Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and Wordsworth—and our Sunday evenings were of a happiness to be remembered forever; at least they were so to me!
If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was a blank day for Robert Maurice. For it was not very lively at home—especially when my father was there. He was the best and kindest man that ever lived, but his businesslike seriousness about this world, and his anxiety about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were deadly depressing; combined with the aspect of London on the Lord's day—London east of Russell Square! Oh, Paris ... Paris ... and the yellow omnibus that took us both there together, Barty and me, at eight on a Sunday morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back to school till fourteen hours later!
I shall never forget one gloomy wintry Sunday—somewhere in 1854 or 5, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end of Barty's career as a Guardsman.
Twice after lunch I had called at Barty's, who was to have been on duty in barracks or at the Tower that morning; he had not come back; I called for him at his club, but he hadn't been there either—and I turned my face eastward and homeward with a sickening sense of desolate ennui and deep disgust of London for which I could find no terms that are fit for publication!
And this was not lessened by the bitter reproaches I made myself for being such a selfish and unworthy son and brother. It was precious dull at home for my mother and sister—and my place was there.
They were just lighting the lamps as I got to the arcade in the Quadrant—and there I ran against the cheerful Barty. Joy! what a change in the aspect of everything! It rained light! He pulled a new book out of his pocket, which he had just borrowed from some fair lady—and showed it to me. It was called Maud.
We dined at Pergolese's, in Rupert Street—and went back to Barty's—and read the lovely poem out loud, taking it by turns; and that is the most delightful recollection I have since I left the Institution F. Brossard!
Occasionally I dined with him "on guard" at St. James's Palace—and well I could understand all the attractions of his life, so different from mine, and see what a good fellow he was to come so often to Brunswick Square, and seem so happy with us.
The reader will conclude that I was a kind of over‑affectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and affectionate nature—and was of a Frenchness that made French thought and talk and commune almost a daily necessity. We nearly always spoke French when together alone, or with my mother and sister. It would have seemed almost unnatural not to have done so.
I always feel a special tenderness towards young people whose lives have been such that those two languages are exactly the same to them. It means so many things to me. It doubles them in my estimation, and I seem to understand them through and through.