Every letter thou shalt answer.
Photographs thou shalt sign.
To Hortense Damian thou shalt listen,
And all her counsels thou shalt follow.)
I laughed at these “commandments,” but I soon realized that, under this jocular form, she considered them as very serious and important. Alas! my poor friend had hit upon the wrong person for her counsels. I detested paying visits, writing letters, signing photographs, or following anyone’s advice. I adore having people come to see me, and I detest going to see them. I adore receiving letters, reading them, commenting on them, but I detest writing them. I detest riding and driving in frequented parts, and I adore lonely roads and solitary places. I adore giving advice and I detest receiving it, and I never follow at once any wise advice that is given me. It always requires an effort of my will to recognize the justice of any counsel, and then an effort of my intellect to be grateful for it; at first it simply annoys me. Consequently, I paid no attention to Hortense Damian’s counsels, nor yet to Jarrett’s, and in this I made a great mistake, for many people were vexed with me—and, in any other country, I should have made enemies. On that first visit to London what a quantity of letters of invitation I received to which I never replied! How many charming women called upon me and I never returned their calls! Then, too, how many times I accepted invitations to dinner and never went after all, nor did I even send a line of excuse. It is perfectly odious, I know, and yet I always accept with pleasure and intend to go; but when the day comes I am tired, perhaps, or want to have a quiet time, or to be free from any obligation, and when I am obliged to decide one way or another, the time has gone by, and it is too late to send word and too late to go. And so I stay at home, dissatisfied with myself, with everyone else, and with everything.
Hospitality is a quality made up of primitive taste and antique grandeur. The English are, in my opinion, the most hospitable people on earth, and they are hospitable simply and munificently. When an Englishman has opened his door to you he never closes it again. He excuses your faults and accepts your peculiarities. It is thanks to this broadness of ideas that I have been for twenty-five years the beloved and pampered artiste.
I was delighted with my first soirée in London, and I returned home very gay and very much “anglomaniaized.” I found some of my friends there—Parisians who had just arrived, and they were furious. My enthusiasm exasperated them, and we sat up arguing until two in the morning.
The next day I went to Rotten Row. It was glorious weather, and all Hyde Park seemed to be strewn with enormous bouquets. There were the flower beds wonderfully arranged by the gardeners, then there were the clusters of sunshades, blue, pink, red, white, or yellow, which sheltered the light hats covered with flowers, under which shone the pretty faces of babies and women. Along the riding path there was an exciting gallop of graceful thoroughbreds bearing along some hundreds of horsewomen, slender, supple, and courageous; there were men and children, the latter mounted on big Irish ponies. There were other children, too, galloping along on Scotch ponies with long, shaggy manes, and the children’s hair and the manes of the horses blew about with the wind caused by the ride.
The carriage road between the riding track and the foot passengers was filled with dogcarts, open carriages of various kinds, mail coaches, and very smart cabs. There were powdered footmen, horses decorated with flowers, sportsmen driving, ladies, too, driving admirable horses. All this elegance, this essence of luxury and this joy of life, brought back to my memory the vision of our Bois de Boulogne, so elegant and so animated a few years before, when Napoleon III used to drive through in his daumont, nonchalant and smiling. Ah, how beautiful it was in those days—our Bois de Boulogne! with the officers caracoling in the Avenue des Acacias, admired by our beautiful society women!
The joy of life was everywhere—the love of Love enveloping life with an infinite charm. I closed my eyes, and I felt a pang at my heart as the awful recollections of 1870 crowded to my brain. He was dead, our gentle Emperor with his shrewd smile. Dead, vanquished by the sword, betrayed by fortune, crushed with grief!