O’er thee, Jerusalem!
MY ENGLISH ACQUAINTANCE.
The spring of the year 183- found me in Paris, whither I had gone, immediately after Christmas, for a fortnight’s stay, and where I had remained four months. The prolongation of my visit will not surprise those who appreciate and enjoy the gay metropolis of France, in the most agreeable season. The festivities of the new year, with its gratulations and embraces, and tons of bonbons, of racy flavour and ingenious device, were no sooner over, than we found ourselves in full carnival. From the aristocratic regions of the noble Faubourg, where linger, in fossil preservation, the last relics of the ancien régime, to the plebeian district of the Marais; from the brilliant hotels of St Honoré and the Chaussée, peopled by rose-water exquisites and full-maned lionesses, to the remote and ignoble purlieus of Saints Dennis and Anthony, where tailors and tinkers dwell and thrive and propagate their kind, pleasure and enjoyment reigned. With the old year, the wet season had concluded; a clear bright frost had ushered in the new. Paris got rid of its mud and misery, and turned out in a new paletot and well polished boots for a ramble on the Boulevards. This was for four or five hours of the day; but night was the time to see the noisy dissolute old city in its glory, prancing and capering as madly as if it had stumbled upon the fountain of Jouvence, and had taken a pull at the regenerating element that had restored it to its teens. Appalling was the amount of eating, drinking, and merriment, occurring within its precincts; succulent breakfasts in the forenoon, and fat dinners of many courses in the evening, and riotous suppers at all hours of the night, liquidated by Burgundy in big bumpers, and Champagne in pint tumblers, and stiff punch, stinging hot and burning blue, in bright silver bowls. Then there was dancing, and masquing, and flirting, till day-dawn—of pretty late arrival at that season; sleep was at a discount, and desperate revellers who never took a wink of it, that could possibly be discovered, rushed from the ball-room to a cool breakfast on oysters and Sauterne, and rose therefrom fresh as cowslips, ready to begin again. Paris was a vortex of gaiety and dissipation, whence, once drawn in, it was scarcely possible to extricate one’s-self. I did not make the attempt. I was too well pleased with my snug sunny entresol on the Italian boulevard, with my dainty fare at the adjacent restaurant, with the twinkling feet of the Taglioni, and the melodious quaverings of Rubini and Duprez, then in full song; with my occasional visits to rout and masquerade, and more frequent ones to the hospitable dining rooms and saloons of a few old friends, both French and English. Then, for ride or walk, what better than the Champs Elysées, crowded with ruddy pedestrians, arch grisettes and lounging soldiers; traversed by sledges innumerable of every variety of form—dragon, sphinx, and mermaid, dolphin, lion, swan, enough to stock a mythological museum and a zoological garden—coursing up and down the road, and in the crisp frosty alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, drawn by smoking foam-speckled steeds, half hidden beneath ribbon panoply and high panache, sending silver sounds of countless bells before them, and delighting the eyes of all beholders by the sight of other belles, whose clear-toned voices and lightsome laugh rang not less sweet and silvery than the tinkle of their metal-tongued rivals, through the rare and sun-lit ether, as they sat, sunk in furs and velvets, with bright eyes and ruddy lips, and smooth firm cheeks just slightly mottled by the cold, beside the enviable cavaliers to whose charioteership they confided themselves. In short, the combination of Parisian attractions forbade departure, and I dreamed not of it till February had flown. Then I turned my eyes channelwards, and my thoughts to passports and post-horses, when sudden rumours reached me of eastern gales and virulent influenza raging on Britain’s shores; and of March dust, proverbially precious, but practically odious, careering in dense and blinding clouds through London’s tortured streets. This was ample excuse to linger a few weeks longer in my agreeable quarters, until spring came in earnest, and the sun was so warm, and the air so balmy, and the chestnuts in the Tuileries’ gardens, just burst into foliage, presented so glorious a mass of tender green, that, although often taking leave, I still was loath to depart. And thus it came to pass that, on a bright fresh April morning, I found myself seated in a Palais Royal coffee-house, in tranquil enjoyment of creaming chocolate, a damp newspaper, and the noiseless attendance of admirably drilled waiters.
I have always loved the Palais Royal, associated as it is with my earliest and most pleasurable recollections of Paris; and with sincere regret have I noted the rapid decline of what was once the heart and focus of the French capital. At the time I now speak of, although its best days were long past, it was still far removed from the deserted and desolate state into which it has since sunk: it had not yet dwindled into a dreary quadrangle of cheap tailors, pinchbeck jewellers, and shops to let, traversed in haste by all who enter it, save by newly-imported provincials, sauntering nurserymaids, and a few old loungers, who, from long habit, haunt the fabric after the spirit has fled. The melancholy truth is, that the march of morality ruined the Palais Royal. So long as it was the headquarters of dissipation, it throve and flourished exceedingly; it was merry and much frequented, like the mansion of some rich and jovial profligate, whom all abuse, but from whose well-spread table, few care to absent themselves. Then the Palais Royal, to the stranger, almost comprehended Paris: all the luxuries, necessaries, amusements, and pleasures of life, were found within its walls: it was the bazaar, the tavern, the harem, and the gaming-house of Europe. The reforms wrought in it since the peace by its present royal owner, however advantageous to its good fame and comeliness, have been grievously detrimental to its vivacity and pocket. In 183-, the last of these changes, the finishing-stroke, as it may be termed, the suppression of the gambling tables, although fully resolved upon, had not yet taken place. The coffee-houses were still numerous and crowded, the shops magnificent and prosperous; the garden and arcades, now abandoned to mischievous boys, and to puling infants in nurses’ arms, were thronged from morn till midnight with visitors of all nations and classes, lured thither by curiosity, or by the demon Play. There was always abundant food for observation, if only in the noisy groups who paced the avenues of trees, discussing the chances of the dice or the events of the morning’s sitting, and in the flushed or haggard countenances that each moment entered and issued from the doors of the various hells. With a genial sky, a rush-bottomed chair, and the occasional assistance of a sou’s worth of literature, obtained from the old women who dwell in wooden boxes, and hire out newspapers, an entire day might be passed there with amusement and profit. Occasional incidents, sometimes dramatic enough, varied the monotony, never great. The detection of a pickpocket, a loud-voiced quarrel, often resulting in blows or a challenge, the expulsion from the rouge-et-noir temple of some unlucky wretch, whom ruin had rendered unruly, were incidents of daily occurrence. For those whom the minor drama did not satisfy, there was an occasional bit of high tragedy, in the shape of a suicide from losses, or an arrest for fraud. Not long before the time I speak of, a group of persons, standing in the garden, were startled by the fall of a body at their feet. It was that of a gamester, who, after losing his last franc, had thrown himself from the elevated window of the pandemonium where his ruin had been consummated.
“I believe I have the pleasure of seeing Mr ——,” said a voice in English, as I paused for a moment, my breakfast concluded, before the door of the coffeehouse, planning the disposal of my day.
I looked at the person who thus addressed me; and, although I pique myself on rarely forgetting the faces of those with whom I have once been acquainted, I confess that in this instance my memory was completely at fault. But for his knowledge of my name, I should have concluded my interlocutor mistaken as to my identity. I was at least as much surprised at the perfectly good English he spoke, as at having my acquaintance claimed by a person of his profession and rank. He was a young man of about five-and-twenty, attired in the handsome and well-fitting undress of a sergeant of French light dragoons. His dark brown hair curled short and crisp from under his smart green forage-cap, cavalierly placed upon one side of his head; his clear blue eyes contrasted with the tawny colour of his cheek, a tint for which it was evidently indebted to sun and weather; his face was clean shaven, save and except small well-trimmed mustachios and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder, slender in the hip, well-limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly found amongst noncommissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as visible under the coarse basane and drugget of a private soldier as beneath the garb of finer materials and more careful cut, which, in his capacity of maréchal de logis, or sergeant, it was permitted him to wear. But my admiration of this pretty model of a man-at-arms did not assist me to recognise him, although, whilst gazing at him, and especially when he slightly smiled at my visible embarrassment, his features did not seem totally unfamiliar to me. I looked, I have no doubt, considerably puzzled. The stranger came to my assistance.
“I see you do not remember me,” he said. “Not above four years since we met, if so much; but four years, an African sun, and a French uniform, have made a change. I met you in Warwickshire, at George Clinton’s. I have seen you once or twice since; but I think the last time we spoke was when cantering over Harleigh downs. My name is Frank Oakley.”
I immediately recollected my man. About four summers previously, whilst on a flying visit at a country house, whither a friend had taken me, and where I had been made heartily welcome by the hospitable owner, I had formed a slight acquaintance with Mr Frank Oakley, who had then just come of age, and into possession—by the death of his father, which had occurred a twelvemonth previously—of a few thousand pounds. The interest of this sum, which would have been an agreeable and sufficient addition to a subaltern’s pay or curate’s stipend, or which would have enabled a struggling barrister to bide his briefs, was altogether insufficient to supply the wants and caprices of an idler, especially such an idler as Oakley. Master Francis was what young gentlemen fresh from school or at college, sucking ensigns, precocious templars, et id genus omne, are accustomed to call a “fast” man; the said fastness not referring, as Johnson’s dictionary teaches us it might do, to any particular strength or firmness of character, but merely to the singular rapidity with which such persons get through their money and into debt. At the time I speak of, Oakley was going his fastest, that is to say, spending the utmost amount of coin, for the least possible value; indeed he could hardly have run madder riot with his moderate patrimony, had he cast his sovereigns into bullets and made pipe-lights of his bank notes. But verily, he had his reward in the open-mouthed admiration of three or four younkers of his own standing, or a year or two less, then assembled at Harleigh Hall, who looked up to him as something between a hero and an oracle; and in the encouraging familiarity and approval of one or two gentlemen of maturer age, who swore he was a fine fellow, and proved they thought so by winning bets of him at billiards, and by selling him horses that would have fetched “twice the money at Tattersall’s,” with other bargains of an equally advantageous description. Although we were four days in the same house, meeting each evening at dinner, and occasionally riding and walking in the same group, our acquaintance continued of the very slightest description, and I took my departure without any thing approaching to intimacy having sprung up between us. Amongst the large party of visitors at the Hall, were not wanting persons of tastes more suited to my own, than those of Oakley and his little knot of flatterers and admirers; and he, on his part, was far too much taken up with his newly-inherited fortune—which he evidently considered inexhaustible—with planning amusements, and inhaling adulatory incense, to pay attention to a man whom, as full fifteen years his senior, he doubtless set down as an old fellow, a “slow coach,” and perhaps even as a member of that distinguished corporation known as the “Fogie Club.” So that when we met in London, during the ensuing season, occasionally in the street and once or twice in a ballroom, a slight bow or word of recognition was all that passed between us. I could perceive, however, that Oakley still kept up the rapid pace at which he had started, and lived, with a few hundreds a year, as if he had possessed as many thousands. The proximity of my quiet club to the fashionable and expensive one into which he had obtained admission, gave me many opportunities of observing his proceedings, and those opportunities, in my capacity of a student of human nature, I was careful not to neglect. I had marked his career and ultimate fate in my mind, and was curious to see my predictions verified, although I sincerely wished they might not be, for they were any thing but favourable to the welfare of Oakley, who, in spite of his follies, had generous and manly qualities. His prodigality was not of that purely egotistical description most commonly found in spendthrifts of his class. He would give a lavish alms to a whining beggar, as freely as he would throw away a handful of gold on some folly of the moment or extravagant debauch; and I had heard an old one-armed soldier, who sometimes held his horse at the club door, utter blessings, when he had ridden out of hearing, on his kind heart and open hand. These and similar little traits that came under my notice, made me regret to see him going post-haste to perdition. That he was doing so, I could not for one moment doubt. His extravagance knew no limit, and in six months he must have got through as many years’ income. Wherever pleasure was to be had, no matter at what price, Oakley was to be seen.—Upon a revenue overrated at five hundred a-year, he kept half a dozen horses, a cab, and a strange nondescript vehicle, made after an eccentric design of his own, and which every body turned to look at, as he drove down Piccadilly of an afternoon, on his way to the Park. He had his stall at the opera, of course, and an elegant set of apartments in the most expensive street in London, where he gave suppers and dinners of extravagant delicacy to thirsty friends and greedy danseuses. The former showed their gratitude for his good cheer by winning his money at cards; the latter evinced their affection by carrying off the costly nicknacks that strewed his rooms, and by taking his diamond shirt-pins to fasten their shawls. In short, he regularly delivered himself over to the harpies. In addition to these minor drafts upon his exchequer, came others of a more serious nature. He played high, and never refused a bet. Like many silly young men, (and some silly old ones,) he had a blind veneration for rank, and held that a lord could do no wrong. Even a baronetcy conferred a certain degree of infallibility in his eyes. No amount of respectable affidavits would have convinced him that if Lord Rufus Slam, who not unfrequently condescended to win a cool fifty of him at écarté, did not turn the king each time he dealt, it was only because he despised so hackneyed a swindle, and had other ways of securing the game, equally nefarious but less palpable. Neither would it have been possible to persuade him that Sir Tantivy Martingale, “that prime fellow and thorough sportsman,” as Frank admiringly and confidingly styled him, was capable of taking his bet upon a horse which he, the aforesaid Sir Tantivy, had just made “safe to lose.” In short, poor Oakley, who, during his father’s lifetime, had been little, if at all, in London, thought himself excessively knowing and fully up to all the wiles and snares of the metropolis. In reality he was exceedingly raw, was victimised accordingly, and, at the end of a few months in town, found himself minus a sum that brought reflection, I suspect, even to his giddy head. I conjectured so, at least, when, at the end of the season, I encountered him on a Boulogne steamer, looking fagged and out of spirits. It was only a year since we had met at Harleigh Hall, but that year had told upon him. Dissipation had driven the flush of health from his cheek, and his youthful brow was already care-loaded. I spoke to him, and made an attempt to converse; but he seemed sulky and unwilling; and, on reaching Boulogne, I lost sight of him. After a short tour, I went to winter at Paris, and there I frequently saw him. He had forgotten, apparently, the annoyances that weighed on him when he left London, and was again the gayest of the gay; living as if his purse were bottomless, and his Gibus hat the wishing cap of Fortunatus. Nothing was too hot or too strong for him: rated a “fast man” in England, in France he was held a viveur enragé. I did not much admire the society he selected: I saw him alternately with the most roué and dissolute young Frenchmen of fashion, and with an English set which, if it comprised men against whom nothing positively bad could be proved, also included others whose reputation was more than doubtful. At first he was chiefly with the French, whose language, from long residence in the country when a boy, he spoke as one of themselves; then he seemed to abandon them for the English clique, and then he suddenly disappeared. I no longer saw him pacing the Boulevard or riding in the Bois, or issuing at night from the Café Anglais, flushed with wine and bent upon riotous debauch. All his former companions remained, pursuing their old amusements, frequenting the same haunts; but he was never with them. I could not understand his leaving Paris just as the best season commenced, (it was in January that he disappeared,) and at first I supposed him ill. But week after week slipped by, and no Oakley appearing, I made up my mind he had departed, whither I knew not. I was rather vexed at this, for I had made up my mind to watch him to the end of his career. Moreover, although we never spoke, and had almost left off bowing, my idle habit of observing his proceedings had given me a sort of interest in him. Once only, after his eclipse, did I fancy I caught a glimpse of him. I was fond of long rambles in the low and remote quarters of Paris, through those labyrinths of narrow streets, filthy courts, and rickety houses, where the character and peculiarities of the humbler classes of Parisians are best to be studied. Returning, after dark, from an expedition of this kind, I was surprised by a violent shower in a shabby street of the Faubourg St Antoine, and took refuge under a doorway. Immediately opposite to me was the wretched shop of a traiteur, in whose dingy window a cloudy white bowl of mashed spinach, a plate of bouilli, dry as a deal plank, and some triangular fragments of pear, stewed with cochineal and exposed in a saucer, served as indications of the luxurious fare to be obtained within. On one of the grimy shutters, whose scanty coat of green paint the weather had converted into a sickly blue, was the announcement, in yellow letters, that “Fricot, Traiteur, donne à Boire et à Manger;” whilst upon the other the hieroglyphical representation of a bottle and glass, flanked by the words “Bon Vin de Macon à 8 et à 10 S.” hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot’s cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the Café or the Trois Frères, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get comfortably intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood, for a similar amount. It needs a three days’ fast or a paviour’s appetite to induce entrance into such a place. I was gazing with some curiosity at the windows of this poor tavern, through whose starred and patched panes, crowded with bottles, and backed by a curtain of dirty muslin, the waving of iron forks and spoons was dimly discernible by the light of two flickering candles, when the door suddenly opened, a man came out, heedless of the rain, which fell in torrents, and walked rapidly away. It was but a second, and he was lost in the darkness of the ill-lighted street, but in that second I thought I distinguished the gait and features of Frank Oakley. But my view of him was very indistinct, and I concluded myself misled by a resemblance. Since that day nothing had occurred to remind me of him, and for a long time I had entirely forgotten the good-hearted but reckless scamp, who for a brief period had attracted my attention.
Frank Oakley, then, it was, who now stood before me under the arcades of the Palais Royal. I held out my hand, with a word or two of apology for my slowness in remembering him.
“No excuse, I beg,” was his reply. “Not one in twenty of my former acquaintances recognises the spendthrift dandy in the humble sergeant of dragoons, and in the few who do, I observe, upon my approach, a strong partiality for the opposite side of the street. They give themselves unnecessary trouble, for I have no wish to intrude upon them. I have been four months in Paris, and have constantly met former intimates, but have never spoken to one of them. And I cannot say what induced me to address you, with whom my acquaintance is so slight, except that I should be very glad to have a talk about dear old England, and if I am not mistaken you are a likely man to grant it me.”