I have to get back to Bella and Frida, and tell of heavy clouds that arose to darken our path, and of how I came to draw a portrait that has left a lasting impression in my mind. So I will but cursorily mention that there were one or two of the above-named lovely types that commiserated the unlicked cub, and set themselves the difficult task of raising him, if not to their level, to within measurable distance of it. It was rather an awkward position for the cub when one of them more than usually warm-hearted and liberal, foreshadowed the bestowal of a first prize if the unlicked one proved himself an apt pupil. Of this I said something in a letter to Bella, for I occasionally remembered that she had wishedme to tell her "all about—I mean something about" what I was doing. I gave the incident in a diluted form, merely hinting that the lessons might be learnt in Paris, but could be better applied elsewhere. Yes! When I come to think of it, I am sure Bella was my guiding star, shedding a ray of light just when I particularly wanted it to show me the right way.
It was now more than a twelvemonth since I had gone to Paris, and the time was drawing near when, in accordance with the good old fashion, I should spend Christmas at home. Notwithstanding all the attractions of upper and lower Paris, I had been working hard, drawing from morning to night, and sometimes from night to morning. Those were the days when a humble student might still worship at the shrine of a Vandyke or a Rembrandt, when the war-cry, "Nous avons changé tout cela," had not yet sounded, and the Messiahs of modern art were not yet busy proclaiming their newly-found truth from the house-tops, and painting there, too, lest a particle of light should get lost. So I was still quite naïvely addicted to drawing portraits by lamplight, putting in deep shadows and deeper accents, and picking out high lights on the breadths of foreheads or the tips of noses.
At last I was in the train and we were approaching Leipsic. I was thinking of parents and friends, and as I mentally rehearsed our meeting and greeting, I am sure my lips moved unconsciously, and the subtle smile of anticipation must have played around them. It was 3.30P. M., I had travelled forty-five hours, but at last the old familiar landmarks appeared.There was the row of poplars, the distant spire. Out came the pocket-comb—a final touch, and in a few minutes I was in my mother's arms. She had come upon the chance of my arriving by that train; time-tables did not pretend to give much information in those days. It is a long while ago, but I well remember that particular meeting and embrace. The two separate parts of one whole were re-united and were being welded together. Words had to wait. When they came—it does seem absurd—they were the most trivial ones, and rushed out buzzing like froth from the bottle. "Where's the green carpet-bag?" "I've got the parcel;" "All right, here is my passport;" "And when did you leave? to be sure, you must be hungry, poor boy;" and so on, till home was reached, where other loving arms awaited me. As we sobered down, the froth was brushed aside, the right words came, and we drank deep draughts from the phial that contains the very essence of love.
My first visit was for the Traumanns. That tailor at the corner of the Passage d'Orléans in the Palais Royal—he is there still—had made me a waistcoat of blue velvet, dotted with little yellow spots; it was of the very latest Paris fashion, and in it I went to make my call.
Once more a joyous meeting, a warm welcome. Herr Magister and the Frau Magisterin were just the same as I had left them. Frida had grown, but was little changed otherwise, just as bright and happy as ever; but Bella I could not see; she was not well. That was disappointing; I kept looking at her desk, just opposite me, with the glass inkstand on the right,and the little bust of Mendelssohn I had given her, on the left.
"Well, good-bye, Frida," I said at the door, "tell Bella she must be well by Friday; she's got to dance at least two waltzes and the cotillon with me."
Now dancing at the Tuileries is a very good thing in its way; elbowing a future emperor, and hobnobbing with a scoundrel disguised as a gentleman, are things to brag of. But it is nothing to having a dance at one's own home, with one's sisters, and one's sisters' friends, with one's friends and one's friends' sisters.
I was surprised to find several "Impériales" on the programme of our little dance, and was told that was the latest craze all over Paris. Now nothing of the kind had ever been heard of in the terpsichorean circles I had just left, so naturally I had no notion of what the step might be like. When I attempted it, however, it mattered little whether I danced it correctly or not, for, coming straight as I did from the French capital, I was supposed to know all about it; so the good Leipsickers soon adopted my rendering, and my step became the fashion.
I wanted those two waltzes and the cotillon because Bella was the best dancer in Leipsic. She must have been born under the star of rhythm; some fairy must have beaten time with a magic wand, pronouncing aOne-two-three,One-two-three blessing upon her. One would never have imagined that that reserved girl, with the far-away look, was the queen of the ballroom; true, her figure was perfect, but it was not till she waltzed that itsgraceful and subtle lines revealed themselves. Curiously the far-away look never left her when dancing; she seemed to be undulating towards some distant goal, wherever that might be.
How few fairies there are to beat time at the baby's cradle! and is it not curious how seldom they go to the little boys? Dancing humanity has had to invent the valse à deux temps, that bids us close our ears to the strains of the syren, Strauss, and take two steps where there should be three. Perhaps there is some malignant fairy to visit the cradles of the little boys. One would think so, to judge by the expressions on the faces of many dancers, expressions varying from that of painful uneasiness to that of abject misery. Poor souls! Some rushing wildly to destruction, others doomed to crawl out their ballroom existence, gravitating within the narrow circle of the chandelier!
* * * * * *
Friday came, and the ball.
But I have nothing to tell about it. Bella was not there. No, Bella could not be there—she was ill.
Ill—then very ill—dangerously ill. Soon she was dead!
It all came so rapidly, it must be told rapidly, breathlessly.
When? How?—She died on Sunday night at eleven o'clock—It can't be true!—It was true.
How incredulous we are when first called upon to realise the truth! how slow to understand and believethat what was but yesterday a living form must be accounted dead to-day! Anguish rises rebellious: It cannot be.—It is a dream, a grievous mistake, to be explained away presently. Love's giant strength would wrench its victim from death's grasp. Hope, the very last to yield—or is it but an after-glow of hope?—will catch at shadowy straws, ere it submits and sinks to rise no more.
None but the father, mother, and sister were at the bedside when the young life ebbed away. Poor tortured souls! May they be strong enough to bear the heavy trial. That night the father never shed a tear, nor the next day, nor the next. It would have been better had grief found a natural channel. He spoke but little, and mostly sat by the bed as if in deep thought, until they carried her away.
The white wreaths had come,—and the black hearse; and graceful lilies, their long stems bound together with white ribbons. Black crapes too, and sable hues, to harmonise with a world of sorrow and darkness.
Then the blinds went up, and the world went on as before. I looked out of the window; I recollect a boy's cap had got cast adrift on the branch of a tree just opposite the house of sadness; a little crowd had collected to do justice to the incident. "Would it get off, or gradually perish where it hung?" was the question of paramount interest to that particular little world.
But does the world really go on as before? Not quite. A fraction of our globe has been disturbed, a balance lost. The blow that struck down one brotheror sister wounds many hearts, reverberates in circles small or large, and it will take time to restore that fraction's equilibrium. It is as when we break the peaceful surface of the water. First a thud, a gash; next a circle, small, but broken and restless; then a larger one and a larger, each and all gradually calming down to be at rest, with the smooth untroubled waters beyond.
When a link in the chain of existences, near and dear to us, is snapped asunder, we instinctively seek to close up the gap, to join hands and succour one another. So Frida's heart went out to her father as he sat brooding, with his eyes fixed on the desk with the little bust. It was not till much later that I knew what she had suffered. She wished to throw her arms round his neck and cry her little aching heart out, and love him with her dead sister's love and her own, and let him cry too, that love and sorrow could mingle. But he sat there, so forbidding, so strange, that her arms fell, and her tears flowed back to the aching heart. Then she went up to him and stood by his side. The word "father" quivered on her lips; she knew not why, but she dared not pronounce it. Her mother came in and stood waiting too, hoping he would turn round, but he did not move. "Dearest mine," she said, "speak to Frida."
He lifted his head slowly, as if it were a great weight, his lips moved with an effort, and looking vacantly at his poor love-seeking child, he said, "Never, never!"
Days passed, and melancholy settled deeper anddeeper on the sufferer. He would occasionally show something of the old tenderness for his wife, and sometimes a spark of gratitude would for moments light up the darkness of his moods. But mostly he sat brooding, prostrate, heart-stricken. If she spoke to him of Frida he would wave his hand as if to beg her to forbear, and would keep on repeating to himself the words, "Never, never!"
She had insisted one day; she had hoped to break the spell, when he rose angrily, he the mildest of men. "Never, never mention her name to me again," he said sternly, then, gradually recovering himself, he returned to his seat and relapsed into silence.
The well-known physician and psychologist, Dr. Reclam, was in daily attendance on the patient. He was an old friend of the Magister's, and put heart and soul into the task of restoring him to health. He had said, "No, she must not show herself for the present, it would be to no purpose; but you must not let a day pass without mentioning her name in some way or other; we must not allow the blight to settle upon him undisturbed." Soon he advised change of air and surroundings. So the Magister and his wife left for Sonnenthal, a place far away in the country, where a cousin of his owned a large farm. He had spent part of his childhood there, and it was hoped that early associations, and the soothing influence of some old trusted servants who would be around him, might go far to restore his mind to peace and rest.
Frida remained in Leipsic; she left the darkenedhome, and went to stay with an uncle, a well-known lawyer. He was a good man at heart, but one of those whose hearts lie so deeply hidden away that there is no getting at them. He had a boy we all hated; his heart-strings must have been hopelessly knotted and tangled, or he would never have tortured that poor kitten as he did. With the assistance of his friend, the carpenter's son, he—But no, I will not tell, for I am firmly convinced that the very mention of evil begets evil. Such is man; moulded perhaps after the Divine image in some respects, he has in his composition quite as much of his brother beasts as of divinity. Curious lord of creation! As if there were not enough misery in the world as it is, he must needs go out of his way to torture kittens.
In this crisis of her life Frida found two friends, absolutely devoted and sympathetic: Helene and her husband. They, more than anybody, helped her through those first sad weeks. How mistaken the girls had been when they thought Helene worldly and heartless. My little flirt was then, and has proved herself through life, the most steadfast and reliable of us all. Her two brothers, the chubby boys, were now students at the Leipsic University, qualifying themselves for future town-councillorships and civic honours, coupled, I presume, with some German substitute for turtle soup.
Frida spent much of her time in the congenial atmosphere of my parents' house. We had always been devoted to her; how much more now! She loved music, and that, with us, was a sort of staple commodity to be found as surely as the daily bread.It was not an easy task to divert her thoughts from her trouble. All her girlish brightness had vanished, and she seemed, without a warning, to have had womanhood, suffering womanhood, thrust upon her. But she loved to be soothed by music, and more than once I remember my father improvising strains of consolation on his grand Erard, that seemed to go straight to her heart and strengthen her.
"Will you sit for me, Frida?" I asked one evening. "I should like to draw a portrait of you."
I had known Frida for four or five years, and had never asked her to sit, so the question surprised her, and it startled my mother, who was seated at the other end of the drawing-room on a little raised platform, surrounded by palms and a variety of plants with curiously shaped and fancifully speckled leaves. Her spinning-wheel, that had been going round with the regularity of clockwork, suddenly stopped—perhaps the thread had snapped. Catching my eye she reproachfully signalled behind Frida's back: "How can you, my dear? Surely this is not the time to use the poor girl as a model?" Frida evidently thought so too; she was at a loss for an answer, and there was an awkward silence. For an instant I wished I had not spoken; my request, I felt, was really ill timed; but, once out, I adhered to it, insisting, "Do, Frida; if nothing else, it will keep me out of mischief this evening."
She knew the thought of mischief was for from my mind, and she simply answered:
"Very well, Felix, if you wish it, I will sit." And with that she gave me an encouraging look.
I was anxious to get her to sit, for a picture of that girl in her sadness had gradually been ripening in my mind; it was so complete that it seemed only to want putting down, and no more difficult of accomplishment than the writing out of any lines that I might have learnt by heart. It was a case of "Don't begin till it's finished." That I have often since found a good maxim, but one not so easily lived up to. The picture, then, such as I had conceived it, I was wedded to, for better or for worse. I must draw her all but full-face. The light from above, and slightly from the left, will model and bring out the delicate beauty of her features. It was all ready to be transcribed: the smooth hair with the black ribbon tied in a large symmetrical bow on the top of the head, the plain dress, the background, and, above all, that expression, reflecting the yearnings of a poor chilled soul. On the surface, bewilderment, helplessness; beneath, a substratum of trust, of faith; and far below, hope, the spark of life that glimmers and glows on, even under mountains of despair.
We got the lamp that had served my purpose more than once, and the two candles, with the little special shades I had brought from Paris (I have them still), and Frida sat. Not once, but often, for the more I drew the more I was eager to pursue that will-o'-the-wisp, the realisation of an idea. Many a time I had to point my crayons, Conté No. 2, and to blacken the little paper stumps, the classical tortillons, before I could make up my mind to admit that I had finished.
And what was the result? Perhaps it was very poor; probably it was; certainly, if you like—but I don't want to know it if it was. I want to think it was good and true, like the knight that serves the lady. If it is an illusion, bear with me and let me keep it.
I had a grey mount put round it and a cheap little black frame; and then—may the gods forgive my presumption!—I felt as if the crayons and the humble tortillons might possibly have been working for the ends of Providence; I packed up the picture and sent it with all my love to the Magisterin.
"Try it," I said; "he may like it." And she tried it, and—to that poor little drawing of mine it was given to work a miracle—gradually, but surely, it rent asunder the veil that obscured my dear Magister's mental vision.
It was not till long afterwards that I learnt what had happened on that critical day. The Magisterin told me all as we sat on a stone bench in the garden at the back of their house. It was a hot day and the Magister was in shirt-sleeves, pruning and tending his rose-trees, perhaps removing the blight that had settled on some leaf to warp and waste it. For once in the way the good Hausfrau vouchsafed to stop knitting, and took my hand as she began:—
"Your drawing came in the morning, my Lixchen. It was as I had fancied it, for Frida had well described it in her letters. It touched me deeply, but I could not even give a stray thought to my own feelings. 'Try it,' you had said, and a wild rush of conflicting emotions quite overcame me. How should I try it? I wished you were there, you orReclam, to tell me what would be best. Might it not give him a shock and do him harm? I never felt as utterly helpless as all that morning. I waited. At one o'clock he was lying on the sofa and resting; he seemed to slumber more peacefully than usual. You know he had the desk with the little Mendelssohn bust sent from Leipsic; it was the only thing he had asked for. I stood the drawing up against it. He would be sure to see it when he awoke.
"Then I sat down and prayed.
"He rose as usual and seated himself at the table. Hours passed. His face was turned away from me, but I could see his hands as they lay clasped before him. At last he got up and went to the bookcase. 'They have changed everything,' I heard him say to himself. 'Where is my Sophocles? Ah! to be sure, to be sure.'
"He sat down, but got up again directly, found paper and pen, and laid out everything, just as he used to do at the old writing-table before beginning work. He took up the pen, but he did not write; occasionally he passed the quill over his forehead. I dared not move or speak. Oh, how long the hours seemed!
"The daylight was fading. Martha came home with the cows, and old Günther made his rounds and bolted the front gate. After that all was quiet. Yes—all was quiet,—quite quiet for a while.
"Suddenly he rose. He turned round and stood still. He looked at me,—a look I knew. My heart beat fast and the clock ticked so loud.
"He looked, and, ach, mein Lixchen, he smiledat me, just a little feeble smile, and an instant afterwards he rushed up to me and he burst into a flood of tears as he buried his face in my lap.
"'O Hannerl, my heart's treasure, tell me: Where is my Frida? Why is she not with me?'"
The dear old Magisterin could say no more; tears of gratitude choked her voice. I pressed her hand with my right, and with my left hand I brushed away something that had got between my eyelashes.
Iwell rememberthat first year of my stay in Leipsic, when all our interests seemed to centre in the friend we were to lose so soon.
At all times I was proud of my godfather, inordinately so, perhaps, when conversation turned on the great kindness which Goethe had lavished on his young friend Felix. To know a man who had known Goethe seemed to me like knowing a man who had known Shakespeare, and I was accordingly proud of my godfather. It is not surprising that Goethe, the great dissector of human nature, should, with a few masterly touches, have portrayed the boy of twelve, and forecast the character of the man. "You know," he said to his friend Rellstab, "the doctrine of temperaments; every one has four in his composition, only in different proportions. Well, this boy, I should say, possesses the smallest possible modicum of phlegm, and the maximum of the opposite quality." Whatever that "opposite quality" was which Goethe had in his mind, it was one which kept Mendelssohn on the alert; it was the very essence of life that he was drawing on, alas! too prodigally.
Thus, of his own compositions he says in a letter to my father: "How I am to set about writing a calm and quiet piece (as you advised me to do last spring) I really do not know. All that passes through my head in the shape of pianoforte music is about as calm and quiet as Cheapside; and when I sit down to start improvising ever so quietly, it is of no use—by degrees I fall back into the old ways."
But if Goethe noted the boy's extreme sensibility, he also appreciated his sound intellect. "He is so clear-headed about his own subjects," he says, "that I must learn a great deal from him." And Mendelssohn relates how, seated at the piano, he familiarises the poet with the work of Beethoven, how the grand old man is overwhelmed by the beauties and mysteries revealed, and sits all the while in a dark corner, like a Jupiter Tonans, with his eyes flashing fire. "I felt," he says, "that this was the very Goethe of whom people will one day declare that he is not at all one person, but is made up of several smaller Goethes."
The house we lived in stood in its own grounds, and very picturesque they were; some parts delightfully kept, others still more delightfully neglected. Wild tangles blocked disused paths; weeds and creepers climbed up the legs of classical statues, and wound round their arms when they had any. There was a Kiosk too, a little museum in which had been collected relics of the great battle which had raged furiously in those grounds. It was dedicated to Prince Poniatowski, who, during the disastrous retreat of the French army, was drowned with scores ofother fugitives in that rapid little stream, the Elster, which flowed at the bottom of what was in my days called "Gerhard's Garten," the same stream in which I now used to take my daily swim.
There were only two houses in that "Garten." In one of them lived the Herr Legationsrath Gerhard, our landlord, a personal friend of the great Goethe, and himself a gifted poet, and so good a scholar, that he was able to make an admirable translation of Burns's poems. The good people of Leipsic appreciated his talents, but were very angry with him because he was unmistakably a poet with an eye to business, and he charged five neugroschen (sixpence) for admission to the historical site and to the Poniatowski Kiosk.
In the other house we occupied the second floor, and on the first lived Madame Mendelssohn's sister, Madame Schunck, and her family. The ground-floor was the private residence of a wealthy wine merchant; perhaps Schmidt was his name. The latter nearly got us into very serious trouble in the days when the tide of revolution, set in motion by the French rising in 1848, had swept all over Germany, and when even the Leipsickers, usually so peaceful, were up in arms. The standard of insurrection had been raised throughout the Fatherland, dynasties were threatened, and thrones shaken. Some of the Saxon patriots had gone to help their brothers in the Austrian capital, amongst others Robert Blum, one of the most popular leaders of the democratic party. The barricade he was defending was taken, and he was made a prisoner. Popular feeling in Leipsic ran high, and when the news camethat he had been tried by court-martial and shot, it reached fever heat.
Interested as I always was in the doings of man, woman, or child, especially when they had come together in the name of mischief, I was naturally anxious to watch as closely as possible the process of history-making they were about to engage in. So I was to be found where the crowd was thickest and the mob most threatening.
An indignation meeting was improvised; the more rabid fire-eaters were hoisted on some handy box, or took possession of a passing cart, from which they addressed the rioters. The Austrian rule, its Kaiser, and its leading statesmen, were held up to execration, and a shout was raised, "To the Consulate!" Sticks and stones appeared on the scene, one knew not whence, and soon we were on our way to the Consulate, where it did not take long to smash every window in the house. The arms of Austria were torn down and carried in triumph to the market-place, where they were ignominiously strung up to a lamp-post amidst yells of exultation. The mob had by this time worked itself into a frantic state of excitement, and was thirsting for action. "What next?" was the cry. "To Gerhard's Garten," shouted a voice; "let us hang Schmidt next. He bragged that he would stand a dozen of his best champagne if it were true that Blum had been shot. We'll drink it to the scoundrel's health—to his perdition—hang the dog!"
"Save the dog," was naturally my first impulse, and I ran off at full speed to give warning. I arrivedin time to raise an alarm, and the place was speedily prepared to resist at least a first assault; the massive iron gates that protected us on the river-side were closed, and the heavy wooden doors on the land-side were barred and bolted. The rioters were soon on the spot, and threatened to make matchwood of them if they were not opened. In true mediæval fashion the old Legationsrath parleyed with the enemy through a grated opening in the door, asseverating that the man wanted was not in the house or anywhere on the premises. He was so successful in his diplomatic efforts that a compromise was agreed to, and a few of the most clamorous were admitted to satisfy themselves that the object of their search was not in hiding. The wine merchant had plenty of time to escape, the crowd, baffled of its prey, moved on to seek fresh fields of action, and our house escaped with only a few panes of broken glass. As for myself, I was warmly complimented on having acted the goose and saved the Capitol.
The next day matters wore a graver aspect, and attempts were made to raise barricades. During the short conflict which ensued, a friend of ours, Herr Gontard, was shot through the heart, as from his window he was pointing a rifle at the insurgents. He was a prominent citizen, and his death created a profound sensation. When a short time afterwards I accompanied my father to the house, to inquire after the bereaved family, we were shown by the servant into the room where his master lay in the stillness of death, a service which we were expected to acknowledge by handing him the customary"Trinkgeld," the tip which a German servant considers his due, whenever his master practises hospitality. On this occasion it was a weird entertainment we had been bidden to.
In Dresden the insurrection was of a much more serious character. Civil war raged fiercely in the streets of that capital, and the Saxon army proving insufficient to subdue the people, the assistance of the Prussians was invoked or had to be accepted.
Great was the excitement when the first batch of soldiers passed through Leipsic, but it led to no demonstration. By this time the restless spirits knew that the cause of liberty was lost. The newZündnadel Gewehrjust introduced into the Prussian army, a rifle that was shortly to prove its superiority in the Danish campaign, seemed a very strange-looking piece of mechanism to us. What would be the English forZündnadel GewehrI do not know, nor will I ascertain, for I object to showing an interest in lethal weapons manufactured for fratricidal purposes.
Richard Wagner's active participation in the revolutionary movement was at the time severely commented upon by many of his friends, for he had every reason to be personally grateful to the king, who, it was said, had acted very liberally towards him, and had generally distinguished and befriended him. Accounts varied as to the actual part he took in the fighting, but at any rate he had to flee the country, and took refuge first in Paris and then in Zurich.
After a prolonged conflict the barricades weretaken; from the front they had been made all but impregnable, so the Prussian troops cut themselves a road through the party walls of the adjoining houses, and attacked them in the rear; they did terrible execution, and it was once more crowned autocracy which scored a victory over struggling democracy.
When all was over, a deputation of so-called loyal subjects waited upon the King of Prussia to do homage to the victor.
"I wish all my subjects were now here before me, to do justice to my august sentiments," were the concluding words in his Majesty's answer. And the royal utterance was suitably quoted beneath a drawing published shortly afterwards, in which the king stands, fuse in hand, by the cannon, ready to fire a well-directed charge of grape-shot into the midst of his faithful subjects.
* * * * * *
All this happened some months after Mendelssohn's death, and it was well he was spared experiences which would have made the most painful impression on his sensitive nature. Indeed, so impressionable was he, that even trifling incidents would sometimes visibly affect him, and then he could make it very trying for those who had the misfortune to incur his displeasure. He had strong likes and dislikes, and would not always take the trouble to conceal them; as on one occasion, when he very pointedly showed his dislike to Miss F., an Irish girl, who was studying at the Conservatorio in Leipsic.I think he was prejudiced against her because she had a mass of fluffy reddish hair, which would break away from the rule of the hairpin and escape in a spirit of rebellion; just the sort of thing we admire nowadays, but that was thought positively improper then.
She once appealed to me, when my mother was reading her a homily on the wicked ways of that hair. "Now, Felix, you who have an artist's eye; is it really so dreadful?" she asked. To be sure I told her that I, for one, thought it mighty fine, and she triumphed, but I was ever after chaffed as the one who had "an artist's eye."
There were tears shed on the evening of the Pupils' concert at the Gewandhaus. When Miss F.'s turn came, it was found she had forgotten her music, and Mendelssohn, behind the scenes, was in a rage. There was an awkward pause whilst the music was being fetched and the audience was waiting, but my father called up the tuner to officiate and fill the gap, and so appearances were saved. But Mendelssohn never forgave poor Miss F.
A passage in a letter to my mother, dated September 3, 1832, I must transcribe, if only because I think it my duty to quote it as a warning to such bachelors as may be inclined to make rash vows of celibacy. Mendelssohn, who was then twenty-three, wrote of his friend Klingemann: "If Klingemann flirts, he is only doing the correct thing, and wisely too; what else are we born for? But, if he gets married, I shall just die with laughter; only fancy Klingemann a married man! But you predict it,and I know you can always tell by people's faces what they are going to say or to do. If I wanted bread at dinner, you used to say in an undertone, 'Some bread for Mr. Mendelssohn;' and perhaps your matrimonial forecast might be equally true. But on the other hand, I too am a prophet in matrimonial matters, and maintain exactly the reverse. Klingemann is, and will ever be, a Knight of the Order of Bachelors, and so shall I. Who knows but we may both wish to marry thirty years hence! But then, no girl will care to have us. Pray, cut this prophecy out of the letter before you burn it, and keep it carefully; in thirty years we shall know whether it proves correct or not."
Klingemann married in 1845, and Mendelssohn became engaged to Cécile Jeanrenaud in September 1836, just four years after his prophecy.
He writes in a very different strain shortly after his marriage:—
"All that is good," he says, "has become doubly dear to me; all that is bad, easier to put up with. Your wife must not visit my sins on Cécile; on the contrary she must be ready to like her, and to love her a little when she becomes acquainted with her. And truly my dear Cécile deserves it, and I think I need not make any appeal to your wife, but simply introduce her and say, 'This is Cécile'—the rest will follow naturally." He was right; they met the same year and became friends.
Cécile was in many respects a contrast to her husband; she was calm and reserved, where he was lively and excitable. Hers was a deeply emotionalnature, but she rarely showed outwardly what moved or impressed her, whereas his emotions would ever rise to the surface, generally to overflow and find expression in words.
My father, after first meeting her in Berlin, says: "Felix's wife is very charming, very unassuming and childlike. Her mouth and nose are like Sontag's. Her way of speaking is pleasing and simple; her German is quite that of the Frankforter. She said naïvely at dinner, 'I speak too slowly for my Felix, and he so quickly that I don't always understand him.'"
I remember thinking her exceedingly beautiful. Her appearance reminded me of a certain picture of Germania by Kaulbach; but she was not the typical fair-haired German; she was dark, and wore her hair not in classical waves, but according to the fashion of the day, in many ringlets.
The daily intercourse between the Mendelssohns and the Moscheles was a source of real happiness to both. They were constantly meeting to make or to discuss music, to take long walks together, or short ones along the Grimmaische Strasse to the Conservatorio. The work there was particularly congenial to my father's taste; after the many years of feverish activity he had spent in London, Leipsic was truly a haven of rest to him, and he could well say, "I am beginning to realise my dream of emancipation from professional slavery."
Following the example of the parents, the children of the two families soon fraternised too. I recollect a very lively children's party at our house. Mendelssohn came in and joined in the games; then he went to thepiano and set us all a dancing as only the rhythm of his improvisation could. When he ended, we clamoured for more. Give any child a Mendelssohn finger and no wonder it wants the ten. We got another splendid waltz that glided into a gallop, but when that too came to an end, we insatiable little tyrants would not let him get up from the piano.
"Well," he said, "if all the little girls will go down on their knees and beg and pray of me, I may be induced to give you one more dance." A circle was soon formed around him, and they had to beg hard, harder, and hardest, before he allowed himself to be softened.
David, the violinist, also belonged to the intimate circle of our friends. He had come to London in 1839 with a warm introduction from Mendelssohn, and had soon endeared himself to all of us. He was a musician of the good old kind, practising and loving music for its own sake; he was a man of high culture, ever entertaining and genial, and took special delight in smoking innumerable cigars with his friends. In one respect he was much like my father and Mendelssohn. He could not understand how anybody could get through twenty-four hours without playing some Sonata or Trio. I recollect he was quite indignant on one occasion when he was in London and was staying with Sterndale Bennett. "Would you believe it?" he said. "I have been in the house now for more than a week, and we have not once sat down to make music." Poor Sterndale Bennett, who hadprobably been giving his eight or ten lessons a day in London or Brighton!
Rietz, too, the conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts, was a friend and amusic-makerin the German sense—a musician of the highest order, and a brilliant virtuoso on the violoncello.
For Mendelssohn's birthday, the 3rd of February, we had been getting up theatricals, and great excitement prevailed amongst old and young, for all were to take part in them. I feel pretty sure that my mother had planned it all, for, amongst a good many other things, she was the family poet and playwright. The performance began with a scene acted in the Frankfort dialect by Madame Mendelssohn and her sister, Madame Schunck; then followed a charade in four parts—"Gewandhaus," the name of the famous concert hall, was the word to be illustrated.
For the first syllable, "Ge," Joachim, then sixteen years old, appeared in an eccentric wig, and played a wild Fantasiaà laPaganini on the Ge-Saite, the G string. Then the stirring scene from "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," when Pyramus and Thisbe make love through the chink in the wall, stood for "Wand," the German for wall. The lion, I need not say, roared well.
To illustrate the third syllable "Haus," my mother had written a little domestic scene, to be acted by herself and her husband. When the curtain rose, she was discovered knitting a blue stocking, and soliloquising on the foibles of female authoresses; whereupon enter the cook. The cook was my father,and his bearing on this his first appearance in the part, his female attire, as well as his realistic get-up, so tickled Mendelssohn's fancy, that he broke into a fit of Homeric laughter; Homeric, with this reserve, that that historical outburst was not produced in a wickerwork chair, and therefore cannot have been as effective as Mendelssohn's. Under his weight the chair rocked to and fro, and creaked till one thought it must break its bonds. But it held out, and gradually found its balance; it was not till then that the cook was allowed to proceed with her part.
Finally "Gewandhaus," the complete word, was represented by all the juvenile members of the company; each of us had to blow or play some instrument of a primitive character. Joachim led with a toy violin, and I wielded the bâton, and did my best to take off the characteristic ways of my illustrious godfather. Some of my imitative faculty must have survived the dead-man period of my early days, for the wickerwork once more shook with the sympathetic laughter of its occupant, and it reached a climax when Joachim made some pointed remarks in imitation of the master.
After the performance actors and public gathered round a festive board. In the centre of the supper-table stood the birthday cake, around which burned thirty-seven candles, one for each year, according to the good old German fashion. My mother had written a few words descriptive of the year each represented—from the cradle to the piano and the conductor's desk—from his first attempt at composition,to "St. Paul," "Elijah," and the opera to come. In the centre stood the Light of Life, that, alas! was so soon to fail. We little dreamt that it was his last birthday we were celebrating.
The sounds of mirth, as the chords of harmony, were ere long to be silenced. A few months later Mendelssohn's dearly beloved sister, Fanny Hensel, suddenly died. It was a heavy blow from which he never quite recovered, for the brother and sister were bound together by the closest ties of affection, and the most striking artistic affinities. He spent the summer in Switzerland, but returned enfeebled in health and depressed in spirits. "His step is less elastic than before," says my father, "but to see him at the piano, or to hear him talk about art and artists, he is all life and fire."
The evening of the 8th of October was the last I was to spend at Mendelssohn's house. He, my father, Rietz, and David had been playing much classical music. In the course of an animated conversation which followed, some knotty art question arose and led to a lively discussion. Each of the authorities present was warmly defending his own opinion, and there seemed little prospect of an immediate agreement, when Mendelssohn, suddenly interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence, turned on his heel and startled me with the unexpected question—
"What is the Aoristus primus ofτυπτω, Felix?" I was at that time a schoolboy in my fifteenth year, and so, quickly recovering from my surprise, I gave the correct answer.
"Good," said he, and off we went to supper, the knotty point being thus promptly settled.
* * * * * *
I well remember the 9th of October of that year. From our windows we saw Mendelssohn walking slowly and languidly through the garden towards our house. As he came in, my mother inquired after his health, and he answered, "Grau in grau" (Grey on grey). My father suggested a walk in the Rosenthal, that beautiful park, in those days scarcely touched by the hand of the landscape gardener. Mendelssohn acquiesced listlessly. "Will you take me too?" asked my mother. "What do you say? shall we take her?" broke in Mendelssohn in his old genial manner. Well, she was taken, and so was I, or, at any rate, I went. The walk seemed to do him good; he brightened up, and was soon engaged in lively conversation. My mother said, "You have not told us enough about your last stay in London," and that started him talking of our mutual friends there. Then he gave us a graphic account of his visit to the Queen.
It will be remembered how, on a previous occasion, he had spent a delightful hour in Buckingham Palace, and was charmed with the Queen's singing of some of his songs, and struck with Prince Albert's musical talents. How, between them, the three had set to work to pick up the sheets of music which the wind had blown all over the room, before they settled down to the organ and the piano, and how Mendelssohn carried out the parrot in his cage, to theamazement of the royal servants. The pleasant incident of his last visit, which he related to us as we walked along the Rosenthal, was this. He had been once more making music with the Queen, and had been genuinely delighted with her rendering of his songs. As he was about to leave, she said—
"Now, Dr. Mendelssohn, you have given me so much pleasure; is there nothing I can do to give you pleasure?" To be sure, he answered, that he was more than amply rewarded by her Majesty's gracious reception, and by what would be a lasting remembrance of the interest she had shown in his music; but when she insisted, he said—
"Well, to speak the truth, I have a wish, and one that only your Majesty can grant."
"It is granted," she interposed.
And then he told her that nothing could give him greater pleasure than to see the nurseries and all the domestic arrangements connected with the royal children. The most consummate courtier could not have expressed a wish better calculated to please the Queen. She most cordially responded, and herself conducted him through the nurseries. Nor was the matter treated lightly; she had to show him the contents of the wardrobes and give him particulars of the service, and for the time being the two were not in the relative position of gracious sovereign and obedient servant, but rather of an experienced materfamilias and an enlightened paterfamilias, comparing notes, and giving one another points on the management of their respective children.
Mendelssohn left us about one o'clock in the mostcheerful mood. The same afternoon he was taken ill in Madame Frege's house. He had gone there to persuade her to sing in his "Elijah," which had as yet only been performed in England, and was now to be heard in Leipsic; he also wanted her advice and help in putting together a new book of his songs. I pass over the anxiety of the next weeks, the partial recovery, to be followed only by relapse and aggravated symptoms.
From the 1st of November we knew that the worst was to be feared. My parents were not often away from the house of sickness. In the morning of the fatal day, at four o'clock, I went to the Königstrasse to get the latest news; I had to return hopeless through the dark and foggy night. Later in the day I was again for some hours in the house, but was not allowed to see the dying man. From two o'clock in the afternoon, the hour when another paralytic stroke was dreaded, he gradually began to sink. Cécile, his brother Paul, David, Schleinitz, and my father were present, when at twenty-four minutes past nine he expired with a deep sigh.
The next day Cécile wrote to my mother asking her to order the mourning for the children; she would let her know when she could see her. Some days elapsed, the funeral service had been held and the remains had been transferred to Berlin, when she wrote again asking my mother to come and to bring me. We went. Outwardly we found her calm and resigned, but one could read in her countenance that she was mortally wounded. She talked of him she had lost and showed us a deathbed drawing that hisbrother-in-law Hensel had made. For a time his manuscripts remained untouched; the door of his study she kept locked.
"Not a pin, not a paper," she wrote, "could I bring myself to move from its place. That room must remain for a short time my sanctuary; those things, that music, my secret treasure."
It was with feelings of deep emotion that I entered the room when, shortly afterwards, she opened its door for me. I had asked and obtained permission to make a water-colour drawing of that study, whilst all yet stood as the master had left it. On the right was the little old-fashioned piano on which he composed so many of his great works; near the window the writing-desk he used to stand at. On the walls water-colours by his own hand—Swiss landscapes and others. On the left the busts of Goethe and Bach, placed on the bookcases which contained his valuable musical library.
Whilst I was painting, Cécile came and went. Not a sigh, not a murmur escaped her lips.
She died just four years after her husband.
Iwell rememberhow I got my first commission and earned the first money in the exercise of my profession. It came about in this way.
I was down by the Quais of old Paris, close to the Pont des Aveugles, drawing the Parisian workman as he took his midday rest. The Quais had not yet got as strait-laced as they are now, and the river flowed its pleasant course without much police supervision. There was the loveliest of buildings, the Louvre, but it had not made more than a start towards the Tuileries, with which it was in but a few years to join stones.
I was often down there sketching, and I always found willing models amongst the friendly natives in blouses. The Parisian has an ever-varying way of asking you to take his likeness. "Tirez ma binette," "Fixez moi cette frimousse," or, "Relevez moi le plan de mon image," are amongst those I recollect. "Draw my mug," we might say, although translation does not go far to render that sort of colloquialism.—"Fix my phiz," and "Just you give me the map of my image."
I never accepted coppers on the occasions when Ipresented my models with a sketch, but such ready-money payment was often proffered. It was not till a man had insisted on my accompanying him to his home with a view to artistic business, that I was led to accept my first commission. He lived near the Temple, quite a little distance from the Quai Voltaire, and as we went along, my companion became very communicative. He began about himself, then gave me a bird's-eye view of the family history, and soon came to "Ma mère," a theme he stuck to as only a Frenchman can. "She was," he said, "une maîtresse femme," and he would just like to see the man "qui pourrait lui tirer une carotte" (who could extract a carrot from her). This was not an allusion to the fruit and vegetable shop she kept, but meant that she was not an easy one to get over in money matters. I found the old lady as my friend had described her. She was stout and determined, and she kept her money jingling in the two or three capacious pockets of her apron. She could see I was an artist; why,shecould recognise one within a radius of a league; and if I would draw her the portraits of her two granddaughters for five francs, I might set to work at once; they both had the eyes ofherfamily, the Roufflards,—not a trace of the Tusserand look—an advantage I was not to overlook. The girls were about fourteen or fifteen, and I thought I could make rather a telling picture of the two heads together in medallion shape. But the old lady was after me at once. She didn't believe in pinching and cheeseparing, and didn't want the thing rounded off in any of those circular frames. "No," she said."Allez-y franchement; you just draw them as they are, hands and feet and all,comme qui dirait: there they are, those two girls,les fillettes à la mère Tusserand."
To this I answered that we hadn't bargained for all that, and I was right from a strictly professional point of view, but I wouldn't have lost the five francs for the world, and I daresay she guessed as much, and stuck to her guns. She, as an old materfamilias, knew that people were not born in bust shape; then why should they be thus represented?Shealways gave good measure, and if she didn't, her customers would soon keep her up to the mark; so why shouldn't she have her money's worth? I felt that I ought to insist on better terms, if only for the dignity of my profession, but I was no match for the old lady, so I started work on her conditions, only, to save appearances, bargaining for a plentiful supply ofreineclaudesduring the sittings.
A sort of staircase, that had just missed being a ladder, led up in a straight line to the room that was to serve as a studio. A bed of imposing dimensions took up the greater part of the room; the bedstead of polished mahogany was an old-fashioned structure, that you could see at once had been handed down from one generation of fruiterers to another; similarly suggestive was a queer old roccoco looking-glass, and a faded portrait of a tomcat sitting on a middle-aged spinster's lap. "Who are you, young man?" these worthy relics seemed to say; "haveyougot a pedigree?"
The latest offshoots from the genealogical tree of the Roufflard-Tusserand family had to be enthroned on the bed. I could otherwise not get sufficiently far away from them to overlook my group. It was desired that their arms should be interlaced with a view to emphasising their sisterly affection, and this gave rise to a new difficulty as to the presentment of one of the hands, which, being in perspective, did not show the full complement of fingers. When Madame Tusserand came to inspect my work, she particularly insisted that no part of the thumb should be concealed. She had noticed such imperfections in other pictures, and had always looked upon them as instances of the artful way in which painters sought to scamp their work. But here I struck. I swore by the holy Raphael that I could and would not alter it, and gave the old lady a lecture on the glorious Madonnas, who, even with incomplete thumbs, had been the means of regenerating the world. She was so pleased with the mention of the Madonna, and more especially with that part of my argument which she did not understand, that she gave in, and so perspective scored a victory.
The two girls, my models, were neat little types of the bourgeois class. I did not think much of them or the type; in fact I thought the generality of Parisian girls plain; but experienced friends told me I knew nothing about it, and taught me that if I wanted to judge of a woman (that unripe fruit, a girl, to be sure was not worth mentioning), I must study not her face or her figure, but her generalappearance and one or two essential parts of her toilette. "What is the use of features," they asked, "to a woman who can't dress, or who isgantéeandchausséeas if sherevenait de l'autre monde." Which other world they meant, and how they wear their gloves and shoes there, they didn't explain. "And why should you give undue importance," they wound up, "to beauty where there is thetournureto observe and thechic. No,mon cher, if you want to form a correct estimate of a woman, study her ankles and herbottines."
Whilst I was taking stock of my models, and arriving at the conclusion that they were plain, pert, and precocious, they had evidently lost no time in deciding that I was green, and that it would take a good deal of teaching to give me the more attractive tinges of ripeness. They told me all about the Bouzibon, a familiar name by which they designated their favourite Bal de Barrière. They took it for granted I couldn't dance, but I might come and learn there next Sunday evening. It was a most respectable place, and nothing was ever lost or stolen there. La mère Bouze was a widow; to be sure I had noticed that elegant place in the Faubourg St. Denis, the fried-fish shop; well, that had originally been started by the late Monsieur Bouze years ago.
In return I told them my old yarn about Prince Poniatowski being drowned in the river Pleisse, just at the bottom of our garden in Leipsic; but I let out the point too quickly, and once they knew the Prince was drowned, they did not carefor the rest. They behaved very well on the whole, and, as far as I am aware, did not make ugly faces at me when I was looking the other way. I am sure they did not like me though; their fancy men were twogarçons coiffeursin a barber's shop close by, and so I hadn't a fair start.
That was my first experience as a portrait-painter. From that day to this I have truly loved my profession, undeterred by the fact that the course of true love does not always run smooth. At any rate that five-franc piece which Madame Roufflard-Tusserand took from the depths of her apron pocket and handed to me, gave me more satisfaction than many a "Pay to F. Moscheles, Esq.," that has since followed.
I wonder whether my drawing still exists, and, if so, whether it is going down as an heirloom from generation to generation with the bedstead, the looking-glass, and the middle-aged tomcat lady.
Iwell rememberthe first words of French that I mastered, and the sensation I created when I, a very small boy, irrepressibly burst forth with my declaration:
"O Madam, kay voos aite bell!"
This was addressed across the friendly supper table to Madame de R., who with her husband, the well-known portrait-painter, was spending her honeymoon at Boulogne.
To Boulogne we too had gone, as people went then when they wanted a change of air, or as they go now to Africa or the antipodes.
On this occasion our party consisted of my parents, three sisters, myself, and an English nurse, who, from first to last, was unutterably shocked by what she called the outrageous proceedings of the foreigners, and by the fearful language that parrot used, who always gathered a little sympathetic crowd in front of the shell and wooden-spade shop.
My sisters had a French governess of the approved type.
"Maître Corbeau sur un arbre perché," she recited to me with conventional emphasis and genuine affectation.On such occasions I stood staring at her, surprised at the amount of mouth-twisting and wriggling it took to talk French. Then I tried to do as much, and said:
"Mayter Korbow sure unn ahber per Shay."
"Perrrché," she interposed, and
"Pure Shay," I repeated.
"Mais non, mon petit chéri, perrrr—ché!" and so on, till we got to "apeuprès ce langage," the "a pew pray" being, I recollect, a terrible stumbling-block.
I was about eighteen when I met that handsome Madame de R. again in Paris. She reminded me of my early appreciation of her beauty, and was anxious to know whether I was still inclined to express my admiration as warmly as I did formerly.
"To be sure," I said. "Yes.Mais oui certainement, madame." But, oh dear! how little female French I must have understood in those days, and how little male French I must have had at my command! for—I must confess—I said no more.
The de R.'s became great people under the Empire: he and she—or perhaps more correctly she and he—got into the inner Court circle, where she soon distinguished herself as a leader of fashion, and he as a very successful painter of life-size fashion-plates in oils. Both his works and her personal charms were graciously smiled upon by the imperial master himself.
Apropos of my French, I may say that I had every opportunity of improving it. I soon entered the Atelier Gleyre, that studio we have heard aboutin reference to Du Maurier, Whistler, Poynter, and others, who there learnt to draw their first bonshommes, and to spoil their first canvases.
I had made a sort of mental vow to speak nought but the language of the country for the first year of my stay in Paris. In the beginning I found it rather tough work, but a French studio is a good school. I plunged in head foremost, and soon got on swimmingly. From the first I was attracted by the brilliancy of Parisian slang, and by the terseness of French argot (that is, the thieves' language). As for the genuine article, real French, as spoken by real Frenchwomen in real salons on a "Madame reçoit" day—nothing could exceed my admiration for it. But the Quartier Latin, with its studios and garrets, itscrêmeriesand little restaurants, all bedecked with clever works from the brushes of thehabitués, was the high school in which I graduated and which in due time turned me out a fair specimen of the classicalRapin—the art student as Paris alone produces him. In a word, I soon felt quite at home in that delightful haven of unrest we call Bohemia.
And the friends of those days! I made many and lost few. There is one who stands out prominently from amongst the rest, and he is connected in my mind with a thousand and one incidents of my Paris life. His name was Claude; Claude Raoul Dupont.
At our first meeting I felt that I should like to make friends with him. He was what the Italians callsympatico—not quite the same thing assympathetic; just the sort of man whom little girls would unhesitatingly request to ring the bell they couldn't reach, or boys would call to their assistance with a "Please, sir, lend us your stick to get down that cap from up there," or "to fetch out that ball from inside them railings;" the sort of man with whom you or I would at once have got into conversation, if we had met him in a railway carriage.
My first acquaintance with him was in that Atelier Gleyre. We were just fellow-students at the beginning, then chums,bons camarades, soon friends, and finally we got linked together by the most lasting of ties, that of brotherly love. So it comes that the story of his life is most vividly impressed on my mind. It is uneventful, perhaps, and differs little from any other story that pictures the artist's life, with its hopes and aspirations, its sprinkling of love-making and its glorious consummation of love-finding, but I must attempt to give an outline of it, if but in memory of my friend.
To begin at the beginning, let me sketch our days of good comradeship, and put in a wash of background here and there, and a few touches of local colour in illustration of the life we led.
You could tell at a glance that Claude was a "Rapin," but that was not surprising, for in those days it had not yet become the aim and end of the young artist to conceal his profession and to walk through life incognito, with a well-groomed chimney-pot implanted on the top of his head. So you must fancy Claude with a soft felt hat of a species even now not quite extinct, although,as we all know, superseded by the boiled apple-pudding-shaped dome, ornamented with a gutter, which we have universally adopted, and which we call a pot hat, a bowler, a billycock hat, or as the coachman or groom says, a bridle.
It was quite appropriate that Claude should wear a wide-awake, as being in keeping with an expression that showed him always on thequi vive. He was tall, rather too much so for the breadth of his shoulders, but he moved with great freedom and ease, and as he was mostly on the move, he also mostly showed to advantage.
In the Atelier Gleyre he was the leading spirit. That studio was situated in the Rue de l'Ouest, flanking the Luxembourg Gardens. It was a large, high room with the regulation studio window, and was furnished with one model table on wheels, one iron spitfire of a stove, and a lot of three-legged easels and four-legged stools, not to forget a large screen behind which the models undressed; all things bearing traces of the perilous lives they led, and showing picturesque seams and scars where they were begrimed with the scrapings from perennial palettes. The professor very liberally gave his instruction gratis. For the working expenses of the Atelier the students clubbed together, each contributing ten francs per month to the "masse." At the time I entered, Claude was "Massier," that is, a sort of secretary, treasurer, and boss combined. He occupied that exalted position with much distinction, for he could be alternately serious and absurd, weighty and trivial. Common sense on the onehand; an uncommon amount of nonsense on the other. In fact his character was a curious compound of elements seemingly opposed, but working in harmony together. He wasfacile princepsas ablagueur, that is, he could chaff unmercifully, talk tall, make a fool imagine himself wise, and a wise man feel foolish. It takes a double-distilled Frenchman to make a full-blownblagueur, and such a man was Dupont.
We were a lively set, and the jokes that were bandied about, coupled with the most unparliamentary, not to say vituperative language, at first startled me. But the Rapin's bark is worse than his bite. "Il est défendu de chahuter la religion et la famille" was an unwritten law, that excluded those two delicate topics, the family and religion, from the field of word-battle. Another law bade you keep your temper. We might have hurled the most obnoxious of epithets at one another, but when the available catalogue of abuse was exhausted, we would wind up with some good-humoured trump card, like "C'est égal, je suis plus bête que toi," which, freely translated, says, "Never mind, I am the bigger fool of the two."
One of the first things that struck me in the atelier was a large felt hat forming a sort of centre on the ceiling. That was Gobelot's hat. It was there just because some of the boys had taken a dislike to it; in fact it was a priggish hat, and as Gobelot had a twitchy sort of a face that would work well under feelings of surprise and resentment, they thought they would like to watch him, fromthe first moment when he would miss his hat, to the last when he would discover its whereabouts.
It had got fixed on the ceiling with some difficulty, whilst its owner had fallen asleep by the stove. The model table was placed in the centre of the room, and the ladder held upright upon it by half-a-dozen sturdy arms; a light-weight clambered to the top and did the nailing. The result proved pre-eminently satisfactory to all except Gobelot, and even he, I think, after the lapse of a few months, got to be rather proud of the excelsiority accorded to his headgear.
This was by no means the first experience he had had of studio life. On his entrance into the Atelier Gleyre, he had set himself to draw the figure of Sinel, one of the leading models of the day, and had betrayed more self-confidence than was compatible with his position as anouveau. He had been working for a couple of days, when Monsieur Gleyre came to visit his students. The bear-garden was suddenly transformed into a grave academy. Respectful silence and order prevailed, as the master passed from easel to easel, criticising here and encouraging there, and generally enunciating wise artistic saws for the benefit of the students. When Gobelot's turn came, he paused a while before he expressed an opinion on his work. At last he said kindly but firmly: "Young man, you have come to study with me, and it is my duty to advise you honestly and straight-forwardly. Believe me, devote all your attention to the human foot; learn to draw that correctly,—and then perhaps you may be successful as a bootmaker." Therewith he passed on to the neighbour. Shortlyafterwards the real Monsieur Gleyre came in, for the whole thing was a plant, and Gobelot was officially introduced as thenouveauby the sham professor.
It is not a sinecure to be thenouveau. One is the butt of endless jokes, and has to take them meekly; one is at everybody's beck and call, to pick up a brush, or to run for a ha'porth of bread or a penn'orth of fried potatoes. When I was the new boy, I knew resistance was useless, so I served my time cheerfully, swallowing snakes, as the French call it, with apparent relish.
But one day I was caught napping. I had joined in the general conversation, and had so far forgotten myself as to make a joke, and, what was worse, they said, not a bad one. This was adding insult to injury; a storm of indignation broke forth, and the cry of "À l'échelle" ("To the ladder") was raised. I should then and there have suffered the penalty of my rashness, had not Dupont interposed. He mounted the rostrum,i.e.the model table, and made an eloquent appeal on my behalf. I was an Englishman, he pleaded, and as such I had been reared on raw beef and bran puddings; he would himself now see that I was kept on lighter food (I suppose he meant frogs). Yes, I had presumed to trespass on the domain of "esprit," the exclusive property of Frenchmen in general, and of the duffers now before him in particular—he would not offend them by calling them gentlemen. My joke, he admitted, was a good one, but then, what could you expect from a benighted foreigner, who did not know the value of a bad one. And so on. However feeble his defencemay appear to us as we read it in cold blood, it had the desired effect, and I was saved from my impending fate. But I was not to get off for long. Only a couple of days afterwards, an incident led to my punishment. It was luncheon time and I was studying the greasy paper that my potatoes had been wrapped up in, probably a leaf from some old register, so many tons of which are issued daily by bureaucratic Paris. I had got to my second course, roast chestnuts done to a T, when I had a sort of secret forewarning that a certain long stick with a hook, one of the studio properties, was stealthily approaching towards the stool I was sitting on. A sudden jerk, and the stool was pulled from beneath me; but being fully prepared, I failed to collapse, and remained as if seated, continuing my meal as if nothing had occurred. Such independence could not be tolerated. Stop, the well-known caricaturist, now formally moved that I be "mis à l'échelle," and the resolution was unanimously carried. So the ladder was laid on the floor, and I was bound to it hands and feet; then it and I were hoisted up and placed against the wall. Next Stop proceeded to bare my breast, and to paint thereon a highly coloured picture representing several pigs and their doings. In the meanwhile the poker was being made red-hot in the stove. The occasion must be marked by a scar, I was given to understand, and I can assure those who have never gone through a similar experience, that a touch from a red-hot poker is very painful, even if the red is only vermilion and the heat imaginary. I was informed that I should have topreserve the pig picture for a fortnight, after which time I should be called up for inspection.
When anouveauis entered at an atelier, he is expected to pay "la bienvenue," his welcome. Gobelot had preceded me as the new boy, and as we had both been pretty liberal, a sum of about fifty francs was in readiness to be used for some sociable purpose. After some deliberation it was decided to invest our capital in donkeys, to be hired in the Bois de Boulogne. So one fine afternoon we found ourselves in full force, selecting our mounts at Père Delaborde's well-known stables. His donkeys were always the best fed and best kept, and to us, who had never been to the East, and therefore did not know what a donkey was really like, they seemed quite decent and cheerful specimens of their kind. Here and there, to be sure, there was one who had not become resigned to his fate, and who would stiffen his neck with an emphasis that showed that he would have used strong language, had he been endowed with the power of speech. But on the whole Monsieur Delaborde's donkeys were quite docile and manageable, and accustomed to be ruled by the little shouting savages known as donkey-boys.
There were two horses in the stables, and it was decided that Gobelot and I should mount them and take command of the donkey brigade. The responsibility of leadership soon, however, devolved on me alone, for Gobelot's horse had, I suppose through long-standing habits of companionship, taken to the ways of its mates; so it kept step with them, and stretched its ears full length, and took all thingsphilosophically. My steed was made of very different metal. He started off at a lively pace, giving me an opportunity of showing off my horsemanship, acquired at the riding-school in Leipsic. I felt pleasantly aware of my superiority over my donkey-mounted friends, especially over Dupont, whose long legs were dangling very near the ground, he having left his stirrups, or they him, and over Gobelot, who was ineffectually trying to break into a canter.
Very suddenly and unexpectedly my horse stopped as if it had divined that I thought it time to inspect my followers. It was my intention to form them into column, and then to execute one or two strategical movements that seemed well adapted to the occasion. As a first step towards this, I wanted to wheel round and face my men, but my steed was evidently in a meditative mood and would not be disturbed. I applied my heels to its flanks, and pulled its head round, till its eye met mine, but its body remained stationary. When it had thought out whatever it may have had on its mind, it started off again as suddenly as it had stopped, before I had had an opportunity of commencing operations. This capricious starting and stopping, over which I had no control, was, I need not say, a source of annoyance to me, and of hilarity to my friends. It was to be more than this presently.
I had got pretty far ahead of the others, when my mount came to one of its dead stops. I contented myself with hoping it would soon have done staring vacantly. Looking round, I noticed some commotion in the distant donkey group, and anopening in its ranks to let a carriage pass. As it approached, it proved to be a well-appointed phaeton, and I recognised Louis Napoleon, who was driving himself, accompanied by a gentleman and by two servants in green and gold livery. I made every effort to get out of the way, but in vain. The prince took in the situation at a glance and considerately deviated from his course, seeing that I could not keep it clear for him. A smile flitted across his face and enlivened his rigidly waxed moustache, as he turned to his companion and made some remark. I did not catch it, but my horse probably did, and must have taken it as encouraging, for it started off in an uncontrollable fit of loyalty, and whether I liked it or not, I had to ride by the side of the phaeton, acting, for the time being, as equerry to the future emperor. He took it kindly; the two green and gold ones were amazed and indignant, but too well trained to lynch me, and so I galloped on till once more my quadruped stopped and again became absorbed in thought.
When my companions came up, they gave expression to their unbounded delight at my discomfiture, and generally treated me, their appointed leader, with every mark of disrespect. This time the horse must have mistaken their vociferous hooting for a signal to return home, for it started off in that direction, and took me back without once indulging in the usual hiatus.
I dismounted, and whilst, on the one hand, I was glad to be now able to regulate my own movements, on the other I was smarting under the recollection ofmy ignominious failure, and the jeering and hooting still rang in my ears.
A couple ofsergents de villewere on duty close by, a circumstance which suggested to me the opportunity of getting even with my insubordinate men.
"Well, Messieurs," I said to the policemen, "I think there might be a few more of you along the principal avenues. It is positively disgraceful. I don't mind a bit of a joke myself, but in my country we don't play practical jokes on royalty, as that young chap with the brown felt hat did on your Prince President."