For all he is eighty-two years of age, his hair is yet thick, and the blackness of it is of too stubborn an order ever to go more than iron-grey. He has glassy eyes, puffed and bagged with flesh; heavy black eyebrows half-way up his sloping forehead; a heavy black moustache under his strong nose; a tongue several sizes too large for his mouth; and under the mouth a chin which recedes so sharply that it becomes neck before you are really aware that it is chin. He reminds us a little, as he sits there laughing and chuckling, of early caricatures of Sir Redvers Buller.
Opposite Old Joe sits Mr. Wells, a little old white-haired gentleman, very spruce and tidy, with neatly clipped moustache and neatly pointed beard, and peering little cloudy eyes which are sightless.
* * * * *
The two old gentlemen, as they are called, live together in a tiny two-roomed house in a narrow flagged court which is generally strung with washing. The low-roofed kitchen is their sitting-room, and its smoky-panelled walls are decorated only with church almanacs and a few faded photographs.
The room is beautifully clean, and so is the bedroom above, where the two pensioners sleep in neat little beds. Out of the money allowed them by a neighbouring church—some nine shillings a week between the two—they pay a woman five shillings a week "to do for them." As for themselves, they smoke their pipes in front of the fire, and laugh to find themselves, after much rough work on the high seas, so happy and jolly at the end of their days.
"It wasn't always as clean as this, you must understand," says Mr. Wells confidentially, his sightless eyes blinking with amusement. "When we first come here the place was simply swarming; swarming it was—you know,gentlemen in the overcoatswe call 'em down here. And the amusing thing was—there, I did laugh!—Joe could see 'em but couldn't catch 'em, and I, who might have caught 'em, couldn't see 'em." He leans over to Joe and shouts, "I was telling the genneman about the bugs when we first came here!" And Joe lifts his eyebrows, rubs his shoulder against his chair, and laughs, and says with his pipe in his mouth, "Ess, sir!" making a pantomimic gesture supposed to represent the slaughter of vermin.
Little Mr. Wells has a great and fundamental pride in the fact that he is "eight year younger nor what Joe is." He tells you this interesting fact more than once, speaking in his wonted low tone of voice, reaching out with his pipe between his fingers to touch you lightly with his elbow, and always concluding with the appeal, "You wouldn't think so, would you?" And then, as the pipe goes back to his mouth, "Well, it is so," he says, and nods his head at the fire. And Old Joe, who doesn't care a brass farden, or a bone button for that matter, whether he is eighty-two or one hundred and eighty-two, has his point of pride in the certain conviction that if only he had the use of his legs he would be as strong now as ever he was.
* * * * *
Now, old Joe, for all he is paralysed, has the use of his eyes, whereas Mr. Wells, who can and does shuffle about pretty freely on his feet, has not got the use of his.
Joe's sight is a great blessing to him; he can read. He has a sturdy taste in literature, and will stand none of your milk-and-water stuff. He likes fighting, plenty of that: and Red Indians, and duels, and murders, and shipwrecks, and fires, and sudden deaths. He requires of his author that he keep his mind steeped perpetually in blood and thunder. You will always find that Old Joe is sitting on a penny novelette, open at the place, and but little crumpled or creased from the impress of his skeleton of a body. He is a great reader, one of the greatest readers in London; and, perhaps, to no man in all the world more than to Joe has literature brought so complete an escape from the pressing demands of self-consciousness and the inconvenient emphasis of personality.
It is at this point that we reach, by the reader's leave, the psychological interest of this our simple story. For the problem presents itself to Mr. Wells, as well as to me, whether all this violent reading has not created in Joe's mind the impression of a Joe who never was on sea or land. In other words: in the tale which Joe tells of his own life, is any part of it fact, or is it not all a figment of his brain, the creation of his bloody-minded authors? Joe himself believes every word of it; Joe believes he was the Joe he tells you about, and his face grows purple, and his glassy eyes dart fire out of their baggy flesh, if you insinuate never so delicately that one of his stories is in the very smallest detail just a little difficult of belief.
Mr. Wells never contradicts Joe; but every now and then (forgetting that Joe can see) he shakes a sceptic head, and, leaning towards you, whispers (forgetting that Joe can only hear when you shout at him) that you must be pleased to remember that "that'swhat he thinks he done; and no doubt hethinksthat it was so; and it may be it was, and I should never think of contradicting, not no man; but I has my own opinion in the matter.I don'tthink it was so. I think he's half dreaming and half telling a tale. That's whatIthink."
"But," you inquire, "is it not true that Joe was once a pirate?"
"Oh, yes," he cries at once, smiling proudly; "Oh, yes. Joe was a pirate right enough. What, haven't you heard him tell how they boarded a Spanish ship, and cut the throats and broke the heads of the swarthy crew? Oh, you ought to hear him tell that. It's as good as a play." And here he leans forward, and calls across to chuckling and gurgling Joe. "Joe! Tell the genneman how you boarded that Spanish ship, and cut the throats of them there swarthy Spaniards."
* * * * *
At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air, makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be slain again.
It is plain that the poor old paralysed fellow is lost to the Present. He is back in the Past—or in one of his novelettes; and in front of him, begging for mercy, as he slits their throats, or cracks open their skulls, are, indeed, hundreds of real and living men. His acting is superb. It is only made comical by the hanging legs, the fixture of the body to the seat of the chair, and the furious spluttering of his frenzied mouth.
When he has quite finished, thoroughly exhausted, he leans back in his chair, sticks his pipe into his face, strikes a match with his shaking hands, and covers his laughing face in a wreath of tobacco-smoke.
"Arst him," whispers Mr. Wells, "how many he killed? Go on; you arst him."
* * * * *
So you lean across to Old Joe, who shoots forward to meet your lips half-way with his left ear, and you calmly, and without dread or horror, ask the gurgling and chuckling veteran how many men he has killed.
As soon as he has caught your question he bursts out laughing, flings himself suddenly back, and exclaims, with a splutter: "How many ha' I killed? How many? I couldn't say. Too many on 'em. Hundreds! Hundreds! Hundreds of 'em!" Back goes the pipe, and, wreathed in proud smiles, his shoulders twitching, his hands never still for a moment, he sits square back in his chair and looks at you proudly, as much as to say:
"Ain't I a devil of a feller? Ain't I a monster? Ho, I've had a terrible life. You just arst me another!"
Well, I know not how true is the story told by Old Joe of his own wickedness.
But, however this may be—and it is not the province of Old Joe's humble historian to speculate—let us be content with the picture of these two old pensioners from the high seas, living together in the evening of their days in a narrow court in a London slum, the one paralysed and the other blind; the one a most brilliant and imaginative story-teller, the other a most cautious, modest, tentative, and genial critic. And let us sit between their two chairs for a moment and listen to the moving story of Old Joe, believing it with all the simplicity, if not with all the stupefied, admiration of the little slum children who gaze at the pirate when his chair is moved out into the court that he may warm his old bones in the sun.
[In brackets, let me say that I have come upon Old Joe literally posing in the court as a most ferocious pirate before an audience of toddling infants not more than four years of age.]
Eighty-two years ago Old Joe, surnamed Ridley, was born in the neighbourhood of the Barbican. He remembers how murderers and highwaymen used to come and hide in the court where he was born, "because, don't you see, the police daren't come where we was living." He went to a school in Charterhouse-square. "Charterhouse School," he says. But Mr. Wells nudges us with his pipe hand. "That's a mistake," he says. "There wasn't never noschoolin Charterhouse Square, in those days. But never mind; let him go on. Only you must make allowance, you know."
His father was a carman who could drink porter by the two-gallon, and had an arm like a leg of mutton. But this great, lusty carman found himself ruled with a rod of iron by the little spitfire he took for his second wife. She managed the carman, and she managed his brats of children. She particularly managed Joe because he particularly disliked being managed.
* * * * *
So it came about that Joe found the streets pleasanter than his home, and took to slouching about with his hands in his pockets, feeling hungry and sometimes a little concerned, perhaps, as to what was to become of him. One day, as he was wasting time at a street-corner in Aldersgate, there came up to him a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man in a blue reefer suit, who showed all his teeth when he smiled and whose voice had a sharp rattle in it like a bag full of gold coins. This noticeable man hailed Joe as a fine fellow, and asked the fine fellow whether he wouldn't step with him into a convenient tavern and wet his whistle with a glass of the best brandy.
The broad-shouldered, easy-smiling gentleman in the reefer suit told Joe, over a glass of brandy in the sanded-floor parlour of a neat tavern, that he was a rich man, with a hobby on which he spent a great deal of money. "It's a hobby of mine," he said, laughing, "to put down the slave-trade. I don't like it, and so I put it down. Now, a fine young likely fellow, such as you, is just the man I want for my ship. How would you like to go sailing the lovely seas catching slave-dealers, and giving them what-for with the best steel and gunpowder that money can buy?"
Joe said he could put up with it if the money was all right. And, being assured that the money was more than all right, he agreed to go down to Plymouth with a party of the gentleman's friends and try his hand for a year or two at laying pirates by the heel.
But when our Joe got out to sea and awoke from a terrible bout of intoxication on the schooner sailed by the gentleman with a hobby, he discovered that, instead of being on the ocean to catch pirates, he was there as a pirate himself. The boy had run away from home to make a fortune catching wicked men; he now found that his bread and butter depended upon his ability in cracking the heads of perfectly honest men. Some of the new hands wanted to be put back when the situation was explained to them, but Joe was among those who felt respect for the villainous seamen on board (the ship carried 130 men, he says,) who declared that they had as lief be pirates as catch pirates, and it was no odds to them what flag they sailed under or for what purpose.
"On board," splutters Joe, striking another match, "there was a turr'ble fellow—Jack Armstrong—six foot five in socks, strong's a lion, brave's a tiger. He and me use to fight—every day, pretty near. Bang! crack! g-r-r-r-r-r! I used to beat him—easy! I was turr'bly strong. Make's nose bleed—bung's eyes up—split's lips. Ess! And there was a mulatto aboard. Metsi-metsi-metsi-can, he was."
"He means Mexican," whispers Mr. Wells behind his hand. "That's what Joe means. A Mexican." And then he gets up from his chair and shouts into Joe's ear, "You mean a Mex-i-can, Joe."
"Ess; a Metsican," splutters Joe, getting purple in the face under the impression of a contradiction. "That's what I said—Metsican. Used to call him Black Peter. I've seen him eat rattlesnake. Swallow him clean down. Like this, he would—Gollop!" Here Mr. Wells goes off into a quiet chuckle of scepticism, one finger crooked over his pipe-stem, his sightless eyes blinking at the coals. "Great big bull of a feller. 'Normous chest. Legs o' granite. Used ter fight wi' bar o' iron. Ho! Ho! Weighed half a hunded. Tremenjus weapon! If he hit you, you know—dash!—out go your brains. Ho! ho! He was fond o' me. If I saw him sulky, or anythin', up I'd go, an' 'What's matter?' I'd say. Peter'd say, 'So-a-so.' 'Oh blow,' I'd say, and walk off. He looked up to me. R'spected me. Peter was always behind me in action. Always. Never let me be killed. Never!Bang! Crack!Brain any man who come near me. Fond o' me."
Joe, we gather, was fourteen years at sea without ever coming home. He was a pirate in the China seas for years. He was in the Baltic during the Crimea. He has been to the bottom of the sea two or three times. He has fought hand-to-hand with many a shark. He has been shipwrecked a score of times. The experience of St. Paul in a good cause hardly exceeds for suffering the experience of Old Joe in a bad one. For six days and seven nights he and seven others were tossed about the sea without food in a row-boat. Two of the men died, and were eaten by the rest, with the exception of Joe, who could not stomach cannibalism for all he was such a terrible fellow. Then they were picked up by the famousAlabama, and Joe fought in the great American War of NorthversusSouth.
"I was put in prison," he says, with a roar of laughter. "Two years. InAllybammer. Two years in dungeon. In the Harbour there. AllybammerHarbour."
"Alabama, he means," whispers Mr. Wells. "You've heard of Alabama, I dare say? Somewhere in Ameriky, isn't it? Ah! Well, that's what Joe means—Alabama."
"Two years!" laughed Joe; and then, with a great roar of delight, he adds, "Went off my nut! In dungeon. Clean off my nut!"
"What Joe means," whispers Mr. Wells, slowly and dogmatically, "is that, while he was in prison in Alabama Harbour, he lost his reason: 'Off his nut' is slang for losing his reason. Now, I dare say that that is true. I shouldn't be surprised if it was."
"Then I went Canada," bellows Joe, striking a fresh match. "Buff'lo hunter! Ho! Ho! Fought the Injuns. Red Injuns. Killed hundreds.Slish! C-r-r-r-r! Bang! Dash! Gurrrr!Hundreds. Red Injuns! I killed hundreds myself. Ho! Ho! I dashed their brains out. Ho! Ho! Injuns. Red Injuns!"
It is some time before he grows really calm after illustrating with tremendous energy his ferocity against the poor Red Indians. Even Mr. Wells grows enthusiastic, and, sucking his pipe-stem, chuckles proudly over Joe's enormous valour.
But what a fall it is when Joe resumes his life. From being a pirate, a fighter, and a buffalo-hunter, he becomes—think of it!—a pastrycook. He leaves the magnificent society of Jack Armstrong, and Black Peter, and Red Indians, to mix with the commonplace citizens of London—as a pastrycook! He makes buns. He makes sponge cakes. Think of it—he makes jam-puffs!
* * * * *
But romance could not leave Joe, even while he toiled before a London oven.
There was a fire on the premises, and Joe did astonishing things. After being rescued he walked calmly back, through sheets of fire, to fetch the cash-box from the parlour. "Never afraid of anythin'—fire, water, gunpowder, sword, arrows—nothin'! No fear. Always brave. Ho! Ho! Brave's lion."
"Tell the genneman," shouted Mr. Wells, "what became of the shop."
"Ho, business failed," roars Joe. "Pastry-cook I was. Came down—smash! Lost everythin'. Every penny! Ho! Ho! But what's odds? Happy and jolly! Nothin' wrong. I'm a'right. What's odds?"
"Your old missus is dead, ain't she, Joe?" shouts Mr. Wells.
"Ess," answers Joe cheerfully. "Gone. Dead." He points towards the floor with a twitching finger, and stabs downward. "Dead. Years ago. Gone."
"And what about your boy?" asks Mr. Wells.
"No good," roars Joe, in half a rage. "He's no good. No good 't all. Brought him up like genneman. No good." He laughs again, shakes himself in his chair, and strikes another match.
"He was selling things in the street when the clergyman found him," says Mr. Wells behind his pipe. "Had a little tray strapped on to his shoulders, and two sticks to keep him standing. Collar-studs, tie-clips, bootlaces, matches—you know. You've often seen trays like that, I dare say. Well, that was what Joe was doing when the clergyman found him. Not this clergyman, you understand. The one before, Father Vivian. He's now a bishop. Out somewhere in Africa. That's his photograph on the wall over there. He sent us a picture-postcard the other day. Little black woolly-headed baby with no clothes on! I haven't seen it myself, because my eyes are bad; but they all laugh at it, and I dare say it's funny enough. A nice man Father Vivian was. A genneman. He's a bishop now, but he don't forget his old friends, do he?"
* * * * *
And as we listen to the blind man we wonder what his story is, and we learn that he was born in Trinity Lane, Upper Thames Street, in the days when poor people did live on that side of the water, and that he was engaged at an early age in tide work. "Coal trade," he says, quietly. "Seaham to London. TheIsabellabrig. Four or five years I had of that. Then I was off to Russia in thePrince George. Then I did the trade between England and America. Then I was on a brig working the west coast of Africa. After that I came home and married. My wife lived in Fivefoot Lane. Her father was a carpenter. She was a good woman. She's dead now. We buried a sight of little 'uns. I can't tell you how many. There was a son, Harry: we buried him; a girl, 'Liza: we buried her; and a boy, Frank: we buried him; but I can't tell you how many little 'uns. Buried a lot, we did. Three children living now. Doing fair, they are; pretty fair. As times go, you know. I dare say they're happy enough."
After all these years of seafaring Mr. Wells worked on Brewer's Quay for eleven years, and after that took a spell of work in City warehouses. He "entered the Fur Trade." He did good work and earned good money; but after a bit he got what he describes as "a bit of a blight" in the eyes. He went to Moorfields hospital and underwent an operation. The darkness didn't lift. The twilight in which he lived deepened. He had to give up respectable work, and took to selling toys in the street. Then, one day, he was knocked down by a cab, and was carried to hospital, where by good fortune he fell in with Father Vivian. Father Vivian—whose name is blessed to this day in I know not how many slum homes—happened to want a companion for Joe, and Mr. Wells was pressed into the service. The blind man came to take care of the paralytic, and here they now are in the little two-roomed slum cottage, smoking their pipes in the blackened kitchen, and declaring that they have never been so well off in their lives before.
His Majesty the King has no more loyal and affectionate subjects. A friend of mine carried the two old gentlemen off to a Coronation dinner. They had a hundred things to complain of concerning the way in which the plates were whisked off before they had even got the savour of the dish in their nostrils; but when it came to singing "God save the King" they roared and cheered and shouted and cheered again, and cried till the tears ran down their faces. And now, among their possessions, there is nothing of which they are more proud than the gorgeous card telling how the King and Queen of England requested the favour of their society to a banquet. It is splendid to see these two old sea-dogs in their kitchen fingering that card and smiling over it with a pride not to be matched in all the world outside.
* * * * *
I have never heard them complain. They are old friends of mine. I have smoked many a pipe in their kitchen; but never yet did I hear murmur or complaint from their lips. Never once. They are most beautifully happy. They are radiant in their happiness. I do not believe there is a room in the world in which laughter is more constant and more spontaneous than in the little low-roofed black kitchen where the paralytic old pirate and the blind old seaman smoke their pipes and chuckle over the things they have done, the sights they have seen, and the storms they have weathered.
Opposite to the two old gentlemen lives a great friend of theirs, a maker of rag-dolls—a grey-headed, bent-back old veteran named Mr. Kight. I happened to be calling on the two old gentlemen on the Fifth of November last year, and, entering the kitchen, and while shaking hands with Joe (who always roars with laughter when he clutches your hand, and shakes it backwards and forwards as if he meant never to let it go) little Mr. Wells came fumbling to my side, laughing and chuckling, evidently with important news.
"You know it's the Fifth of November," he said, nudging me with the elbow of the hand which held his pipe. "You know that, don't you? Everybody knows that. Well, I've been telling Old Joe that he ought to let me and Mr. Kight shove a couple o' broom-sticks under his Grandfer Chair and carry him out into the streets. He'd make a lovely Guy, wouldn't he?"
Mr. Wells joined a treble of laughter to the continuous bass of Joe's gurgle, and then, stooping forward: "Joe," he shouted, "I'm telling the genneman you ought to let me and Kight take you out in your chair for a Guy Fawkes."
At this Old Joe's mouth opened wider than ever, his face became purple, and he pretended very hard indeed to laugh with a relish. But the jest hurt him. I saw, what Mr. Wells could not see, the hurt look in his old eyes, and, leaning to his ear, I shouted, "You'd have all the girls running after you, Joe! You're too handsome for a Guy. They'd run you off to church and marry you as sure as a gun."
"Ess!" he cried, delighted. "Ess! 'Zactly." And then, after a frightful effort to master his stammer, his face the colour of claret, his eyes buried in their flesh, his old body twitching violently, he burst out with the boast: "I was d——d handsome feller. Once. Ess! Handsome's paint. Ho! Ho! Girls mad about me!"
Happiness was restored. We drew our chairs nearer to the fire, filled our pipes, and laughed away the winter afternoon in the best of good spirits.
"We've got nothing to complain of," says Mr. Wells. "Everybody is kind to us. We've got our health, thank God! We've got a roof over our heads. We've got food in the locker. We've generally got a bit of terbaccer somewhere about the place. And we've done with the sea." After a pause, he adds, "When the Call comes, we shall be here to answer it. Early or late, we shall be ready; me and Old Joe."
Once more he leans across to the pirate. "I'm telling the genneman," he shouted; "that we've nothing to complain about, that when the Call comes we shall be ready."
"Ess!" shouts Old Joe cheerfully, with his pipe in the air. "Always ready! That's me. Always ready. But, don't want to die. Not yet. No! No fear. Why should I! Happy and jolly I am. Happy and jolly!" And once more he throws himself back with twitching shoulders, the chin fallen, the eyes scarcely visible in their bags of flesh, and laughs till the tears come.
"He's wunnerful hearty for eighty-two," says Mr. Wells quietly.
HITS AND MISSES[Sidenote:Anon.]
Shop-windows shivered in the framesDo advertise the women's aims.
THE BROKEN WINDOW[Sidenote:Anon.]
Till Venus saw a SuffragetteCried she, "But women should regretA broken glass!" But then, next minute,"Poor thing! she saw her image in it!"
Lamb said that the greatest pleasure in life was to do good in secret and be found out by accident.
* * * * *
"_I suppose" said Lamb, "that Johnson was thinking of Shakespeare making Hector talk about Aristotle when he says,
And panting Time toils after him in vain_."
* * * * *
_A clergyman who had several livings was under discussion. "Why, such fellows look at a cure of souls like a cure of herrings—so much per hundred."
"Ah, but the herring cures fulfil their contract," said Jerrold.
He called clerical pluralists_ polypi,parsons with many stomachs and no hearts.
* * * * *
A young prince had just been born and they were firing royal salutes to celebrate the occasion. A bystander exclaimed, "How they do powder these babies!"
* * * * *
In a pompous speech of self-defence the orator wound up by declaring himself the guardian of his own honour. "What a sinecure!" murmured his opponent.
"How do you like babies, Mr. Lamb?" cried the gushing mother.
"Boi-boi-boiled," answered the stammering old bachelor.
* * * * *
Foote used to say that the Irish take us in and the Scots turn us out.
* * * * *
A stout duellist once said to his diminutive antagonist, "It is a perfectly unequal contest. It is almost impossible to hit any one of your size, or to miss any one of mine."
"I agree," said his opponent. "And I will chalk my size on your body. We will not count the shots that go out of the ring."
* * * * *
"Ah," said Curran, noticing an Irish friend walking along absent-mindedly with his tongue out, "he is evidently trying to catch the English accent."
* * * * *
Sydney Smith was asked his opinion of Newton's portrait of Tom Moore. "Couldn't you," he asked the painter, "put more hostility to the Established Church into the face?"
* * * * *
An intemperate duke asked Foote how he should go to a masquerade. "Go sober," said Foote.
* * * * *
"_I'm afraid the salad is gritty," apologised the host.
"Gritty!" mumbled the guest, "it's a gravel path with a few weeds in it_."
* * * * *
"I never read a book before reviewing it" said Sydney Smith to a friend. "It is so apt to prejudice one."
* * * * *
Bentley, the publisher, said to Jerrold, "I thought of calling my magazineThe Wits' Miscellany,but I have decided onBentley's Miscellany."
"My dear fellow," said Jerrold, "why go to the other extreme?"
* * * * *
"_What a magnificent-looking man!" said Goldsmith of a stranger; "he ought to be a Lord Chancellor."
He was, in fact, a rich baker.
"Not Chancellor," whispered a friend; "only Master of the Rolls_."
* * * * *
Coleridge was dreaming of the time when he was a minister. "Ah, Charles, you never heard me preach." "My dear fellow," cried Lamb, "I never heard you do anything else."
* * * * *
Sydney Smith said that the whole of his life had been spent like a razor—in hot water or a scrape.
* * * * *
As a means of bragging of his acquaintance, a man was remarking to the company that, although he had often dined at the Duke of Devonshire's, there had never been any fish. "Is it notextraordinary?"he asked. Jerrold said, "Hardly. They ate it all upstairs."
* * * * *
_A jealous general was abusing Wolfe to the King.
"The man is mad," he declared bitterly.
George sighed. "I wish," he said, "that I could persuade him to bite all my generals."_
* * * * *
_A rich man, formerly a cheesemonger, was discussing the Poor Law with Lamb, and boasted that he had got rid of all the sentimental stuff called the milk of human kindness.
"Yes," said Lamb sadly, "you turned it into cheese long ago_."
* * * * *
Jerrold said of some one who sent his wife effusive letters but not a farthing of money, that he was full of "unremitting kindness."
* * * * *
A Turkish proverb says, "The devil tempts the busy man, but the idle man tempts the devil."
* * * * *
Gladstone once asked, "In what country except ours would (as I know to have happened) a Parish Ball have been got up in order to supply funds for a Parish Hearse?"
* * * * *
"They're rising in Connaught," shouted a scaremonger, dashing into Chesterfield's room. Quietly he drew out his watch. "Nine o'clock," he said gently. "They ought to be."
* * * * *
"He is one of those people," said Jerrold of a mistaken philanthropist, "who would vote for a supply of tooth-picks in a time of famine"; and of another—"He would hold an umbrella over a duck while it was raining."
* * * * *
"Hark at Boswell," muttered Wilkes, "telling every one how he has had his handkerchief picked from his pocket—it's merely brag, to show us he had one."
* * * * *
"Do you approve of clergymen riding?" Sydney Smith was asked. "Well, it depends," he replied thoughtfully; "yes, if they turn their toes out."
* * * * *
"The testator meant to keep a life interest in the estate himself," remarked the judge, who was trying a will case.
"Surely, my lord," said the barrister, "you are taking the will for the deed."
* * * * *
Sydney Smith said of an obstinate man, "You might as well try to poultice the humps off a camel's back."
A MASTER WITH BRAINS[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
At Bideford, died the only master I ever had who had any brains. When I was fourteen or fifteen he taught me to place my knowledge as it came, to have its proportion. He so kept me to the drawing of maps that the earth has ever since lain beneath me as if I could see it all from a great height, and he so taught me history that I see it now as a panorama, from the first days. In his time I could draw the coasts of all the world in very fair proportion, without looking at a map, and I think I could do it now, though not so well as then, perhaps; and always afterwards, if ever I heard or saw or read up a thing, I knew in what little pocket of the mind to put it. Right up to the end of Oxford days no one could compare with him. His name was Abraham Thompson, a doctor of divinity he was; black hair grew on the back of his hands which I used to marvel at, he was very handsome and dark. Funny little boys are—how they watch. He could be very angry and caned furiously; at times I caught it. I think he grew poor in his last years and had the school at Bideford. I never heard about him at the end. I worshipped him when I was little, and we used to look at each other in class. I wonder what he thought when he looked; I used to think Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees was like him, and I am sure if he had bought a piece of land to bury his Sarah in, he would have been just as courteous as the first Abraham. I was always sorry that he was called Thompson, for I like lovely names—should have liked one myself and a handsome form—yes, I should. So that was Thompson. I have thought how far more needful with a lad is one year with a man of intellect than ten years of useless teaching. He taught us few facts, but spent all the time drilling us that we might know what to do with them when they came. Abraham Kerr Thompson, that was his name. I wonder if any one remembers him. A strange thing he would do, unlike any other I ever heard of; he would call up the class, and open any book and make the head boy read out a chance sentence, and then he would set to work with every word—how it grew and came to mean this or that. With the flattest sentence in the world he would take us to ocean waters and the marshes of Babylon and the hills of Caucasus and wilds of Tartary and the constellations and abysses of space. Yes, no one ever taught me anything but he only—I hope he made a good end. But how long ago it all was! It is forty-five years since I saw him.
A SPLENDID ADVENTURER[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
When I was fifteen or sixteen he (Newman) taught me so much I do mind—things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and cushions he taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen, and this so early that it was well in me when life began, and I was equipped before I went to Oxford with a real good panoply, and it has never failed me. So if this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury—and it can't—or anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor forbidding, nor much leading—walking with me a step in front. So he stands to me as a great image or symbol of a man who never stooped, and who put all this world's life in one splendid venture, which he knew as well as you or I might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything that was not his dream.
RED LION MARY[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
The life in Red Lion Square was a very happy one in its freedom. Red Lion Mary's originality all but equalled that of the young men, and she understood them and their ways thoroughly. Their rough and ready hospitality was seconded by her with unfailing good temper; she cheerfully spread mattresses on the floor for friends who stayed there, and when the mattresses came to an end it was said that she built up beds with boots and portmanteaus. Cleanliness, beyond the limits of the tub, was impossible in Red Lion Square, and hers was not a nature to dash itself against impossibilities, so the subject was pretty much ignored, but she was ready to fulfil any mission or do anything for them at a moment's notice, which was much more important. Never did she dishonour their bills.
"Mary!" cried Edward one evening when ordering breakfast over-night for Rossetti, who was staying with them, "let us have quarts of hot coffee, pyramids of toast, and multitudinous quantities of milk"; which to her meant all he intended. "Dear Mary," wrote Rossetti, "please go and smash a brute in Red Lion passage to-morrow. He had to send a big book, a scrapbook, to Master Crabb, 34, Westbourne Place, Eaton Square, and he hasn't done it. I don't know his name, but his shop is dirty and full of account books. This book was ordered ten days ago, and was to have been sent home the next dayand was paid for—so sit on him hard to-morrow and dig a fork into his eye, as I can't come that way to murder him myself." From these hints she knew exactly what to say.
Her memory was excellent and sense of humour keen, so that some of the commissions on which she was sent gave her great enjoyment—as one day when Edward told her to take a cab and go to Mr. Watts at Little Holland House, and ask him for the loan of "whatever draperies and any other old things he could spare," and Mr. Watts, amused at the form of the request, sent her back with a parcel of draperies and an old pair of brown trousers, bidding her tell Mr. Jones those were the only "old things" he could spare. This delighted Edward, and he detained Mary while he took down his "Vasari" and read to her of the old Italian painter who had his breeches made of leather because they wore out so quickly; and then he professed to be grateful for Mr. Watts' gift, and said he would have the brown trousers made to fit him.
Mary wrote a good hand and spelled well, and would sit down and write with gravity such a note as the following, dictated to her by Edward. "Mr. Bogie Jones' compts. to Mr. Price and begs to inform him he expects to be down for Commemoration and that he hopes to meet him, clean, well shaved, and with a contrite heart." Morris' quick temper annoyed her, but she once prettily said, "Though he was so short-tempered, I seemed so necessary to him at all times, and felt myself his man Friday."
ELEPHANT[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
My reading aloud to him began soon after our marriage, with Plutarch's "Lives"—an old folio edition. Holland's translation of Pliny's "Natural History" was also a treasure for the purpose, and the "Arabian Nights" were ever fresh. The description of "Mrs. Gamp's apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn," was read over and over again until I, but not he, was wearied for a time. These were all classics admitting of no criticism, but some books were illuminated by commentary. For instance, the frequent comparison of Goethe with Shakespeare which G.H. Lewes makes in his "Life of Goethe" grew tiresome to the hearer, who quietly asked me to read the word Elephant instead of Shakespeare next time it occurred, and the change proved refreshing. But there was a kind of book that he reserved for himself and never liked any one to read to him—"The Broad Stone of Honour" and "Mores Catholici" are instances: they were kept in his own room, close to his hand, and often dipped into in wakeful nights or early mornings.
"Sillyish books both," he once said, "but I can't help it, I like them."And no wonder, for his youth lay enclosed in them.
MY FACES[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
"Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use the word. How should they have any? They are not portraits of people in paroxysms—paroxysms of terror, hatred, benevolence, desire, avarice, veneration, and all the 'passions' and emotions that Le Brun and that kind of person find somagnifiquein Raphael's later work—mostly painted by his pupils and assistants, by the way. It is Winckelmann, isn't it, who says that when you come to the age of expression in Greek art you have come to the age of decadence? I don't remember how or where it is said, but of course it is true—can't be otherwise in the nature of things."
"Portraiture," he also said, "may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. Any portraiture involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion, an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or woman with the damned 'pleasing expression,' or even the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask, as silly as the old tragic and comic mask. The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental. Apart from portraiture you don't want even so much, or very seldom: in fact you only want types, symbols, suggestions. The moment you give what people call expression, you destroy the typical character of heads and degrade them into portraits which stand for nothing."
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
The different stages of his children's lives were of profound interest to him, and as they grew up they found in him an elder brother as well as a father. As soon as Margaret was old enough she began to share and then almost entirely to take my post as reader-aloud in the studio. Beside many other books she went through the whole of Thackeray twice in this way; Dickens was my special province. She and Edward had their own world of fun, and for her he invented a "little language," besides the most unheard-of names. I remember hearing him and Millais once talk to each other about their daughters, each boasting that he was the most devoted father. "Ah, butyoudon't take your daughter's breakfast up to her in bed," said Edward, certain that the prize belonged to him. Millais' triumphant "Yes, I do!" left them only equal.
"ANNA KARENINA"[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
"Don't lend me any sad stories—no, not if they are masterpieces. I cannot afford to be made unhappy, and I suspect that book 'Anna Karenina'—I suspect it is Russian, and if it is I know what to expect, and I couldn't bear it. There would be a beautiful woman in it—all that is best in a woman, and she would be miserable and love some trumpery frip (as they do) and die of finding out she had been a fool—and it would be beautifully written and full of nature and just like life, and I couldn't bear it. These books are written for the hard-hearted, to melt them into a softer mood for once before they congeal again—as much music is written—not for poets but for stockjobbers, to wring iron tears from them for once; that is the use of sorrowful art, to penetrate the thick hide of the obtuse, and I have grown to be a coward about pain. I should like that Anna so much and be so sorry for her and wish I had been the man instead of that thing she would have—and it wouldn't be happy. Look! tells me it ends well and that the two lovers marry and are happy ever afterwards, and I'll read it gratefully—and I shall wait your answer."
TWO TRIALS[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
Whilst the Commission was sitting he went once or twice with Sir George Lewis to the Law Courts and closely listened and watched, sitting where he could see the face of Mr. Parnell clearly. "Charles Stewart Parnell," he once said, "God only knows what he really was, but I saw him in court and watched him the day long: he was like Christ."
Of the miserable Pigott, the perjured witness against Parnell, he wrote: "And I have grown philosophical—it came of seeing Pigott in the witness-box, who looked like half the dreary men one meets, and I don't see why the rest of the Pigotts shouldn't be found out too. So it made me reflect on crime and its connection with being found out and made me philosophical and depressed."
But on another day his mind turned to a more cheerful exercise: "Legal testimony doesn't affect me at all, and I want people tried for their faces—so I spent the time in court settling things all my own way, and I tried the Judges first and acquitted one, so that he sits in court without a blemish on his character; and one I admitted to mercy, and of the other have postponed the trial for further evidence: and then I tried the counsel on both sides, and one of them I am sorry to say will have to be hanged for his face."
THE FOUR HISTORIANS[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
On hearing some one quote Carlyle's contempt for invented stories and his saying that facts were better worth writing of, Edward exclaimed: "'Frederick the Great's' a romance; 'Monte Cristo' is real history, and so is 'The Three Musketeers.'" And another time he said: "Ah, the historians are so few. There's Dumas, there's Scott, there's Thackeray, and there's Dickens, and no more—after you have said them, there's an end."
SWINBURNE AND PADEREWSKI[Sidenote:Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]
"There's a beautiful fellow in London named Paderewski—and I want to have a face like him and look like him, and I can't—there's trouble. He looks so like Swinburne looked at twenty that I could cry over past things, and has his ways too—the pretty ways of him—courteous little tricks and low bows and a hand that clings in shaking hands, and a face very like Swinburne's, only in better drawing, but the expression the same, and little turns and looks and jerks so like the thing I remember that it makes me fairly jump. I asked to draw from him, and Henschel brought him and played on the organ and sang while I drew—which was good for the emotions but bad for the drawing. And knowing people say he is a great master in his art, which might well be, for he looks glorious. I praised Allah for making him and felt myself a poor thing for several hours. Have got over it now."
THE VIVACIOUS VIVIER[Sidenote:H. Sutherland-Edwards]
I "breakfasted" again and again with Adolphe Sax, and had always the same fare—"un bifteck et des oeufs sur le plat." …
On one occasion Vivier turned up. He was the natural enemy of Sax, for Sax, by his system of keys, brought effective horn-playing within the reach of ordinary performers, which lessened the immense superiority of Vivier over horn-players in general. Vivier, however, was troubled by no considerations of that kind. The Saxhorn, moreover, did not possess the timbre of the horn.
I had already met this remarkable engineer, musician, diplomatist and professor of mystification, in London, when he was complaining with facetious bitterness that Mr. Frederic Gye had not sent him a box for one of Angiolina Bosio's touching performances of "La Traviata."
He had written to the manager explaining that he was ready to shed tears, and that he possessed a pocket handkerchief, but wanted something more. "J'ai un mouchoir, mais pas de loge," he said. Yet his letter was left without a reply. After waiting a day or two, and still receiving no answer, Vivier engaged the dirtiest crossing-sweeper he could find, made him put on a little extra mud, and sent him with a letter to Mr. Gye demanding "the return of his correspondence." The courteous manager of the Royal Italian Opera could scarcely have known that, besides being one of the finest musicians and quite the finest horn player of his day, Eugene Vivier was the most charming of men, and the spoiled child of nearly every Court in Europe. Speaking to me once of the Emperor Napoleon, he said, in answer to a question I had put to him as to Napoleon III's characteristics: "He is the most gentlemanly Emperor I know."
"What can I do for you?" said this gentlemanly Emperor one day, whenVivier had gone to see him at the Tuileries.
"Come out on the balcony with me, sire," replied the genial cynic. "Some of my creditors are sure to be passing, and it will do me good to be seen in conversation with your Majesty."
Besides speaking to him familiarly within view of his creditors, the Emperor Napoleon III conferred on Vivier several well-paid sinecures. He appointed him "Inspector of Mines," which, from conscientious motives, knowing very little of mining, Vivier never inspected; and he was once accused by a facetious journal of having received the post of "Librarian to the Forest of Fontainebleau," with its multitudinous leaves.
There were only two other Emperors at that time in Europe, and to one of them, the Emperor of Austria, Vivier was sent on a certain occasion with despatches—not, I fancy, in the character of Vely Pacha's secretary, the only quasi-diplomatic post he held, but partly to facilitate his travelling, and partly, it may be, for some private political reason. Instead of being delayed, questioned, and searched at the frontier, as generally happened in those days—the days before 1859—Vivier was treated by the Custom House officials, and by the police, with all possible respect; and journeying as an honoured personage—an emissary from the Emperor of the French—he in due time reached Vienna, where, hastening to the palace, he made known the object of his visit. It seems quite possible that the despatches carried by Vivier may have possessed particular importance, and that Napoleon III had motives of his own for not forwarding them through the ordinary diplomatic channels. Vivier had, in any case, been instructed to deliver them to the Emperor in person—one of those Emperors whom he numbered among his private acquaintances.
A Court Chamberlain had hurried out to receive the distinguished messenger, ready after a due interchange of compliments to usher him into the Imperial presence.
"Your Excellency!" began the Chamberlain, in the most obsequious manner.
"I am not an Excellency!" replied Vivier.
"General, then—Monsieur le Général?"
"I am not a General!"
"Colonel, perhaps, and aide-de-camp to his Imperial Majesty?"
"I am not in the army. I have no official rank—no rank of any kind whatever."
"Good heavens! then what are you?" exclaimed the Chamberlain, indignant with himself for having treated as high-born and high-placed one who was apparently a mere nobody.
"I am a musician," said Vivier.
Bounding with rage, the Court functionary made an unbecoming gesture, such as Mephistopheles, according to the stage directions, should make in one of the passages of Goethe'sFaust.
"Very well, my friend," said Vivier to himself, "I will tell the Emperor of your rude behaviour; I will get you rapped on the knuckles" ("Je t'en ferai donner sur les doigts"); and the uncourtly courtier was, in fact, severely reprimanded.
At St. Petersburg Vivier took such liberties with the Emperor Nicholas that, if half the stories of that monarch were true, the imprudent Frenchman would have been arrested, knouted, and sent to Siberia.
He had just brought to perfection the art of blowing soap bubbles. The whole secret of his process consisted, as he once informed me, in mixing with the soap-suds a little gum. Using a solution of soap and gum, he was able to produce bubbles of such size and solidity that they floated in the air for an almost indefinite time, like so many small balloons. In order to entertain the St. Petersburg public, Vivier would, in the most benevolent manner, take his seat at an open window, and blow his gigantic and many-coloured bubbles, until these prodigies of aerostation had attracted a multitude of lookers-on. The delighted crowd applauded with enthusiasm. Vivier rose from his seat and bowed. Then the applause was renewed, and Vivier blew larger and brighter bubbles than before.
One evening, or rather afternoon, the rays of the setting sun were illuminating a number of iridescent balloons floating high above the point where the Nevsky Prospect runs into the Admiralty Square, when the Emperor Nicholas drove past, or tried to do so—for his progress was interrupted at every step by the density of the crowd.
"What is the meaning of all this?" asked the Emperor Nicholas.
"It is M. Vivier blowing his soap bubbles," replied the aide-de-camp in attendance.
"What! Vivier, the French musician, who played the horn so wonderfully the other night at the Winter Palace, and afterwards entertained us so much with his conversation?"
"The same, sire."
"Go to him, then, and tell him that I should be glad if he would choose some other time for his soap-bubble performances. How wonderful they are!"
The aide-de-camp forced his way through the crowd, went upstairs to Vivier's apartments, and told him that the Emperor desired him not to give his exhibition of soap bubbles at half-past three in the afternoon, that being the time when his Majesty usually went for a drive.
Vivier took out a pocket-book, consulted it carefully, and, turning to the aide-de-camp, said with the utmost gravity, "That is the only hour I have disengaged."
Vivier, meanwhile, had had his joke; and his exhibition of soap bubbles, or rather of gum-and-soap balloons, was now discontinued.
The horn-playing performance to which the Emperor Nicholas had made reference was marked by one strange, marvellous, almost inexplicable peculiarity. The player sounded on his instrument, simultaneously, a chord of four notes. To produce at the same time four different notes from one and the same tube seems, and must be, an impossibility. But Vivier did it, and the fact was certified to by Meyerbeer, Auber, Halévy, Adolphe Adam, and other musicians of eminence.
The only possible explanation of the matter is that Vivier executed a very rapid arpeggio, so that the four notes which apparently were heard together were, in fact, heard one after the other. The effect, however, was not that of an arpeggio, but of a chord of four different notes played simultaneously on four different instruments.
Both for home and for out-of-doors use the mystifications practised by Vivier were as numerous as they were varied. In an omnibus, when some grave old lady had just risen from her seat, Vivier would assume an expression of the utmost astonishment, and suddenly take from the place where she had been sitting an egg, which meanwhile he had been concealing up his sleeve.
Or, asked to pass a coin to the conductor, he would gravely put it into his pocket. A well-dressed, well-bred gentleman, of charming manners, could scarcely be suspected of any intention to misappropriate a two-sous piece. But it interested Vivier to see what, in the circumstances, the lawful owner of the coin would do. On one occasion Vivier, in an omnibus, alarmed his fellow passengers by pretending to be mad. He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!
Vivier could not bear to see people in a hurry. According to him, there was nothing in life worth hurrying for; and living on the Boulevard just opposite the Rue Vivienne, he was much annoyed at seeing so many persons hastening, towards six o'clock, to the post office on the Place de la Bourse. He determined to pay them out, and for that purpose bought a calf, which he took up to his apartments at night and exhibited the next afternoon at a few minutes before six o'clock, in the balcony of his second floor. In spite of their eagerness to catch the post, many persons could not help stopping to look at the calf. Soon a crowd collected, and messengers stayed their steps in order to gaze at the unwonted apparition. Six o'clock struck, and soon after a number of men who had missed the post returned in an irritated condition, and, stopping before Vivier's house, shook their fists at him. Vivier went down to them, and asked the meaning of this insolence.
"We were not shaking our fists at you," replied the angered ones, "but at that calf."
"Ah! you know him then?" returned Vivier. "I was not aware of it."
In time Vivier's calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier's apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbours by his lowing that; the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away. Vivier told him to come; and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it downstairs.
MONSIEUR SYLVESTRE BONNARD: A CONFESSION[Sidenote:Anatole France, translated by Lafcadio Hearn]
I can see once more, with astonishing vividness, a certain doll which, when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the window of an ugly little shop of the Rue de la Seine. I was very proud of being a boy; I despised little girls; and I longed impatiently for the day (which, alas! has come) when a strong white beard should bristle on my chin. I played at being a soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother used to keep on her window-sill. Manly amusements those, I should say! and nevertheless, I was consumed with longing for a doll. Characters like Hercules have such weaknesses occasionally. Was the one I had fallen in love with at all beautiful? No. I can see her now. She had a splotch of vermilion on either cheek, short soft arms, horrible wooden hands, and long sprawling legs. Her flowered petticoat was fastened at the waist with two pins. It was a decidedly vulgar doll—smelt of the faubourg. I remember perfectly well that, even child as I was then, before I had put on my first pair of trousers, I was quite conscious in my own way that this doll lacked grace and style—that she was gross, that she was coarse. But I loved her in spite of that; I loved her just for that; I loved her only; I wanted her. My soldiers and my drums had become as nothing in my eyes. I ceased to stick sprigs of heliotrope and veronica into the mouth of my rocking-horse. That doll was all the world to me. I invented ruses worthy of a savage to oblige Virginie, my nurse, to take me by the little shop in the Rue de la Seine. I would press my nose against the window until my nurse had to take my arm and drag me away. "Monsieur Sylvestre, it is late, and your mamma will scold you." Monsieur Sylvestre in those days made very little of either scoldings or whippings. But his nurse lifted him up like a feather, and Monsieur Sylvestre yielded to force. In after years, with age, he degenerated, and sometimes yielded to fear. But at that time he used to fear nothing.
I was unhappy. An unreasoning but irresistible shame prevented me from telling my mother about the object of my love. Thence all my sufferings. For many days that doll, incessantly present in fancy, danced before my eyes, stared at me fixedly, opened her arms to me, assuming in my imagination a sort of life which made her appear at once mysterious and weird, and thereby all the more charming and desirable.
Finally, one day—a day I shall never forget—my nurse took me to see my uncle, Captain Victor, who had invited me to breakfast. I admired my uncle a great deal, as much because he had fired the last French cartridge at Waterloo as because he used to make with his own hands, at my mother's table, certain chapons-à-l'ail, which he afterwards put into the chicory-salad. I thought that was very fine! My Uncle Victor also inspired me with much respect by his frogged coat, and still more by his way of turning the whole house upside down from the moment he came into it. Even now I cannot tell just how he managed it, but I can affirm that whenever my Uncle Victor found himself in any assembly of twenty persons, it was impossible to see or to hear anybody but him. My excellent father, I have reason to believe, never shared my admiration for Uncle Victor, who used to sicken him with his pipe, gave him great thumps on the back by way of friendliness, and accused him of lacking energy. My mother, though always showing a sister's indulgence to the captain, sometimes advised him to fondle the brandy bottle a little less frequently. But I had no part either in these repugnances or these reproaches, and Uncle Victor inspired me with the purest enthusiasm. It was therefore with a feeling of pride that I entered into the little lodging-house where he lived, in the Rue Guénégaud. The entire breakfast, served on a small table close to the fireplace, consisted of pork-meats and confectionery.
The Captain stuffed me with cakes and pure wine. He told me of numberless injustices to which he had been a victim. He complained particularly of the Bourbons; and as he neglected to tell me who the Bourbons were, I got the idea—I can't tell how—that the Bourbons were horse-dealers established at Waterloo. The Captain, who never interrupted his talk except for the purpose of pouring out wine, furthermore made charges against a number ofmorveux, ofjeanfesses, and "good-for-nothings" whom I did not know anything about, but whom I hated from the bottom of my heart. At dessert, I thought I heard the Captain say my father was a man who could be led anywhere by the nose; but I am not quite sure that I understood him. I had a buzzing in my ears; and it seemed to me that the table was dancing.
My uncle put on his frogged coat, took hischapeau tromblon, and we descended to the street, which seemed to me singularly changed. It looked to me as if I had not been in it before for ever so long a time. Nevertheless, when we came to the Rue de la Seine, the idea of my doll suddenly returned to my mind, and excited me in an extraordinary way. My head was on fire. I resolved upon a desperate expedient. We were passing before the window. She was there, behind the glass—with her red cheeks, and her flowered petticoat, and her long legs.
"Uncle," I said, with a great effort, "will you buy that doll for me?"
And I waited.
"Buy a doll for a boy—sacré bleu!" cried my uncle, in a voice of thunder. "Do you wish to dishonour yourself? And it is that old Mag there that you want! Well, I must compliment you, my young fellow! If you grow up with such tastes as that, you will never have any pleasure in life; and your comrades will call you a precious ninny. If you asked me for a sword or a gun, my boy, I would buy them for you with the last silver crown of my pension. But to buy a doll for you—a thousand thunders!—to disgrace you! Never in the world! Why, if I were even to see you playing with a puppet rigged out like that, monsieur, my sister's son, I would disown you for my nephew!"
On hearing these words, I felt my heart so wrung that nothing but pride—a diabolic pride—kept me from crying.
My uncle, suddenly calming down, returned to his ideas about the Bourbons; but I, still smarting from the blow of his indignation, felt an unspeakable shame. My resolve was quickly made. I promised myself never to disgrace myself—I firmly and for ever renounced that red-cheeked doll.
I felt that day, for the first time, the austere sweetness of sacrifice.
Captain, though it be true that all your life you swore like a pagan, smoked like a beadle, and drank like a bell-ringer, be your memory nevertheless honoured—not merely because you were a brave soldier, but also because you revealed to your little nephew in petticoats the sentiment of heroism! Pride and laziness had made you almost insupportable, O my Uncle Victor!—but a great heart used to beat under those frogs upon your coat. You always used to wear, I now remember, a rose in your button-hole. That rose which you allowed, as I now have reason to believe, the shop-girls to pluck for you—that, large, open-hearted flower, scattering its petals to all the winds, was the symbol of your glorious youth. You despised neither absinthe nor tobacco; but you despised life. Neither delicacy nor common sense could have been learned from you, captain; but you taught me, even at an age when my nurse had to wipe my nose, a lesson of honour and self-abnegation that I will never forget.
THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS[Sidenote:Dean Swift]
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
* * * * *
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
* * * * *
When a true genius appeareth in the world you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
* * * * *
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.
* * * * *
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!
* * * * *
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
* * * * *
"He who does not provide for his own house," St. Paul says, "is worse than an infidel." And I think, he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel.
* * * * *
An idle reason lessens the value of the good ones you gave before.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
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Very few men, properly speaking,liveat present, but are providing to live another time.
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If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.
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As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty.
GOETHE IN HIS OLD AGE[Sidenote:W.M. Thackeray]
In 1831, though he had retired from the world, Goethe would nevertheless very kindly receive strangers. His daughter-in-law's tea-table was always spread for us. We passed hour after hour there, and night after night, with the pleasantest talk and music. We read over endless novels and poems in French, English, and German. My delight in those days was to make caricatures for children. I was touched to find (in 1855) that they were remembered and some even kept to the present time; and very proud to be told, as a lad, that the great Goethe had looked at some of them.
He remained in his private apartments, where only a very few privileged persons were admitted; but he liked to know all that was happening, and interested himself about all strangers. Whenever a countenance took his fancy there was an artist settled in Weimar who made a portrait of it. Goethe had quite a gallery of heads, in black and white, taken by this painter. His house was all over pictures, drawings, casts, statues and medals.
Of course, I remember very well the perturbation of spirit with which, as a lad of nineteen, I received the long-expected intimation that the Herr Geheimrath would see me on such a morning. This notable audience took place in a little antechamber of his private apartments, covered all round with antique carts and bas-reliefs. He was habited in a long grey or drab redingote, with a white neckcloth and a red ribbon in his button-hole. He kept his hands behind his back just as in Rauch's statuette. His complexion was very clear, bright, and rosy. His eyes extraordinarily dark, piercing, and brilliant. I felt quite afraid before them, and remember comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called "Melmoth the Wanderer," which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago; eyes of an individual who had made a bargain with a Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained these eyes in their awful splendour. I fancy Goethe must have been still more handsome as an old man than even in the days of his youth. His voice was very rich and sweet. He asked me questions about myself, which I answered as best I could. I recollect I was at first astonished, and then somewhat relieved, when I found he spoke French with not a good accent.