Part 29

Heavens! what a voice! and how like his, but for the difference of sex and her long and careful training (which he never had); and the accent, how perfect!

Then suddenly:

"À Saint-Blaize, à la Zuecca ... Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise! À Saint-Blaize, à la Zuecca ... Nous étions, nous étions bien là! Mais de vous en souvenir Prendrez-vous la peine? Mais de vous en souvenir, Et d'y revenir? À Saint-Blaize, à la Zuecca ... Vivre et mourir là!"

So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the richest, sweetest voice I know. And behold! at last I have caught my little French remembrance, just as the lamps are being lit--and I transfix it with my pen and write it down....

And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fête de St.-Cloud--all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and doesn't concern Barty in the least; for it so happened that Barty wasn't there!

* * * * *

Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I bade adieu forever to our happy school life--and for a few years to our beloved Paris--and for many years to our close intimacy of every hour in the day.

I remember spending two or three afternoons with him at the great exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire--and happy afternoons they were! and we made the most of them. We saw all there was to be seen there, I think; and found ourselves always drifting back to the "Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which Barty's admiration was boundless.

And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite deplorable by contrast--especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget can so eloquently describe!

My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the Vougeot-Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.

"'QUAND ON PERD, PAR TRISTE OCCURRENCE, SON ESPÉRANCE, ET SA GAÎTÉ, LE REMÈDE AU MÉLANCOLIQUE C'EST LA MUSIQUE ET LA BEAUTÉ'" ]

My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities, Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a great dislike to business--and so had I; from different motives, I fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science--a passion that had been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in.

Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College, close by--in October, 1851--and studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have pleased him even more.

At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately.

Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or the society we severally frequented.

I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls--beautiful female faces--the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were also foils, boxing-gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice a week, and was made much of--even by my father, who thoroughly disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.

My father was much away--in Paris and Dijon--and Barty made rain and fine weather in our dull abode, to use a French expression--il y faisait la pluie et le beau temps. That is, it rained there when he was away, and he brought the fine weather with him; and we spoke French all round.

The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast with Barty in St. James's Street on Sunday mornings, when he was not serving his Queen and country--either alone with him or with two or three of his friends--mostly young carpet warriors like himself; and very charming young fellows they were. I have always been fond of warriors, young or old, and of whatever rank, and wish to goodness I had been a warrior myself. I feel sure I should have made a fairly good one!

Then we would spend an hour or two in athletic exercises and smoke many pipes. And after this, in the summer, we would walk in Kensington Gardens and see the Rank and Fashion. In those days the Rank and Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Kensington Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the Serpentine Bridge again and again between Prince's Gate and Bayswater.

Then for dinner we went to some pleasant foreign pot-house in or near Leicester Square, where they spoke French--and ate and drank it!--and then back again to his rooms. Sometimes we would be alone, which I liked best: we would read and smoke and be happy; or he would sketch, or pick out accompaniments on his guitar; often not exchanging a word, but with a delightful sense of close companionship which silence almost intensified.

Sometimes we were in very jolly company: more warriors; young Robson, the actor who became so famous; a big negro pugilist, called Snowdrop; two medical students from St. George's Hospital, who boxed well and were capital fellows; and an academy art student, who died a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of Barty's mural decorations and laughed at the colored lithographs; and many others of all sorts. There used to be much turf talk, and sometimes a little card-playing and mild gambling--but Barty's tastes did not lie that way.

His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the gloves with Snowdrop, or any one else who chose--or fencing--or else making music; or being funny in any way one could; and for this he had quite a special gift: he had sudden droll inspirations that made one absolutely hysterical--mere things of suggestive look or sound or gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite original; absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it made one laugh till one's sides ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this.

Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of the most high-minded, there is often a latent longing for this kind of happy idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for those who can supply it without effort and who delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor of the Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our day, although he developed in quite another direction!

Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love-ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep by spoonfuls!

By-the-way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing things up--confusing Sundays and week-days; of course our Sunday evenings were quiet and respectable, and I much preferred them when he and I were alone; he was then another person altogether--a thoughtful and intelligent young Frenchman, who loved reading poetry aloud or being read to; especially English poetry--Byron! He was faithful to his "Don Juan," his Hebrew melodies--his "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea." We knew them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we read them still; and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred de Musset....

And one day I discovered another Alfred who wrote verses--Alfred the Great, as we called him--one Alfred Tennyson, who had written a certain poem, among others, called "In Memoriam"--which I carried off to Barty's and read out aloud one wet Sunday evening, and the Sunday evening after, and other Sunday evenings; and other poems by the same hand: "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Lotos-Eaters," "The Lady of Shalott"--and the chord of Byron passed in music out of sight.

Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and Wordsworth--and our Sunday evenings were of a happiness to be remembered forever; at least they were so to me!

If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was a blank day for Robert Maurice. For it was not very lively at home--especially when my father was there. He was the best and kindest man that ever lived, but his businesslike seriousness about this world, and his anxiety about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were deadly depressing; combined with the aspect of London on the Lord's day--London east of Russell Square! Oh, Paris ... Paris ... and the yellow omnibus that took us both there together, Barty and me, at eight on a Sunday morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back to school till fourteen hours later!