lifeboatTHE LIFEBOAT.
THE LIFEBOAT.
THE LIFEBOAT.
I slipped on some clothes and went out. The night was wilder than ever, the driving rain heavier, the wind louder, the sea rougher. I saw the coastguard-men bury themselves in oilskins, and sally out with lanterns to their station on the Denes. When they took boat to cross the river, I had perforce to leave, and so, wet through, went back to my bedroom window.
For hours I watched the fitful lights on the Denes, and the wavering light on the mast of the ship beyond. Once, in the staring light of a "flare," I saw her plainly—her stark, white, sloping deck looming ghostly through the darkness; then, another rocket-line went flashing across the black waste, and I hoped the crew were safe.
Next morning I learned from our landlady's son that he had been all night in thelifeboat; that despite the smack-skipper's first refusal to leave his ship the lifeboat had stood by him for hours, the waves washing over the stranded vessel the while; that, at last, finding the skipper obstinate, the lifeboatmen had returned to shore, but had scarcely landed when the new view which isolation lent to his perilous position, caused the skipper to signal for their return. They went back accordingly, and at three in the morning safely landed the shipwrecked crew in Gorleston.
All through the next day, without rest or respite, the hardy young boatman unceasingly engaged on salvage duty. I accidentally heard, by the way, that on the previous day he had plunged twice into the sea from the breakwater to save two children who had fallen in—for which service he was munificently rewarded with five shillings.
At night, in answer to a question, he told me, "Sometimes in winter we've been out as much as three times in one night, and been at it again the night after. You soon get used to it, you know."
H'm! Idon'tknow: I only know that after that night I was laid up with a chill, whilst he made no more of his labours, his perils and exposure than if they had been part of a picnic; and I also know that when, in inquiring about my health, he wistfully struggled to tune his storm-tanned hardy face to a note of decent sympathy, he made me feel ashamed of my lubberly fragility.
Yet—tut, tut! Can I not win more pay for a nice little cackling article about his work, than this dreadnought will get for saving six men's and two children's lives?
Since everything is justly ordained in ourbest of all possible societies, my greater gain must prove, despite appearances, that I am this man's superior.
Besides, he speaks to me with manifest respect, and calls me "Sir."
A few nights later, there was another gale; a trawler was driven ashore, and her crew saved by the rocket apparatus.
Two or three nights later a Lowestoft smack was run down by a Norwegian barque, and the skipper and mate were drowned; one left a wife and four children, the other a wife and nine!
These casualties are happening constantly—they are so common they are scarcely reported, even in local papers; but what becomes of the widows and orphans?
A man's wages on the trawlers are 14s. a week,when his boat is at sea.
"They ought to be included in theCompensation Act," I suggested to a boatman.
"Who is to pay the compensation?" he asked.
I suggested the smack owners.
"Oh, they couldn't afford it"; they couldn't afford more wages; couldn't afford anything. They also were to be numbered amongst those deserving unfortunate classes of disinterested British capitalists who are living on their losses. Yet one doesn't hear oftheirstarving in the winter, oftheirbeing drowned in quest of a precarious livelihood, oftheirwidows and orphans being gathered into the workhouse. Nor the boatbuilders, nor the sailmakers, nor the Billingsgate "wholesalers," nor any of the men connected with the trade, except those who do the actual work of catching the fish.
Their poverty is apparent to all the world;the difficulty of getting even a bare living by the fisheries is bringing competition for employment even into the lifeboat. Lifeboatmen may earn 30s. in a winter's night by going out to a wreck, and may get as much as £10 per man in one haul if they recover salvage. That is "big money" to fishermen; so it comes to pass that even that business is tarnished with a sordid taint.
"The coastguard had no business to fire their rocket-line," said a fisherman to me, speaking of the wreck above described; "we was in the water first and was entitled to the pay. Besides," he continued, following up a train of thought which is horrible to pursue, "they needn't be in such a hurry to take the bread from us lifeboatmen:it's only half a crown each they'd get for firing the rocket."
I heard ugly hints of vessels purposely cast away to recover insurance; and I heard a well-dressed townsman, who spoke with considerable warmth, and evidently with knowledge, utter bitter sneers at the rapacity of certain boatmen who had "made salvage a business," and who "always won their actions-at-law against the owners because counsel artfully worked on the jurymen's feelings by glowing accounts of the men's pluck and perils."
"And do you deny the peril of the work?" I asked.
"No," he admitted, "it's risky enough, but it pays better than fishing, and that's about as risky."
"You would not care to do it yourself, I presume?"
"Not me!" he answered, with a chuckle; "I should hope I'd got a better mark on.But to make a ten-pound note, those beggars, why, they'd face hell!"
If there be a devil his name is Money.
Fresh from the hands of the gods, we are the exquisite instruments upon which they play divine music. But comes Money to play upon us, and the strings become jangled, harsh, and out of tune. If there were no money—if none were tempted for lack of it to sell themselves, if none were driven by excess of it to wallow in porcine gutters—how brave, noble, and lovable were Man!
The stock question that Yorkshire weavers ask of one another on meeting, is one we might fitly ask of our Civilisation, "What soorts are yo' makin' now?"
The nearer the knuckle of civilisation we seek, the less shall we find of the cool,fearless, manly air of my Gorleston lifeboatman.
Civilisation is not making those "soorts," Nature preserves the monopoly of manufacture; civilisation succeeds only in spoiling them.
From drinking fiery poison in a denCrowded with tawdry girls and squalid men,Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight:I wake from day dreams to this real night.
From drinking fiery poison in a denCrowded with tawdry girls and squalid men,Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight:I wake from day dreams to this real night.
James Thomson.
Since I met the Lancashire excursionist at Lowestoft I have been wondering what is the essential distinction between the Cockney-tripper and the holiday-maker one meets at New Brighton, Douglas, or Blackpool.
We were tightly packed in the shelter on the promenade waiting the end of the thunderstorm. There were two native boyssinging a temperance song to the tune of "There's nae luck aboot the hoose," translated to a dirge with a drawling refrain of "No d-r-r-rink! no d-r-r-rink for me!"
This they would whisperingly sing, with stealthy inquiring glances at the people who pressed about them, and then hysterically giggle. But the stolid, respectable crowd of "visitors" from London, stiff with the recent dignity of seeing their names printed in the visitors' list (with "Esquire" at the end!) would not stoop to notice these frivolous ebullitions. They stolidly glowered with heavy impassive glare, oblivious, it seemed, not only of the boys, but also of each other.
Now this starchiness would not have been remarkable in Southport or Folkestone, where one meets so many pompous, old, superior persons, puffed up with the importance of their little pension, annuity, or snug, retiringhoard; nor in Scarborough, where many visitors are genuine "toffs," and naturally privileged to look down upon the common herd.
But this crowd at Lowestoft consisted unmistakably of the genteel working class—the clerks at £150 to £300 a year, the small shopkeepers, the—in short, the genteel working class.
In Lancashire this class, though disposed to a sort of blunt arrogance at home, become humanised when holiday-making. They will condescend to fuse with their "inferiors," and when united, as in this case, by common misfortune, they will even condescend to be affable.
Not so the genteel workman of Cockaigne.
That he is a workman he never remembers; that he is genteel he never forgets.
Even when he has divested himself of hiscustomary frock-coat and tall silk hat, he remains still clothed with his cumbrous and sombre gentility. It is to him as valour was to his forebears. It serves him in lieu of honour or religion. His gentility is of his possessions the most sacred: rather than that, he would lose his honesty, his manliness, and his humanity.
The silence was broken by the irruption of a bustling newcomer, who, as he shook his dripping cap, cheerily cried, "Good Laur! it does come down!"
He looked round for acknowledgment, but the genteel gentlemen from London stonily stared into vacancy.
Undiscouraged, the newcomer took off his mackintosh, offered a jest about the weather, beamed cordially upon the crowd, and playfully cuffed the ears of the boy who demanded, "No d-r-r-rink, no d-r-r-rink for me."
"All right," he said, "if you don't want any drink, you needn't cry about it. I'll take your share when the whisky comes."
Again he glanced round with an inviting smile, but the petrified images looked remote, unfriendly, melancholy, slow.
But this chilliness troubled him no more than a frosty morning troubles the jovial sun. He beamed and glowed and laughed and talked, and, despite themselves, the genteel glaciers thawed.
"That man," I said to myself, "comes from the North."
His next speech told of storms he had seen—at Blackpool! of seas washing over the promenade wetting him "three streets back."
One of the gentlemen from London cast a look of curiosity.
The man from the North went on to tellhow he had taken a day's sail from Blackpool, and, being unable to land there at night, had been carried to Fleetwood, and thence back by rail after midnight.
"How was that?" asked the gentleman who had looked interested; "haven't they a pier at Blackpool?"
Fancy that to a Blackpoolite! It was as if one had asked a sailor whether he had ever seen the sea, a Scotch reporter whether he had tasted whisky, a French soldier whether he had ever heard the "Marseillaise," or a Southport man whether he knew what sand was.
It did my heart good in that strange land upon that cheerless day to hear the man from the North pour out his volcanic eloquence in Blackpool's praise.
I grieve to be compelled to admit that some of his statements struck me asinaccurate. For instance, I thought he was wrong in describing the promenade as ten miles long, and I think he was not justified in stretching the Tower to double the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
I cast a glance of mild rebuke upon him when he added that the Winter Gardens were "something like the Crystal Palace, and Earl's Court put together," and I gasped when he represented Uncle Tom's Cabin as "a sort of shandygaff of Buckingham Palace and Olympia!".
I felt that if I didn't check him the man would rupture himself.
I touched him on the shoulder. "I have lived at Blackpool myself," I said.
"There you are," he continued, without turning a hair; "this gentleman will confirm what I'm telling you. Aren't all these Southof England watering-places slow as compared with Blackpool?"
"Well," I said, "none of them have such variety of amusements."
"If you want amusement," said the Cockney gentleman who had offered the cue about the pier, "if you want amusement, you should try Yarmouth."
"Yarmouth!" cried the North of England man, with an expression of superb disdain. "Bah! Yarmouth is vulgar!"
It was lovely! After his praise of Blackpool it was sublime. I saluted him respectfully and departed with a soul full of awe.
For I had not then seen Yarmouth. On the next day I did.
Then my wonder vanished.
I had seen something of the Yarmouth yahoos at Gorleston.
For the democratic price of twopence, steamers bring them up the river, past the teeming wharves and shipbuilding yards of the Yare, and belch them forth to stare upon Gorleston's "slowness."
Our placid Gorleston sun smiled on their hurry and pain with its customary calm complacency. Our lazy Gorleston sea rocked itself benignly with its usual hushing swish. Our deliberate Gorleston sea-gulls indolently flapped their wings.
And the Yarmouth yahoos yawned and hastened away in disgust.
But at Yarmouth, their feet are, as it were, upon their own wicket; their deportment was to the manner born.
See them shying at skittles or cocoanuts, gorging on stout and shellfish, bustling, breathless but roaring, from "entertainment"to "entertainment." How hot they look! how they perspire! and how they shout! Do they really amuse themselves? I wonder.
They all seek happiness, these good brothers and sisters of ours; but surely they run away from it that so distress themselves in its pursuit. To "get on," to "do" the utmost possible in the shortest possible time, to eclipse their fellows, to make haste and yet more haste, and ever more haste—that, in pleasure as in toil, is ever their aim.
For a right-down, regular, blaring, flaring, glaring, tearing, staring, devil-may-caring hullabaloo, Blackpool on August Bank Holiday is peculiar.
But between the Lancashire and the Cockney-tripper there is an essential difference which is not in the Southerner's favour.
The Northern tripper may be rowdy, but there is a redeeming quality of broad joviality, good-tempered companionship in his razzling, that mellows and softens its asperity. But the Cockney-tripper, from his exasperating accent to his infuriating concertina, is aggressively, blatantly, harshly coarse. There is a self-sufficient "cockiness" about him that soars above all compromise and defers to nothing and to nobody. His profanity is more raucous and vicious than the Northerner's, his ebriety more ribald, brutal, and swinish. Armed with his customary concertina, or his still more harrowing occasional cornet, 'Arry is a terror to shudder at.
His 'Arriet, too, is infinitely coarser than the worst specimen of the Lancashire mill-girl.
The shrieking sisterhood of the flauntingfeathers and marvellously beaded and bugled tippets, swagger along in serried bands, five and six feet deep. Arm in arm they come, lifting their skirts high in impudent dance as they lurch to and fro, giggling hysterically, and shouting vocal inanities with shrill and piercing insistence.
There is nothing more distressing in all England than the spectacle of these unfortunate persons in their hours of mirth. In all England there is no poverty more pitiful than the conspicuous poverty of their resources of pleasure.
To raise as much noise as they can, to make themselves as offensive as possible to the quietly disposed, to spoil natural beauties and break things,—these seem to be the aims of their enjoyment.
If they find a pleasant stretch of clean sand, where barefooted children happilydisport themselves, they will fill the place with lurid profanity, and departing leave behind them a Tom Tiddler's heap of broken bottles, threatening the security and comfort of every playing baby in the neighbourhood. If they find a pretty flower-garden, where they are politely requested to "keep off the grass," they will deliberately and purposely trample on the sequestered patch, to prove their insolent superiority over regulations framed for their and the general public's profit and advantage.
Oh, but it is sad to see! There is nothing more depressing, more crushing to one's aspirations for the people's greater and truer liberty.
The usurer's greed, the tyranny of upstart wealth, labour's subjection and dependence, poverty's hunger—all these may be cured; but what shall be done with yahoos whosechief delight lies in spoiling the enjoyment of others?
Ah, me! I wish I had not been to Yarmouth.
It was a Sunday in London—gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look to them out of windows in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the plague were in the city, and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.Charles Dickens.
It was a Sunday in London—gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look to them out of windows in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the plague were in the city, and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.
Charles Dickens.
When, as a boy of ten (driven from Paris by General Trochu's proclamation beforethe siege as abouche inutile), I first set my eyes on the world's metropolis, my impressions were not favourable. Ugh! that first Sunday in London! It was like a day of death, a day among the tombs.
What a change from the Paris of the Third Empire!
I had been suddenly translated from an airy, flower-festooned apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, to a dirty brick lodging-house in the Pentonville Road, with a soot-garden in front and a dingy penitentiary across the way.
Never before had I seen a brick house, soot-garden, or penitentiary; and novelty for once failed to lure my youthful eye.
It was then that the purple-faced landlady in the rusty black gown assured my father that the place was "exceedingly respectable."
"What is that?" asked my elder brother John in French—"c'est tres quoi?"
"Respectable," repeated my father.
"Respectable," quoth John. "What we calltriste, hein?"
And my father, who was ever grave as a tetrarch, smiled.
I knew only two or three English phrases then, such as "I am pretty and vell; how vos you?" "If you please," "menny of zem," etc. etc.
Never till then had I heard the British national word; and when my father explained that "respectability" meant "une nature honorable," we boys looked out at the soot-garden and penitentiary, and marvelled why honour in London looked so dirty.
The next day was Sunday, and our landlady furnished us with the name of a "most respectable" church near Clerkenwell Prison.
But John expressed a suspiciously fervent and pious desire to attend service at St. Paul's Cathedral, and when my mother looked hard at him he blushed. That settled it. I was ordered to put on my new Sunday boots, and go with him.
When we got outside, John took the precaution, by way of a start, to box my ears for being an artful littlemouchard, and then set off as fast as he could go, with a view to leaving me behind.
His legs were long, mine were short, and I wore my Sunday boots. Besides, I was hindered by rude insular boys, who stood in my way pointing to my Parisian headgear, and shouting barbarian phrases which I have since recognised as "Who's your 'atter?"
We ran, as I have since ascertained, through Euston Square, Tavistock Square,Bloomsbury Square, Bedford Square, twice round Russell Square, and then somehow got back to Euston. Then John stopped. The fact was he was lost. But he put a bold front on the matter, and said we would go and dance with the London 'prentice lads and fair-haired Saxon maids, first at Westminster and then at Tower Green. He told me he had seen pictures in which the youth of Britain, in gaily-coloured attire, were shown dancing round garlanded and festooned poles. He fancied the sports were held at Westminster. But was sure some were held on Tower Hill. Was I brave enough to join the venture and risk the after-part?
I was a nice, well-meaning boy, but before his dazzling array of temptations I fell at once.
John knew a little English—learnt at theLycée St. Louis—but, as he confided to me after several interviews with the ignorant Londoners, these persons did not understand their own tongue; and it seemed to take a long time to teach it them.
So we trudged again through the dreadful, dreary, desolate squares, with their carefully railed regulation patches of soot-gardens, and indefinable, uniform air of hypochondriacal blight.
I believe we should have walked round and round those grim and forbidding dwelling-boxes all day, had we not, after many attempts, discovered a man who knew a little French, and who offered to take us down to Westminster.
John asked him about the Squares. "Are they barracks?" he said, "or workmen's dwellings?"
"Mais, non," answered our guide, lookingshocked, "they are the dwellings of the most respectable people."
Again that mystic word "respectable." Again the atmosphere of dignified dumps and dingy sulkiness. And father had told us that "respectability" was "an honourable nature." London honour seemed a sad thing.
The story of that day's spree ought to be published as a Sunday-school tract. It was the most chastening experience I ever underwent.
A few months later we were in the midst of barricades and street massacres in Paris; but even that weird experience has left no such impression of blank and heavy gloom upon my memory as the dismal reconnaissance into the London Sabbath and British respectability whereof this is the true account.
Those miles of deserted and colourlessstreets under the narrow glimpses of leaden sky, with the solitary heavy figure of the large British policeman everlastingly in the foreground—mon Dieu!in what clammy, icy bands of unrelieved wretchedness they strangled the exuberance of our boyish hearts upon that dull September Sunday!
Besides, I wore my Sunday boots.
The man who spoke French, or who, at least, understood some of John's English, left us at Charing Cross, and we went on alone to the joyous dance and revels of Westminster.
John had mentioned them to the man, so far as his resources would allow; but the man only shook his head and muttered something about Cremorne, which John explained to me, must be the name of the queen of the revels.
And when we got there—oh dear! ohdear!—frosty-faced, dun-coloured, British matrons and virgins with ivory-backed prayer-books were streaming out of the Abbey, and a drizzling chilly rain and mist had begun to fall over the scene, when John, distracted and discomfited, stumbled over the boots of the customary policeman.
"Milles pardons!" said John, lifting his hat, "but ve seek vere ze girls and boys dance ze Sunday."
"Daunce!" replied the heavy policeman, "daunce a' Sundays? Nice, respectable little boys you must be, I down't think!"
We didn't understand all he said, but we heard the chilly word "respectable," and didn't get warm again till we had run to the City.
To tell all the adventures of that terrible day would be to repeat, with variations, the tale I've told so far. The City finished ourspirits. Even liquorice-water would not raise one's courage in these "catacombs with the roof off," as John aptly described the tomb-like streets.
And the Tower, which John had represented to me as a sort of Versailles or Fontainebleau, with fountains, flower-beds, and avenues on the exterior, and British lions, crowns, and a plentiful supply of beheaded traitors constantly on view inside, was the last straw.
It was, as the usual policeman told John, "closed on Sundays."
Then I fell upon a seat, repentant, and vowed I'd tell my mother.
Finally, we compromised, on my brother's promising to pay the omnibus fare home, for the which I was to declare that we had lost our way, and to deny that we had been upon the spree.
I felt that I could do this without injury to my conscience, and when we returned to the soot-garden I did it.
John got a hiding all the same, and I didn't offer myself as a substitute; for my feet were very sore, and I felt that he was a wicked boy who deserved all the chastisement he could get.
In the days which followed, my understanding of "respectability" was much ripened.
There was another family in the house.
Its head was a fat old lady with corkscrew ringlets (I'd never seen corkscrew ringlets before), who sat everlastingly in front of the fire, like Patience in a hair-seated rocking-chair (I'd never seen a hair-seated chair before), toasting endless slices of bread (I'd never seen toast before). There were her two thin, middle-aged, maidendaughters, who were perfect types of the British old maid (and I'd never seen an old maid before). There was also a son, who washed up the pots, and occasionally went out into the garden to feed the hens, dressed in a pair of shabby gaiters, a rusty tall hat, and a cane.
The landlady informed us that they were a family of the highest respectability. They never paid any rent, and owed money to all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood; but they always went to church on Sundays and were most respectable people.
My mother asked why the son didn't go to work.
"Work?" said the landlady, with a pitying smile. "None of the Ropers were ever known to work. The family is too respectable."
There was another thing I saw for the firsttime in that house, and that was a drunken woman.
The landlady, robbed of rent and food by the Ropers, who were too respectable to be turned out, had grown poor and dismal, and had taken to pawn her belongings for gin. I had never heard of gin before, nor ever seen a gin-palace. It was our landlady who bribed me for the first time to enter a London public-house—a flaring, reeking, typical London gin-palace. The sight and smell of the place filled me with a loathing which I have never forgotten.
But "here's a penny for yourself," said she, "and it's a most respectable house."
And that was my first introduction to English respectability.
No wonder that I preferred Parisian wickedness!
Other days come back on meWith recollected music, though the toneIs changed and solemn, like the cloudy groanOf dying thunder on the distant wind.
Other days come back on meWith recollected music, though the toneIs changed and solemn, like the cloudy groanOf dying thunder on the distant wind.
Byron.
The stock-in-trade of the ten-a-penny poets includes a serviceable allusion to the pleasure derivable from a re-visit, after a prolonged absence to a familiar scene of earlier years.
The wanderer, returning in a snowstorm, sees the dear old gables from afar, bathed in tender memories and moonshine. The snow lies in crystal heaps on the well-rememberedwindow-sill; and the apple-trees in the backyard are loaded with frequent blossom. The boats are darting o'er the curly bay, the nightingales are singing blythe and free, the little lambs on the icy peaks skip up and down the flowering willow, and the wanderer's aged parents are standing on their heads under the ancestral fig-tree.
And as the ten-a-penny poet gazes, enraptured, upon this pleasing spectacle from a conveniently adjacent mountain summit, his bosom heaves with many a joy, he flings his pack upon the grassy sward, and he too dances a festal hornpipe upon his head.
If admirers of ten-a-penny poetry had anything to think with, they would resent this crude and humiliating imposition.
I protest that the scenes of earlier joys are always, and in the nature of things, a delusion and a snare. That vast and luscious orchard,so long and so fondly remembered, turns out to be no more than a scrubby clump of woebegone bearers of tasteless, sapless pears and wooden apples. The main street that we thought so wide and grand and gay, is a narrow, dirty, straggling collection of dingy, fly-blown marine stores and reach-me-down contraptions. The toffee-shop—the Star of the East, that glorious palace of delight—is a ramshackle, tumbledown hovel, with a stock of sloppy, sticky, sickly brandy-balls, and soiled peppermints. The confectioner's—ah, woe is me!
When I lived in Paris, as a boy, what a mad, merry, reckless place it was! How admirably Offenbach set it to music in the rippling airs ofLa Grande Duchesse, whichtout Paristhen whistled and sang!
I think the sun in those days shone all the time, and Paris, newly rebuilt by BaronHaussman, glittered in bran new white and gold under a canopy of silky blue.
Offenbach translated it all—sunshine, staring new white stone, gilt railings and eagles, joyous crowds, laughing women, madly merry mirlitons, dazzling uniforms, splendid horses and carriages, imperial tinsel, bright silk skies, universal carelessness, recklessness, and intoxication. It is all in the music ofThe Grand Duchess of Gerolstein.
Then the Sunday picnics in the woods of Vincennes and St. Cloud! theal frescodinner-parties at the suburban cafés! the jousting games upon the river, where we knocked each other into the Seine, to the joy of ourselves and all beholders! and the old dances—ah! who could forget the dances of the fête at St. Cloud? Men in shirt-sleeves, girls without hats, spinning likecoupled tornadoes, heedless of time, heedless of all measure, heedless of conventions. If they desired to dance the waltz, and the band chose to play the polka,eh bien, "Zut," to the band.
champsTHE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.
THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.
THE CHAMPS ÉLYSÉES.
And the band! If the dancers didn't care, it wasbien égalto the band?Parbleu.Every blower blew his hardest, and arranged his time to his heart's content; every scraper scraped for novelty of effect, letting harmony take care of itself; and the drummer in his shirt-sleeves, contemptuous of all besides, spanked the sounding drum with a rollicking energy that put all other effects in the shade. How he did drum, that drummer! and smile, and cock his hat!
Then the great Exhibition of 1867, and my childish wonder and delight in its cosmopolitan crowds and dazzling prodigality of uniforms! By the same token I rememberthat my first literary attempt was a composition written at M. Duvernoy's Protestant School, in the Rue Madame, setting forth my impressions of a grand review upon a brilliant Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, where three emperors and the Sultan of Turkey watched the manœuvres of what was then believed to be the finest army in the world; and I remember—these little things cling to one's memory sometimes to the exclusion of important events—how the Prince Imperial, Napoleon's ill-starred son, riding past our landau at the head of his glittering regiment in the Avenue de l'Impératrice, paused to smile at me, a boy little younger than himself, as my hat's protecting elastic hindered my salute.
Yet another radiant Sunday I remember, and a splendid cavalcade escorting Napoleon III, and the Sultan from the Palaisde l'Industrie back through the Champs-Élysées through the then spick and span, and glitteringly white Rue de Rivoli, to the luxurious Palais des Tuileries; and I remember how amongst the hurrahs and waving of hats, there burst out one loud "A bas l'Empereur," which caused the conqueror of Solferino to look furtively sideways under his heavy eyebrows, whilst his ubiquitousmouchardspounced upon the bold republican with their loaded sticks and dragged him off to jail.
But now when I visit Paris I see no more the pomp and glitter of unsurpassed opulence, nor splendour of architecture, nor infectious gaiety.
Scowling St. Antoine I see all the time—in the bullet marks left on the buildings from the Commune massacre, and in thefaces and gait of the tired and melancholy Parisians.
The glitter of Haussman's buildings is faded, their whiteness tarnished, the whole place is like the scene of an orgie as seen by the revellers on the dismal morrow.
The books and pictures in the shop windows are infamous; the plays in theatres and music-halls are unspeakable; and the smells—ah,mon Dieu?the smells!
Looked Paris so in '70? and smelt so? Pah!
My acquaintance with atmospheres is extensive and peculiar. I have essayed Widnes on a summer's afternoon; I have sniffed the fiery soot, smithy cleek, and wheel swarf of Sheffield in August; I have dwelt upon the fragrant banks of Irwell and within scent of Barking Creek; but—a sultry day in Paris, ugh!
The narrow streets near the Halles may not smell as strong as St. Helen's, nor as loud as Widnes, but their perfume is more subtle, and like the famous patent pill of England it goes further.
When the hot season begins, people who regularly live thereabouts need no nutriment.
They live on the atmosphere—or die on it. And the state of the latter is the more happy.
Then the drapers' shops.
How is it that in the years that were earlier, I saw only fêtes and picnics? whilst now, when I accompany my Bosom's Lord on her periodical invasions of France—
Ah! yes, perhaps that accounts for it.
I accompany Madame to the Printemps, the Belle Jardinière, the Louvre, and the Bon Marché, to interpret her commands,and I climb everlasting staircases like a little white mouse in a wheel.
How I perspire—dame!how I perspire!
One day in a great magazine of Paris a small grease spot will be found upon the carpet, and someone will approach and say, "Tiens donc, this grease spot; what is it?"
And they will call Mr. Stirlock Roames, the detective, and he will say, "Ah, it is the remains of a great dramatic critic. By my process of induction I perceive that he was a remarkable genius, and owned a yellow dog with a gift for solo leapfrog. He had one fault: he was too good. If you bring me a small piece of blotting-paper and a flat iron I will pick him up."
And the grease spot will be removed to Westminster Abbey, and the readers of theClarionwill wear sackcloth and ashes ever after.
Ah!mon Dieu!These shops!
"Ask the man," says She who must be obeyed, "to show me an accordeon-pleated plain bell-skirt with a deep hem and shallow basque of glycine velvet, shirred with a shallow round yoke of fine guise guipure, and broadly turned back lapels of material to match, and ample Marie Stuart sleeves of white satin mounted on lace, braceleted with a band of silver and pearl-embroidered satin slashed to the elbow."
A college of professors of languages, armed with a library of technical dictionaries would be compelled to give it up.
But I dare not.
If I confessed myself unable to translate this wholesale order offhand into currentParisian, Madame would denounce me as an impostor on the spot.
Therefore I translate it for her, but I work it on a system. Thus—
I turn nonchalantly to the shopman, and observe briskly in French, "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been."
Madame, who doesn't understand a word, nods her head in corroboration like a Chinese figure in a tea-shop window, and repeats "Wee-wee," which, as regards French, represents the whole of her little lot.
Whatever the topic, whatever the emergency, she always says "Wee-wee." One would think that sometimes when she had laid it out in one speculation unsuccessfully, she would feel discouraged and deterred.
But lor! nothing discourages that diminutivebut remarkable woman. I have tried, and I know.
So whenever, in Paris, opportunity occurs to put in a word, Madame sails in hopefully and spreads out her "Wee-wee" as confidently as if it were the ace of trumps.
Whereupon the shopman looks perplexed. "Mais, M'sieur," says he, shrugging his shoulders in pretty apology, "je ne comprends pas."
It is a shame to abuse his gentle, smiling good-nature and affability, but, what the good year! self-preservation is the first law of Nature. My business at this crisis is not to bandy compliments with a polite shopman, but to snatch my acquisitive Bosom's Lord as swiftly as it may be from bankruptcy.
When the shopman says he does not understand me, I pepper him at once with another staggerer. "Milles bombes!" Icry, "what have you done with M. Zola?"
"M. Zola!" he exclaims, looking pathetically bewildered; "Vraiment, M'sieur, I do not know."
"You're quite right," I answer meditatively. Then, turning to Madame, I explain: "Sold out. Empress of China sent for the last this morning. Fresh cargo expected from Patagonia in the spring"; and hastily grabbing her umbrella I snatch her out of the shop before she can say "Wee-wee."
It worked very well at first. Then she got in the way of grabbing her umbrella in her own hand at the critical moment, and when I turned to go she would say, "Yes, I know what you are going to say, my dear; they're sold out again. It must be, as you suggest, the curious custom of the country.But do not be discouraged; ask him whether they have any alpaca skirts with dotted foulards in two-inch wristbands of shot moiré gussets and squashed strawberry ruchings to the sleeve, rosettes of guipure and bronze-powdered swordgrass flounces with Imogen ruffles round the waist."
Then the situation complicates itself; it becomes needful to prepare thegrand coup.
I approach the shopman with a determined air, and with faltering speech, and eyes that wildly glare; I give it him in French, as thus—"Look at here, young fellow, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I say that drink is a curse."
He looks surprised, and shrugs his shoulders again as if once more to apologise.
"Then bandy words no more with me," Icry; "for slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs receive our air, that moment they are free; they touch our country and their shackles fall."
"Mais, M'sieur," he begins, but ere he can think of his little piece, I pour into him another broadside—"O native isle," I cry, adopting now a friendly, engaging, and rhapsodical air, "fair freedom's happiest seat! at thought of thee, my bounding pulses beat! For what country has such work-houses, such gin-palaces, such company promoters, such Sunday clothes, and such respectability?"
He shakes his head, a little impatiently perhaps, and again begins, "Mais, M'sieur"—
"Yes, I know what you would plead," I interrupt, "butmilles tonnerres!is not your proprietor a lanthern-jawed, spider-legged, hump-backed, knock-kneed, flat-footed,swivel-eyed, chowder-headed old Paty du Clam?"
Then his politeness gives way and the poison begins to work on him. He foams at the mouth and jerks out little broken bits of hissing and gurgling words.
"Come, come," I continue in a placid and wheedling tone, "you must admit his eyebrows are like birds' nests, his teeth like tombstones, and his hair like whiskers on broomstick. Now, even at his time of life, why should he not try to wash himself?"
That lets my poor friend out. He rolls his eyes, claws the air, and spits fire, till at last my Bosom's Lord, who has been unconsciously smiling and dropping bland "Wee-wee's" at ill-sorted intervals throughout the conversation, imperiously demands to know what is the matter.
"Oh, nothing!" I explain; "only thegentleman wants to know whether you are a Kaffir collector of curiosities or a Hottentot marine store-dealer, that you should ask for a thing so many years behind the fashion. He says you've no more notion of style, my Queen, than a superannuated Dutch scarecrow with cheap false teeth and a father who worked for his living. He says"—
But that letsherout. She turns upon the gasping foreigner as if with a view to fell him, but realising at last the pathetic inadequacy of "Wee-wee" as a conversational medium, she speechlessly grabs her umbrella, and with eyes flashing lightning, rustles out.
As she is too excited to notice me, I seize the opportunity to apologise to the shopman.
I explain to him that we are English.
"Ah!" he says, shrugging his shoulders. No further explanation is required.
I have said.
It seems mean, but no other means may serve. Once let a woman get a footing in a Paris draper's shop, and all is lost.
Par example—to show you the system. A woman enters one of these vast magazines where the insidious, perfidious, meretricious merchandise of Paris is displayed on countless counters, in storey after storey.
Suppose, after sampling all the stock, she asks for a ha'pennyworth of pins:—
"Ha'porth o' pins? Oui, madame," says the shopman. "Would madame deign to give the address to which I must send them? No, madame, it is not worth the trouble to pay now. If you desire to pay, why not pay when the goods are delivered, madame?"
And, bowing madame out of the shop,he politely sweeps the floor with his hair.
On the next day the pins are delivered at Madame's address in the suburbs, by two handsome men in uniform who drive out in a handsome van. Madame uses the pins for a few days, and decides that she can do without them.
Next time she passes that way she calls in the shop, visits the refreshment department, where refreshments are dispensed free of charge, lolls awhile on a sofa in the reading-room, where the newspapers are kept for the use of customers, retires to the writing-room, conducts her day's correspondence on stationery provided by the establishment, and finally, as she is passing out, informs the cashier that she has bought something which she desires to return.
"Oui, madame," says he, "what address?"
She gives her address, and the shop-walker, as he bows her out, sweeps the floor with his nose.
Next day come the two handsome men in uniform with the handsome carriage, to fetch the pins; on the day following they come once more to return the money, and when the lady has pocketed her halfpenny again, they politely raise their caps and say, "Merci bien, Madame."
What is the natural result of these things? When a Parisian wife is not foraging in the shops, she is in her bedroom trying on the plunder. She has all the new fashions sent home to her, tries them on, and sends half of them back. The other half, which she never would have seen but forthis tempting convenience, are kept and have to be paid for.
It is thus that Parisian husbands are reminded of their wives' existence. If it were not for the bills, I think some of them might sometimes forget that they were married.
It occurred the other day, that my interpretation of the French failed of its accustomed success.
At Madame's request, I had asked a shopwoman at the Samaritaine, the price of a pennyworth of ribbon; but, after I had spoken, Madame demanded to know what I had said.
"I asked her, my Queen, what was the price?"
"Price of what? Price of a kiss?"
"No, my Sultana; price of the ribbon."
"What was it you said about a kiss?"
"I didn't mention a kiss, my Empress."
"Yes, you did; I heard you."
"No, my Juno, I said,Qu'est ce que c'est?"
"Ah? 'Kiss Kissay.' That was what I heard. How do you spell it?"
She produces a pocket dictionary, with whose aid she designs during the next few days to learn the French language, and I am obliged to spell out my remark while she dubiously translates it word for word. The literal translation comes out thus—
French—Qu'est ce que c'est?English—What is this, what this is?
French—Qu'est ce que c'est?
English—What is this, what this is?
"'What is this, what this is'?" Madame solemnly repeats; "is that all you said to the girl?"
"Yes, my dear, it is a 'French idiom.'"
"I am glad," says she, "that it is no worse. It is a mercy I did not let you come to this place by yourself.
"Let us get home to London."
And I am thankful to be able to add that we get.
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