But if there were no more enchanted hours like the first, there were to
be seven happy years that have the quality of enchantment as I look
back on them.
* * * * *
Oh, the beautiful garden! Roses, nasturtiums and convolvulus,
wallflowers, sweet-pease and carnations, marigolds and sunflowers,
dahlias and pansies and hollyhocks and poppies, and Heaven knows what
besides! In my fond recollection they all bloom at once, irrespective of
time and season.
To see and smell and pick all these for the first time at the
susceptible age of five! To inherit such a kingdom after five years of
Gower Street and Bedford Square! For all things are relative, and
everything depends upon the point of view. To the owner of Chatsworth
(and to his gardeners) my beautiful French Garden would have seemed a
small affair.
[Illustration: LE P'TIT ANGLAIS.]
And what a world of insects--Chatsworth could not beat _these_ (indeed,
is no doubt sadly lacking in them)--beautiful, interesting, comic,
grotesque, and terrible; from the proud humble-bee to the earwig and his
cousin, the devil's coach-horse; and all those rampant, many footed
things that pullulate in damp and darkness under big flat stones. To
think that I have been friends with all these--roses and centipedes and
all--and then to think that most of my outer life has been spent between
bare whitewashed walls, with never even a flea or a spider to be friends
with again!
Our house (where, by-the-way, I had been born five years before), an old
yellow house with green shutters and Mansard-roofs of slate, stood
between this garden and the street--a long winding street, roughly
flagged, with oil-lamps suspended across at long intervals; these lamps
were let down with pulleys at dusk, replenished and lit, and then hauled
up again to make darkness visible for a few hours on nights when the
moon was away.
Opposite to us was a boys' school--"Maison d'Éducation, Dirigée par M.
Jules Saindou, Bachelier et Maître ès Lettres et ès Sciences," and
author of a treatise on geology, with such hauntingly terrific pictures
of antediluvian reptiles battling in the primeval slime that I have
never been able to forget them. My father, who was fond of science, made
me a present of it on my sixth birthday. It cost me many a nightmare.
From our windows we could see and hear the boys at play--at a proper
distance French boys sound just like English ones, though they do not
look so, on account of their blue blouses and dusky, cropped heads--and
we could see the gymnastic fixtures in the play-ground, M. Saindou's
pride. "Le portique! la poutre! le cheval! et les barres parallèles!"
Thus they were described in M. Saindou's prospectus.
On either side of the street (which was called "the Street of the
Pump"), as far as eye could reach looking west, were dwelling-houses
just like our own, only agreeably different; and garden walls overtopped
with the foliage of horse-chestnut, sycamore, acacia, and lime; and here
and there huge portals and iron gates defended by posts of stone gave
ingress to mysterious abodes of brick and plaster and granite,
many-shuttered, and embosomed in sun-shot greenery.
Looking east one could see in the near distance unsophisticated shops
with old-fashioned windows of many panes--Liard, the grocer; Corbin, the
poulterer; the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.
And this delightful street, as it went on its winding way, led not to
Bedford Square or the new University College Hospital, but to Paris
through the Arc de Triomphe at one end, and to the river Seine at the
other; or else, turning to the right, to St. Cloud through the Bois de
Boulogne of Louis Philippe Premier, Roi des Français--as different from
the Paris and the Bois de Boulogne of to-day as a diligence from an
express train.
On one side of the beautiful garden was another beautiful garden,
separated from ours by a high wall covered with peach and pear and plum
and apricot trees; on the other, accessible to us through a small door
in another lower wall clothed with jasmine, clematis, convolvulus, and
nasturtium, was a long, straight avenue of almond-trees, acacia,
laburnum, lilac, and may, so closely planted that the ivy-grown walls
on either side could scarcely be seen. What lovely patches they made on
the ground when the sun shone! One end of this abutted on "the Street of
the Pump," from which it was fenced by tall, elaborately-carved iron
gates between stone portals, and at the side was a "porte bâtarde,"
guarded by le Père et la Mère François, the old concierge and his old
wife. Peace to their ashes, and Heaven rest their kindly, genial souls!
The other end of the avenue, where there was also an iron gate, admitted
to a large private park that seemed to belong to nobody, and of which we
were free--a very wilderness of delight, a heaven, a terror of tangled
thickets and not too dangerous chalk cliffs, disused old quarries and
dark caverns, prairies of lush grass, sedgy pools, turnip fields,
forests of pine, groves and avenues of horse-chestnut, dank valleys of
walnut-trees and hawthorn, which summer made dark at noon; bare,
wind-swept mountainous regions whence one could reconnoitre afar; all
sorts of wild and fearsome places for savages and wild beasts to hide
and small boys to roam quite safely in quest of perilous adventure.
All this vast enclosure (full of strange singing, humming, whistling,
buzzing, twittering, cooing, booming, croaking, flying, creeping,
crawling, jumping, climbing, burrowing, splashing, diving things) had
been neglected for ages--an Eden where one might gather and eat of the
fruit of the tree of knowledge without fear, and learn lovingly the ways
of life without losing one's innocence; a forest that had remade for
itself a new virginity, and become primeval once more; where beautiful
Nature had reasserted her own sweet will, and massed and tangled
everything together as though a Beauty had been sleeping there
undisturbed for close on a hundred years, and was only waiting for the
charming Prince--or, as it turned out a few years later, alas! the
speculative builder and the railway engineer--those princes of our day.
My fond remembrance would tell me that this region was almost boundless,
well as I remember its boundaries. My knowledge of physical geography,
as applied to this particular suburb of Paris, bids me assign more
modest limits to this earthly paradise, which again was separated by an
easily surmounted fence from Louis Philippe's Bois de Boulogne; and to
this I cannot find it in my heart to assign any limits whatever, except
the pretty old town from which it takes its name, and whose principal
street leads to that magical combination of river, bridge, palace,
gardens, mountain, and forest, St. Cloud.
What more could be wanted for a small boy fresh (if such be freshness)
from the very heart of Bloomsbury?
That not a single drop should be lacking to the full cup of that small
boy's felicity, there was a pond on the way from Passy to St. Cloud--a
memorable pond, called "La Mare d'Auteuil," the sole aquatic treasure
that Louis Philippe's Bois de Boulogne could boast. For in those
ingenuous days there existed no artificial lake fed by an artificial
stream, no pré-Catelan, no Jardin d'Acclimatation. The wood was just a
wood, and nothing more--a dense, wild wood, that covered many hundreds
of acres, and sheltered many thousands of wild live things. Though
mysteriously deep in the middle, this famous pond (which may have been
centuries old, and still exists) was not large; you might almost fling a
stone across it anywhere.
[Illustration]
Bounded on three sides by the forest (now shorn away), it was just
hidden from the dusty road by a fringe of trees; and one could have it
all to one's self, except on Sunday and Thursday afternoons, when a few
love-sick Parisians remembered its existence, and in its loveliness
forgot their own.
To be there at all was to be happy; for not only was it quite the most
secluded, picturesque, and beautiful pond in all the habitable
globe--that pond of ponds, the _only_ pond--but it teemed with a far
greater number and variety of wonderful insects and reptiles than any
other pond in the world. Such, at least, I believed must be the case,
for they were endless.
To watch these creatures, to learn their ways, to catch them (which we
sometimes did), to take them home and be kind to them, and try to tame
them, and teach them our ways (with never varying non-success, it is
true, but in, oh, such jolly company!) became a hobby that lasted me, on
and off, for seven years.
La Mare d'Auteuil! The very name has a magic, from all the associations
that gathered round it during that time, to cling forever.
How I loved it! At night, snoozing in my warm bed, I would awesomely
think of it, and how solemn it looked when I had reluctantly left it at
dusk, an hour or two before; then I would picture it to myself, later,
lying deep and cold and still under the stars, in the dark thicket, with
all that weird, uncanny lite seething beneath its stagnant surface.
Then gradually the water would sink, and the reeds, left naked, begin to
move and rustle ominously, and from among their roots in the uncovered
slush everything alive would make for the middle--hopping, gliding,
writhing frantically....
Down shrank the water; and soon in the slimy bottom, yards below, huge
fat salamanders, long-lost and forgotten tadpoles as large as rats,
gigantic toads, enormous flat beetles, all kinds of hairy, scaly, spiny,
blear-eyed, bulbous, shapeless monsters without name, mud-colored
offspring of the mire that had been sleeping there for hundreds of
years, woke up, and crawled in and out, and wallowed and interwriggled,
and devoured each other, like the great saurians and batrachians in my
_Manuel de Géologie Élémentaire_. Édition illustrée à l'usage des
enfants. Par Jules Saindou, Bachelier et Maître ès Lettres et
ès Sciences.
Then would I wake up with a start, in a cold perspiration, an icy chill
shooting through me that roughed my skin and stirred the roots of my
hair, and ardently wish for to-morrow morning.
In after-years, and far away among the cold fogs of Clerkenwell, when
the frequent longing would come over me to revisit "the pretty place of
my birth," it was for the Mare d'Auteuil I longed the most; _that_ was
the loadstar, the very pole of my home-sick desires; always thither the
wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread
that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles
swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the
water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the
horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and
to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of
all where I and mine were always happiest!
"...Qu'ils étaient beaux, les jours De France!"
In the avenue I have mentioned (_the_ avenue, as it is still to me, and
as I will always call it) there was on the right hand, half the way up,
a _maison de santé_, or boarding-house, kept by one Madame Pelé; and
there among others came to board and lodge, a short while after our
advent, four or five gentlemen who had tried to invade France, with a
certain grim Pretender at their head, and a tame eagle as a symbol of
empire to rally round.
The expedition had failed; the Pretender had been consigned to a
fortress; the eagle had found a home in the public slaughter-house of
Boulogne-sur-Mer, which it adorned for many years, and where it fed as
it had never probably fed before; and these, the faithful followers, le
Colonel Voisil, le Major Duquesnois, le Capitaine Audenis, le Docteur
Lombal (and one or two others whose names I have forgotten), were
prisoners on parole at Madame Pelé's, and did not seem to find their
durance very vile.
[Illustration: (no caption)]
I grew to know and love them all, especially the Major Duquesnois, an
almost literal translation into French of Colonel Newcome. He took to
me at once, in spite of my Englishness, and drilled me, and taught me
the exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new
fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years.
Scheherezade could do no more for a Sultan, and to save her own neck
from the bowstring!
Cher et bien amé "Vieux de la Vieille!" with his big iron-gray mustache,
his black satin stock, his spotless linen, his long green frock-coat so
baggy about the skirts, and the smart red ribbon in his button-hole! He
little foresaw with what warm and affectionate regard his memory would
be kept forever sweet and green in the heart of his hereditary foe and
small English tyrant and companion!
* * * * *
Opposite Madame Pelé's, and the only other dwelling besides hers and
ours in the avenue, was a charming little white villa with a Grecian
portico, on which were inscribed in letters of gold the words "Parva sed
Apta"; but it was not tenanted till two or three years after
our arrival.
In the genial French fashion of those times we soon got on terms of
intimacy with these and other neighbors, and saw much of each other at
all times of the day.
My tall and beautiful young mother (la belle Madame Pasquier, as she was
gallantly called) was an Englishwoman who had been born and partly
brought up in Paris.
My gay and jovial father (le beau Pasquier, for he was also tall and
comely to the eye) was a Frenchman, although an English subject, who had
been born and partly brought up in London; for he was the child of
emigres from France during the Reign of Terror.
[Illustration]
"When in death I shall calm recline,
Oh take my heart to my mistress dear!
Tell her it lived upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here!"
He was gifted with a magnificent, a phenomenal voice--a barytone and
tenor rolled into one; a marvel of richness, sweetness, flexibility, and
power--and had intended to sing at the opera; indeed, he had studied for
three years at the Paris Conservatoire to that end; and there he had
carried all before him, and given rise to the highest hopes. But his
family, who were Catholics of the blackest and Legitimists of the
whitest dye--and as poor as church rats had objected to such a godless
and derogatory career; so the world lost a great singer, and the great
singer a mine of wealth and fame.
However, he had just enough to live upon, and had married a wife (a
heretic!) who had just about as much, or as little; and he spent his
time, and both his money and hers, in scientific inventions--to little
purpose, for well as he had learned how to sing, he had not been to any
conservatoire where they teach one how to invent.
So that, as he waited "for his ship to come home," he sang only to amuse
his wife, as they say the nightingale does; and to ease himself of
superfluous energy, and to charm the servants, and le Père et la Mère
François, and the five followers of Napoleon, and all and everybody who
cared to listen, and last and least (and most!), myself.
For this great neglected gift of his, on which he set so little store,
was already to me the most beautiful and mysterious thing in the world;
and next to this, my mother's sweet playing on the harp and piano, for
she was an admirable musician.
It was her custom to play at night, leaving the door of my bedroom ajar,
and also the drawing-room door, so that I could hear her till I fell
asleep.
Sometimes, when my father was at home, the spirit would move him to hum
or sing the airs she played, as he paced up and down the room on the
track of a new invention.
And though he sang and hummed "pian-piano," the sweet, searching, manly
tones seemed to fill all space.
The hushed house became a sounding-board, the harp a mere subservient
tinkle, and my small, excitable frame would thrill and vibrate under the
waves of my unconscious father's voice; and oh, the charming airs
he sang!
His stock was inexhaustible, and so was hers; and thus an endless
succession of lovely melodies went ringing through that happy period.
And just as when a man is drowning, or falling from a height, his whole
past life is said to be mapped out before his mental vision as in a
single flash, so seven years of sweet, priceless home love--seven times
four changing seasons of simple, genial, prae-imperial Frenchness; an
ideal house, with all its pretty furniture, and shape, and color; a
garden full of trees and flowers; a large park, and all the wild live
things therein; a town and its inhabitants; a mile or two of historic
river; a wood big enough to reach from the Arc de Triomphe to St. Cloud
(and in it the pond of ponds); and every wind and weather that the
changing seasons can bring--all lie embedded and embalmed for me in
every single bar of at least a hundred different tunes, to be evoked at
will for the small trouble and cost of just whistling or humming the
same, or even playing it with one finger on the piano--when I had a
piano within reach.
Enough to last me for a lifetime--with proper economy, of course--it
will not do to exhaust, by too frequent experiment, the strange capacity
of a melodic bar for preserving the essence of by-gone things, and days
that are no more.
Oh, Nightingale! whether thou singest thyself or, better still, if thy
voice by not in thy throat, but in thy fiery heart and subtle brain, and
thou makest songs for the singing of many others, blessed be thy name!
The very sound of it is sweet in every clime and tongue: Nightingale,
Rossignol, Usignuolo, Bulbul! Even Nachtigall does not sound amiss in
the mouth of a fair English girl who has had a Hanoverian for a
governess! and, indeed, it is in the Nachtigall's country that the best
music is made!
[Illustration: "OH, NIGHTINGALE!"]
And oh, Nightingale! never, never grudge thy song to those who love
it--nor waste it upon those who do not....
Thus serenaded, I would close my eyes, and lapped in darkness and
warmth and heavenly sound, be lulled asleep--perchance to dream!
For my early childhood was often haunted by a dream, which at first I
took for a reality--a transcendant dream of some interest and importance
to mankind, as the patient reader will admit in time. But many years of
my life passed away before I was able to explain and account for it.
I had but to turn my face to the wall, and soon I found myself in
company with a lady who had white hair and a young face--a very
beautiful young face.
Sometimes I walked with her, hand in hand--I being quite a small
child--and together we fed innumerable pigeons who lived in a tower by a
winding stream that ended in a water-mill. It was too lovely, and I
would wake.
Sometimes we went into a dark place, where there was a fiery furnace
with many holes, and many people working and moving about--among them a
man with white hair and a young face, like the lady, and beautiful red
heels to his shoes. And under his guidance I would contrive to make in
the furnace a charming little cocked hat of colored glass--a treasure!
And the sheer joy thereof would wake me.
Sometimes the white-haired lady and I would sit together at a square
box from which she made lovely music, and she would sing my favorite
song--a song that I adored. But I always woke before this song came to
an end, on account of the too insupportably intense bliss I felt on
hearing it; and all I could remember when awake were the words
"triste--comment--sale." The air, which I knew so well in my dream, I
could not recall.
It seemed as though some innermost core of my being, some childish holy
of holies, secreted a source of supersubtle reminiscence, which, under
some stimulus that now and again became active during sleep, exhaled
itself in this singular dream--shadowy and slight, but invariably
accompanied by a sense of felicity so measureless and so penetrating
that I would always wake in a mystic flutter of ecstasy, the bare
remembrance of which was enough to bless and make happy many a
succeeding hour.
* * * * *
Besides this happy family of three, close by (in the Street of the
Tower) lived my grandmother Mrs. Biddulph, and my Aunt Plunket, a widow,
with her two sons, Alfred and Charlie, and her daughter Madge. They also
were fair to look at--extremely so--of the gold-haired, white-skinned,
well-grown Anglo-Saxon type, with frank, open, jolly manners, and no
beastly British pride.
So that physically, at least, we reflected much credit on the English
name, which was not in good odor just then at Passy-lès-Paris, where
Waterloo was unforgotten. In time, however, our nationality was condoned
on account of our good looks--"non Angli sed angeli!" as M. Saindou was
gallantly pleased to exclaim when he called (with a prospectus of his
school) and found us all gathered together under the big apple-tree
on our lawn.
But English beauty in Passy was soon to receive a memorable addition to
its ranks in the person of a certain Madame Seraskier, who came with an
invalid little daughter to live in the house so modestly described in
gold as "Parva sed Apta."
She was the English, or rather the Irish, wife of a Hungarian patriot
and man of science, Dr. Seraskier (son of the famous violinist); an
extremely tall, thin man, almost gigantic, with a grave, benevolent
face, and a head like a prophet's; who was, like my father, very much
away from his family--conspiring perhaps--or perhaps only inventing
(like my father), and looking out "for his ship to come home!"
[Illustration: "SHE TOPPED MY TALL MOTHER."]
This fair lady's advent was a sensation--to me a sensation that never
palled or wore itself away; it was no longer now "la belle Madame
Pasquier," but "la divine Madame Seraskier"--beauty-blind as the French
are apt to be.
She topped my tall mother by more than half a head; as was remarked by
Madame Pelé, whose similes were all of the kitchen and dining-room,
"elle lui mangerait des petits pâtés sur la tête!" And height, that
lends dignity to ugliness, magnifies beauty on a scale of geometrical
progression--2, 4, 8, 16, 32--for every consecutive inch, between five
feet five, let us say, and five feet ten or eleven (or thereabouts),
which I take to have been Madame Seraskier's measurement.
She had black hair and blue eyes--of the kind that turns violet in a
novel--and a beautiful white skin, lovely hands and feet, a perfect
figure, and features chiselled and finished and polished and turned out
with such singular felicitousness that one gazed and gazed till the
heart was full of a strange jealous resentment at any one else having
the right to gaze on something so rare, so divinely, so sacredly
fair--any one in the world but one's self!
But a woman can be all this without being Madame Seraskier--she was much
more.
For the warmth and genial kindness of her nature shone through her eyes
and rang in her voice. All was of a piece with her--her simplicity, her
grace, her naturalness and absence of vanity; her courtesy, her
sympathy, her mirthfulness.
I do not know which was the most irresistible: she had a slight Irish
accent when she spoke English, a less slight English accent when she
spoke French!