“That flesh should ever be low in tone would seem to many a source of sorrow, and of vast vexation, and its rendering, in such circumstance, an unfailing occasion of suspicion, objection, and reproach; each objection—which is the more fascinating in that it would seem to imply superiority and much virtue on the part of the one who makes it—is vaguely based upon the popular superstition as to what flesh really is—when seen on canvas, for the people never look at Nature with any sense of its pictorial appearance, for which reason, by the way, they also never look at a picture with any sense of Nature, but unconsciously, from habit, with reference to what they have seen in other pictures. Lights have been heightened until the white of the tube alone remains. Shadows have been deepened until black only is left! Scarcely a feature stays in its place, so fierce is its intention of firmly coming forth. And in the midst of this unseemly struggle for prominence, the gentle truth has but a sorry chance, falling flat and flavourless and without force.”
No one who has not lived, as we did, the life of “The Quarter” can at all appreciate its charm. In description—as I have already had occasion to say—it is usual, and more entertaining, to dwell upon the disasters of daily life, but though these, thanks to a bonne à tout faire, and a perfidious stove, were not lacking, Martin and I, and our friends, enjoyed ourselves. Small and select tea-parties were frequent; occasionally we aspired to giving what has been called by a gratified guest in the County Cork “a nice, ladylike little dinner,” and in a letter of my own I find an account of a more unusual form of entertainment which came our way.
“A friendly and agreeable American, who works in the Studio, asked us to come and see her in her rooms, away back of Saint Sulpice. When we got there we found, as well as my American friend, a little incidental, casual mother, whom she had not thought worth mentioning before. She just said, briefly,
“‘Oh, this is Mother,’ which, after all, sufficed.
“‘Mother’ was a perfect specimen of one of the secret, serf-like American mothers, who are concealed in Paris, put away like a pair of warm stockings, or an old waterproof, for an emergency. She was a nice, shrivelled, little old thing, very kind and polite. Their room, which was about six inches square, had little in it save a huge and catafaltic bed with deep crimson curtains; the window curtains were deep crimson, the walls, which were brown, had panels of deep crimson. Hot air welled into the room through gratings. We sat and talked, and looked at picture postcards for a long time, and our tongues were beginning to hang out, from want of tea, and suffocation, when the daughter said something to the mother.
“There was then produced, from a sort of hole in the wall, sweet biscuits, and a bottle of wine, the latter also deep crimson (to match the room, no doubt). It was a fierce and heady vintage. I know not its origin, I can only assure you that in less than two minutes from its consumption our faces were tremendously en suite with the curtains. We tottered home, clinging to each other, and lost our way twice.”
We had ourselves an opportunity of offering a somewhat unusual form of hospitality to two of our friends, the occasion being nothing less than the expected End of the World. This was timed by the newspapers to occur on the night of November 15, and I will allow Martin to describe what took place. The beginning part of the letter gives the history of one of those curious and unlucky coincidences of which writing-people are more often the victims than is generally known, and for this reason I will transcribe it also.
V. F. M. to Mrs. Martin. (Nov. 23, 1899.)
“...The story for the Christmas number of the Homestead came to a most untimely end; not that it was untimely, as we were at the very limit of time allowed for sending it in. It was finished, and we were just sitting down to copy it, when I chanced to look through last year’s Xmas No. (which, fortunately, we happened to have here,) in order to see about the number of words. I then made the discovery that one of the stories last Christmas, by Miss Jane Barlow, no less! was built round the same idea as ours; one or two incidents quite startlingly alike, so much so that one couldn’t possibly send in ours. It read like a sort of burlesque of Miss Barlow’s, and would never have done. There was no time to re-write it, so all we could do was to write and tell the Editor what had happened, and make our bows. E. sent him a sketch, as an amende, which he has accepted in the handsome and gentlemanlike spirit in which it was offered, and I sent him a little dull article[13] that I happened to have here, on the chance that it might do to fill a corner, and it is to appear with E.’s sketch. But I am afraid, though he was very kind about it, that these things have not at all consoled the Editor, who wanted a story like the ‘R.M.’s.’
“Nothing very interesting has happened here since the night of ‘The Leonids,’ the Shower of Stars that was to have happened last week. There was much excitement in Paris, at least the newspapers were excited. On my way to the dentist a woman at the corner of the boulevard was selling enormous sheets of paper, with ‘La Fin du Monde, à trois heures!’ on them, and a gorgeous picture of Falbe’s comet striking the earth. It was then 1.30, but I thought I had better go to the dentist just the same. I believe that lots of the poor people were very much on the jump about it. The Rain of Meteors was prophesied by the Observatory here for that night, and Kinkie, and the lady whom we call ‘Madame Là Là,’ arranged to spend the night in our sitting room (which has a good view of the sky in two aspects). We laid in provender and filled the stove to bursting, and our visitors arrived at about 9.30 p.m. It really was very like a wake, at the outset. The stipulation was that they were to call us if anything happened; I went to bed at 10.30, E. at midnight, and those unhappy creatures sat there all night, and nothing happened. They saw three falling stars, and they made tea three times (once in honour of each star), and they also had ‘Maggi,’ which is the French equivalent for Bovril, and twice as nice. During the night I could hear their stealthy steps going to and fro to the kitchen to boil up things on the gas stove. In the awful dawn they crept home, and, I hear, turned up at the Studio looking just the sort of wrecks one might have expected.