MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE
CHAPTER I
SPRING IN LONDON
As I sit at my window on Sunday morning, lazily watching the sparrows--restless black dots that haunt the old tree at the corner of King's Bench Walk--I begin to distinguish a faint green haze in the branches of the old lime. Yes, there it is green in the branches; and I'm moved by an impulse--the impulse of Spring is in my feet; india-rubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I would see London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, to stop--pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs--to call a hansom, and to notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement's Danes. The quality of the green is exquisite on the smoke-black wall. London can be seen better on Sundays than on week-days; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, celebrated for licentious literature. The blue and white sky shows above a seventeenth-century gable, and a few moments after we are in Drury Lane. The fine weather has enticed the population out of grim courts and alleys; skipping-ropes are whirling everywhere. The children hardly escape being run over. Coster girls sit wrapped in shawls, contentedly, like rabbits at the edge of a burrow; the men smoke their pipes in sullen groups, their eyes on the closed doors of the public house. At the corner of the great theatre a vendor of cheap ices is rapidly absorbing the few spare pennies of the neighbourhood. The hansom turns out of the lane into the great thoroughfare, a bright glow like the sunset fills the roadway, and upon it a triangular block of masonry and St. Giles's church rise, the spire aloft in the faint blue and delicate air. Spires are so beautiful that we would fain believe that they will outlast creeds; religion or no religion we must have spires, and in town and country--spires showing between trees and rising out of the city purlieus.
The spring tide is rising; the almond trees are in bloom, that one growing in an area spreads its Japanese decoration fan-like upon the wall. The hedges in the time-worn streets of Fitzroy Square light up--how the green runs along? The spring is more winsome here than in the country. One must be in London to see the spring. One can see the spring from afar dancing in St. John's wood, haze and sun playing together like a lad and a lass. The sweet air, how tempting! How exciting! It melts on the lips in fond kisses, instilling a delicate gluttony of life. It would be pleasant in these gardens walking through shadowy alleys, lit here and there by a ray, to see girls walking hand in hand, catching at branches, as girls do when dreaming of lovers. But alas! the gardens are empty; only some daffodils! But how beautiful is the curve of the flower when seen in profile, and still more beautiful is the starry yellow when the flower is seen full face. That antique flower carries my mind back--not to Greek times, for the daffodil has lost something of its ancient loveliness; it is more reminiscent of a Wedgwood than of a Greek vase. My nonsense thoughts amuse me; I follow my thoughts as a child follows butterflies; and all this ecstasy in and about me, is the joy of health--my health and the health of the world. This April day has set brain and blood on fire. Now it would be well to ponder by this old canal! It looks as if it had fallen into disuse, and that is charming; an abandoned canal is a perfect symbol of--well, I do not know of what. A river flows or rushes, even an artificial lake harbours waterfowl, children sail their boats upon it; but a canal does nothing.
Here comes a boat! The canal has not been abandoned. Ah! that boat has interrupted my dreams, and I feel quite wretched. I had hoped that the last had passed twenty years ago. Here it comes with its lean horse, the rope tightening and stretching, a great black mass with ripples at the prow and a figure bearing against the rudder. A canal reminds me of my childhood; every child likes a canal. A canal recalls the first wonder. We all remember the wonder with which we watched the first barge, the wonder which the smoke coming out of the funnel excited. When my father asked me why I'd like to go to Dublin better by canal than by railroad, I couldn't tell him. Nor could I tell any one to-day why I love a canal. One never loses one's fondness for canals. The boats glide like the days, and the toiling horse is a symbol! how he strains, sticking his toes into the path!
There are visits to pay. Three hours pass--of course women, always women. But at six I am free, and I resume my meditations in declining light as the cab rolls through the old brick streets that crowd round Golden Square; streets whose names you meet in old novels; streets full of studios where Hayden, Fuseli, and others of the rank historical tribe talked art with a big A, drank their despair away, and died wondering why the world did not recognise their genius. Children are scrambling round a neglected archway, striving to reach to a lantern of old time. The smell of these dry faded streets is peculiar to London; there is something of the odour of the original marsh in the smell of these streets; it rises through the pavement and mingles with the smoke. Fancy follows fancy, image succeeds image; till all is but a seeming, and mystery envelops everything. That white Arch seems to speak to me out of the twilight. I would fain believe it has its secret to reveal. London wraps herself in mists; blue scarfs are falling--trailing. London has a secret! Let me peer into her veiled face and read. I have only to fix my thoughts to decipher--what? I know not. Something ... perhaps. But I cannot control my thoughts. I am absorbed in turn by the beauty of the Marble Arch and the perspective of the Bayswater Road, fading like an apparition amid the romance of great trees.
As I turn away, for the wind thrills and obliges me to walk rapidly, I think how fortunate I am to experience these emotions in Hyde Park, whereas my fellows have to go to Switzerland and to climb up Mont Blanc, to feel half what I am feeling now, as I stand looking across the level park watching the sunset, a dusky one. The last red bar of light fades, and nothing remains but the grey park with the blue of the suburb behind it, flowing away full of mist and people, dim and mournful to the pallid lights of Kensington; and its crowds are like strips of black tape scattered here and there. By the railings the tape has been wound into a black ball, and, no doubt, the peg on which it is wound is some preacher promising human nature deliverance from evil if it will forego the spring time. But the spring time continues, despite the preacher, over yonder, under branches swelling with leaf and noisy with sparrows; the spring is there amid the boys and girls, boys dressed in ill-fitting suits of broadcloth, daffodils in their buttonholes; girls hardly less coarse, creatures made for work, escaped for a while from the thraldom of the kitchen, now doing the business of the world better than the preacher; poor servants of sacred Spring. A woman in a close-fitting green cloth dress passes me to meet a young man; a rich fur hangs from her shoulders; and they go towards Park Lane, towards the wilful little houses with low balconies and pendent flower-baskets swinging in the areas. Circumspect little gardens! There is one, Greek as an eighteenth-century engraving, and the woman in the close-fitting green cloth dress, rich fur hanging from her shoulders, almost hiding the pleasant waist, enters one of these. She is Park Lane. Park Lane supper parties and divorce are written in her eyes and manner. The old beau, walking swiftly lest he should catch cold, his moustache clearly dyed, his waist certainly pinched by a belt, he, too, is Park Lane. And those two young men, talking joyously--admirable specimens of Anglo-Saxons, slender feet, varnished boots, health and abundant youth--they, too, are characteristic of Park Lane.
Park Lane dips in a narrow and old-fashioned way as it enters Piccadilly. Piccadilly has not yet grown vulgar, only a little modern, a little out of keeping with the beauty of the Green Park, of that beautiful dell, about whose mounds I should like to see a comedy of the Restoration acted.
I used to stand here, at this very spot, twenty years ago, to watch
the moonlight between the trees, and the shadows of the trees floating
over that beautiful dell; I used to think of Wycherly's comedy, "Love
in St. James's Park," and I think of it still. In those days the
Argyle Rooms, Kate Hamilton's in Panton Street, and the Café de la
Régence were the fashion. But Paris drew me from these, towards other
pleasures, towards the Nouvelle Athènes and the Elysée Montmartre; and
when I returned to London after an absence of ten years I found a new
London, a less English London. Paris draws me still, and I shall be
there in three weeks, when the chestnuts are in bloom.
CHAPTER II
FLOWERING NORMANDY
On my arrival in Paris, though the hour was that stupid hour of seven in the morning, while I walked up the grey platform, my head was filled with memories of the sea, for all the way across it had seemed like a beautiful blue plain without beginning or end, a plain on which the ship threw a little circle of light, moving always like life itself, with darkness before and after. I remembered how we steamed into the long winding harbour in the dusk, half an hour before we were due--at daybreak. Against the green sky, along the cliff's edge, a line of broken paling zigzagged; one star shone in the dawning sky, one reflection wavered in the tranquil harbour. There was no sound except the splashing of paddle-wheels, and not wind enough to take the fishing boats out to sea; the boats rolled in the tide, their sails only half-filled. From the deck of the steamer we watched the strange crews, wild-looking men and boys, leaning over the bulwarks; and I remembered how I had sought for the town amid the shadow, but nowhere could I discover trace of it; yet I knew it was there, smothered in the dusk, under the green sky, its streets leading to the cathedral, the end of every one crossed by flying buttresses, and the round roof disappearing amid the chimney-stacks. A curious, pathetic town, full of nuns and pigeons and old gables and strange dormer windows, and courtyards where French nobles once assembled--fish will be sold there in a few hours. Once I spent a summer in Dieppe. And during the hour we had to wait for the train, during the hour that we watched the green sky widening between masses of shrouding cloud, I thought of ten years ago. The town emerged very slowly, and only a few roofs were visible when the fisher girl clanked down the quays with a clumsy movement of the hips, and we were called upon to take our seats in the train. We moved along the quays, into the suburbs, and then into a quiet garden country of little fields and brooks and hillsides breaking into cliffs. The fields and the hills were still shadowless and grey, and even the orchards in bloom seemed sad. But what shall I say of their beauty when the first faint lights appeared, when the first rose clouds appeared above the hills? Orchard succeeded orchard, and the farmhouses were all asleep. There is no such journey in the world as the journey from Dieppe to Paris on a fine May morning. Never shall I forget the first glimpse of Rouen Cathedral in the diamond air, the branching river, and the tall ships anchored in the deep current. I was dreaming of the cathedral when we had left Rouen far behind us, and when I awoke from my dream we were in the midst of a flat green country, the river winding about islands and through fields in which stood solitary poplar-trees, formerly haunts of Corot and Daubigny. I could see the spots where they had set their easels--that slight rise with the solitary poplar for Corot, that rich river bank and shady backwater for Daubigny. Soon after I saw the first weir, and then the first hay-boat; and at every moment the river grew more serene, more gracious, it passed its arms about a flat, green-wooded island, on which there was a rookery; and sometimes we saw it ahead of us, looping up the verdant landscape as if it were a gown, running through it like a white silk ribbon, and over there the green gown disappearing in fine muslin vapours, drawn about the low horizon.
I did not weary of this landscape, and was sorry when the first villa appeared. Another and then another showed between the chestnut-trees in bloom; and there were often blue vases on the steps and sometimes lanterns in metalwork hung from wooden balconies. The shutters were not yet open, those heavy French shutters that we all know so well, and that give the French houses such a look of comfort, of ease, of long tradition. Suddenly the aspect of a street struck me as a place I had known, and I said, "Is it possible that we are passing through Asnières?" The name flitted past, and I was glad I had recognised Asnières, for at the end of that very long road is the restaurant where we used to dine, and between it and the bridge is the bal where we used to dance. It was there I saw the beautiful Blanche D'Antigny surrounded by her admirers. It was there she used to sit by the side of the composer of the musical follies which she sang--in those days I thought she sang enchantingly. Those were the days of L'Oeil, Crevé, and Chilpéric. She once passed under the chestnut-trees of that dusty little bal de banlieue with me by her side, proud of being with her. She has gone and Julia Baron has gone; Hortense has outlived them all. She must be very old, eighty-five at least. It would be wonderful to hear her sing "Mon cher amant, je te jure" in the quavering voice of eighty-five; it would be wonderful to hear her sing it because she doesn't know how wonderful she is; the old light of love requires an interpreter, and she has had many; many great poets have voiced her woe and decadence.
Not five minutes from that bal was the little house in which Hervé lived, and to which he used to invite us to supper; and where, after supper, he used to play to us the last music he had composed. We listened, but the public would listen to it no longer. Sedan had taken all the tinkle out of it, and the poor compositeur toqué never caught the public ear again. We listened to his chirpy scores, believing that they would revive that old nervous fever which was the Empire when Hortense used to dance, when Hortense took the Empire for a spring-board, when Paris cried out, "Cascade ma fille, Hortense, cascade." The great Hortense Schneider, the great goddess of folly, used to come down there to sing the songs which were intended to revive her triumphs. She was growing old then, her days were over, and Hervé's day was over. Vainly did he pile parody upon parody; vainly did he seize the conductor's bâton; the days of their glory had gone. Now Asnières itself is forgotten; the modern youth has chosen another suburb to disport himself in; the ballroom has been pulled down, and never again will an orchestra play a note of these poor scores; even their names are unknown. A few bars of a chorus of pages came back to me, remembered only by me, all are gone, like Hortense and Blanche and Julia.
But after all I am in Paris. Almost the same Paris; almost the same
George Moore, my senses awake as before to all enjoyment, my soul as
enwrapped as ever in the divine sensation of life. Once my youth moved
through thy whiteness, O City, and its dreams lay down to dreams in
the freedom of thy fields! Years come and years go, but every year I
see city and plain in the happy exaltation of Spring, and departing
before the cuckoo, while the blossom is still bright on the bough, it
has come to me to think that Paris and May are one.
CHAPTER III
A WAITRESS
Feeling that he would never see Scotland again, Stevenson wrote in a preface to "Catriona":--"I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But however vacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will be remembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forget the "laughter and the tears" and the "sudden freshet," and a simpler phrase will form itself in our memories. The emotion that Stevenson had to express transpires only in the words, "romance of destiny, ultimate islands." Who does not feel his destiny to be a romance, and who does not admire the ultimate island whither his destiny will cast him? Giacomo Cenci, whom the Pope ordered to be flayed alive, no doubt admired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, a raised plank, so that the executioner might conveniently roll up the skin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating a tambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am sure it admired in some remote way the romance of destiny that had taken it from the woodland and cast it upon its ultimate island--in this case a barrow. But neither of these strange examples of the romance of destiny seems to me more wonderful than the destiny of a wistful Irish girl whom I saw serving drinks to students in a certain ultimate café in the Latin Quarter; she, too, no doubt, admired the destiny which had cast her out, ordaining that she should die amid tobacco smoke, serving drinks to students, entertaining them with whatever conversation they desired.
Gervex, Mademoiselle D'Avary, and I had gone to this café after the theatre for half an hour's distraction; I had thought that the place seemed too rough for Mademoiselle D'Avary, but Gervex had said that we should find a quiet corner, and we had happened to choose one in charge of a thin, delicate girl, a girl touched with languor, weakness, and a grace which interested and moved me; her cheeks were thin, and the deep grey eyes were wistful as a drawing of Rossetti; her waving brown hair fell over the temples, and was looped up low over the neck after the Rossetti fashion. I had noticed how the two women looked at each other, one woman healthful and rich, the other poor and ailing; I had guessed the thought that passed across their minds. Each had doubtless asked and wondered why life had come to them so differently. But first I must tell who was Mademoiselle D'Avary, and how I came to know her. I had gone to Tortoni, a once-celebrated cafe at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, the dining place of Rossini. When Rossini had earned an income of two thousand pounds a year it is recorded that he said: "Now I've done with music, it has served its turn, and I'm going to dine every day at Tortoni's." Even in my time Tortoni was the rendezvous of the world of art and letters; every one was there at five o'clock, and to Tortoni I went the day I arrived in Paris. To be seen there would make known the fact that I was in Paris. Tortoni was a sort of publication. At Tortoni I had discovered a young man, one of my oldest friends, a painter of talent--he had a picture in the Luxembourg--and a man who was beloved by women. Gervex, for it was he, had seized me by the hand, and with voluble eagerness had told me that I was the person he was seeking: he had heard of my coming and had sought me in every cafe from the Madeleine to Tortoni. He had been seeking me because he wished to ask me to dinner to meet Mademoiselle D'Avary; we were to fetch her in the Rue des Capucines. I write the name of the street, not because it matters to my little story in what street she lived, but because the name is an evocation. Those who like Paris like to hear the names of the streets, and the long staircase turning closely up the painted walls, the brown painted doors on the landings, and the bell rope, are evocative of Parisian life; and Mademoiselle D'Avary is herself an evocation, for she was an actress of the Palais Royal. My friend, too, is an evocation, he was one of those whose pride is not to spend money upon women, whose theory of life is that "If she likes to come round to the studio when one's work is done, nous pouvons faire la fête ensemble." But however defensible this view of life may be, and there is much to be said for it, I had thought that he might have refrained from saying when I looked round the drawing-room admiring it--a drawing-room furnished with sixteenth-century bronzes, Dresden figures, étagères covered with silver ornaments, three drawings by Boucher--Boucher in three periods, a French Boucher, a Flemish Boucher, and an Italian Boucher--that I must not think that any of these things were presents from him, and from saying when she came into the room that the bracelet on her arm was not from him. It had seemed to me in slightly bad taste that he should remind her that he made no presents, for his remark had clouded her joyousness; I could see that she was not so happy at the thought of going out to dine with him as she had been.
It was chez Foyoz that we dined, an old-fashioned restaurant still free from the new taste that likes walls painted white and gold, electric lamps and fiddlers. After dinner we had gone to see a play next door at the Odéon, a play in which shepherds spoke to each other about singing brooks, and stabbed each other for false women, a play diversified with vintages, processions, wains, and songs. Nevertheless it had not interested us. And during the entr'actes Gervex had paid visits in various parts of the house, leaving Mademoiselle D'Avary to make herself agreeable to me. I dearly love to walk by the perambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers. After the play he had said, "Allons boire un bock," and we had turned into a students' café, a café furnished with tapestries and oak tables, and old-time jugs and Medicis gowns, a café in which a student occasionally caught up a tall bock in his teeth, emptied it at a gulp, and after turning head over heels, walked out without having smiled. Mademoiselle D'Avary's beauty and fashion had drawn the wild eyes of all the students gathered there. She wore a flower-enwoven dress, and from under the large hat her hair showed dark as night; and her southern skin filled with rich tints, yellow and dark green where the hair grew scanty on the neck; the shoulders drooped into opulent suggestion in the lace bodice. And it was interesting to compare her ripe beauty with the pale deciduous beauty of the waitress. Mademoiselle D'Avary sat, her fan wide-spread across her bosom, her lips parted, the small teeth showing between the red lips. The waitress sat, her thin arms leaning on the table, joining very prettily in the conversation, betraying only in one glance that she knew that she was only a failure and Mademoiselle D'Avary a success. It was some time before the ear caught the slight accent; an accent that was difficult to trace to any country. Once I heard a southern intonation, and then a northern; finally I heard an unmistakable English intonation, and said:
"But you're English."
"I'm Irish. I'm from Dublin."
And thinking of a girl reared in its Dublin conventions, but whom the romance of destiny had cast upon this ultimate café, I asked her how she had found her way here; and she told me she had left Dublin when she was sixteen; she had come to Paris six years ago to take a situation as nursery governess. She used to go with the children into the Luxembourg Gardens and talk to them in English. One day a student had sat on the bench beside her. The rest of the story is easily guessed. But he had no money to keep her, and she had to come to this café to earn her living.
"It doesn't suit me, but what am I to do? One must live, and the tobacco smoke makes me cough." I sat looking at her, and she must have guessed what was passing in my mind, for she told me that one lung was gone; and we spoke of health, of the South, and she said that the doctor had advised her to go away south.
Seeing that Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary were engaged in conversation, I leaned forward and devoted all my attention to this wistful Irish girl, so interesting in her phthisis, in her red Medicis gown, her thin arms showing in the long rucked sleeves. I had to offer her drink; to do so was the custom of the place. She said that drink harmed her, but she would get into trouble if she refused drink; perhaps I would not mind paying for a piece of beef-steak instead. She had been ordered raw steak! I have only to close my eyes to see her going over to the corner of the cafe and cutting a piece and putting it away. She said she would eat it before going to bed, and that would be two hours hence, about three. While talking to her I thought of a cottage in the South amid olive and orange trees, an open window full of fragrant air, and this girl sitting by it.
"I should like to take you south and attend upon you."
"I'm afraid you would grow weary of nursing me. And I should be able to give you very little in return for your care. The doctor says I'm not to love any one." We must have talked for some time, for it was like waking out of a dream when Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary got up to go, and, seeing how interested I was, he laughed, saying to Mademoiselle D'Avary that it would be kind to leave me with my new friend. His pleasantry jarred, and though I should like to have remained, I followed them into the street, where the moon was shining over the Luxembourg Gardens. And as I have said before, I dearly love to walk by a perambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers: but it is sad to find oneself alone on the pavement at midnight. Instead of going back to the café I wandered on, thinking of the girl I had seen, and of her certain death, for she could not live many months in that café. We all want to think at midnight, under the moon, when the city looks like a black Italian engraving, and poems come to us as we watch a swirling river. Not only the idea of a poem came to me that night, but on the Pont Neuf the words began to sing together, and I jotted down the first lines before going to bed. Next morning I continued my poem, and all day was passed in this little composition.
We are alone! Listen, a little while,
And hear the reason why your weary smile
And lute-toned speaking are so very sweet,
And how my love of you is more complete
Than any love of any lover. They
Have only been attracted by the grey
Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim
And delicate form, or some such other whim,
The simple pretexts of all lovers;--I
For other reason. Listen whilst I try
To say. I joy to see the sunset slope
Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope,
Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm
Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm,
In mildly modulated phrases; thus
Your life shall fade like a voluptuous
Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die
Like some soft evening's sad serenity....
I would possess your dying hours; indeed
My love is worthy of the gift, I plead
For them. Although I never loved as yet,
Methinks that I might love you; I would get
From out the knowledge that the time was brief,
That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief,
And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm
Beyond all other loves, for now the arm
Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims
You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames
Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet
To see you fading like a violet,
Or some sweet thought, would be a very strange
And costly pleasure, far beyond the range
Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I
Will chose a country spot where fields of rye
And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains,
Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes,
To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where
The porch and windows are festooned with fair
Green leaves of eglantine, and look upon
A shady garden where we'll walk alone
In the autumn summer evenings; each will see
Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree,
The garden's length, is far, and you will rest
From time to time, leaning upon my breast
Your languid lily face, then later still
Unto the sofa by the window-sill
Your wasted body I shall carry, so
That you may drink the last left lingering glow
Of evening, when the air is filled with scent
Of blossoms; and my spirits shall be rent
The while with many griefs. Like some blue day
That grows more lovely as it fades away,
Gaining that calm serenity and height
Of colour wanted, as the solemn night
Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep
For ever and for ever; I shall weep
A day and night large tears upon your face,
Laying you then beneath a rose-red place
Where I may muse and dedicate and dream
Volumes of poesy of you; and deem
It happiness to know that you are far
From any base desires as that fair star
Set in the evening magnitude of heaven.
Death takes but little, yea, your death has given
Me that deep peace and immaculate possession
Which man may never find in earthly passion.
Good poetry of course not, but good verse, well turned every line except the penultimate. The elision is not a happy one, and the mere suppression of the "and" does not produce a satisfying line.
Death takes but little, Death I thank for giving
Me a remembrance, and a pure possession
Of unrequited love.
And mumbling the last lines of the poem, I hastened to the café near the Luxembourg Gardens, wondering if I should find courage to ask the girl to come away to the South and live, fearing that I should not, fearing it was the idea rather than the deed that tempted me; for the soul of a poet is not the soul of Florence Nightingale. I was sorry for this wistful Irish girl, and was hastening to her, I knew not why; not to show her the poem--the very thought was intolerable. Often did I stop on the way to ask myself why I was going, and on what errand. Without discovering an answer in my heart I hastened on, feeling, I suppose, in some blind way that my quest was in my own heart. I would know if it were capable of making a sacrifice; and sitting down at one of her tables I waited, but she did not come, and I asked the student by me if he knew the girl generally in charge of these tables. He said he did, and told me about her case. There was no hope for her; only a transfusion of blood could save her; she was almost bloodless. He described how blood could be taken from the arm of a healthy man and passed into the veins of the almost bloodless. But as he spoke things began to get dim and his voice to grow faint; I heard some one saying, "You're very pale," and he ordered some brandy for me. The South could not save her; practically nothing could; and I returned home thinking of her.
Twenty years have passed, and I am thinking of her again. Poor little
Irish girl! Cast out in the end by a sudden freshet on an ultimate
café. Poor little heap of bones! And I bow my head and admire the
romance of destiny which ordained that I, who only saw her once,
should be the last to remember her. Perhaps I should have forgotten
her had it not been that I wrote a poem, a poem which I now inscribe
and dedicate to her nameless memory.
CHAPTER IV
THE END OF MARIE PELLEGRIN
Octave Barrès liked his friends to come to his studio, and a few of us who believed in his talent used to drop in during the afternoon, and little by little I got to know every picture, every sketch; but one never knows everything that a painter has done, and one day, coming into the studio, I caught sight of a full-length portrait I had never seen before on the easel.
"It was in the back room turned to the wall," he said. "I took it out, thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decoration might buy it," and he turned away, not liking to hear my praise of it; for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised nor abused. "I painted it before I knew how to paint," and standing before me, his palette in his hand, he expounded his new aestheticism: that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century all painting had been done first in monochrome and then glazed, and what we know as solid painting had been invented by Greuze. One day in the Louvre he had perceived something in Delacroix, something not wholly satisfactory; this something had set him thinking. It was Rubens, however, who had revealed the secret! It was Rubens who had taught him how to paint! He admitted that there was danger in retracing one's steps, in beginning one's education over again; but what help was there for it, since painting was not taught in the schools.
I had heard all he had to say before, and could not change my belief that every man must live in the ideas of his time, be they good or bad. It is easy to say that we must only adopt Rubens's method and jealously guard against any infringement on our personality; but in art our personality is determined by the methods we employ, and Octave's portrait interested me more than the Pegasus decoration, or the three pink Venuses holding a basket of flowers above their heads. The portrait was crude and violent, but so was the man that had painted it; he had painted it when he was a disciple of Manet's, and the methods of Manet were in agreement with my friend's temperament. We are all impressionists to-day; we are eager to note down what we feel and see; and the carefully prepared rhetorical manner of Rubens was as incompatible with Octave's temperament as the manner of John Milton is with mine. There was a thought of Goya in the background, in the contrast between the grey and the black, and there was something of Manet's simplifications in the face, but these echoes were faint, nor did they matter, for they were of our time. In looking at his model he had seen and felt something; he had noted this harshly, crudely, but he noted it; and to do this, is after all the main thing. His sitter had inspired him. The word "inspired" offended him; I withdrew it; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and he admitted that: to see that thin, olive-complexioned girl with fine delicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head like feathers--she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing--compelled one to paint; and after admiring the face I admired the black silk dress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with black lace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls upon her neck.
I was interested in the quality of the painting, so different from Octave's present painting, but I was more interested in the woman herself. The picture revealed to me something in human nature that I had never seen before, something that I had never thought of. The soul in this picture was so intense that I forgot the painting, and began to think of her. She was unlike any one I had ever met in Octave Barrès's studio; a studio beloved of women; the women one met there seemed to be of all sorts, but in truth they were all of a sort. They began to arrive about four o'clock in the afternoon, and they stayed on until they were sent away. He allowed them to play the piano and sing to him; he allowed them, as he would phrase it, to grouiller about the place, and they talked of the painters they had sat to, of their gowns, and they showed us their shoes and their garters. He heeded them hardly at all, walking to and fro thinking of his painting, of his archaic painting. I often wondered if his appearance counted for anything in his renunciation of modern methods, and certainly his appearance was a link of association; he did not look like a modern man, but like a sixteenth-century baron; his beard and his broken nose and his hierarchial air contributed to the resemblance; the jersey he wore reminded one of a cuirass, a coat of mail. Even in his choice of a dwelling-place he seemed instinctively to avoid the modern; he had found a studio in the street, the name of which no one had ever heard before; it was found with difficulty; and the studio, too, it was hidden behind great crumbling walls, in the middle of a plot of ground in which some one was growing cabbages. Octave was always, as he would phrase it, dans une dèche épouvantable, but he managed to keep a thoroughbred horse in the stable at the end of the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon as the light failed. He would say, "Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette, mais mon cheval m'attend." And the women liked to see him mount, and many thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he rode away.
But who was this refined girl? this--a painting tells things that cannot be translated into words--this olive-skinned girl who might have sat to Raphael for a Virgin, so different from Octave's usual women? They were of the Montmartre kin; but this woman might be a Spanish princess. And remembering that Octave had said he had taken out the portrait hoping that the Russian who had ordered the Pegasus might buy it, the thought struck me that she might be the prince's mistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might her history be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seemingly endless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he was saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his present manner, "for there are good things in the picture," I said, "and the model--you seem to have been lucky with your model."
"Yes, she was nice to paint from, but it was difficult to get her to sit. A concierge's daughter--you wouldn't think it, would you?" My astonishment amused him, and he began to laugh. "You don't know her?" he said. "That is Marie Pellegrin," and when I asked him where he had met her he told me, at Alphonsine's; but I did not know where Alphonsine's was.
"I'm going to dine there to-night. I'm going to meet her; she's going back to Russia with the prince; she has been staying in the Quartier Bréda on her holiday. Sacré nom! Half-past five, and I haven't washed my brushes yet!"
In answer to my question, what he meant by going to the Quartier Bréda for a holiday, he said:
"I'll tell you all about that in the carriage."
But no sooner had we got into the carriage than he remembered that he must leave word for a woman who had promised to sit to him, and swearing that a message would not delay us for more than a few minutes he directed the coachman. We were shown into a drawing-room, and the lady ran out of her bedroom, wrapping herself as she ran in a peignoir, and the sitting was discussed in the middle of a polished parquet floor. We at last returned to the carriage, but we were hardly seated when he remembered another appointment. He scribbled notes in the lodges of the concierges, and between whiles told me all he knew of the story of Marie Pellegrin. This delicate woman that I had felt could not be of the Montmartre kin was the daughter of a concierge on the Boulevard Extérieur. She had run away from home at fifteen, had danced at the Elysée Montmartre.
Sa jupe avait des trous,
Elle aimait des voyous,
Ils ont des yeux si doux.
But one day a Russian prince had caught sight of her, and had built her a palace in the Champs Elysées; but the Russian prince and his palace bored her.
The stopping of the carriage interrupted Octave's narrative. "Here we are," he said, seizing a bell hanging on a jangling wire, and the green door in the crumbling wall opened, and I saw an undersized woman--I saw Alphonsine! And her portrait, a life-sized caricature drawn by Octave, faced me from the white-washed wall of the hen-coop. He had drawn her two cats purring about her legs, and had written under it, "Ils viennent après le mou." Her garden was a gravelled space; I think there was one tree in it. A tent had been stretched from wall to wall; and a seedy-looking waiter laid the tables (there were two), placing bottles of wine in front of each knife and fork, and bread in long sticks at regular intervals. He was constantly disturbed by the ringing of the bell, and had to run to the door to admit the company. Here and there I recognised faces that I had already seen in the studio; Clementine, who last year was studying the part of Elsa and this year was singing, "La femme de feu, la cui, la cui, la cuisinière," in a café chantant; and Margaret Byron, who had just retreated from Russia--a disastrous campaign hers was said to have been. The greater number were hors concours, for Alphonsine's was to the aged courtesan what Chelsea Hospital is to the aged soldier. It was a sort of human garden full of the sound and colour of October.
I scrutinised the crowd. How could any one of these women interest the woman whose portrait I had seen in Barrès's studio? That one, for instance, whom I saw every morning in the Rue des Martyres, in a greasy peignoir, going marketing, a basket on her arm. Search as I would I could not find a friend for Marie among the women nor a lover among the men--neither of those two stout middle-aged men with large whiskers, who had probably once been stockbrokers, nor the withered journalist whom I heard speaking to Octave about a duel he had fought recently; nor the little sandy Scotchman whose French was not understood by the women and whose English was nearly unintelligible to me; nor the man who looked like a head-waiter--Alphonsine's lover; he had been a waiter, and he told you with the air of Napoleon describing Waterloo that he had "created" a certain fashionable café on the Boulevard. I could not attribute any one of these men to Marie; and Octave spoke of her with indifference; she had interested him to paint, and now he hoped she would get the Russian to buy her picture.
"But she's not here," I said.
"She'll be here presently," Octave answered, and he went on talking to Clementine, a fair pretty woman whom one saw every night at the Rat Mort. It was when the soup-plates were being taken away that I saw a young woman dressed in black coming across the garden.
It was she, Marie Pellegrin.
She wore a dress similar to the one she wore in her portrait, a black silk covered with lace, and her black hair was swathed about her shapely little head. She was her portrait and something more. Her smile was her own, a sad little smile that seemed to come out of a depth of her being, and her voice was a little musical voice, irresponsible as a bird's, and during dinner I noticed how she broke into speech abruptly as a bird breaks into song, and she stopped as abruptly. I never saw a woman so like herself, and sometimes her beauty brought a little mist into my eyes, and I lost sight of her or very nearly, and I went on eating mechanically. Dinner seemed to end suddenly, and before I knew that it was over we were getting up from table.
As we went towards the house where coffee was being served, Marie asked me if I played cards, but I excused myself, saying that I would prefer to sit and look at her; and just then a thin woman with red hair, who had arrived at the same time as Marie and who had sat next her at dinner, was introduced to me, and I was told that she was Marie's intimate friend, and that the two lived together whenever Marie returned to Montmartre. She was known as La Glue, her real name was Victorine, she had sat for Manet's picture of Olympe, but that was years ago. The face was thinner, but I recognised the red hair and the brown eyes, small eyes set closely, reminding one of des petits verres de cognac. Her sketch-book was being passed round, and as it came into my hands I noticed that she did not wear stays and was dressed in old grey woollen. She lit cigarette after cigarette, and leaned over Marie with her arm about her shoulder, advising her what cards to play. The game was baccarat, and in a little while I saw that Marie was losing a great deal of money, and a little later I saw La Glue trying to persuade her away from the card-table.
"One more deal." That deal lost her the last louis she had placed on the table. "Some one will have to pay my cab," she said.
We were going to the Elysée Montmartre, and Alphonsine lent her a couple of louis, pour passer sa soirée, and we all went away in carriages, the little horses straining up the steep streets; the plumes of the women's hats floating over the carriage hoods. Marie was in one of the front carriages, and was waiting for us on the high steps leading from the street to the bal.
"It's my last night," she said, "the last night I shall see the Elysée for many a month."
"You'll soon be back again?"
"You see, I have been offered five hundred thousand francs to go to Russia for three years. Fancy three years without seeing the Elysée," and she looked round as an angel might look upon Paradise out of which she is about to be driven. "The trees are beautiful," she said, "they're like a fairy tale," and that is exactly what they were like, rising into the summer darkness, unnaturally green above the electric lights. In the middle of a circle of white globes the orchestra played upon an estrade, and everyone whirled his partner as if she were a top. "I always sit over there under the trees in the angle," she said; and she was about to invite me to come and sit with her when her attention was distracted from me; for the people had drawn together into groups, and I heard everybody whispering: "That's Marie Pellegrin." Seeing her coming, her waiter with much ostentation began to draw aside tables and chairs, and in a few minutes she was sitting under her tree, she and La Glue together, their friends about them, Marie distributing absinthe, brandy, and cigarettes. A little procession suddenly formed under the trees and came towards her, and Marie was presented with a great basket of flowers, and all her company with bouquets; and a little cheer went up from different parts of the bal, "Vive Marie Pellegrin, la reine de l'Elysée."
The music began again, the people rushed to see a quadrille where two women, with ease, were kicking off men's hats; and while watching them I heard that a special display of fireworks had been arranged in Marie's honour, the news having got about that this was her last night at the Elysée. A swishing sound was heard; the rocket rose to its height high up in the thick sky. Then it dipped over, the star fell a little way and burst: it melted into turquoise blue, and changed to ruby red, beautiful as the colour of flowers, roses or tulips. The falling fire changed again and again. And Marie stood on a chair and watched till the last sparks vanished.
"Doesn't she look like my picture now?" said Octave.
"You seemed to have divined her soul."
He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "I'm not a psychologist; I am a painter. But I must get a word with her," and with a carelessness that was almost insolence, he pushed his way into the crowd and called her, saying he wanted to speak to her; and they walked round the bal together. I could not understand his indifference to her charm, and asked myself if he had always been so indifferent. In a little while they returned.
"I'll do my best," I heard her say; and she ran back to join her companions.
"I suppose you've seen enough of the Elysée?"
"Ah! qu'elle est jolie ce soir; et elle ferait joliment marcher le Russe."
We walked on in silence. Octave did not notice that he had said anything to jar my feelings; he was thinking of his portrait, and presently he said that he was sorry she was going to Russia. "I should like to begin another portrait, now that I have learned to paint."
"Do you think she'll go to Russia?"
"Yes, she'll go there; but she'll come back one of these days, and I'll get her to sit again. It is extraordinary how little is known of the art of painting; the art is forgotten. The old masters did perfectly in two days what we spend weeks fumbling at. In two days Rubens finished his grisaille, and the glazing was done with certainty, with skill, with ease in half an hour! He could get more depth of colour with a glaze than any one can to-day, however much paint is put on the canvas. The old masters had method; now there's none. One brush as well as another, rub the paint up or down, it doesn't matter so long as the canvas is covered. Manet began it, and Cézanne has--well, filed the petition: painting is bankrupt."
I listened to him a little wearily, for I had heard all he was saying many times before; but Octave always talked as he wanted to talk, and this evening he wanted to talk of painting, not of Marie, and I was glad when we came to the spot where our ways parted.
"You know that the Russian is coming to the studio to-morrow; I hope he'll buy the portrait."
"I hope he will," I said. "I'd buy it myself if I could afford it."
"I'd prefer you to have something I have done since, unless it be the woman you're after ... but one minute. You're coming to sit to me the day after to-morrow?"
"Yes," I said, "I'll come."
"And then I'll be able to tell you if he has bought the picture."
Three days afterwards I asked Octave on the threshold if the Russian had bought the portrait, and he told me nothing had been definitely settled yet.
Marie had gone to St. Petersburg with the prince, and this was the last news I had of her for many months. But a week rarely passed without something happening to remind me of her. One day a books of travels in Siberia opened at a passage telling how a boy belonging to a tribe of Asiatic savages had been taken from his deserts, where he had been found deserted and dying, and brought to Moscow. The gentleman who had found him adopted and educated him, and the reclaimed savage became in time a fashionable young man about town, betraying no trace of his origin until one day he happened to meet one of his tribe. The man had come to Moscow to sell skins; and the smell of the skins awoke a longing for the desert. The reclaimed savage grew melancholy; his adopted father tried in vain to overcome the original instinct; presents of money did not soothe his homesickness. He disappeared, and was not heard of for years until one day a caravan came back with the news of a man among the savages who had betrayed himself by speaking French. On being questioned, he denied any knowledge of French; he said he had never been to St. Petersburg, nor did he wish to go there. And what was this story but the story of Marie Pellegrin, who, when weary of Russian princes and palaces, returned for her holiday to the Quartier Bréda? A few days afterwards I heard in Barrès's studio that she had escaped from Russia; and that evening I went to Alphonsine's to dinner, hoping to see her there. But she was not there. There was no one there except Clementine and the two stockbrokers; and I waited eagerly for news of her. I did not like to mention her name, and the dreary dinner was nearly over before her name was mentioned. I heard that she was ill; no, not dying, but very ill. Alphonsine gave me her address; a little higher up on the same side as the Cirque Fernando, nearly facing the Elysée Montmartre. The number I could inquire out, she said, and I went away in a cab up the steep and stony Rue des Martyres, noticing the café and then the brasserie and a little higher up the fruit-seller and the photographer. When the mind is at stress one notices the casual, and mine was at stress, and too agitated to think. The first house we stopped at happened to be the right one, and the concierge said, "The fourth floor." As I went upstairs I thought of La Glue, of her untidy dress and her red hair, and it was she who answered the bell and asked me into an unfurnished drawing-room, and we stood by the chimneypiece.
"She's talking of going to the Elysée to-night. Won't you come in? She'd like to see you. There are three or four of us here. You know them. Clementine, Margaret Byron?" And she mentioned some other names that I did not remember, and opening a door she cried: "Marie, here's a visitor for you, a gentleman from Alphonsine's. You know, dear, the Englishman, Octave Barrès's friend."
She gave me her hand, and I held it a long while.
"Comme les Anglais sont gentils. Dès qu'on est malade--"
I don't think Marie finished the sentence, if she did I did not hear her; but I remember quite well that she spoke of my distaste for cards.
"You didn't play that night at Alphonsine's when I lost all my money. You preferred to look at Victorine's drawings. She has done some better ones. Go and look at them, and let's finish our game. Then I'll talk to you. So you heard about me at Alphonsine's? They say I'm very ill, don't they? But now that I've come back I'll soon get well. I'm always well at Montmartre, amn't I, Victorine?" "Nous ne sommes pas installés encore," Marie said, referring to the scarcity of furniture, and to the clock and candelabra which stood on the floor. But if there were too few chairs, there was a good deal of money and jewellery among the bed-clothes; and Marie toyed with this jewellery during the games. She wore large lace sleeves, and the thin arms showed delicate and slight when she raised them to change her ear-rings. Her small beauty, fashioned like an ivory, contrasted with the coarse features about her, and the little nose with beautifully shaped nostrils, above all the mouth fading at the ends into faint indecisions. Every now and then a tenderness came over her face; Octave had seen the essential in her, whatever he might say; he had painted herself--her soul; and Marie's soul rose up like a water-flower in her eyes, and then the soul sank out of sight, and I saw another Marie, une grue, playing cards with five others from Alphonsine's, losing her money and her health. A bottle of absinthe stood on a beautiful Empire table that her prince had given her, and Bijou, Clementine's little dog, slept on an embroidered cushion. Bijou was one of those dear little Japanese or Chinese spaniels, those dogs that are like the King Charles. She was going to have puppies, and I was stroking her silky coat thinking of her coming trouble, when I suddenly heard Clementine's voice raised above the others, and looking up I saw a great animation in her face; I heard that the cards had not been fairly dealt, and then the women threw their cards aside, and La Glue told Clementine that she was not wanted, that elle ferait bien de débarrasser les planches, that was the expression she used. I heard further accusations, and among them the plaintive voice of Marie begging of me not to believe what they said. The women caught each other by the hair, and tore at each other's faces, and Marie raised herself up in bed and implored them to cease; and then she fell back crying. For a moment it seemed as if they were going to sit down to cards again, but suddenly everybody snatched her own money and then everybody snatched at the money within her reach; and, calling each other thieves, they struggled through the door, and I heard them quarrelling all the way down the staircase. Bijou jumped from her chair and followed her mistress.
"Help me to look," Marie said; and looking I saw her faint hands seeking through the bed-clothes. Some jewellery was missing, a bracelet and some pearls, as well as all her money. Marie fell back among the pillows unable to speak, and every moment I dreaded a flow of blood. She began to cry, and the little lace handkerchief was soon soaking. I had to find her another. The money that had been taken had been paid her by a fournisseur in the Quartier, who had given her two thousand francs for her garniture de cheminée. A few francs were found among the bed-clothes, and these few francs, she said, were sufficient pour passer sa soirée, and she begged me to go the dressmaker to inquire for the gown that had been promised for ten o'clock.
"I shall be at the Elysée by eleven. Au revoir, au revoir! Let me rest a little now. I shall see you to-night. You know where I always sit, in the left-hand corner; they always keep those seats for me."
Her eyes closed, I could see that she was already asleep, and her calm and reasonable sleep reminded me of her agitated and unreasonable life; and I stood looking at her, at this poor butterfly who was lying here all alone, robbed by her friends and associates. But she slept contentedly, having found a few francs that they had overlooked amid the bedclothes, enough to enable her to pass her evening at the Elysée! The prince might be written to; but he, no doubt, was weary of her inability to lead a respectable life, and knew, no doubt, that if he were to send her money, it would go as his last gift had gone. If she lived, Marie would one day be selling fried potatoes on the streets. And this decadence--was it her fault? Octave would say: "Qu'est ce que cela peut nous faire, une fille plus ou moins fichue ... si je pouvais réussir un peu dans ce sacré métier!" This was how he talked, but he thought more profoundly in his painting; his picture of her was something more than mere sarcasm.
She was going to the Elysée to-night. It was just six o'clock, so she wanted her dress by ten. I must hasten away to the dressmaker at once; it might be wiser not--she lay in bed peaceful and beautiful; at the Elysée she would be drinking absinthe and smoking cigarettes until three in the morning. But I had promised: she wouldn't forgive me if I didn't, and I went.
The dressmaker said that Madame Pellegrin would have her dress by nine, and at half-past ten I was at the Elysée waiting for her.
How many times did I walk round the gravel path, wearying of the unnatural green of the chestnut leaves and of the high kicking in the quadrilles? Now and then there would be a rush of people, and then the human tide would disperse again under the trees among the zinc chairs and tables, for the enjoyment of bocks and cigars. I noticed that Marie's friends spent their evening in the left-hand corner; but they did not call me to drink with them, knowing well that I knew the money they were spending was stolen money.
I left the place discontented and weary, glad in a way that Marie had not come. No doubt the dressmaker had disappointed her, or maybe she had felt too ill. There was no time to go to inquire in the morning, for I was breakfasting with Octave, and in the afternoon sitting to him.
We were in the middle of the sitting, he had just sketched in my head, when we heard footsteps on the stairs.
"Only some women," he said; "I've a mind not to open the door."
"But do," I said, feeling sure the women were Marie's friends bringing news of her. And it was so. She had been found dead on her balcony dressed in the gown that had just come home from the dressmaker.
I hoped that Octave would not try to pass the matter off with some ribald jest, and I was surprised at his gravity. "Even Octave," I said, "refrains, on ne blague pas la mort."
"But what was she doing on the balcony?" he asked. "What I don't understand is the balcony."
We all stood looking at her picture, trying to read the face.
"I suppose she went out to look at the fireworks; they begin about eleven."
It was one of the women who had spoken, and her remark seemed to
explain the picture.
CHAPTER V
LA BUTTE
To-morrow I shall drive to breakfast, seeing Paris continuously unfolding, prospect after prospect, green swards, white buildings, villas engarlanded; to-day I drive to breakfast through the white torridities of Rue Blanche. The back of the coachman grows drowsier, and would have rounded off into sleep long ago had it not been for the great paving stones that swing the vehicle from side to side, and we have to climb the Rue Lepic, and the poor little fainting animal will never be able to draw me to the Butte. So I dismiss my carriage, half out of pity, half out of a wish to study the Rue Lepic, so typical is it of the upper lower classes. In the Rue Blanche there are portes-cochères, but in Rue Lepic there are narrow doors, partially grated, open on narrow passages at the end of which, squeezed between the wall and the stairs, are small rooms where concierges sit, eternally en camisole, amid vegetables and sewing. The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellow walls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavy middle-aged woman, en camisole, passing between the cooking stove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the men sitting at their trades in the windows. The smell of leather follows me for several steps; a few doors farther a girl sits trimming a bonnet, her mother beside her. The girl looks up, pale with the exhausting heat. At the corner of the next street there is the marchand de vins, and opposite the dirty little charbonnier, and standing about a little hole which he calls his boutique a group of women in discoloured peignoirs and heavy carpet slippers. They have baskets on their arms. Everywhere traces of meagre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretch common in our London streets--the man with bare feet, the furtive and frightened creature, gnawing a crust and drawing a black, tattered shirt about his consumptive chest.
The asphalt is melting, the reverberation of the stones intolerable, my feet ache and burn. At the top of the street I enter a still poorer neighbourhood, a still steeper street, but so narrow that the shadow has already begun to draw out on the pavements. At the top of the street is a stairway, and above the stairway a grassy knoll, and above the knoll a windmill lifts its black and motionless arms. For the mill is now a mute ornament, a sign for the Bal du Moulin de la Galette.
As I ascend the street grows whiter, and at the Butte it is empty of everything except the white rays of noon. There are some dusty streets, and silhouetting against the dim sky a dilapidated façade of some broken pillars. Some stand in the midst of ruined gardens, circled by high walls crumbling and white, and looking through a broken gateway I see a fountain splashing, but nowhere the inhabitants that correspond to these houses--only a workwoman, a grisette, a child crying in the dust. The Butte Montmartre is full of suggestion; grand folk must at some time have lived there. Could it be that this place was once country? To-day it is full of romantic idleness and abandonment.
On my left an iron gateway, swinging on rusty hinges, leads on to a large terrace, at the end of which is a row of houses. It is in one of these houses that my friend lives, and as I pull the bell I think that the pleasure of seeing him is worth the ascent, and my thoughts float back over the long time I have known Paul. We have known each other always, since we began to write. But Paul is not at home. The servant comes to the door with a baby in her arms, another baby! and tells me that Monsieur et Madame are gone out for the day. No breakfast, no smoke, no talk about literature, only a long walk back--cabs are not found at these heights--a long walk back through the roasting sun. And it is no consolation to be told that I should have written and warned them I was coming.
But I must rest, and ask leave to do so, and the servant brings me in some claret and a siphon. The study is better to sit in than the front room, for in the front room, although the shutters are closed, the white rays pierce through the chinks, and lie like sword-blades along the floor. The study is pleasant and the wine refreshing. The house seems built on the sheer hillside. Fifty feet--more than that--a hundred feet under me there are gardens, gardens caught somehow in the hollow of the hill, and planted with trees, tall trees, for swings hang out of them, otherwise I should not know they were tall. From this window they look like shrubs, and beyond the houses that surround these gardens Paris spreads out over the plain, an endless tide of bricks and stone, splashed with white when the sun shines on some railway station or great boulevard: a dim reddish mass, like a gigantic brickfield, and far away a line of hills, and above the plain a sky as pale and faint as the blue ash of a cigarette.
I can never look upon this city without strong emotion; it has been all my life to me. I came here in my youth, I relinquished myself to Paris, never extending once my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Ville d'Avray, Fontainebleau--and Paris has made me. How much of my mind do I owe to Paris? And by thus acquiring a fatherland more ideal than the one birth had arrogantly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I have doubled my span of life. Do I not exist in two countries? Have I not furnished myself with two sets of thoughts and sensations? Ah! the delicate delight of owning un pays ami--a country where you may go when you are weary to madness of the routine of life, sure of finding there all the sensations of home, plus those of irresponsible caprice. The pleasure of a literature that is yours without being wholly your own, a literature that is like an exquisite mistress, in whom you find consolation for all the commonplaces of life! The comparison is perfect, for although I know these French folk better than all else in the world, they must ever remain my pleasure, and not my work in life. It is strange that this should be so, for in truth I know them strangely well. I can see them living their lives from hour to hour; I know what they would say on any given occasion.
There is Paul. I understand nothing more completely than that man's mind. I know its habitual colour and every varying shade, and yet I may not make him the hero of a novel when I lay the scene in Montmartre, though I know it so well. I know when he dresses, how long he takes to dress, and what he wears. I know the breakfast he eats, and the streets down which he passes--their shape, their colour, their smell. I know exactly how life has come to him, how it has affected him. The day I met him in London! Paul in London! He was there to meet une petite fermière with whom he had become infatuated when he went to Normandy to finish his novel. Paul is foncièrement bon; he married her, and this is their abode. There is the salle-à-manger, furnished with a nice sideboard in oak, and six chairs to match; on the left is their bedroom, and there is the baby's cot, a present from le grand, le cher et illustre maître.
Paul and Mrs. Paul get up at twelve, and they loiter over breakfast; some friends come in and they loiter over les petits verres. About four Paul begins to write his article, which he finishes or nearly finishes before dinner. They loiter over dinner until it is time for Paul to take his article to the newspaper. He loiters in the printing office or the cafe until his proof is ready, and when that is corrected he loiters in the many cafés of the Faubourg Montmartre, smoking interminable cigars, finding his way back to the Butte between three and four in the morning. Paul is fat and of an equable temperament. He believes in naturalism all the day, particularly after a breakfast over les petits verres. He never said an unkind word to any one, and I am sure never thought one. He used to be fond of grisettes, but since he married he has thought of no one but his wife. Il écrit des choses raides, but no woman ever had a better husband. And now you know him as well as I do. Here are his own books, "The End of Lucie Pellegrin," the story that I have just finished writing: I think I must explain how it was that I have come to rewrite one of Paul's stories, the best he ever wrote. I remember asking him why he called her Lucie, and he was surprised to hear her name was Marie; he never knew her, he had never been to Alphonsine's, and he had told the story as he had picked it up from the women who turned into the Rat Mort at midnight for a soupe à l'oignon. He said it was a pity he did not know me when he was writing it, for I could have told him her story more sympathetically than the women in the Rat Mort, supplying him with many pretty details that they had never noticed or had forgotten. It would have been easy for me to have done this, for Marie Pellegrin is enshrined in my memory like a miniature in a case. I press a spring, and I see the beautifully shaped little head, the pale olive face, the dark eyes, and the blue-black hair. Marie Pellegrin is really part of my own story, so why should I have any scruple about telling it? Merely because my friend had written it from hearsay? Whereas I knew her; I saw her on her death-bed. Chance made me her natural historian. Now I think that every one will accept my excuses, and will acquit me of plagiarism.
I see the Rougon-Macquart series, each volume presented to him by the author, Goncourt, Huysmans, Duranty, Céard, Maupassant, Hennique, etc.; in a word, the works of those with whom I grew up, those who tied my first literary pinafore round my neck. But here are "Les Moralités Legendaires" by Jules Laforgue, and "Les Illuminations" by Rambaud. Paul has not read these books; they were sent to him, I suppose, for review, and put away on the bookcase, all uncut; their authors do not visit here.
And this sets me thinking that one knows very little of any generation except one's own. True that I know a little more of the symbolists than Paul. I am the youngest of the naturalists, the eldest of the symbolists. The naturalists affected the art of painting, the symbolists the art of music; and since the symbolists there has been no artistic manifestation--the game is played out. When Huysmans and Paul and myself are dead, it will be as impossible to write a naturalistic novel as to revive the megatherium. Where is Hennique? When Monet is dead it will be as impossible to paint an impressionistic picture as to revive the ichthyosaurus. A little world of ideas goes by every five-and-twenty years, and the next that emerges will be incomprehensible to me, as incomprehensible as Monet was to Corot.... Was the young generation knocking at the door of the Opéra Comique last night? If the music was the young generation, I am sorry for it. It was the second time I had gone. I had been to hear the music, and I left exasperated after the third act. A friend was with me and he left, but for different reasons; he suffered in his ears; it was my intelligence that suffered. Why did the flute play the chromatic scale when the boy said, "Il faut que cela soit un grand navire," and why were all the cellos in motion when the girl answered, "Cela ou bien tout autre chose?" I suffered because of the divorce of the orchestra and singers, uniting perhaps at the end of the scene. It was speaking through music, no more, monotonous as the Sahara, league after league, and I lost amid sands. A chord is heard in "Lohengrin" to sustain Elsa's voice, and it performs its purpose; a motive is heard to attract attention to a certain part of the story, and it fills its purpose, when Ortrud shrieks out the motive of the secret, and in its simplest form, at the church door, the method may be criticised as crude, but the crudest melodrama is better than this desert wandering. While I ponder on the music of the younger generation, remembering the perplexity it had caused me, I hear a vagrant singing on the other side of the terrace:
and I say: "I hear the truth in the mouth of the vagrant minstrel, one who possibly has no trou wherein to lay his head." Et moi aussi, je reste dans mon trou, et mon trou est assez beau pour que j'y reste, car mon trou est--Richard Wagner. My trou is the Ring--the Sacrosanct Ring. Again I fall to musing. The intention of Liszt and Wagner and Strauss was to write music. However long Wotan might ponder on Mother Earth the moment comes when the violins begin to sing; ah! how the spring uncloses in the orchestra, and the lovers fly to the woods!...
The vagrant continued his wail, and forgetful of Paul, forgetful of all things but the philosophy of the minstrel of the Butte, I picked my way down the tortuous streets repeating: