'Never heard it that I know of,' answered Chalks; then, raising his
voice, 'Any gentleman present ever heard of--what did you say your
name was?' he asked in an aside; and being informed, went on, 'of Mr.
Davis Blake?'
No one spoke.
'Mud?' queried Chalks.
'Mud?' repeated Mr. Blake, perplexed.
'He means to enquire whether you are a sculptor,' ventured I.
'A sculptor--certainly not.' He spoke sharply, throwing back his head.
'It is impossible that no one here should have heard of me; and this
pretence of ignorance is meant as a practical joke. I am a
novelist--one of the best known novelists living. I am Davis Blake,
the author of "Crispin Dorr," and "The Card Dealer." My portrait, with
a short biographical sketch, appeared in the _Illustrated Gazette_ not
a month ago. My works have been translated into French, German,
Russian, and Italian. Of "The Card Dealer," upwards of thirty thousand
copies have been sold in Great Britain alone.'
'Ah, then you could well afford to stand us drinks,' was Chalks's
cheerful commentary. 'We ain't much on book-learning, this side the
river, Mr. Blake. We're plain blunt men, that ain't ashamed of manual
labour--horny-handed sons of toil, in short. But we're proud to meet a
cultivated gentleman like yourself, all the same, and can appreciate
him when met.'
Blake laughed rather lamely, and responded, 'I perceive that you are a
humorist. Your countrymen are great admirers of my writings; of
"Crispin Dorr," I am told, there are no fewer than three rival
editions in the market; and I have received complimentary letters and
requests for my autograph, from all parts of the United States, I
think that the quality of American humour has been over-rated: but I
can forgive a jest at my own expense, provided it be not meant in
malice.'
'Every novice in our order, sir,' said Chalks, 'must approve his
mettle by undergoing something in the nature of an initiatory ordeal.
We may now drop foolery, and converse like intelligent human beings.
You were asking our opinion of Willy's daub----'
'Willy?' questioned Blake.
'Ay--Bouguereau. Isn't his front name William?' And Chalks, speaking
as it were _ex cathedrâ_, made very short work indeed of Monsieur
Bouguereau's claims to rank as a painter. Blake listened with
open-eyed wonder. But we are difficult critics, we of the Paris art
schools, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five; cold, cynical,
suspicious as any Old Bailey judge; and rare is the man whose work can
sustain our notice, and get off with lighter censure than '_croûte_'
or '_plat d'épinards_.' We grow more lenient, however, as we advance
in years. Already, at thirty, we begin to detect signs of promise in
other canvases than our own. At forty, conceivably, we shall even
admit a certain degree of actual merit.
By and by, Chalks having concluded his pronouncement, and drifted to
another corner of the room, Blake and I fell into separate talk.
'I must count it a piece of exceptional good fortune,' he informed me,
'to have made the acquaintance of your little _coterie_ this evening.
I am on the point of writing a novel, in which it will be necessary
that my hero should pass several years as a student in the Latin
Quarter; and I have run over from London for the especial purpose of
collecting local colour. No doubt you will be able to help me with a
hint or two as to the best mode of setting about it.'
'I can think of none better than to come here and live for a while,'
said I.
'I only arrived last night, and I put up at the Grand Hotel. But it
was quite my intention to move across the river directly I could find
suitable lodgings. Do you know of any that you could recommend?'
'If you want to see student life _par excellence_, you can scarcely
improve upon the shop I'm in myself--the Hôtel du Saint-Esprit, in the
Rue St. Jacques.'
And after he had examined me in some detail touching that house of
entertainment, 'Yes,' he said, 'then, if you will bespeak a room for
me there, I'll come to-morrow and stop for a week or ten days.'
'A week or ten days?' I questioned.
'I can't spare more than a fortnight. I must be back in town by the
20th.'
'But what can you hope to learn of Latin Quarter customs in a
fortnight? One ought to live here for a year, at the very least,
before attempting to write us up.'
'Ah,' he rejoined, shaking his head and gazing dreamily at something
invisible beyond the smoky atmosphere of the café, 'a man with
dramatic insight can learn as much in a fortnight as an ordinary
person in half a lifetime. Intuition and inspiration take the place of
the note-book and the yard-stick. The author of _The Merchant of
Venice_ had never visited Italy. In "Crispin Dorr" I have described a
tempest and a shipwreck at which old sailors shudder: and my longest
voyage has been from Holyhead to Kingstown. Besides,' he added, with a
bow and smile, 'for the Latin Quarter, if you will take me under your
protection, I shall, I am sure, benefit by the services of a capital
cicerone.'
And the next afternoon he arrived. I met him at the threshold of the
hotel, introduced him to our landlady, Madame Pamparagoux (who stared
rather wildly, not being accustomed to see her lodgers so mediævally
attired), and showed him upstairs to the room I had engaged.
There he invited me to be seated while he unpacked his portmanteau and
put his things in order. These, I noticed, were un-Britishly few and
simple. I could discern no vestiges of either sponge or tub. As he
moved backwards and forwards between his chest of drawers and
dressing-table, he would cast frequent affectionate glances at his
double, now in the glass of the _armoire_, now in that above the
chimney. He was favouring me meantime with a running monologue of an
autobiographical complexion.
'I am a self-educated man. My father was a wine merchant in Leeds. At
sixteen he put me to serve in the shop of a cousin, a print-seller. It
was there, I think, that my literary instincts awoke. I contributed
occasional art notes to a local paper. At twenty I came up to London
and began my definite career, as a reporter. I was soon earning thirty
shillings a week, which seemed to me magnificent. But I aspired to
higher things. I felt within me the stirrings of what I could not help
believing to be genius--true genius. I longed to distinguish myself,
to emerge from the crowd, from the background, to make myself
remarked, to do something, to be somebody, to see my name a famous
one. I was fortunate enough at this epoch to attract the notice of
X----, the poet. He believed in me, and encouraged me to believe in
myself. It is one of the regrets of my life that he died before I had
achieved my celebrity. However, I have achieved it. My name is a
household word wherever the English language is read. I have written
the only novels of my time that are sure to live. They will live not
only by virtue of their style and matter, but because of a quality
they possess which I must call _universal_--a quality which appeals
with equal force to readers of every rank, and which will procure for
them as wide a popularity five hundred years hence as they enjoy
to-day. I call them novels, but they are really prose-poems. The
novel,' he continued, rising for an instant to impersonal heights,
'the novel is the literary form or expression of my period, as the
drama was that of Shakespeare's, the epic of Homer's. Do you follow
me? Ah, here is a copy of "Crispin Dorr"--here is "The Card Dealer."
Take them and read them, and return them when you have finished. Being
author's copies, they possess an exceptional value. This is my
autograph upon the fly-leaf. This is a photograph of my wife. She is a
good woman, but has no great literary culture, and we are not so happy
together as I could wish. Men of commanding parts seldom make good
husbands, and I committed the imprudence of marrying very young. My
wife, you see, belongs to that class of society from which I have
risen. I am the son of a wine merchant, yet I dine with peers, and
have been favoured with smiles from peeresses. My wife has not kept
pace with me. This is my little girl--our only child--my daughter
Judith. Here is the _Illustrated Gazette_ with the portrait of
myself.'
Some of us in the Latin Quarter found the man's egotism insupportable,
and gave him a wide berth. Others, more numerous, among them the
irrepressible Chalks, made it an object of derision, and would
exhaust their ingenuity in efforts to lead him on, and entice him into
more and more egregious exhibitions of it; while, if they did not
laugh in his face, they took, at least, no slightest pains to conceal
their jubilant interchange of winks and nudges.
'If he were only an ass,' Chalks urged, 'one might feel disposed to
spare him. A merciful man is merciful to a beast. But he's such a cad,
to boot--bandying his wife's name about the Latin Quarter, telling
Tom, Dick, and Harry of their conjugal differences, and boasting of
his successes with other women!'
A few of us, however, could not prevent an element of pity from
tincturing our amusement. If his self-conceit was comical, by reason
of its candour, it was surely pitiable, because of the poor, dwarfed
starveling of a soul that it revealed. Here was a man, with life in
his veins, and round about him the whole mystery and richness of
creation--and he could seriously think of nothing save how, by his
dress, by his speech, his postures, to render himself the observed of
all observers!
Wherever he went, in whatever company he found himself, that was the
sole thing he cared for--to be the centre of attention, to be looked
at, listened to, recognised and admired as a celebrity. And if the
event happened otherwise, if he had ground for the suspicion that the
people near him were suffering their minds to wander to another topic,
his face would darken, his attitude become distinctly one of rancour.
With Chalks, familiarity bred boldness; he made the latter days of
Blake's sojourn amongst us exceedingly unhappy.
'Now, Mr. Blake,' he would say, 'we are going to talk of art and love
and things in general for a while, to rest our brains from the author
of "Crispin Dorr." Please step into the corner there and sulk.'
And he had a bit of slang, which he set to a bar of music, and would
sing, as if in absence of mind, whenever the conversation lapsed, to
the infinite annoyance of Mr. Blake:--
'Git your hair cut--git your hair cut--git your hair cut--_short_!'
'If that is meant for me,' Blake once protested, 'I take it as
discourteous in the last degree.'
'My dear sir, you were twenty thousand leagues from my thoughts. And
as for getting your hair cut, I beseech you, don't. You would shear
away the fabric of our joy,' Chalks answered.
Blake had a curiously exaggerated notion of his fame; and his jealousy
thereof surpassed the jealousy of women. He took it for granted that
everybody had heard of him, and bridled, as at a personal affront,
when he met any one who hadn't. If you fell into chance talk with him,
in ignorance of his identity, he could not let three minutes pass
without informing you. And then, if you appeared not adequately
impressed, he would wax ill-tempered. He was genuinely convinced that
his person and his actions were affairs of consuming interest to all
the world. To be something, to do something, perhaps he honestly
aspired; but to _seem_ something was certainly his ruling passion.
One Sunday afternoon, at his suggestion, we went together to the
studio of Z----, and I introduced him to the Master. But, as we moved
about the vast room, among those small, priceless canvases, the
consciousness grew upon me that my companion was in some distress of
mind. His eye wandered; his utterances were brief and dry. At length
he got me into a corner, and remarked, 'You introduced me simply as
Mr. Blake. He evidently doesn't realise who I am.'
'Oh, these Frenchmen are so indifferent to things not French, you
know,' said I.
'Yes--but--still--I wish you could make an occasion to let him know.
In introducing me you might have added "a distinguished English
author."'
'But do you quite realise who _he_ is?' I cried. 'He's jolly near the
most distinguished living painter.'
'Never mind. He is treating me now as he might Brown, Jones, or
Robinson.' As this was with a superfine consideration, it seemed
unreasonable to demand a difference. Nevertheless, I seized an
opportunity to whisper in the Master's ear a word or two to the
desired effect. '_Tiens_!' he returned composedly, and continued to
treat his visitor precisely as he had done from the beginning.
Blake had announced that he wanted to gather information about the
Latin Quarter; and I don't doubt that his purpose was sincere, but he
employed a novel method of attaining it. We took him everywhere, we
showed him everything; I could never observe that he either looked or
listened. He would sit (or stand or walk), his eye craving admiration
from our faces; his tongue wagging about himself; his early hardships,
his first success, his habits of work, his troubles with his wife, his
_liaison_ with Lady Blank, his tastes in fruits and wines, his
handwriting, his very teeth and boots. He passed his life in a sort of
trance, an ecstacy of self-absorption; he had fallen in love with his
own conception of himself, like a metaphysical Narcissus. This
idiosyncrasy was the means of defeating various conspiracies, in which
Chalks, of course, was the prime mover, calculated to impose upon his
credulity, and send him back to London loaded down with
misinformation.
'His cheek, by Christopher!' cried Chalks. 'Live in the Quarter for a
fortnight, keep his eyes and ears shut, talk perpetually of Davis
Blake, and read nothing but his own works, and then go home and write
a book about it. _I'll_ quarter him!'
But Chalks counted without his man. That Monsieur Bullier, the founder
of the Closerie des Lilas, was also Professor of Moral Philosophy in
the Collège de France; that the word _étudiante_ (for Blake had only a
tourist's smattering of French) should literally be translated
_student_, and that the young ladies who bore it as a name were indeed
pursuing rigorous courses of study at the Sorbonne; that it was
obligatory upon a freshman (_nouveau_) in the Quarter to shave his
head and wear wooden shoes for the first month after his
matriculation--from these and kindred superstitions Blake was saved by
his grand talent for never paying attention.
In the meanwhile some of us had read his books: chromo-lithographs,
struck in the primary colours; pasteboard complications of passion and
adventure, with the conservative entanglement of threadbare
marionnettes--a hero, tall, with golden brown moustaches and blue
eyes; a heroine, lissome, with 'sunny locks;' then a swarthy villain,
for the most part a nobleman, and his Spanish-looking female
accomplice, who had an uncomfortable habit of delivering her remarks
'from between clenched teeth,' and, generally, 'in a blood-chilling
hiss'--the narrative set forth in a sustained _fortissimo_, and
punctuated by the timely exits of the god from the machine. Never a
felicity, never an impression. I fancy he had made his notes of human
nature whilst observing the personages of a melodrama at a provincial
theatre. He loved the obvious sentiment, the obvious and but
approximate word.
But the climax of his infatuation was not disclosed till the night
before he left us. Again we were in session at the Café des Souris,
and the talk had turned upon metempsychosis. Blake, for a wonder,
pricked up his ears and appeared to listen, at the same time watching
his chance to take the floor. Half-a-dozen men had their say first,
however; then he cut in.
'Metempsychosis is not a theory, it is a fact. I can testify to it
from my personal experience. I know it. I can distinctly recall my
former life. I can tell you who I was, who my friends were, what I
did, what I felt, everything, down to the very dishes I preferred for
dinner.'
Chalks scanned Blake's features for an instant with an intentness that
suggested a mingling of perplexity and malice; then, all at once, I
saw a light flash in his eyes, which forthwith began to twinkle in a
manner that struck me as ominous.
'In my early youth,' Blake continued, 'this memory of mine was, if I
may so phrase it, piecemeal and occasional. Feeling that I was no
ordinary man, conscious of strange forces struggling in me, I would
obtain, as it were, glimpses, fleeting and unsatisfactory, into a
former state. Then they would go, not for long intervals to return. As
time elapsed, however, these glimpses, to call them so, became more
frequent and lasting, the intervals of oblivion shorter; and at last,
one day on Hampstead Heath, I identified myself in a sudden burst of
insight. I was walking on the Heath, and thinking of my
work--marvelling at a certain quality I had discerned in it, which, I
was convinced, would assure it everlasting life: a quality that
seemed not unfamiliar to me, and yet which I could associate with none
of the writers whose names passed in review before my mind; not with
Byron, or Shelley, or Keats, not with Wordsworth or Coleridge, Goethe
or Dante, not even with Homer. I mean the quality which I call
universal--universal in its authenticity, universal in its appeal.
By-and-bye, I took out a little pocket mirror that I always carry, and
looked into it, studying my face. One glance sufficed. There,
suddenly, on Hampstead Heath, the whole thing flashed upon me. I saw,
I understood; I realised who I was, I remembered everything.'
'Stop right there, Mr. Blake,' called out Chalks in stentorian tones.
'Don't you say another word. I'm going to hail you by your right name
in half-a-minute. I guess I must have recognised you the very first
time I clapped eyes on your distinguished physiognomy; only I couldn't
just _place_ you, as we say over in America. But there was a _je ne
sais quoi_ in the whole cut of your jib as familiar to me as rolls and
coffee. I tried and tried to think when and where I'd had the pleasure
before. But now that you speak of a former state of existence--why,
I'm _there_! It was all I needed, just a little hint like that, to jog
my memory. Talk about entertaining angels unawares! The beard, eh? And
the yaller cloak? And ain't there a statue of you up Boulevard
Haussmann way? Shakesy, old man, shake!'
And Chalks got hold of his victim's hand and wrung it fervently. 'I'm
particularly glad to meet you this way,' he added, 'because I was
Queen Elizabeth myself; and I can't begin to tell you how sort of out
of it I felt, alone here with all this degenerate posterity.'
Blake coldly withdrew his hand, frowning loftily at Chalks. 'You
should reserve your nonsense for more appropriate occasions,' he said.
'Though you speak in a spirit of foolish levity, you have builded
better than you knew. I am indeed Shakespeare re-incarnated. My books
alone would prove it; they could have been dictated by no other mind.
But--look at this.'
He produced from an interior pocket a case of red morocco and handed
it to me. 'You,' he said, with a flattering emphasis upon the
pronoun, 'you are a man who can treat a serious matter seriously.
What do you think of that?'
The case contained a photograph, and the photograph represented the
head and shoulders of Mr. Blake and a bust of Shakespeare, placed
cheek by jowl. In the pointed beard and the wide-set eyes there were,
perhaps, the rudiments of something remotely like a likeness.
'Isn't that conclusive?' he demanded. 'Doesn't that place the fact
beyond the reach of question?'
'You've got more hair than you used to have,' said Chalks. 'I'm
talking of the front hair--your forehead ain't as high as it was. But
your back hair is all right enough.'
'You have put your finger on the one, the only, point of difference,'
assented Blake,
On our way home he took my arm, and pitched his voice in the key of
confidence. 'I am writing my autobiography, from my birth in Stratford
down to the present day. It will be in two parts; the interim when
people thought me dead, marking their separation. I was not dead; I
slept a dreamless sleep. Presently I shall sleep again; as men say,
die; then doubtless wake again. Life and death are but sleeping and
waking on a larger scale. Our little life is rounded with a sleep. It
is the swing of the pendulum, the revolution of the orb. Yes, I am
writing my autobiography. So little is known of the private history of
Shakespeare, conceive the boon it will be to mankind. I shall leave
the manuscripts to my executors, for them to publish after I have lain
down to my next long rest. Of special value will be the chapters
telling how I wrote the plays, settling disputed readings, closing all
controversy upon the sanity of Hamlet, and divulging the true
personality of Mr. W.H.'
He came into my room for a little visit before going to bed. There,
candle in hand, he gazed long and earnestly into my chimney-glass.
'Yes,' he sighed at last, 'it is solely in the quantity of my hair
that the resemblance fails.'
I understood now why he trained it back and plastered it down over his
scalp, as he did; at a rough glance, you might have got the impression
that the crown of his head was bald. I suppose he is the only man in
two hemispheres who finds the opposite condition a matter of regret.