(1834-1896)
eorge Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was born in Paris on March 6th, 1834, and his early life was passed there. His father was a Frenchman, who had married an Englishwoman in Paris. The Du Mauriers came of an old family in Brittany, Du Maurier's grandfather having been a small rentier, who derived his living from glass-works. During Du Maurier's childhood his parents removed to Belgium and thence to London. At seventeen years of age he tried for a degree at the Sorbonne in Paris, but was not successful; and he was put, much against his will, to study chemistry under Dr. Williamson at University College, London. Du Maurier's father, whose characteristics are described in 'Peter Ibbetson,' was an amateur of science. It has been hinted by the son that certain unlucky experiments, which were the result of the elder Du Maurier's fancy for the natural sciences, considerably impaired the family fortunes. The father had bent his heart on the son's being a man of science, but the son's tastes were all for art. He did therefore little good in his chemical studies.
George du Maurier
Du Maurier's father died in 1856, and he then devoted himself definitely to art. He worked at the British Museum, and made considerable progress there. He next went to Paris, and lived the life which he has described in 'Trilby.' In 1857 he attended the Academy at Antwerp, and studied under De Kaiser and Van Lerius. His severe studies at Antwerp had the result that his sight was seriously impaired, and he lost the use of his left eye. After two years of enforced idleness he went to London to seek his fortune. An old acquaintance of his student life in Paris introduced him to Charles Reade, who in turn introduced him to Mark Lemon, the editor of Punch. Through these acquaintances he obtained employment in drawing for Once a Week, Punch, and the Cornhill Magazine. On the death of Leech in 1864 he was regularly attached to the staff of Punch, and till the time of his death continued to work for that periodical with ever-increasing success. It is not too much to say that for many years Punch was chiefly and mainly Du Maurier. He early marked out for himself an entirely new path, which was not in the direction of caricature or broad comedy; grace, sentiment, and wit, rather than fun, were the characteristics of his work. He confined himself almost entirely to society, so that his field was a narrower one than that of some of his coadjutors. He had not, for instance, the masculine breadth of Leech, who represented with great strength and humor the chief characters of English life,—the parson, the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, etc.
Du Maurier was almost entirely a carpet knight. He drew London society, and a certain phase of London society. The particular society which he represented is of very recent existence. Thirty years ago there was but one society in London. This was simply the ancient aristocratic society of England, which gathered in London in the season. It is true that there was an artistic society in London at that time, but it was quite apart and of little general recognition or influence. But since then there has come up in London a society made up chiefly of artists, professional people, and successful merchants (having moreover its points of contact with the old society), which is very strong and influential. It is this which Du Maurier knew, and which he represented. Even here, however, the types he has selected for description were very special. But they were presented with so much grace and charm that the public never tired of them. To his type of woman he was especially faithful: the tall woman with long throat and well-defined chin, much resembling the figures of Burne-Jones and Rossetti, only somewhat more mundane. We have the same woman in the heroine of 'Trilby.'
Though Du Maurier, before beginning 'Peter Ibbetson,' had never written a book, he had had considerable literary experience, for he is said to have spent as much time upon the construction of the dialogues which accompanied his pictures as upon the pictures themselves. The story of 'Peter Ibbetson' he had often related to his friends, who had urged him to write it down. This he finally did,—at the special instance, it is said, of Henry James. It appeared in Harper's Magazine in 1891. 'Trilby' was published in 1894 in Harper's Magazine, and at once attained a great popular success. The publishers estimate that about 250,000 copies of the book have been sold. Du Maurier had sold the book outright for £2,000, but when it became apparent that the work was to be a success, the publishers admitted the author to a royalty, paying at one time $40,000. They also shared with him the large sums paid for the dramatization of the work. For 'The Martian,' his last novel, he received £10,000 outright. This also was published in Harper's Magazine.
It is perhaps too early to pass judgment upon the merits of these works. They have, no doubt, grave faults. The story of 'Peter Ibbetson' has been completed when it is but two-thirds told. The remaining portion of the book is a dream. This is of course a dangerous reversal of the usual method of the story-teller, which is to make dreams seem like facts. The hypnotic part of 'Trilby' is said by the professional authorities on the subject to be bad science. The hypnotism in 'Trilby' was perhaps a journalist's idea, that subject being much talked of at the time the book was written. Du Maurier, it need hardly be said, was by training a journalist, although the training had been of the pencil rather than of the pen. The literary style of the novels is curious. It makes no pretensions to finish; the grammar even is sometimes at fault. But on the other hand, it has decided merits. It is particularly easy, flowing, and simple. These are not the qualities we should have expected from the nature of Du Maurier's literary training. The brief dialogues which he has for so many years appended to his sketches in 'Punch' would have educated, we should have thought, the qualities of brevity and point rather than those of ease and fullness. Certain peculiarities of the style cannot be defended, but the author produces his effects in spite of such solecisms. This is true of the matter of his stories as well as of the style. They are at many points inartistically constructed; but the stuff is good, and the works therefore hold their own in spite of these drawbacks. They certainly have one virtue, which is most necessary to the success of any work of the imagination: they have reality. We believe as we read, and continue to believe after we have ceased reading, that the Major and Mimsey and Taffy and Trilby are real persons. They are real to us because they have in the first case been real to their creator. It is possible, however, that the pictures which accompany the text may increase the strength of the illusion.
No book, in recent years at any rate, has had so instantaneous and prodigious a popular success as 'Trilby.' Popularity is always hard to explain with any certainty. It seems to be a quality in the warp and woof of the mind of the man that has it. One condition appears to be that he shall be in sympathy with the minds of the mass of his fellow-beings. There was such a sympathy in Du Maurier's case; and to be more particular, his kindly and friendly enthusiasm was a quality to commend him to men. He had a power of enjoying beauty in his fellow-beings. Then he had had a long education in the qualities that make popularity. He had long studied the art of pleasing. It is not improbable that in these novels, which were intended for the American public, he may have played upon certain of our national susceptibilities. We in this country like to have our literature taken seriously by the European. It may be that Du Maurier may have had an inkling of this, for it is curious to note how much of our poetry appears in these novels. Du Maurier had a very nice taste in poetry, a genuine enthusiasm for it which it is heartily to be wished were shared by all college professors of English literature. Thus, he could not have chosen better lines than those which Peter Ibbetson was in the habit of reciting to Mimsey, 'The Water-fowl' of Bryant,—perhaps the most perfect poem ever produced in this country,—a poem so "beautifully carried," as Matthew Arnold once described it to the present writer. Poe's beautiful and musical lines, written by him at fourteen,—'Helen, thy beauty is to me,'—are also made use of. We have a good deal of Longfellow and other American writers. 'Ben Bolt' is of course an American song. These appeals to our national predilections may have influenced us. But the interest and curiosity of our practical and hard-working American public in the Bohemian art life of the Latin Quarter was also, no doubt, a chief cause of the popularity of 'Trilby.'
Du Maurier did not live long to enjoy his success. He had always been known to his friends as a sensitive man, this quality being ascribed to ill health. Ill health was no doubt a chief cause of the vexation with which he received certain comments upon his books, in some cases inspired by envy of his success. Many of his recent contributions to Punch have been at the expense of the unsuccessful author, and have supported the thesis that ill success was not an indubitable proof of genius. When Lord Wolseley asked him what would be the title of his next novel, he said 'Soured by Success.' He died in London on October 8th, 1896.
AT THE HEART OF BOHEMIA
From 'Trilby' Copyright 1894, by Harper & Brothers
And then—well, I happen to forget what sort of a day this particular day turned into, about six of the clock.
If it was decently fine, the most of them went off to dine at the Restaurant de la Couronne, kept by the Père Trin, in the Rue de Monsieur, who gave you of his best to eat and drink for twenty sols Parisis, or one franc in the coin of the empire. Good distending soups, omelets that were only too savory, lentils, red and white beans, meat so dressed and sauced and seasoned that you didn't know whether it was beef or mutton, flesh, fowl, or good red herring,—or even bad, for that matter,—nor very greatly care.
And just the same lettuce, radishes, and cheese of Gruyère or Brie as you got at the Trois Frères Provençaux (but not the same butter!). And to wash it all down, generous wine in wooden "brocs," that stained a lovely aesthetic blue everything it was spilled over.
And you hobnobbed with models, male and female, students of law and medicine, painters and sculptors, workmen and blanchisseuses and grisettes, and found them very good company, and most improving to your French, if your French was of the usual British kind, and even to some of your manners, if these were very British indeed. And the evening was innocently wound up with billiards, cards, or dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg opposite; or at the Théâtre du Luxembourg, in the Rue de Madame, to see funny farces with screamingly droll Englishmen in them; or still better, at the Jardin Bullier (la Closerie des Lilas), to see the students dance the cancan, or try and dance it yourself, which is not so easy as it seems; or best of all, at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, to see Fechter and Madame Doche in the 'Dame aux Camélias.'
Or if it were not only fine, but a Saturday afternoon into the bargain, the Laird would put on a necktie and a few other necessary things, and the three friends would walk arm-in-arm to Taffy's hotel in the Rue de Seine, and wait outside till he had made himself as presentable as the Laird, which did not take very long. And then (Little Billee was always presentable) they would, arm-in-arm, the huge Taffy in the middle, descend the Rue de Seine and cross a bridge to the Cité, and have a look in at the Morgue. Then back again to the quays on the Rive Gauche by the Pont Neuf, to wend their way westward; now on one side to look at the print and picture shops and the magasins of bric-à-brac, and haply sometimes buy thereof, now on the other to finger and cheapen the second-hand books for sale on the parapet, and even pick one or two utterly unwanted bargains, never to be read or opened again.
When they reached the Pont des Arts they would cross it, stopping in the middle to look up the river towards the old Cité and Notre Dame, eastward, and dream unutterable things and try to utter them. Then turning westward, they would gaze at the glowing sky and all it glowed upon—the corner of the Tuileries and the Louvre, the many bridges, the Chamber of Deputies, the golden river narrowing its perspective and broadening its bed, as it went flowing and winding on its way between Passy and Grenelle to St. Cloud, to Rouen, to the Havre, to England perhaps—where they didn't want to be just then; and they would try and express themselves to the effect that life was uncommonly well worth living in that particular city at that particular time of the day and year and century, at that particular epoch of their own mortal and uncertain lives.
Then, still arm-in-arm and chatting gayly, across the court-yard of the Louvre, through gilded gates well guarded by reckless imperial Zouaves, up the arcaded Rue de Rivoli as far as the Rue Castiglione, where they would stare with greedy eyes at the window of the great corner pastry-cook, and marvel at the beautiful assortment of bonbons, pralines, dragées, marrons glacés—saccharine, crystalline substances of all kinds and colors, as charming to look at as an illumination; precious stones, delicately frosted sweets, pearls and diamonds so arranged as to melt in the mouth; especially, at this particular time of the year, the monstrous Easter eggs of enchanting hue, enshrined like costly jewels in caskets of satin and gold; and the Laird, who was well read in his English classics and liked to show it, would opine that "they managed these things better in France."
Then across the street by a great gate into the Allée des Feuillants, and up to the Place de la Concorde—to gaze, but quite without base envy, at the smart people coming back from the Bois de Boulogne. For even in Paris "carriage people" have a way of looking bored, of taking their pleasure sadly, of having nothing to say to each other, as though the vibration of so many wheels all rolling home the same way every afternoon had hypnotized them into silence, idiocy, and melancholia.
And our three musketeers of the brush would speculate on the vanity of wealth and rank and fashion; on the satiety that follows in the wake of self-indulgence and overtakes it; on the weariness of the pleasures that become a toil—as if they knew all about it, had found it all out for themselves, and nobody else had ever found it out before!
Then they found out something else—namely, that the sting of healthy appetite was becoming intolerable; so they would betake themselves to an English eating-house in the Rue de la Madeleine (on the left-hand side near the top), where they would renovate their strength and their patriotism on British beef and beer, and household bread, and bracing, biting, stinging yellow mustard, and horseradish, and noble apple-pie, and Cheshire cheese; and get through as much of these in an hour or so as they could for talking, talking, talking; such happy talk! as full of sanguine hope and enthusiasm, of cocksure commendation or condemnation of all painters, dead or alive, of modest but firm belief in themselves and each other, as a Paris Easter egg is full of sweets and pleasantness (for the young).
And then a stroll on the crowded, well-lighted boulevards, and a bock at the café there, at a little three-legged marble table right out on the genial asphalt pavement, still talking nineteen to the dozen.
Then home by dark old silent streets and some deserted bridge to their beloved Latin Quarter, the Morgue gleaming cold and still and fatal in the pale lamplight, and Notre Dame pricking up its watchful twin towers, which have looked down for so many centuries on so many happy, sanguine, expansive youths walking arm-in-arm by twos and threes, and forever talking, talking, talking....
The Laird and Little Billee would see Taffy safe to the door of his hôtel garni in the Rue de Seine, where they would find much to say to each other before they said good-night—so much that Taffy and Little Billee would see the Laird safe to his door, in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. And then a discussion would arise between Taffy and the Laird on the immortality of the soul, let us say, or the exact meaning of the word "gentleman," or the relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray, or some such recondite and quite unhackneyed theme, and Taffy and the Laird would escort Little Billee to his door, in the Place de l'Odéon, and he would re-escort them both back again, and so on till any hour you please.
Or again, if it rained, and Paris through the studio window loomed lead-colored, with its shiny slate roofs under skies that were ashen and sober, and the wild west wind made woeful music among the chimney-pots, and little gray waves ran up the river the wrong way, and the Morgue looked chill and dark and wet, and almost uninviting (even to three healthy-minded young Britons), they would resolve to dine and spend a happy evening at home.
Little Billee, taking with him three francs (or even four), would dive into back streets and buy a yard or so of crusty new bread, well burned on the flat side, a fillet of beef, a litre of wine, potatoes and onions, butter, a little cylindrical cheese called "bondon de Neufchâtel," tender curly lettuce, with chervil, parsley, spring onions, and other fine herbs, and a pod of garlic, which would be rubbed on a crust of bread to flavor things with.
Taffy would lay the cloth English-wise, and also make the salad, for which, like everybody else I ever met, he had a special receipt of his own (putting in the oil first and the vinegar after); and indeed, his salads were quite as good as everybody else's.
The Laird, bending over the stove, would cook the onions and beef into a savory Scotch mess so cunningly that you could not taste the beef for the onions—nor always the onions for the garlic!
And they would dine far better than at le Père Trin's, far better than at the English Restaurant in the Rue de la Madeleine—better than anywhere else on earth!
And after dinner, what coffee, roasted and ground on the spot, what pipes and cigarettes of "caporal," by the light of the three shaded lamps, while the rain beat against the big north window, and the wind went howling round the quaint old medieval tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres (the old street of the bad lepers), and the damp logs hissed and crackled in the stove!
What jolly talk into the small hours! Thackeray and Dickens again, and Tennyson and Byron (who was "not dead yet" in those days); and Titian and Velasquez, and young Millais and Holman Hunt (just out); and Monsieur Ingres and Monsieur Delacroix, and Balzac and Stendhal and George Sand; and the good Dumas! and Edgar Allan Poe; and the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome....
Good, honest, innocent, artless prattle—not of the wisest, perhaps, nor redolent of the very highest culture (which by the way can mar as well as make), nor leading to any very practical result; but quite pathetically sweet from the sincerity and fervor of its convictions, a profound belief in their importance, and a proud trust in their lifelong immutability.
Oh happy days and happy nights, sacred to art and friendship! oh happy times of careless impecuniosity, and youth and hope and health and strength and freedom—with all Paris for a playground, and its dear old unregenerate Latin Quarter for a workshop and a home!
CHRISTMAS IN THE LATIN QUARTER
From 'Trilby.' Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers
Christmas was drawing near.
There were days when the whole Quartier Latin would veil its iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames Valley between London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the studio window the prospect was a dreary blank. No Morgue! no towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots over the way—not even the little mediæval toy turret at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee's delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep red, before one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a bladder; one had to box or fence at nine in the morning, that one might recover from the cold bath and get warm for the rest of the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and bland; and when they talked, it was generally about Christmas at home in merry England and the distant land of cakes, and how good it was to be there at such a time—hunting, shooting, curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted to start by the very next train.
They didn't do anything so foolish. They wrote over to friends in London for the biggest turkey, the biggest plum-pudding, that could be got for love or money, with mince-pies, and holly and mistletoe, and sturdy, short, thick English sausages, half a Stilton cheese, and a sirloin of beef—two sirloins, in case one should not be enough.
For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on Christmas Day—Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee—and invite all the delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and that is just why I tried to describe them—Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose, l'Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend Angèle Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as could be trusted with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if that was not enough, they would also cook themselves and wait upon each other.
When dinner should be over, supper was to follow, with scarcely any interval to speak of; and to partake of this, other guests should be bidden—Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one or two more. No ladies!
For as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language of a gillie he had once met at a servants' dance in a Highland country-house, "Them wimmen spiles the ball!"
Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing and ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all their fancy (Little Billee had no time).
Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great cost from M. E. Delevigne's, in the Rue St. Honoré, and liqueurs of every description—chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and anisette; no expense was spared.
Also truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de Tours, pâtés de foie gras, "fromage d'Italie" (which has nothing to do with cheese), saucissons d'Arles et de Lyon, with and without garlic, cold jellies, peppery and salt—everything that French charcutiers and their wives can make out of French pigs, or any other animal whatever, beast, bird, or fowl (even cats and rats), for the supper; and sweet jellies and cakes, and sweetmeats, and confections of all kinds, from the famous pastry-cook at the corner of the Rue Castiglione.
Mouths went watering all day long in joyful anticipation. They water somewhat sadly now at the mere remembrance of these delicious things—the mere immediate sight or scent of which in these degenerate latter days would no longer avail to promote any such delectable secretion. Hélas! ahimè! ach weh! ay de mi! eheu! [Greek: oimot]—in point of fact, alas!
That is the very exclamation I wanted.
Christmas eve came round. The pieces of resistance and plum-pudding and mince-pies had not yet arrived from London—but there was plenty of time.
Les trois Angliches dined at le Père Trin's, as usual, and played billiards and dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg, and possessed their souls in patience till it was time to go and hear the midnight mass at the Madeleine, where Roucouly, the great baritone of the Opéra Comique, was retained to sing Adam's famous Noël.
The whole Quarter seemed alive with the réveillon. It was a clear frosty night, with a splendid moon just past the full, and most exhilarating was the walk along the quays on the Rive Gauche, over the Pont de la Concorde and across the Place thereof, and up the thronged Rue de la Madeleine to the massive Parthenaic place of worship that always has such a pagan, worldly look of smug and prosperous modernity.
They struggled manfully, and found standing and kneeling room among that fervent crowd, and heard the impressive service with mixed feelings, as became true Britons of very advanced liberal and religious opinions; not with the unmixed contempt of the proper British Orthodox (who were there in full force, one may be sure).
But their susceptible hearts soon melted at the beautiful music, and in mere sensuous attendrissement they were quickly in unison with all the rest.
For as the clock struck twelve, out pealed the organ, and up rose the finest voice in France:
"Minuit, Chrétiens! c'est l'heure solennelle
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous!"
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of his little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love—love of his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of all that is and ever was and ever will be—a very large order indeed, even for Little Billee.
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love to one figure especially beloved beyond all the rest—one figure erect on high, with arms outstretched to him, in more than common fellowship of need: not the sorrowful Figure crowned with thorns, for it was in the likeness of a woman; but never that of the Virgin Mother of our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif, all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth. Trilby, weak and mortal like himself, and in woeful want of pardon! and in her gray dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would or could.
"Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur!"
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big deep metallic baritone bass—above the organ, above the incense, above everything else in the world—till the very universe seemed to shake with the rolling thunder of that great message of love and forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify and exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound, and the singing human voice had especially strange power to penetrate into his inmost depths—even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest there is, can give worthy utterance to such a message as that,—the epitome, the abstract, the very essence of all collective humanity's wisdom at its best!
"DREAMING TRUE"
From 'Peter Ibbetson.' Copyright 1891, by Harper & Brothers
As I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within my reach: I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment. There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy, well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the gold and silver fish; and there with an aching heart I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some means of possessing the past more fully and completely than we do. Life is not worth living for many of us, if a want so desperate and yet so natural can never be satisfied. Memory is but a poor rudimentary thing that we had better be without, if it can only lead us to the verge of consummation like this, and madden us with a desire it cannot slake. The touch of a vanished hand, the sound of a voice that is still, the tender grace of a day that is dead, should be ours forever at our beck and call, by some exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my beloved ones again in another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly remembered forms in this, just as they once were, by some trick of my own brain! To see them with the eye, and hear them with the ear, and tread with them the old obliterated ways as in a waking dream! It would be well worth going mad, to become such a self-conjurer as that.
I got back to my hotel in the Rue de la Michodière.
Prostrate with emotion and fatigue, the tarantella still jingling in my ears, and that haunting, beloved face, with its ineffable smile, still printed on the retina of my closed eyes, I fell asleep.
And then I dreamed a dream, and the first phase of my real, inner life began!
All the events of the day, distorted and exaggerated and jumbled together after the usual manner of dreams, wove themselves into a kind of nightmare and oppression. I was on my way to my old abode; everything that I met or saw was grotesque and impossible, yet had now the strange, vague charm of association and reminiscence, now the distressing sense of change and desolation.
As I got near to the avenue gate, instead of the school on my left there was a prison; and at the door a little thick-set jailer, three feet high and much deformed, and a little deformed jaileress no bigger than himself, were cunningly watching me out of the corners of their eyes, and toothlessly smiling. Presently they began to waltz together to an old familiar tune, with their enormous keys dangling at their sides; and they looked so funny that I laughed and applauded. But soon I perceived that their crooked faces were not really funny; indeed, they were fatal and terrible in the extreme, and I was soon conscious that these deadly dwarfs were trying to waltz between me and the avenue gate for which I was bound—to cut me off, that they might run me into the prison, where it was their custom to hang people of a Monday morning.
In an agony of terror I made a rush for the avenue gate, and there stood the Duchess of Towers, with mild surprise in her eyes and a kind smile—a heavenly vision of strength and reality.
"You are not dreaming true!" she said. "Don't be afraid—those little people don't exist! Give me your hand and come in here."
And as I did so she waved the troglodytes away, and they vanished; and I felt that this was no longer a dream, but something else—some strange thing that had happened to me, some new life that I had woke up to.
For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity—just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested in what is going on; only with perceptions far keener and more alert.
I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room on the fourth floor of an hôtel garni in the Rue de la Michodière. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body too, just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty, my shirt collar damp with the heat, for it was hot. With my disengaged hand I felt in my trousers pocket; there were my London latch-key, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the breast pocket of my coat, and in its tail pockets my gloves and pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morning. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven. I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was awake; and I was, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her, now at my old school.
The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo! in its place was M. Saindou's maison d'éducation, just as it had been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays. Here it was anew, after fifteen years.
The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily.
A crowd was looking on—le Père et la Mère François, Madame Liard the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier.
A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well, and had forgotten.
The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trousers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified manner—as it seemed—to heaven in a golden chariot. It was beautiful to see and hear.
I was still holding the duchess's hand, and felt the warmth of it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic current. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a spirit other than mine—a most powerful and beneficent spirit. There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self, after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kindness had found it out.
"Now you're dreaming true," she said. "Where are those boys going?"
"To church, to make their première communion," I replied.
"That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you by the hand. Do you know that tune?"
I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the past, and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her eyes screwed up deliciously.
"Quite right—quite!" she exclaimed. "How odd that you should know them! How well you pronounce French for an Englishman! For you are Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect?"
I assented, and she let go my hand.
The street was full of people—familiar forms and faces and voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the yellow omnibus; old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old forgotten French ways of speech—all as it was long ago. Nobody noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.
The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel in the Rue de la Michodière? Could it be that the Duchess of Towers was dead too—had been killed by some accident on her way from St. Cloud to Paris? and that, both having died, so near each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly fashion?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life—and also, alas! that it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every movement of her body, every detail of her dress,—more so than I could have been in actual life,—and said to myself, "Whatever this is, it is no dream." But I felt there was about me the unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right, and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I had lost my stay—the touch of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson?"
"I am afraid not quite," I replied.
"You must try by yourself a little—try hard. Look at this house; what is written on the portico?"
I saw written in gold letters the words "Tête Noire," and said so.
She rippled with laughter, and said, "No, try again;" and just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.
I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame."
"That's rather better," she said, and touched me again; and I read, "Parva sed Apta," as I had so often read there before in old days.
"And now look at that old house over there," pointing to my old home; "how many windows are there in the top story?"
I said seven.
"No; there are five. Look again!" and there were five; and the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of the windows, making my bed.
"That's better," said the duchess; "you will soon do it—it's very easy—ce n'est que le premier pas! My father taught me; you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must never forget in your dream where and what you were when awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget. And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can see."
It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes, and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of Ville d'Avray, a glimpse of which was visible through an opening in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black arms on the top of Mont Valérien.
"Is it all right?" she asked. "That's well. Henceforward, whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight can reach,—from this spot,—all through my introduction. See what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.
"Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne—there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and make everything plain in front of you—true, before you go a step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake, and it will come—on condition, of course, that you have been there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you touch things or people—you may hear, see, and smell; but you mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about. It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't know why, but it does. You must remember that everything here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different; we're alive and real—that is, I am; and there would seem to be no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp of your hands. But you're not; and why you are here, and what business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot understand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this afternoon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are just a stray figment of my over-tired brain—a very agreeable figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now—you can't possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Mabille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young British architect—otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you may be sure!
"Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to come—especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for what else can you be? And now I must leave you: so good-by."
She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of sight.
I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed again.
Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but then considered this would not have been discreet. For although she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and excited brain—a more than agreeable figment (what else could she be!)—she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kindness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France—even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.
And then what business had she in this, my particular dream—as she herself had asked of me?
But was it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was—why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had long ceased to exist—that had been built over by a huge brick edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it,—this edifice,—myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was everything as it had been when I was a child; and all through the agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess, whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought about ten feet high.
Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonishment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my temples, and my breath was short.
At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had pen and ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was 'Elegant Extracts.' The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.
A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.
I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her face.
I must not speak to her nor touch her—not even touch her busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream."
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder. He was translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far, and seemed to be stumped by the line—
"And leaves the world to darkness and to me."
Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her thumb in her mouth, one arm on the back of his chair. She seemed to be stumped also; it was an awkward line to translate.
I stooped and put my hand to Médor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said:—
"Regarde Médor, comme il remue la queue! C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nez."
Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto:—
"Do speak English, Mimsey, please."
O my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar, so unutterably dear! I rushed to her and threw myself on my knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying, "Mother, mother!"
A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality was lost. All became as a dream—a beautiful dream, but only a dream; and I woke.
BARTY JOSSELIN AT SCHOOL
From 'The Martian'
From Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers
Indeed, even from his early boyhood, he was the most extraordinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even heard of; a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton to whom all things came easily—and life itself as an uncommonly good joke. During that summer term of 1847 I did not see very much of him. He was in the class below mine, and took up with Laferté and little Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at everything he said, and worshiped him. So did everybody else, sooner or later; indeed, it soon became evident that he was a most exceptional little person.
In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as will be readily believed by all who have known him since. The mere sight of him as a boy made people pity his father and mother for being dead!
Then he had a charming gift of singing little French and English ditties, comic or touching, with his delightful fresh young pipe, and accompanying himself quite nicely on either piano or guitar without really knowing a note of music. Then he could draw caricatures that we boys thought inimitable, much funnier than Cham's or Bertall's or Gavarni's, and collected and treasured up. I have dozens of them now—they make me laugh still, and bring back memories of which the charm is indescribable; and their pathos to me!
And then how funny he was himself, without effort, and with a fun that never failed! He was a born buffoon of the graceful kind,—more whelp or kitten than monkey—ever playing the fool, in and out of season, but somehow always apropos; and French boys love a boy for that more than anything else; or did in those days.
His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal seafaring Norman ancestors (not to mention another long line of well-fed, well-bred Yorkshire squires), was magnificent. His spirits never failed. He could see the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye; this was often tested by M. Dumollard, maître de mathématiques (et de cosmographie), who had a telescope, which, with a little good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as big as the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.
His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He could hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive very high sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf (this was found out later); and when we played blindman's buff on a rainy day, he could, blindfolded, tell every boy he caught hold of—not by feeling him all over like the rest of us, but by the mere smell of his hair, or his hands, or his blouse! No wonder he was so much more alive than the rest of us! According to the amiable, modest, polite, delicately humorous, and ever tolerant and considerate Professor Max Nordau, this perfection of the olfactory sense proclaims poor Barty a degenerate! I only wish there were a few more like him, and that I were a little more like him myself!
By the way, how proud young Germany must feel of its enlightened Max, and how fond of him, to be sure! Mes compliments!
But the most astounding thing of all (it seems incredible, but all the world knows it by this time, and it will be accounted for later on) is that at certain times and seasons Barty knew by an infallible instinct where the north was, to a point. Most of my readers will remember his extraordinary evidence as a witness in the "Rangoon" trial, and how this power was tested in open court, and how important were the issues involved, and how he refused to give any explanation of a gift so extraordinary.
It was often tried at school by blindfolding him, and turning him round and round till he was giddy, and asking him to point out where the North Pole was, or the North Star, and seven or eight times out of ten the answer was unerringly right. When he failed, he knew beforehand that for the time being he had lost the power, but could never say why. Little Doctor Larcher could never get over his surprise at this strange phenomenon, nor explain it; and often brought some scientific friend from Paris to test it, who was equally nonplussed.
When cross-examined, Barty would merely say:—
"Quelquefois je sais—quelquefois je ne sais pas—mais quand je sais, je sais, et il n'y pas à s'y tromper!"
Indeed, on one occasion that I remember well a very strange thing happened; he not only pointed out the north with absolute accuracy, as he stood carefully blindfolded in the gymnastic ground, after having been turned and twisted again and again—but still blindfolded, he vaulted the wire fence and ran round to the refectory door, which served as the home at rounders, all of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his own invention, that he called 'La Paladine,' the most humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted, "À l'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond tree, which was quite twenty yards off; and after this he ran round the yard from base to base, as at "la balle au camp," till he reached the camp again.
"If ever he goes blind," said the wondering M. Mérovée, "he'll never need a dog to lead him about."
"He must have some special friend above!" said Madame Germain (Mérovée's sister, who was looking on).
Prophetic words! I have never forgotten them, nor the tear that glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a deeply religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty almost as if he were a child of her own.
Such women have strange intuitions.
Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance before skeptical people—parents of boys, visitors, etc.—who had been told of it, and who believed he could not have been properly blindfolded; but he could never be induced to do so.
There was no mistake about the blindfolding—I helped in it myself; and he afterwards told me the whole thing was "aussi simple que bonjour" if once he felt the north—for then, with his back to the refectory door, he knew exactly the position and distance of every tree from where he was.
"It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do without a dog," he added; "I should be just as helpless as any other blind man, unless I was in a place I knew as well as my own pocket—like this play-ground! Besides, I shan't go blind; nothing will ever happen to my eyes—they're the strongest and best in the whole school!"
He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.
"But what do you feel when you feel the north, Barty—a kind of tingling?" I asked.
"Oh—I feel where it is—as if I'd got a mariner's compass trembling inside my stomach—and as if I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything in the world—as if I could go and have my head chopped off and not care a fig."
"Ah, well—I can't make it out—I give it up," I exclaimed.
"So do I," exclaims Barty.
"But tell me, Barty," I whispered—"have you—have you really got a—a—special friend above?"
"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty, and winked at me one eye after the other—and went about his business, and I about mine.