, makes the children
abandoned to it a source of profit to the hard-working poor. Clementine
was put out to nurse. The one spark of genuine affection she ever showed
was for the woman to whose care she fell, and of whom she always spoke
as _ma mere_, with a tenderness very different from her giggling
adoration of the little Ernest. Incessant labour was the rule in _ma
mere's_ house, and food was not too abundant, but of what there was
Clementine had her share, though I fancy the scarcity then was the
origin of the terrible hunger that consumed her throughout her life.
About this hunger her story revolved, so that, while she talked of the
past, I could seldom get far away from it. She recalled little else of
the places the Institution found for her as servant. The State in France
is as wise as it is thrifty, and does not demoralize its foundlings by
free gifts, but, when the time comes, makes them work, appropriating
their wages until it has been paid back the money they have cost it.
Clementine went into service young. She also went into it hungry, and
life became a never-ending struggle for food. In one place she was
reduced to such straits that she devoured a dish of poisoned meat
prepared for the stray cats of the neighbourhood, and, though it brought
her almost to death's door, she could still recall it as a feast. In
another, a small country grocery store, she would steal down in the
night, trembling with fear, to hunt for bits of candy and crackers, and,
safe in bed again, would have to fight for them with the rats that
shared her garret. And her tale of this period grew more miserable and
squalid with every new stage, until she reached the dreadful climax
when, still a child herself, she brought a little girl into the world to
share her hunger. She had the courage to laugh when she told me of her
wandering, half-starved, back to _la bonne mere_, who took her in when
her time came, and kept the baby. She could laugh, too, when she
recalled the wrath of _M. le Directeur_ at the Institution, who sent for
her, and scolded her, giving her a few sharp raps with his cane.
If to Clementine her tragedy was a laughing matter, it was not for me to
weep over it. But I was glad when she got through with this period and
came to the next, which had in it more of pure comedy than enlivened
most of her confidences. For once she was of age, and her debt to the
Institution settled in full, she was free not only to work for herself,
but to claim a percentage of the money she had been making during the
long years of apprenticeship; and this percentage amounting to five
hundred francs, and Clementine never having seen so much money before,
her imagination was stirred by the vastness of her wealth, and she
insisted on being paid in five-franc pieces. She had to get a basket to
hold them all, and with it on her arm she started off in search of
adventure. This, I think, was the supreme moment in her life.
Her adventures began in the third-class carriage of a train for
Boulogne, which might seem a mild beginning to most people, but was full
of excitement for Clementine. She dipped her hands into the silver, and
jingled it, and displayed it to everybody, with the vanity of a child
showing off its new frock. The only wonder was that any of the
five-franc pieces were still in the basket when she got to Boulogne.
There they drew to her a group of young men and women who were bound for
England to make their fortunes, and who persuaded her to join them. Her
head was not completely turned by her wealth, for she crossed with them
on the _bateau aux lapins_, which she explained as the cheapest boat
upon which anything but beasts and vegetables could find passage. At
Folkestone, where they landed, she had no difficulty in getting a place
as scullery maid. But washing up was as dull in England as in France, a
poor resource for anybody with a basketful of five-franc pieces. One of
the young men who had crossed with her agreed that it was a waste of
time to work when there was money to spend, and they decided for a life
of leisure together. The question of marriage apparently did not enter
into the arrangement. They were content to remain _des unis_, in M.
Rod's phrase, and their union was celebrated by a few weeks of riotous
living. The chicken their own Henry IV wished for all his subjects
filled the daily pot, beer flowed like water, they could have paid for
cake had bread failed; for the first time in her life Clementine forgot
what it was to be hungry.
It was delightful while it lasted, and I do not believe that she ever
regretted having had her fling when the chance came. But the basket grew
lighter and lighter, and all too soon barely enough five-franc pieces
were left in it to carry them up to London. There, naturally, they found
their way to the _Quartier_. The man picked up an odd job or two,
Clementine scrubbed, washed, waited, did any and everything by which a
few pence could be earned. The pot was now empty, beer ceased to flow,
bread sometimes was beyond their means, and she was hungrier than ever.
In the course of the year her little Ernest was added to the family, and
there was no _bonne mere_ in London to relieve her of the new burden.
For a while Clementine could not work; when she could, there was no work
to be had. Nor could the man get any more jobs, though I fancy his hunt
for them was not too strenuous. Life became a stern, bread-hunting sort
of business, and I think at moments Clementine almost wished herself
back in the garret with the rats, or in the garden where dishes of
poisoned meat were sometimes to be stolen. The landlord threatened,
starvation stared them in the face. Hunger is ever the incentive to
enterprise, and Ernest's father turned Clementine on the streets.
I must do her the justice to say that, of all her adventures, this was
the one least to her liking. That she had fallen so low did not shock
her; she looked upon it as part of the inevitable scheme of things: but
left to herself, she would have preferred another mode of earning her
living. After I had been told of this period of horrors, I could never
hear Clementine's high, shrill treble and giggle without a shudder, for
they were then part of her stock-in-trade, and she went on the streets
in short skirts with her hair down her back. For months she wallowed in
the gutter, at the mercy of the lowest and the most degraded, insulted,
robbed, despised, and if she attempted to rebel, bullied back to her
shameful trade by a man who had no thought save for the few pitiful
pence she could bring to him out of it. The only part of the affair that
pleased her was the ending--in prison after a disgraceful street brawl.
She was really at heart an adventuress, and the opportunity to see for
the first time the inside of the _panier a salade_, as she called the
prison van, was welcomed by her in the light of a new and exciting
adventure. Then, in prison itself, the dress with the arrows could be
adjusted becomingly, warders and fellow prisoners could be made to laugh
by her antics, and if she could have wished for more to eat, it was a
great thing not to have to find the means to pay for what she got.
She was hardly out of prison when Ernest's father chanced upon a woman
who could provide for him more liberally, and Clementine was again a
free agent. The streets knew her no more, though for an interval the
workhouse did. This was the crisis when, with the shrewdness acquired in
the London slums, she learned something of the English law to her own
advantage, and through the courts compelled the father to contribute to
the support of his son. The weekly three shillings and sixpence paid for
a room. For food she had to work. With prison behind her, she was afraid
to ask for a place in respectable houses, and I should not care to
record the sinks of iniquity and squalid dens where her shrill treble
and little girl's giggle were heard. Ernest was dumped down of a morning
upon any friendly neighbour who would keep an eye on him, until, somehow
or other, _la vieille grandmere_ appeared upon the scene and Clementine
once more had two to feed and the daily problem of her own hunger to
face.
Her responsibilities never drove her to work harder than was absolutely
necessary. "We must all toil or steal," Carlyle says. But Clementine
knew better. She could have suggested a third alternative, for she had
reduced begging to a fine art. Her scent was as keen for charitable
associations as a pig's for truffles, and she could tell to a minute the
appointed time of their alms-giving, and to a penny the value of their
alms. She would, no matter when, drop regular work at the risk of losing
it, to rush off after a possible charity. There was a _Societe_--I never
knew it by any other name--that, while she was with me, drew her from my
kitchen floor or my luncheon dishes as surely as Thursday came round,
and the clock struck one. Why it existed she never made quite clear to
me,--I doubt if she had an idea why, herself. It was enough for her that
the poor French in London were under its special charge, and that, when
luck was with her, she might come away with a loaf of bread, or an order
for coals, or, if she played the beggar well, as much as a shilling.
She kept up a brisk correspondence with "_Madame la Baronne de
Rothschild_," whose sole mission in life she apparently believed was to
see her out of her difficulties. _La Baronne_, on one occasion, gave her
a sovereign, Heaven knows why, unless as a desperate measure to close
the correspondence; but a good part of it went in postage for letters
representing why the bestowal of sovereigns upon Clementine should
become habitual. Stray agents, presumably from _la Baronne_, would pay
me mysterious visits, to ask if Clementine were a deserving object of
benevolence, and I was exposed to repeated cross-examination in her
regard. She made a point of learning the hours when the _chefs_ left the
kitchens of the big hotels and restaurants near the _Quartier_, and
also of finding out who among them might be looked to for a few odd
pence for the sake of Ernest's father, at one time a washer of dishes,
or who, after a _coup de vin_ or an _absinthe_, grew generous with their
money. She had gauged the depth of every tender heart in the _Quartier_
and the possibility of scraps and broken meats at every shop and
eating-place. And no one understood better how to beg, how to turn on
the limelight and bring out in melodramatic relief the enormity of her
need and destitution. The lisping treble, the giggle, the tattered
clothes, _la vieille grandmere_, the desertion of the little Ernest's
father, the little Ernest himself, were so many valuable assets. Indeed,
she appreciated the value of the little Ernest so well that once she
would have had me multiply him by twelve when she asked me to vouch for
her poverty before some new society disposed to be friendly. If luck
went against her, and nothing came of her begging, she was not
discouraged. Begging was a game of chance with her,--her Monte Carlo or
Little Horses,--and she never murmured over her failures, but with her
faculty for making the best of all things, she got amusement out of
them as well as out of her successes.
In the face of these facts, I cannot deny that Clementine's "character"
was not exactly the sort most people expect when they engage a servant.
But I would not turn adrift a mangy dog or a lost cat whom I had once
taken in. And she did her work very well, with a thoroughness the
English charwoman would have despised, never minding what that work was,
so long as she had plenty to eat and could prepare by an elaborate
toilet for every errand she ran. Her morals could do us small harm, and
for a while I was foolish enough to hope ours might do her some good. I
realize now that nothing could have improved Clementine; she was not
made that way; but at the time she was too wholly unlike any woman I had
ever come in contact with, for me to see that the difference lay in her
having no morals to help. She was not immoral, but unmoral. Right and
wrong were without meaning for her. Her standards, if she could be said
to have any, were comfort and discomfort. Virtue and vice were the same
to her, so long as she was not unpleasantly interfered with. This was
the explanation of her past, as of her frankness in disclosing it, and
she was too much occupied in avoiding present pain to bother about the
future by cultivating economy, or ambition, or prudence. An animal would
take more thought for the morrow than Clementine. Of all the people I
have ever come across, she had the most reason to be weary-laden, but
instead of "tears in her eyes," there was always a giggle on her lips.
"_La colere, c'est la folie_," she assured me, and it was a folly she
avoided with marked success. Perhaps she was wise, undoubtedly she was
the happier for it.
Unfortunately for me, I had not her callousness or philosophy,--I am not
yet quite sure which it was,--and if she would not think for herself, I
was the more disturbed by the necessity of thinking for her. It was an
absurd position. There I was, positively growing grey in my endeavours
to drag her up out of the abyss of poverty into which she had sunk, and
there she was, cheerful and happy, if she could only continue to enjoy
_la bonne cuisine de Madame_. I never knew her to make the slightest
attempt to profit by what I, or anyone else, would do for her. I
remember, when _Madame la Baronne_ sent her the sovereign, she stayed at
home a week, and then wrote to me as her excuse, "_J'ai ete rentiere
toute la semaine. Maintenant je n'ai plus un penny, il faut m'occuper du
travail._" I had not taken her things out of pawn before they were
pawned again, and the cast-off clothes she begged from me followed as
promptly. Her little Ernest, after all my trouble, stayed at the convent
six weeks,--the month I paid for and two weeks that Clementine somehow
wheedled out of the sisters,--and then he was back as of old, picking up
his education in the London streets. I presented her once with a good
bed I had no more use for, and, to make space for it, she went into debt
and moved from her one room near Tottenham Court Road to two rooms and a
higher rent near the Lower Marsh, and was robbed on the way by the man
she hired to move her. When she broke anything, and she frequently did,
she was never perturbed: "_Madame est forte pour payer_," or "_l'argent
est fait pour rouler_," was her usual answer to my reproaches. To try
to show her the road to economy was to plunge her into fresh
extravagance.
Nor did I advance matters by talking to her seriously. I recall one
special effort to impress upon her the great misery she was preparing
for herself by her shiftlessness. I had given her a pair of shoes,
though I had vowed a hundred times to give her nothing more, and I used
the occasion for a lecture. She seemed eager to interrupt once or twice,
and I flattered myself my words were having their effect. And now what
had she to say? I asked when my eloquence was exhausted. She giggled:
"Would _Madame_ look at her feet in _Madame's_ shoes? _Jamais je ne me
suis vue si bien chaussee_," and she was going straight to the
_Quartier_ "_pour eblouir le monde_," she said. When Augustine took her
in hand, though Augustine's eloquence had a vigour mine could not boast
of, the result was, if anything, more discouraging. Clementine, made
bold by custom, would turn a hand-spring or dance a jig, or go through
the other accomplishments she had picked up in the slums.
If I could discover any weak spot by which I could reach her, I used to
think something might be gained, and I lost much time in studying how to
work upon her emotions. But her emotions were as far to seek as her
morals. Even family ties, usually so strong in France, had no hold upon
her. If she adored her little Ernest, it was because he brought her in
three shillings and sixpence a week. There was no adoration for her
little girl who occasionally wrote from the Pas-de-Calais and asked her
for money. I saw one of the child's letters in which she implored
Clementine to pay for a white veil and white shoes; she was going to
make her first communion, and the good adopted mother could pay for no
more than the gown. The First Communion is the greatest event in the
French child's life; there could be no deeper disgrace than not to be
dressed for it, and the appeal must have moved every mother who read it,
except Clementine. To her it was comic, and she disposed of it with
giggles: "_C'est drole quand meme, d'avoir une fille de cet age_," and
funnier that she could be expected to pay for anything for anybody.
But if her family awoke in her no sentiment, her "home" did, though it
was of the kind that Lamb would have classed with the "no homes." The
tenacity with which she clung to it was her nearest approach to strong
feeling. I suppose it was because she had so long climbed the stairs of
others that she took such complete satisfaction in the two shabby little
rooms to which she gave the name. I had a glimpse of them, never to be
forgotten, once when she failed to come for two days, and I went to look
her up. The street reeked with the smell of fried fish and onions; it
was filled with barrows of kippers and haddocks and whelks; it was lined
with old-clothes shops; it was crowded with frowzy women and horribly
dirty children. And the halls and stairs of the tenement where she lived
were black with London smoke and greasy with London dirt. I did not feel
clean afterwards until I had had a bath, and it was never again as easy
to reconcile myself to Clementine's daily reappearance in our midst. But
to her the rooms were home, and for that reason she would have stayed on
in a grimier and more malodorous neighbourhood, if such a thing could
be, in preference to living in the cleanest and freshest London
workhouse at the rate-payers' expense. Her objection to going into
service except as a charwoman was that she would have to stay the night.
"_Je ne serais pas chez moi_"; and much as she prized her comfort, it
was not worth the sacrifice. On the contrary, she was prepared to
sacrifice her comfort, dear as it was to her, that she might retain her
home. She actually went to the length of taking in as companion an
Italian workman she met by accident, not because he offered to marry
her, which he did not, but because, according to his representations, he
was making twenty-five shillings a week and would help to pay the rent.
"_Je serais chez moi_," was now her argument, and for food she could
continue to work or beg. He would be a convenience, _voila tout_. The
Italian stayed a week. He lounged in bed all morning while she was at
work, he smoked all afternoon. At the end of the week Clementine sent
him flying. "_Je suis bete et je mourrais bete_," was her explanation to
me; but she was not _bete_ to the point of adding an idle fourth to her
burden, and, as a result, being turned out of the home she had taken him
in to preserve.
Clementine had been with us more than two years when the incident of the
Italian occurred, and by this time I had become so accustomed to her and
to her adventures that I was not as shocked as perhaps I should have
been. It was not a way out of difficulties I could approve, but
Clementine was not to be judged by my standards, and I saw no reason to
express my disapproval by getting rid of her just when she most needed
to stay. In her continually increasing need to stay, I endured so much
besides that, at the end of her third year in our chambers, I was
convinced that she would go on doing my rough work as long as I had
rough work to be done. More than once I came to the end of my patience
and dismissed her. But it was no use. In the course of a couple of
weeks, or at the most three, she was back scrubbing my floors and
polishing my brasses.
The first time she lost her place with me, I sympathized to such an
extent that I was at some pains to arrange a scheme to send her to
France. But Clementine, clinging to the pleasures of life in the Lower
Marsh, agreed to everything I proposed, and was careful to put every
hindrance in the way of carrying out my plans. Twice I went to the
length of engaging another woman, but either the other woman did not
suit or else she did not stay, and I had to ask Clementine to return. On
her side, she made various efforts to leave me, bored, I fancy, by the
monotony of regular work, but they were as unsuccessful as mine to turn
her off. After one disappearance of three weeks, she owned up frankly to
having been again _chez les femmes_ whose pay was better; after a
second, she said she had been ill in the workhouse which I doubted;
after all, she was as frank in admitting that nowhere else did she enjoy
_la bonne cuisine de Madame_, and that this was the attraction to which
I was indebted for her fidelity.
It may have been kindness, it may have been weakness, it may have been
simply necessity, that made me so lenient on these occasions; I do not
attempt to decide. But I cannot blame Clementine for thinking it was
because she was indispensable. I noticed that gradually in small ways
she began to take advantage of our good-nature. For one thing there was
now no limit to her conversation. I did not spend my time in the kitchen
and could turn a deaf ear to it, but I sometimes wondered if Augustine
would not be the next to disappear. She would also often relieve the
tedium of her several tasks by turning the handsprings in which she was
so accomplished, or dancing the jig popular in the Lower Marsh, or by
other performances equally reprehensible in the kitchen of _une maison
bourgeoise_, as she was pleased to describe our chambers. She never lost
a chance of rushing to the door if tradespeople rang, or talking with
the British Workmen we were obliged, for our sins, to employ. Their
bewilderment, stolid Britons as they were, would have been funny, had
not her manner of exciting it been so discreditable. She was even
caught--I was spared the knowledge until much later--turning her
handsprings for a select company of plasterers and painters. Then I
could see that she accepted anything we might bestow upon her as her
due, and was becoming critical of the value and quality of the gift. I
can never forget on one occasion when J. was going away, and he gave her
a few shillings, the expression with which she looked first at the money
and then at him as though insulted by the paltriness of the amount. More
unbearable was the unfair use she made of her little Ernest.
_La vieille grandmere_, who had wandered by chance into her life,
wandered out of it as casually, or so Clementine said as an argument to
induce me to receive that odious little boy into my kitchen during her
hours of work; she had nobody to take care of him, she could not leave
him alone. Here, happily for myself, I had the strength to draw the
line. But when this argument failed, she found another far more
harrowing. She took the opportunity of my stumbling across her in our
little hall one day at noon to tell me that, as I would not let her
bring him with her, she left him every day, carefully locked up out of
harm's way, alone in her rooms. A child of seven, as he was then, locked
up to get into any mischief he could invent, and, moreover, a child with
a talent for mischief! that was too much, and I sent her flying home
without giving her time to eat her lunch or linger before the glass, and
I was haunted for the rest of the day with the thought of all the
terrible things that might have happened to him. Naturally nothing did
happen, nothing ever does happen to children like the little Ernest, and
Clementine, dismayed by the loss of her lunch and the interference with
her toilet, never ventured upon this argument a second time. But she
found another almost as bad, for she informed me that, thanks to my
interference, she was compelled to leave him again to run the streets as
he would, and she hinted only too plainly that for whatever evil might
befall him, I was responsible. Our relations were at this pleasant
stage, and her little Ernest was fast developing into a monstrous
Frankenstein wholly of my own raising, when one day she arrived with a
new air of importance and announced her approaching marriage.