Confessions of a Young Man by George Moore (page 2)

glass of the years.

He has sat in the stalls, opera-glass in hand; he has met women of thirty at balls, and has sat with them beneath shadowy curtains; he knows that the world is full of beautiful women, all waiting to be loved and amused, the circles of his immediate years are filled with feminine faces, they cluster like flowers on this side and that, and they fade into garden-like spaces of colour. How many may love him? The loveliest may one day smile upon his knee! and shall he renounce all for that little creature who has just finished singing and is handing round cups of tea? Every bachelor contemplating marriage says, “I shall have to give up all for one, one.”

The young girl is often pretty but her prettiness is vague and uncertain, it inspires a sort of pitying admiration, but it suggests nothing; the very essence of the young girl’s being is that she should have nothing to suggest, therefore the beauty of the young face fails to touch the imagination. No past lies hidden in those translucent eyes, no story of hate, disappointment, or sin. Nor is there in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases in a thousand any doubt that the hand, that spends at least a pound a day in restaurants and cabs, will succeed in gathering the muslin flower if he so wills it, and by doing so he will delight every one. Where, then, is the struggle? where, then, is the triumph? Therefore, I say that if a young man’s heart is not set on children, and tiresome dinner-parties, the young girl presents to him no possible ideal. But the woman of thirty presents from the outset all that is necessary to ensnare the heart of a young man. I see her sitting in her beautiful drawing-room, all designed by, and all belonging to her. Her chair is placed beneath an evergreen plant, and the long leaves lean out as if to touch her neck. The great white and red roses of the Aubusson carpet are spread enigmatically about her feline feet; a grand piano leans its melodious mouth to her; and there she sits when her visitors have left her, playing Beethoven’s sonatas in the dreamy firelight. The spring-tide shows but a bloom of unvarying freshness; August has languished and loved in the strength of the sun. She is stately, she is tall. What sins, what disappointments, what aspirations lie in those grey eyes, mysteriously still, and mysteriously revealed. These a young man longs to know of, they are his life. He imagines himself sitting by her, when the others have gone, holding her hand, calling on her name; sometimes she moves away and plays the moonlight sonata. Letting her hands droop upon the keys she talks sadly, maybe affectionately; she speaks of the tedium of life, of its disenchantments. He knows well what she means, he has suffered as she has; but could he tell her, could she understand, that in his love reality would dissolve into a dream, all limitations would open into boundless infinity.

The husband he rarely sees. Sometimes a latch-key is heard about half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common, his jaws are heavy, his eyes are expressionless, there is about him the loud swagger of the _caserne_, and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry him?–a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is five-and-thirty, and sees that his generation has passed into middle age.

Why did she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, she has forgotten.

The young man shakes hands with the husband; he strives not to look embarrassed, and he talks of indifferent things–of how well he (the husband) is looking, of his amusements, his projects; and then he (the young man of refined mind) tastes of that keen and highly-seasoned delight–happiness in crime. He knows not the details of her home life, the husband is merely a dark cloud that fills one side of the picture, sometimes obliterating the sunlight; a shadowy shape that in certain moments solidifies and assumes the likeness of a rock-sculptured, imminent monster, but the shadow and the shape and the threat are magnetic, and in a sense of danger the fascination is sealed.

The young man of refined mind is in a ball-room! He leans against the woodwork in a distant doorway; hardly knowing what to do with himself, he strives to interest himself in the conversation of a group of men twice his age. I will not say he is shunned; but neither the matrons nor the young girls make any advances towards him. The young girls so sweet–in the oneness of their fresh hair, flowers, dresses, and glances–are being introduced, are getting up to dance, and the hostess is looking round for partners. She sees the young man in the doorway, but she hesitates and goes to some one else, and if you asked her why, she could not tell you why she avoided him. Presently the woman of thirty enters. She is in white satin and diamonds. She looks for him–a circular glance. Calm with possession she passes to a seat, extending her hand here and there. She dances the eighth, twelfth, and fifteenth waltz with him.

Will he induce her to visit his rooms? Will they be like Marshall’s–strange debauches of colour and Turkish lamps–or mine, an old cabinet, a faded pastel which embalms the memory of a pastoral century, my taste; or will it be a library,–two leather library chairs, a large escritoire, etc.? Be this as it may, whether the apartments be the ruthless extravagance of artistic impulse, or the subdued taste of the student, she, the woman of thirty, shall be there by night and day: her statue is there, and even when she is sleeping safe in her husband’s arms, with fevered brow, he, the young man of refined mind, alone and lonely shall kneel and adore her.

And should she _not_ visit his rooms? If the complex and various accidents of existence should have ruled out her life virtuously; if the many inflections of sentiment have decided against this last consummation, then she will wax to the complete, the unfathomable temptress–the Lilith of old–she will never set him free, and in the end will be found about his heart “one single golden hair.” She shall haunt his wife’s face and words (should he seek to rid himself of her by marriage), a bitter sweet, a half-welcome enchantment; she shall consume and destroy the strength and spirit of his life, leaving it desolation, a barren landscape, burnt and faintly scented with the sea. Fame and wealth shall slip like sand from him. She may be set aside for the cadence of a rhyme, for the flowing line of a limb, but when the passion of art has raged itself out, she shall return to blight the peace of the worker.

A terrible malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called nympholepsy–a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect, “the breasts of the nymphs in the brake.” And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know their malady, and they call it–the woman of thirty.

VIII

A Japanese dressing-gown, the ideality of whose tissue delights me, some fresh honey and milk set by this couch hung with royal fringes; and having partaken of this odorous refreshment, I call to Jack, my great python crawling about after a two months’ fast. I tie up a guinea-pig to the _tabouret_, pure Louis XV., the little beast struggles and squeaks, the snake, his black, bead-like eyes are fixed, how superb are the oscillations…now he strikes; and with what exquisite gourmandise he lubricates and swallows.

Marshall is at the organ in the hall, he is playing a Gregorian chant, that beautiful hymn, the “Vexilla Regis,” by Saint Fortunatus, the great poet of the Middle Ages. And, having turned over the leaves of “Les Fêtes Galantes,” I sit down to write.

My original intention was to write some thirty or forty stories varying from thirty to three hundred lines in length. The nature of these stories is easy to imagine: there was the youth who wandered by night into a witches’ sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and old. There was the light o’ love who went into the desert to tempt the holy man; but he died as he yielded; his arms stiffened by some miracle, and she was unable to free herself; she died of starvation, as her bondage loosened in decay. I had increased my difficulties by adopting as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art of telling a story clearly and dramatically, _selon les procédés de M. Scribe_, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring _café_, and our conversation turned on _l’exposition de la pièce, préparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes_, etc. One day, as I sat waiting for him, I took up the _Voltaire_. It contained an article by M. Zola. _Naturalisme, la vérité, la science,_ were repeated some half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who has received a violent blow on the head.

Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word “Shelley” had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of the word “France” awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led to the creation of a mental existence.

And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, “the new art,” impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, and I vaguely understood that my “Roses of Midnight” were sterile eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any semblance of life, passionless in all their passion.

I had read a few chapters of the “Assommoir,” as it appeared in _La République des Lettres_; I had cried, “ridiculous, abominable,” only because it is characteristic of me to instantly form an opinion and assume at once a violent attitude. But now I bought up the back numbers of the _Voltaire_, and I looked forward to the weekly exposition of the new faith with febrile eagerness. The great zeal with which the new master continued his propaganda, and the marvellous way in which subjects the most diverse, passing events, political, social, religious, were caught up and turned into arguments for, or proof of the truth of naturalism astonished me wholly. The idea of a new art based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be, as it were, a new creed in a new civilisation, filled me with wonder, and I stood dumb before the vastness of the conception, and the towering height of the ambition. In my fevered fancy I saw a new race of writers that would arise, and with the aid of the novel would continue to a more glorious and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets had begun; and at each development of the theory of the new art and its universal applicability, my wonder increased and my admiration choked me. If any one should be tempted to turn to the books themselves to seek an explanation of this wild ecstasy, he would find nothing–as well drink the dregs of yesterday’s champagne. One is lying before me now, and as I glance through the pages listlessly I say, “Only the simple crude statements of a man of powerful mind, but singularly narrow vision.”

Still, although eager and anxious for the fray, I did not see how I was to participate in it. I was not a novelist, not yet a dramatic author, and the possibility of a naturalistic poet seemed to me not a little doubtful. I had clearly understood that the lyrical quality was to be for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so important a branch of literature as poetry, no matter how contemptible he might think it. If he could find nothing to praise, he must at least condemn. At last the expected article came. It was all that could be desired by one in my fever of mind. Hugo’s claims had been previously disproven, but now Banville and Gautier were declared to be warmed-up dishes of the ancient world; Baudelaire was a naturalist, but he had been spoilt by the romantic influence of his generation. _Cependant_ there were indications of the naturalistic movement even in poetry. I trembled with excitement, I could not read fast enough. Coppée had striven to simplify language; he had versified the street cries, _Achetez la France, le Soir, le Rappel_; he had sought to give utterance to humble sentiments as in “Le Petit Epicier de Montrouge,” the little grocer _qui cassait le sucre avec mélancolie_; Richepin had boldly and frankly adopted the language of the people in all its superb crudity. All this was, however, preparatory and tentative. We are waiting for our poet, he who will sing to us fearlessly of the rude industry of dustmen and the comestible glories of the market-places. The subjects are to hand, the formula alone is wanting.

The prospect dazzled me; I tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?–bays, laurel crown, a distinct _souvenir_ of Parnassus, but there is no modern equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the “Romantiques.” The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of Mdlle. de Maupin. In form the Leper is old English, the colouring is Baudelaire, but the rude industry of the dustmen and the comestible glories of the market-place shall be mine. _A bas “Les Roses de Minuit”_!

I felt the “naturalisation” of the “Roses of Midnight” would prove a difficult task. I soon found it an impossible one, and I laid the poems aside and commenced a volume redolent of the delights of Bougival and Ville d’Avray. This book was to be entitled “Poems of ‘Flesh and Blood.'”

“_Elle mit son plus beau chapeau, son chapeau bleu_” …and then? Why, then picking up her skirt she threads her way through the crowded streets, reads the advertisements on the walls, hails the omnibus, inquires at the _concierge’s_ loge, murmurs as she goes upstairs, “_Que c’est haut le cinquième_,” and then? Why, the door opens, and she cries, “_Je t’aime_”

But it was the idea of the new æstheticism–the new art corresponding to modern, as ancient art corresponded to ancient life–that captivated me, that led me away, and not a substantial knowledge of the work done by the naturalists. I had read the “Assommoir,” and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new–the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its fulness; it is worked up to _crescendo_, another side issue is introduced, and again the theme is given forth. And I marvelled greatly at the lordly, river-like roll of the narrative, sometimes widening out into lakes and shallowing meres, but never stagnating in fen or marshlands. The language, too, which I did not then recognise as the weak point, being little more than a boiling down of Chateaubriand and Flaubert, spiced with Goncourt, delighted me with its novelty, its richness, its force. Nor did I then even roughly suspect that the very qualities which set my admiration in a blaze wilder than wildfire, being precisely those that had won the victory for the romantic school forty years before, were very antagonistic to those claimed for the new art; I was deceived, as was all my generation, by a certain externality, an outer skin, a nearness, _un approchement_; in a word, by a substitution of Paris for the distant and exotic backgrounds so beloved of the romantic school. I did not know then, as I do now, that art is eternal, that it is only the artist that changes, and that the two great divisions–the only possible divisions–are: those who have talent, and those who have no talent. But I do not regret my errors, my follies; it is not well to know at once of the limitations of life and things. I should be less than nothing had it not been for my enthusiasms; they were the saving clause in my life.

But although I am apt to love too dearly the art of my day, and to the disparagement of that of other days, I did not fall into the fatal mistake of placing the realistic writers of 1877 side by side with and on the same plane of intellectual vision as the great Balzac; I felt that that vast immemorial mind rose above them all, like a mountain above the highest tower.

And, strange to say, it was Gautier that introduced me to Balzac; for mention is made in the wonderful preface to “Les Fleurs du Mal” of Seraphita: Seraphita, Seraphitus; which is it?–woman or man? Should Wilfred or Mona be the possessor? A new Mdlle. de Maupin, with royal lily and aureole, cloud-capped mountains, great gulfs of sea-water flowing up and reflecting as in a mirror the steep cliff’s side; the straight white feet are set thereon, the obscuring weft of flesh is torn, and the pure, strange soul continues its mystical exhortations. Then the radiant vision, a white glory, the last outburst and manifestation, the trumpets of the apocalypse, the colour of heaven, the closing of this stupendous allegory–Seraphita lying dead in the rays of the first sun of the nineteenth century.

I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Père Goriot, I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of his genius–Seraphita. Certain _nuances_ of soul are characteristic of certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest of this fervent soul? The instincts of genius are unfathomable? but he who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, will aver that instinct led him aright. I have known one, one whom I used to call Seraphita; Coppée knew her too, and that exquisite volume, “L’Exilé,” so Seraphita-like in the keen blonde passion of its verse, was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written. Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season in Paris? Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs of sea water, mountain rock, and pine?

Balzac’s genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars: “Melmoth Reconcilié,” “Jesus-Christ en Flandres,” “Le Revers d’un Grand Homme,” “La Cousine Bette.” I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal. Of Pascal’s claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge. No man is greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of the existence of Jupiter Ammon. “Les Pensées” could appear to me only as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself. Still, I accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived. I am aware that this last statement will make many cry “fool” and hiss “Shakespeare”! But I am not putting forward these criticisms axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different developments and the progress of my mind. It might prove a little tiresome, but it would no doubt “look well,” in the sense that going to church “looks well,” if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of our national bard. I must, however, resist the temptation to “look well”; a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well as I could not fail to hear the melody of–

“Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly? Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.”

Is not such music as this enough? Of course, but I am a sensualist in literature. I may see perfectly well that this or that book is a work of genius, but if it doesn’t “fetch me,” it doesn’t concern me, and I forget its very existence. What leaves me cold to-day will madden me to-morrow. With me literature is a question of sense, intellectual sense if you will, but sense all the same, and ruled by the same caprices–those of the flesh? Now we enter on very subtle distinctions. No doubt that there is the brain-judgment and the sense-judgment of a work of art. And it will be noticed that these two forces of discrimination exist sometimes almost independently of each other, in rare and radiant instances confounded and blended in one immense and unique love. Who has not been, unless perhaps some dusty old pedant, thrilled and driven to pleasure by the action of a book that penetrates to and speaks to you of your most present and most intimate emotions. This is of course pure sensualism; but to take a less marked stage. Why should Marlowe enchant me? why should he delight and awake enthusiasm in me, while Shakespeare leaves me cold? The mind that can understand one can understand the other, but there are affinities in literature corresponding to, and very analogous to, sexual affinities–the same unreasoned attractions, the same pleasures, the same lassitudes. Those we have loved most we are most indifferent to. Shelley, Gautier, Zola, Flaubert, Goncourt! how I have loved you all; and now I could not, would not, read you again. How womanly, how capricious; but even a capricious woman is constant, if not faithful to her _amant de cœur_. And so with me; of those I have loved deeply there is but one that still may thrill me with the old passion, with the first ecstasy–it is Balzac. Upon that rock I built my church, and his great and valid talent saved me often from destruction, saved me from the shoaling waters of new æstheticisms, the putrid mud of naturalism, and the faint and sickly surf of the symbolists. Thinking of him, I could not forget that it is the spirit and not the flesh that is eternal; that, as it was thought that in the first instance gave man speech, so to the end it shall still be thought that shall make speech beautiful and rememberable. The grandeur and sublimity of Balzac’s thoughts seem to me to rise to the loftiest heights, and his range is limitless; there is no passion he has not touched, and what is more marvellous, he has given to each in art a place equivalent to the place it occupies in nature; his intense and penetrating sympathy for human life and all that concerns it enabled him to surround the humblest subjects with awe and crown them with the light of tragedy. There are some, particularly those who can understand neither and can read but one, who will object to any comparison being drawn between the Dramatist and the Novelist; but I confess that I–if the inherent superiority of verse over prose, which I admit unhesitatingly, be waived–that I fail, utterly fail to see in what Shakespeare is greater than Balzac. The range of the poet’s thought is of necessity not so wide, and his concessions must needs be greater than the novelist’s. On these points we will cry quits, and come at once to the vital question–the creation. Is Lucien inferior to Hamlet? Is Eugénie Grandet inferior to Desdemona? Is her father inferior to Shylock? Is Macbeth inferior to Vautrin? Can it be said that the apothecary in the “Cousine Bette,” or the Baron Hulot, or the Cousine Bette herself is inferior to anything the brain of man has ever conceived? And it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare has had three hundred years and the advantage of stage representation to impress his characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she says, “His look frightens me as if he put his hand on my dress”; and another epigram from the same book, “Woman’s virtue is man’s greatest invention.” Find me anything in La Rochefoucauld that goes more incisively to the truth of things. One more; here I can give the exact words: “_La gloire est le soleil des morts_.” It would be easy to compile a book of sayings from Balzac that would make all “Maximes” and “Pensées,” even those of La Rochefoucauld or Joubert, seem trivial and shallow.

Balzac was the great moral influence of my life, and my reading culminated in the “Comédie Humaine.” I no doubt fluttered through some scores of other books, of prose and verse, sipping a little honey, but he alone left any important or lasting impression upon my mind. The rest was like walnuts and wine, an agreeable aftertaste.

But notwithstanding all this reading I can lay no claim to scholarship of any kind; for save life I could never learn anything correctly. I am a student only of ball rooms, bar rooms, streets, and alcoves. I have read very little; but all I read I can turn to account, and all I read I remember. To read freely, extensively, has always been my ambition, and my utter inability to study has always been to me a subject of grave inquietude,–study as contrasted with a general and haphazard gathering of ideas taken in flight. But in me the impulse is so original to frequent the haunts of men that it is irresistible, conversation is the breath of my nostrils, I watch the movement of life, and my ideas spring from it uncalled for, as buds from branches. Contact with the world is in me the generating force; without this what invention I have is thin and sterile, and it grows thinner rapidly, until it dies away utterly, as it did in the composition of my unfortunate “Roses of Midnight.”

Men and women, oh the strength of the living faces! conversation, oh the magic of it! It is a fabulous river of gold where the precious metal is washed up without stint for all to take, to take as much as he can carry. Two old ladies discussing the peerage? Much may be learned, it is gold; poets and wits, then it is fountains whose spray solidifies into jewels, and every herb and plant is begemmed with the sparkle of the diamond and the glow of the ruby.

I did not go to either Oxford or Cambridge, but I went to the “Nouvelle Athènes.” What is the “Nouvelle Athènes”? He who would know anything of my life must know something of the academy of the fine arts. Not the official stupidity you read of in the daily papers, but the real French academy, the _café_. The “Nouvelle Athènes” is a _café_ on the Place Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our home, live only in a few pictures and a few pages of prose. The same old story, the vanquished only are victorious; and though unacknowledged, though unknown, the influence of the “Nouvelle Athènes” is inveterate in the artistic thought of the nineteenth century.

How magnetic, intense, and vivid are these memories of youth. With what strange, almost unnatural clearness do I see and hear,–see the white face of that _café_, the white nose of that block of houses, stretching up to the Place, between two streets. I can see down the incline of those two streets, and I know what shops are there; I can hear the glass door of the _café_ grate on the sand as I open it. I can recall the smell of every hour. In the morning that of eggs frizzling in butter, the pungent cigarette, coffee and bad cognac; at five o’clock the fragrant odour of absinthe; and soon after the steaming soup ascends from the kitchen; and as the evening advances, the mingled smells of cigarettes, coffee, and weak beer. A partition, rising a few feet or more over the hats, separates the glass front from the main body of the _café_. The usual marble tables are there, and it is there we sat and æstheticised till two o’clock in the morning. But who is that man? he whose prominent eyes flash with excitement. That is Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. The last or the supposed last of the great family. He is telling that girl a story–that fair girl with heavy eyelids, stupid and sensual. She is, however, genuinely astonished and interested, and he is striving to play upon her ignorance. Listen to him. “Spain–the night is fragrant with the sea and the perfume of the orange trees, you know–a midnight of stars and dreams. Now and then the silence is broken by the sentries challenging–that is all. But not in Spanish but in French are the challenges given; the town is in the hands of the French; it is under martial law. But now an officer passes down a certain garden, a Spaniard disguised as a French officer; from the balcony the family–one of the most noble and oldest families Spain can boast of, a thousand years, long before the conquest of the Moors–watches him. Well then”–Villiers sweeps with a white feminine hand the long hair that is falling over his face–he has half forgotten, he is a little mixed in the opening of the story, and he is striving in English to “scamp,” in French to _escamoter_. “The family are watching, death if he is caught, if he fails to kill the French sentry. The cry of a bird, some vague sound attracts the sentry, he turns; all is lost. The Spaniard is seized. Martial law, Spanish conspiracy must be put down. The French general is a man of iron.” (Villiers laughs, a short, hesitating laugh that is characteristic of him, and continues in his abrupt, uncertain way), “man of iron; not only he declares that the spy must be beheaded, but also the entire family–a man of iron that, ha, ha; and then, no you cannot, it is impossible for you to understand the enormity of the calamity–a thousand years before the conquest by the Moors, a Spaniard alone could–there is no one here, ha, ha, I was forgetting–the utter extinction of a great family of the name, the oldest and noblest of all the families in Spain, it is not easy to understand that, no, not easy here in the ‘Nouvelle Athènes’–ha, ha, one must belong to a great family to understand, ha, ha.

“The father beseeches, he begs that one member may be spared to continue the name–the youngest son–that is all; if he could be saved, the rest what matter; death is nothing to a Spaniard; the family, the name, a thousand years of name is everything. The general is, you know, a ‘man of iron.’ ‘Yes, one member of your family shall be respited, but on one condition.’ To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they don’t know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and they cry, ‘Any conditions.’ ‘He who is respited must serve as executioner to the others.’ Great is the doom; you understand; but after all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes to his youngest son and says, ‘I have been a good father to you, my son; I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never refused you anything. Now you will not fail us, you will prove yourself worthy of the great name you bear. Remember your great ancestor who defeated the Moors, remember.'” (Villiers strives to get in a little local colour, but his knowledge of Spanish names and history is limited, and he in a certain sense fails.) “Then the mother comes to her son and says, ‘My son, I have been a good mother, I have always loved you; say you will not desert us in this hour of our great need.’ Then the little sister comes, and the whole family kneels down and appeals to the horror-stricken boy….

“‘He will not prove himself unworthy of our name,’ cries the father. ‘Now, my son, courage, take the axe firmly, do what I ask you, courage, strike straight.’ The father’s head falls into the sawdust, the blood all over the white beard; then comes the elder brother, and then another brother; and then, oh, the little sister was almost more than he could bear, and the mother had to whisper, ‘Remember your promise to your father, to your dead father.’ The mother laid her head on the block, but he could not strike. ‘Be not the first coward of our name, strike; remember your promise to us all,’ and her head was struck off.”

“And the son,” the girl asks, “what became of him?”

“He never was seen, save at night, walking, a solitary man, beneath the walls of his castle in Granada.”

“And whom did he marry?”

“He never married.”

Then after a long silence some one said,–

“Whose story is that?”

“Balzac’s.”

At that moment the glass door of the _café_ grated upon the sanded floor, and Manet entered. Although by birth and by art essentially Parisian, there was something in his appearance and manner of speaking that often suggested an Englishman. Perhaps it was his dress–his clean-cut clothes and figure. That figure! those square shoulders that swaggered as he went across a room and the thin waist; and that face, the beard and nose, satyr-like shall I say? No, for I would evoke an idea of beauty of line united to that of intellectual expression–frank words, frank passion in his convictions, loyal and simple phrases, clear as well-water, sometimes a little hard, sometimes, as they flowed away, bitter, but at the fountain head sweet and full of light. He sits next to Degas, that round-shouldered man in suit of pepper and salt. There is nothing very trenchantly French about him either, except the large necktie; his eyes are small and his words are sharp, ironical, cynical. These two men are the leaders of the impressionist school. Their friendship has been jarred by inevitable rivalry. “Degas was painting ‘Semiramis’ when I was painting ‘Modern Paris,'” says Manet. “Manet is in despair because he cannot paint atrocious pictures like Durant, and be fêted and decorated; he is an artist, not by inclination, but by force. He is as a galley slave chained to the oar,” says Degas. Different too are their methods of work. Manet paints his whole picture from nature, trusting his instinct to lead him aright through the devious labyrinth of selection. Nor does his instinct ever fail him, there is a vision in his eyes which he calls nature, and which he paints unconsciously as he digests his food, thinking and declaring vehemently that the artist should not seek a synthesis, but should paint merely what he sees. This extraordinary oneness of nature and artistic vision does not exist in Degas, and even his portraits are composed from drawings and notes. About midnight Catulle Mendès will drop in, when he has corrected his proofs. He will come with his fine paradoxes and his strained eloquence. He will lean towards you, he will take you by the arm, and his presence is a nervous pleasure. And when the _café_ is closed, when the last bock has been drunk, we shall walk about the great moonlight of the Place Pigale, and through the dark shadows of the streets, talking of the last book published, he hanging on to my arm, speaking in that high febrile voice of his, every phrase luminous, aerial, even as the soaring moon and the fitful clouds. Duranty, an unknown Stendhal, will come in for an hour or so; he will talk little and go away quietly; he knows, and his whole manner shows that he knows that he is a defeated man; and if you ask him why he does not write another novel, he will say, “What’s the good, it would not be read; no one read the others, and I mightn’t do even as well if I tried again.” Paul Alexis, Léon Diex, Pissarro, Cabaner, are also frequently seen in the “Nouvelle Athènes.”

Cabaner! the world knows not the names of those who scorn the world: somewhere in one of the great populous churchyards of Paris there is a forgotten grave, and there lies Cabaner. Cabaner! since the beginning there have been, till the end of time there shall be Cabaners; and they shall live miserably and they shall die miserable, and shall be forgotten; and there shall never arise a novelist great enough to make live in art that eternal spirit of devotion, disinterestedness, and aspiration, which in each generation incarnates itself in one heroic soul. Better wast thou than those who stepped to opulence and fame upon thee fallen; better, loftier-minded, purer; thy destiny was to fall that others might rise upon thee, thou wert one of the noble legion of the conquered; let praise be given to the conquered, for with them lies the brunt of victory. Child of the pavement, of strange sonnets and stranger music, I remember thee; I remember the silk shirts, the four sous of Italian cheese, the roll of bread, and the glass of milk, the streets were thy dining-room. And the five-mile walk daily to the suburban music hall where five francs were earned by playing the accompaniments of comic songs. And the wonderful room on the fifth floor, which was furnished when that celebrated heritage of two thousand francs was paid. I remember the fountain that was bought for a wardrobe, and the American organ with all the instruments of the orchestra, and the plaster casts under which the homeless ones that were never denied a refuge and a crust by thee slept. I remember all, and the buying of the life-size “Venus de Milo.” Something extraordinary would be done with it, I knew, but the result exceeded my wildest expectation. The head must needs be struck off, so that the rapture of thy admiration should be secure from all jarring reminiscence of the streets.

Then the wonderful story of the tenor, the pork butcher, who was heard giving out such a volume of sound that the sausages were set in motion above him; he was fed, clothed, and educated on the five francs a day earned in the music hall in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet; and when he made his _début_ at the Théâtre Lyrique, thou wast in the last stage of consumption and too ill to go to hear thy pupil’s success. He was immediately engaged by Mapleson and taken to America.

I remember thy face, Cabaner; I can see it now–that long sallow face ending in a brown beard, and the hollow eyes, the meagre arms covered with a silk shirt, contrasting strangely with the rest of the dress. In all thy privation and poverty, thou didst never forego thy silk shirt. I remember the paradoxes and the aphorisms, if not the exact words, the glamour and the sentiment of a humour that was all thy own. Never didst thou laugh; no, not even when in discussing how silence might be rendered in music, thou didst say, with thy extraordinary Pyrenean accent, “_Pour rendre le silence en musique il me faudrait trois orchestres militaires.”_ And when I did show thee some poor verses of mine, French verses, for at this time I hated and had partly forgotten my native language–

“My dear George Moore, you always write about love, the subject is nauseating.”

“So it is, so it is; but after all Baudelaire wrote about love and lovers; his best poem….”

“_C’est vrai, mais il s’agissait d’une charogne et cela relève beaucoup la chose_.”

I remember, too, a few stray snatches of thy extraordinary music, “music that might be considered by Wagner as a little too advanced, but which Liszt would not fail to understand”; also thy settings of sonnets where the _melody_ was continued uninterruptedly from the first line to the last; and that still more marvellous feat, thy setting, likewise with unbroken melody, of Villon’s ballade “Les Dames du Temps Jadis”; and that Out-Cabanering of Cabaner, the putting to music of Cros’s “Hareng Saur.”

And why didst thou remain ever poor and unknown? Because of something too much, or something too little? Because of something too much! so I think, at least; thy heart was too full of too pure an ideal, too far removed from all possible contagion with the base crowd.

But, Cabaner, thou didst not labour in vain; thy destiny, though obscure, was a valiant and fruitful one; and, as in life, thou didst live for others so now in death thou dost live in others, Thou wast in an hour of wonder and strange splendour when the last tints and lovelinesses of romance lingered in the deepening west; when out of the clear east rose with a mighty effulgence of colour and lawless light Realism; when showing aloft in the dead pallor of the zenith, like a white flag fluttering faintly, Symbolists and Decadents appeared. Never before was there so sudden a flux and conflux of artistic desire, such aspiration in the soul of man, such rage of passion, such fainting fever, such cerebral erethism. The roar and dust of the daily battle of the Realists was continued under the flush of the sunset, the arms of the Romantics glittered, the pale spiritual Symbolists watched and waited, none knowing yet of their presence. In such an hour of artistic convulsion and renewal of thought thou wast, and thou wast a magnificent rallying point for all comers; it was thou who didst theorise our confused aspirations, and by thy holy example didst save us from all base commercialism, from all hateful prostitution; thou wast ever our high priest, and from thy high altar turned to us the white host, the ideal, the true and living God of all men.

Cabaner, I see you now entering the “Nouvelle Athènes”; you are a little tired after your long weary walk, but you lament not and you never cry out against the public that will accept neither your music nor your poetry. But though you are tired and footsore, you are ready to æstheticise till the _café_ closes; for you the homeless ones are waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, you will find a few sous to give them _lager_ to cool their thirsty throats. So you have ever lived–a blameless life is yours, no base thought has ever entered there, not even a woman’s love; art and friends, that is all.

Reader, do you know of anything more angelic? If you do you are more fortunate than I have been.

IX

THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHENES

Two dominant notes in my character–an original hatred of my native country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All the aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I cannot think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to nausea. These feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am instinctively averse from my own countrymen; they are at once remote and repulsive; but with Frenchmen I am conscious of a sense of nearness; I am one with them in their ideas and aspirations, and when I am with them, I am alive with a keen and penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I explain this by atavism? Was there a French man or woman in my family some half-dozen generations ago? I have not inquired. The English I love, and with a love that is foolish–mad, limitless; I love them better than the French, but I am not so near to them. Dear, sweet Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the elms, the great hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading trees, and the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately beautiful southern England, not the north,–there is something Celtic in the north–southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces–a smock frock is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires of the churches pointing between the elm trees…. This is congenial to me; and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental…. There is something even Chinese about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases to be Protestant she will fall…. Look at the nations that have clung to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and revere Cromwell.

_Garçon, un bock_! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; if my books sell I cannot help it–it is an accident.

But you live by writing.

Yes, but life is only an accident–art is eternal.

What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you won’t find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the _Figaro_.

He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper’s shop; if the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it.

And his last novel “l’Œuvre,” how spun out, and for a franc a line in the “Gil Blas.” Not a single new or even exact observation. And that terrible phrase repeated over and over again–“La Conquête de Paris.” What does it mean? I never knew anyone who thought of conquering Paris; no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three provincials.

You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of breaking them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for the pleasure of undressing them.

* * * * *

Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in favour of Lefebvre, and hoped that every one there would vote for Lefebvre. Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_, and Lefebvre’s unswerving fidelity to _le nu_…elegance, refinement, an echo of ancient Greece: and then,–what do you think? when he had exhausted all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to Lefebvre, he said, “I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife and eight children.” Is it not monstrous?

But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole world in conformity with your æstheticisms…a vain dream, and if realised it would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are the basis of existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to such interests as these meet with response…it will be so till the end of time.

And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began two years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as much as you thought they should be.

Love–but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife–you know all about her–who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the _au delà_? But the women one has never seen before, that one will never see again! The choice! the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis! The nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes–the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal. This is love. There is delusion, an _au delà_.

Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching people the “grammar of art.” Education should be confined to clerks, and it drives even them to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct. Art flees before the art school… “correct drawing,” “solid painting.” Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good heavens! Do they suppose that there is one sort of painting that is better than all others, and that there is a receipt for making it as for making chocolate! Art is not mathematics, it is individuality. It does not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don’t paint badly like other people. Education destroys individuality. That great studio of Julien’s is a sphinx, and all the poor folk that go there for artistic education are devoured. After two years they all paint and draw alike, every one; that vile execution,–they call it execution,–_la pâte, la peinture au premier coup_. I was over in England last year, and I saw some portraits by a man called Richmond. They were horrible, but I liked them because they weren’t like painting. Stott and Sargent are clever fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had remained at home and hadn’t been taught, they might have developed a personal art, but the trail of the serpent is over all they do–that vile French painting, _le morceau_, etc. Stott is getting over it by degrees. He exhibited a nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an interesting intention. I liked his little landscapes better…simplified into nothing, into a couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light. But I doubt if he will find a public to understand all that.

Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy…. Athens! a few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy–the mass. The mass can only appreciate simple and _naïve_ emotions, puerile prettiness, above all conventionalities. See the Americans that come over here; what do they admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, Bouguereau and Lefebvre. What was most admired at the International Exhibition?–The Dirty Boy. And if the medal of honour had been decided by a _plébiscite_, the dirty boy would have had an overwhelming majority. What is the literature of the people? The idiotic stories of the _Petit Journal_. Don’t talk of Shakespeare, Molière and the masters; they are accepted on the authority of the centuries. If the people could understand _Hamlet_, the people would not read the _Petit Journal_; if the people could understand Michel Angelo, they would not look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau, Sir F. Leighton. For the last hundred years we have been going rapidly towards democracy, and what is the result? The destruction of the handicrafts. That there are still good pictures painted and good poems written proves nothing, there will always be found men to sacrifice their lives for a picture or a poem. But the decorative arts which are executed in collaboration, and depend for support on the general taste of a large number, have ceased to exist. Explain that if you can. I’ll give you five thousand, ten thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy and is not ancient, and you can’t do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look here, I was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. Well, I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not find out; no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no one is responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more republican you are the worse it will be.

The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to rise against it sooner or later…. Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, and all the rest–stuff…. Look at these plates; they were painted by machinery; they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were painted by the hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the demand, and a china in which there was always something more or less pretty, was turned out; but now thousands, millions of plates are made more than we want, and there is a commercial crisis; the thing is inevitable. I say the great and the reasonable revolution will be when mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the machinery and restores the handicrafts.

Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and outcries; he is not an artist. _Il me fait l’effet_ of an old woman shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of it with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote novels, history, plays, they collected _bric-à-brac_–they wrote about their _bric-à-brac_; they painted in water-colours, they etched–they wrote about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will settling that the _bric-à-brac_ is to be sold at their death, and the proceeds applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I forget which it is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; they kept a diary, they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, _radotage de vieille femme_; nothing must escape, not the slightest word; it might be that very word that might confer on them immortality; everything they heard, or said, must be of value, of inestimable value. A real artist does not trouble himself about immortality, about everything he hears, feels and says; he treats ideas and sensations as so much clay wherewith to create.

And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written about, prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for articles; it all went into pot. Hugo’s vanity was Titanic, Goncourt’s is puerile.

And Daudet?

Oh, Daudet, _c’est de la bouillabaisse_.

Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of artistic work. Whistler’s art is classical; he thinks of nature, but he does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and the best of it is he says so. He knows it well enough! Any one who knows him must have heard him say, “Painting is absolutely scientific; it is an exact science.” And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions. I admire his work; I am showing how he is misunderstood, even by those who think they understand. Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any other?–Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., with a view to rendering his _idea_. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever see Duret with a lady’s opera cloak?–I am sure he never did. Is Duret in the habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No, he is a _littérateur_ who is always in men’s society, rarely in ladies’. But these facts mattered nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to Manet. Whistler took Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme–in a word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw; I am merely contending that Whistler’s art is not modern art, but classic art–yes, and severely classical, far more classical than Titian’s or Velasquez;–from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand that the artistic stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own mysterious fashion. If a man is really an artist he will remember what is necessary, forget what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt his artistic digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches, inchoate and wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis.

I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned. What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the same peasant, the same _sabot_, the same sentiment. You must admit that it is somewhat stereotyped.

What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But that does not prevent it from being always beautiful.

People talk of Manet’s originality; that is just what I can’t see. What he has got, and what you can’t take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of touch–marvellous!

French translation is the only translation; in England you still continue to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used to do the same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of two things–if the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse for that of the original;–I don’t want his verse, I want the original;–if he is a bad poet; he gives us bad verse, which is intolerable. Where the original poet put an effect of cæsura, the translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the original poet puts an effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of cæsura. Take Longfellow’s “Dante.” Does it give as good an idea of the original as our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take Bayard Taylor’s translation of “Goethe.” Is it readable? Not to any one with an ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor’s would be read if the original did not exist? The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful, but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne’s translations of Villon. They are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of a “splendid kissing mouth.” Villon could not have done this unless he had read Swinburne. “Heine,” translated by James Thomson, is not different from Thomson’s original poems; “Heine,” translated by Sir Theodore Martin, is doggerel.

But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you could into prose?

I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your mind away from that of the original.

* * * * *

But if you don’t know the original? The rhythm of the original can be suggested in prose judiciously used; even if it isn’t, your mind is at least free, whereas the English rhythm must destroy the sensation of something foreign. There is no translation except a word-for-word translation. Baudelaire’s translation of Poe, and Hugo’s translation of Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke that is untranslatable is explained in a note.

* * * * *

But that is the way young ladies translate–word for word!

* * * * *

No; ’tis just what they don’t do; they think they are translating word for word, but they aren’t. All the proper names, no matter how unpronounceable, must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose versts into kilometres, or roubles into francs;–I don’t know what a verst is or what a rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. Every proverb must be rendered literally, even if it doesn’t make very good sense: if it doesn’t make sense at all, it must be explained in a note. For example, there is a proverb in German: “_Quand le cheval est sellé il faut le monter_;” in French there is a proverb: “_Quand le vin est tiré il faut le boire_.” Well, a translator who would translate _quand le cheval_, etc., by _quand le vin_, etc., is an ass, and does not know his business. In translation only a strictly classical language should be used; no word of slang, or even word of modern origin should be employed; the translator’s aim should be never to dissipate the illusion of an exotic. If I were translating the “Assommoir” into English, I should strive after a strong, flexible, but colourless language, something–what shall I say?–the style of a modern Addison.

* * * * *

What, don’t you know the story about Mendès?–when _Chose_ wanted to marry his sister? _Chose’s_ mother, it appears, went to live with a priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was broken-hearted; and he went to Mendès, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make a clean breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great deal of beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know Mendès, you can see him smiling a little; and looking at _Chose_ with that white cameo face of his he said,

“_Avec quel meillur homme voulez-vous que votre mère se mit? vous n’avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment religieux._”

Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration, long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again.

How to be happy!–not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the _Nouvelle Athènes_, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the _bourgeois_ over there, not to do anything that would awake a too intense consciousness of life,–to live in a sleepy country side, to have a garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;–and to think there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out of the calm satisfaction of their instincts, and give them passions! The philanthropist is the Nero of modern times.

X

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER

“Why did you not send a letter? We have all been writing to you for the last six months, but no answer–none. Had you written one word I would have saved all. The poor _concierge_ was in despair; she said the _propriétaire_ would wait if you had only said when you were coming back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done. Three quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an auction had to be called. It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne…. And all the while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the face–‘the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,’ ‘the fan widespread across the bosom’ (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the mistress of that little paradise of tapestry. She seemed to resent the intrusion. I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes ‘deep set in crimson shadow’ to fill with tears. But nothing altered her great dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained impenetrable….

“I was there the night before the sale. I looked through the books, taking notes of those I intended to buy–those which we used to read together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in _terre cuite_, that laughed amid the frosty _boulingrins_. I found a large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed. You should not be so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their letters.

“The sale was announced for one o’clock. I wore a thick veil, for I did not wish to be recognised; the _concierge_ of course knew me, but she can be depended upon. The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she to see all your pretty things sold up. You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the _marchands de meubles_ in the _quartier_, came upstairs, spitting and talking coarsely–their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was a humorist, answered, ‘If there are any ladies’ men present, we shall have some spirited bidding.’ The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again. There were many other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare–the organ that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which we could never agree about…but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. I don’t know why, _un caprice de femme_. No one but you would have ever thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders: we dreamed the massy darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted something: ‘_les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants_.’ It was horrid of you: but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the wrong way. Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the servants set the other out with little tables? That supper was fascinating! I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face. The shoes went with a lot of other things–and oh, to whom?

“So now that pretty little retreat in the _Rue de la Tour des Dames_ is ended for ever for you and me. We shall not see the faun in _terre cuite_ again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse’s hind legs. I believe it is the steepest street in Paris. And your luncheon parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to that out-of-the-way little street! Men never appreciate the risks women run for them. But to leave my letters lying about–I cannot forgive that. When I told Fay she said, ‘What can you expect? I warned you against flirting with boys.’ I never did before–never.

“Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I read you Browning. You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand why. I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you should be here. There are lilacs in the room and the _Mont Valérien_ is beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into violet vapour.

“We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year. Last year we went to P—-, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within easy distance of a casino. I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, and I gave way. There were two young men here, one the Count of B—-, the other the Marquis of G—-, one of the best families in France, a distant cousin of my husband. He has written a book which every one says is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, _c’est surtout très Parisien_. He paid me great attentions, and made my husband wildly jealous. I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away. We may return there this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable. We have decided nothing as yet. The Duchesse de —- is giving a costume ball; they say it is going to be a most wonderful affair. I don’t know what money is not going to be spent upon the cotillion. I have just got home a fascinating toilette. I am going as a _Pierette_; you know, a short skirt and a little cap. The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago. I danced the cotillion with L—-, who, as you know, dances divinely; _il m’a fait la cour_, but it is of course no use, you know that.

“The other night we went to see the _Maître-de-Forges_, a fascinating play, and I am reading the book; I don’t know which I like the best. I think the play, but the book is very good too. Now that is what I call a novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels. But I must not talk literature, or you will say something stupid. I wish you would not make foolish remarks about men that _tout-Paris_ considers the cleverest. It does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at you behind your back, and that is not nice for me. The _marquise_ was here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on her ‘days,’ so extraordinary were the remarks you made. And by the way, the _marquise_ has written a book. I have not seen it, but I hear that it is really too _décolleté_. She is _une femme d’esprit_, but the way she affiché’s herself is too much for any one. She never goes anywhere now without _le petit_ D—-. It is a great pity.

“And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you are coming back to Paris. I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really _trés Parisien_. Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs Elysées. You might come back for the Duchesse’s ball. I will get an invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you. The idea of running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going to. I always said you were a little cracked. And letting all your things be sold! If you had only told me! I should like so much to have had that Turkish lamp. Yours —-”

How like her that letter is,–egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not foolish–narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an inexpressible charm. Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely–sincerely?…like a moth caught in a gauze curtain! Well, would that preclude sincerity? Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, that is quite certain. I never could understand her;–a little brain that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune. But no, there was something more in her than that. She often said things that I thought clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put into books. But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of feeling–nervous feeling. I don’t know…perhaps…. She has lived her life…yes, within certain limits she has lived her life. None of us do more than that. True. I remember the first time I saw her. Sharp, little, and merry–a changeable little sprite. I thought she had ugly hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had known her a month. It is now seven years ago. How time passes! I was very young then. What battles we have had, what quarrels! Still we had good times together. She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far too clever for that. I never got the better of her but once…once I did, _enfin_! She soon made up for lost ground. I wonder what the charm was. I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I know…. I never knew if she cared for me, never. There were moments when…. Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that was her charm, subtleness. I never knew if she cared for me, I never knew if she hated her husband,–one never knew her,–I never knew how she would receive me. The last time I saw her…that stupid American would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door. However, she could not blame me that time–and all the stories she used to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the sake of the excitement. She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to think of it night and day. I shall never forget when she went into mourning for the Count de Chambord. And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois they were! That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a little grotesque no doubt;–the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere; the _Figaro_, that is to say Albert Wolf, _l’homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c’est-à-dire, dans le monde_, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain elevations and depravities,–depravities in the legitimate sense of the word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace….

Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from my reverie, it was pleasant.

The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant letter. My agent’s handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in me;–so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible even knowing how I stand at my banker’s. Therefore the odour of honey and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the odious epistle.

That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I may not be deprived of my _demi-tasse_ at _Tortoni’s_, that I may not be forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python–monstrous. And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they will find pity!

Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the strong shall be really strong,–that the strong shall be glorious, sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, cry the moderns.

Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity. His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples. Poor fallen God! I, who hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee now. For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and more Divine than any man’s has been. The chosen people, the garden, the betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of Magdalen. The God descending to the harlot! Even the great pagan world of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this.

Come to me, ye who are weak. The Word went forth, the terrible disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing every day the end–the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I will say it) in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. What fate has been like Thine? Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious plight, forthward in the world’s van the glory and symbol of a man’s new idea–Pity. Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame with Thy light than ever before–Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth century. The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in the ruin Thou hast created.

Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. Man would not be man but for injustice. Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice! What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharaoh’s lash or Egypt’s sun? It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment. Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that died? What care I that the virtue of some sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres’ _La Source_? That the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when compared with the essential that I should have _La Source_, that exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with delight of the painter’s holy vision. Nay more, the knowledge that a wrong was done–that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare. Oh, for the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to hear them cry the famous “Ave Caesar,” to hold the thumb down, to see the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned slaves! Oh, for excess, for crime! I would give many lives to save one sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, “_A la très-chère, à la très-belle, qui remplit man cœur de clarté”_ let the first-born in every house in Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from destruction one drawing by Hokusai. Again I say that all we deem sublime in the world’s history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism. England was great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England’s greatest son was the personification of injustice–Cromwell.

But the old world of heroes is over now. The skies above us are dark with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, creatures of the ooze and rushes about us–we, the great ship that has floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary of tears and effusion, and our refuge–the British Museum–is the wide sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, barbarous soul of beauty and of might!

XI

But neither Apollo nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood lightly advancing; the other sat in sombre contemplation, calm as a beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel–the beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich autumnal leaves where the jays darted and screamed. The twisted columns of the bed rose, burdened with great weight of fringes and curtains, the python devoured a guinea-pig, the last I gave him; the great white cat came to me. I said all this must go, must henceforth be to me an abandoned dream, a something, not more real than a summer meditation. So be it, and, as was characteristic of me, I broke with Paris suddenly, without warning anyone. I knew in my heart of hearts that I should never return, but no word was spoken, and I continued a pleasant delusion with myself; I told my _concierge_ that I would return in a month, and I left all to be sold, brutally sold by auction, as the letter I read in the last chapter charmingly and touchingly describes.

Not even to Marshall did I confide my foreboding that Paris would pass out of my life, that it would henceforth be with me a beautiful memory, but never more a practical delight. He and I were no longer living together; we had parted a second time, but this time without bitterness of any kind; he had learnt to feel that I wanted to live alone, and had moved away into the Latin quarter, whither I made occasional expeditions. I accompanied him once to the old haunts, but various terms of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made friends in the Nouvelle Athènes who interested me passionately, and my thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall had failed to find sympathy for, or even to understand. I had introduced him to Degas and Manet, but he had spoken of Jules Lefèbvre and Bouguereau, and generally shown himself incapable of any higher education; he could not enter where I had entered, and this was alienation. We could no longer even talk of the same people; when I spoke of a certain _marquise_, he answered with an indifferent “Do you really think so”? and proceeded to drag me away from my glitter of satin to the dinginess of print dresses. It was more than alienation, it was almost separation; but he was still my friend, he was the man, and he always will be, to whom my youth, with all its aspirations, was most closely united. So I turned to say good-bye to him and to my past life. Rap–rap–rap!

“Who’s there?”

“I–George Moore.”

“I’ve got a model.”

“Never mind your model. Open the door. How are you? what are you painting?”

“This; what do you think of it?”

“It is prettily composed. I think it will come out all right. I am going to England; come to say good-bye.”

“Going to England! What will you do in England?”

“I have to go about money matters, very tiresome. I had really begun to forget there was such a place.”

“But you are not going to stay there?”

“Oh, no!”

“You will be just in time to see the Academy.”

The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last Marshall said, “I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; there’s that model.”

The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very picture of discontent.

“Send her away.”

“I asked her to come out to dinner.”

“D–n her…. Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with you; you shall both dine with me. _Je quitte Paris demain matin, peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela vous est agrèable_?”

“_Je veux bien, monsieur_.”

Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was always so. We dined in a _gargote_, and afterwards we went to a students’ ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing through a clear sky, and on the pavement’s edge Marshall’s beautiful, slim, manly figure, and Marie’s exquisite gracefulness. She was Lefèbvre’s Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No one knew why; some said it was love.

I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley’s Hotel I met my agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but everything seemed far away–a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of a Frenchman’s mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, form, and temperament;–two ideas destined to remain irrevocably separate and distinct.

I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional _chroniques_ in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure.

Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes:–

We are alone! Listen, a little while, And hear the reason why your weary smile And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet, And how my love of you is more complete Than any love of any lover. They
Have only been attracted by the gray Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim And delicate form, or some such other whim, The simple pretexts of all lovers;–I
For other reason. Listen whilst I try To say. I joy to see the sunset slope
Beyond the weak hours’ hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm
Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, In mildly modulated phrases; thus
Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening’s sad serenity… I would possess your dying hours; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I plead For them. Although I never loved as yet, Methinks that I might love you; I would get From out the knowledge that the time was brief, That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm Beyond all other loves, for now the arm Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet To see you fading like a violet,
Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange And costly pleasure, far beyond the range Of formal man’s emotion. Listen, I
Will choose a country spot where fields of rye And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where, The porch and windows are festooned with fair Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon A shady garden where we’ll walk alone
In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, The garden’s length, is far, and you will rest From time to time, leaning upon my breast Your languid lily face. Then later still Unto the sofa by the window-sill
Your wasted body I shall carry, so That you may drink the last left lingering glow Of evening, when the air is filled with scent Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent The while with many griefs. Like some blue day That grows more lovely as it fades away, Gaining that calm serenity and height
Of colour wanted, as the solemn night Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever; I shall weep
A day and night large tears upon your face, Laying you then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of you; and deem
It happiness to know that you are far From any base desires as that fair star Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. Death takes but little, yea, your death has given Me that deep peace, and that secure possession Which man may never find in earthly passion.

And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor poets?

NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE

La nuit est pleine de silence,
Et dans une étrange lueur,
Et dans une douce indolence
La lune dort comme une fleur.

Parmi rochers, dans le sable
Sous les grands pins d’un calme amer Surgit mon amour périssable,
Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair.

Je suis ton amant, et la blonde
Gorge tremble sous mon baiser,
Et le feu de l’amour inonde
Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser.

Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche
Est telle qu’un fruit fait de sang; Tout passe, mais ta main me touche
Et je me donne en frémissant,

Tes yeux verts me regardent: j’aime Le clair de lune de tes yeux,
Et je ne vois dans le ciel même
Que ton corps rare et radieux.

POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON

De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs,
D’ombres, d’étoiles ou de pleurs? De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes
De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes?

Parcilles aux lis abattus
Elles dorment les rêves tus
Dans la grande fenêtre ovale
Ou s’ouvre la nuit estivale.

But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient occupation for a life-time–I realised that fact suddenly–I remember the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and these poems were the last efforts of my muse.

THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST

As sailors watch from their prison
For the faint grey line of the coasts, I look to the past re-arisen,
And joys come over in hosts
Like the white sea birds from their roosts.

I love not the indelicate present,
The future’s unknown to our quest, To-day is the life of the peasant,
But the past is a haven of rest– The things of the past are the best.

The rose of the past is better
Than the rose we ravish to-day,
‘Tis holier, purer, and fitter
To place on the shrine where we pray For the secret thoughts we obey.

In the past nothing dies, nothing changes, In the past all is lovely and still;
No grief nor fate that estranges, Nor hope that no life can fulfil,
But ethereal shelter from ill.

The coarser delights of the hour
Tempt, and debauch, and deprave, And we joy in a flitting flower,
Knowing that nothing can save
Our flesh from the fate of the grave.

But sooner or later returning
In grief to the well-loved nest, Our souls filled with infinite yearning, We cry, there is rest, there is rest
In the past, its joys are the best.

NOSTALGIA

Fair were the dreamful days of old, When in the summer’s sleepy shade,
Beneath the beeches on the wold,
The shepherds lay and gently played Music to maidens, who, afraid,
Drew all together rapturously,
Their white soft hands like white leaves laid, In the old dear days of Arcady.

Men were not then as they are now
Haunted and terrified by creeds, They sought not then, nor cared to know The end that as a magnet leads,
Nor told with austere fingers beads, Nor reasoned with their grief and glee, But rioted in pleasant meads
In the old dear days of Arcady.

The future may be wrong or right,
The present is a hopeless wrong, For life and love have lost delight,
And bitter even is our song;
And year by year grey doubt grows strong, And death is all that seems to dree.
Wherefore with weary hearts we long For the old dear days of Arcady.

Envoi.

Glories and triumphs ne’er shall cease, But men may sound the heavens and sea, One thing is lost for aye–the peace
Of the old dear days of Arcady.

And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that house? Chance, or a friend’s recommendation? I forget. It was uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, and in the afternoon, friends–girls from the theatre–used to come and see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L—-; she had only two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones.

She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of what?–of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our intimacy, and I believe Miss L—- was charged indirectly for her conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. The landlady’s parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence ascended Mrs S—-‘s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs predominating.

Emma, I remember you–you are not to be forgotten–up at five o’clock every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those hands–can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked–well, to be candid,–you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of yours, for it was a sweet face–that sweet, natural goodness that is so sublime–lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I remember when you heard that Miss L—- was going to America, you asked me, and the question was sublime: “Is she going to travel all night?” You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you went to church, and you said, “No, it makes my eyes bad.” I said, “But you don’t read; you can’t read.” “No, but I have to look at the book.” I asked you if you had heard of God–you hadn’t, but when I pressed you on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you answered that you couldn’t go to church because it made your eyes bad. It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police–yes, you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren’t paid, that you “didn’t know how Mrs S—- would get on without me.”

This woman owed you forty pounds, I think, so I calculated it from what you told me; and yet you did not like to leave her because you did not know how she would get on without you. Sublime stupidity! At this point your intelligence stopped. I remember you once spoke of a half-holiday; I questioned you, and I found your idea of a half-holiday was to take the children for a walk and buy them some sweets. I told my brother of this and he said–Emma out for a half-holiday! why, you might as well give a mule a holiday. The phrase was brutal, but it was admirably descriptive of you. Yes, you are a mule, there is no sense in you; you are a beast of burden, a drudge too horrible for anything but work; and I suppose, all things considered, that the fat landlady with a dozen children did well to work you seventeen hours a day, and cheat you out of your miserable wages. You had no friends; you could not have a friend unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I wondered if he were as awful as you. Poor Emma! I shall never forget your kind heart and your unfailing good humour; you were born beautifully good as a rose is born with perfect perfume; you were as unconscious of your goodness as the rose of its perfume. And you were taken by this fat landlady as ‘Arry takes a rose and sticks it in his tobacco-reeking coat; and you will be thrown away, shut out of doors when health fails you, or when, overcome by base usage, you take to drink. There is no hope for you; even if you were treated better and paid your wages there would be no hope. Those forty pounds even, if they were given to you, would bring you no good fortune. They would bring the idle loafer, who scorns you now as something too low for even his kisses, hanging about your heels and whispering in your ears. And his whispering would drive you mad, for your kind heart longs for kind words; and then when he had spent your money and cast you off in despair, the gin shop and the river would do the rest. Providence is very wise after all, and your best destiny is your present one. We cannot add a pain, nor can we take away a pain; we may alter, but we cannot subtract nor even alleviate. But what truisms are these; who believes in philanthropy nowadays?

* * * * *

“Come in.”

“Oh, it is you, Emma!”

“Are you going to dine at home to-day, sir?”

“What can I have?”

“Well, yer can ‘ave a chop or a steak.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, yer can ‘ave a steak, or a chop, or–”

“Oh, yes, I know; well then, I’ll have a chop. And now tell me, Emma, how is your young man? I hear you have got one, you went out with him the other night.”

“Who told yer that?”

“Ah, never mind; I hear everything.”

“I know, from Miss L—-”

“Well, tell me, how did you meet him, who introduced him?”

“I met ‘im as I was a-coming from the public ‘ouse with the beer for missus’ dinner.”

“And what did he say?”

“He asked me if I was engaged; I said no. And he come round down the lane that evening.”

“And he took you out?”

“Yes.”

“And where did you go?”

“We went for a walk on the Embankment.”

“And when is he coming for you again?”

“He said he was coming last evening, but he didn’t.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“I dunno; I suppose because I haven’t time to go out with him. So it was Miss L—- that told you; well, you do ‘ave chats on the stairs. I suppose you likes talking to ‘er.”

“I like talking to everybody, Emma; I like talking to you.”

“Yes, but not as you talks to ‘er; I ‘ears you jes do ‘ave fine times. She said this morning that she had not seen you for this last two nights–that you had forgotten ‘er, and I was to tell yer.”

“Very well, I’ll come out to-night and speak to her.”

“And missus is so wild about it, and she daren’t say nothing ’cause she thinks yer might go.”

* * * * *

A young man in a house full of women must be almost supernaturally unpleasant if he does not occupy a great deal of their attention. Certain at least it is that I was the point of interest in that house; and I found there that the practice of virtue is not so disagreeable as many young men think it. The fat landlady hovered round my doors, and I obtained perfectly fresh eggs by merely keeping her at her distance; the pretty actress, with whom I used to sympathise with on the stairs at midnight, loved me better, and our intimacy was more strange and subtle, because it was pure, and it was not quite unpleasant to know that the awful servant dreamed of me as she might of a star, or something equally unattainable; but the landlady’s daughter, a nasty girl of fifteen, annoyed me with her ogling, which was a little revolting, but the rest was, and I speak quite candidly, not wholly unpleasant. It was not aristocratic, it is true, but, I repeat, it was not unpleasant, nor do I believe that any young man, however refined, would have found it unpleasant.

But if I was offered a choice between a chop and steak in the evening, in the morning I had to decide between eggs and bacon and bacon and eggs. A knocking at the door, “Nine o’clock, sir; ‘ot water, sir; what will you have for breakfast?” “What can I have?” “Anything you like, sir. You can have bacon and eggs, or–” “Anything else?”–Pause,–“Well, sir, you can have eggs and bacon, or–” “Well, I’ll have eggs and bacon.”

The streets seemed to me like rat holes, dark and wandering as chance directed, with just an occasional rift of sky, seen as if through an occasional crevice, so different from the boulevards widening out into bright space with fountains and clouds of green foliage. The modes of life were so essentially opposed. I am thinking now of intellectual rather than physical comforts. I could put up with even lodging-house food, but I found it difficult to forego the glitter and artistic enthusiasm of the _café_. The tavern, I had heard of the tavern.

Some seventy years ago the Club superseded the Tavern, and since then all literary intercourse has ceased in London. Literary clubs have been founded, and their leather arm-chairs have begotten Mr Gosse; but the tavern gave the world Villon and Marlowe. Nor is this to be wondered at. What is wanted is enthusiasm and devil-may-careism; and the very aspect of a tavern is a snort of defiance at the hearth, the leather arm-chairs are so many salaams to it. I ask, Did anyone ever see a gay club room? Can any one imagine such a thing? You can’t have a club-room without mahogany tables, you can’t have mahogany tables without magazines–_Longman’s_, with a serial by Rider Haggard, the _Nineteenth Century_, with an article, “The Rehabilitation of the Pimp in Modern Society,” by W. E. Gladstone–a dulness that’s a purge to good spirits, an aperient to enthusiasm; in a word, a dulness that’s worth a thousand a year. You can’t have a club without a waiter in red plush and silver salver in his hand; then you can’t bring a lady to a club, and you have to get into a corner to talk about them. Therefore I say a club is dull.

As the hearth and home grew all-powerful it became impossible for the husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can