Part 72

"Je suis au-dessus de mes affaires," as old Bonzig proudly said when he took a garret over the Mont de Piété, in the Rue des Averses.

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Barty's courtship didn't last long--only five or six months--during which he made lots of money by sketching little full-length portraits of people in outline and filling up with tints in water-color. He thus immortalized my father and mother, and Ida Scatcherd and her husband, and the old Scatcherds, and lots of other people. It was not high art, I suppose; he was not a high artist; but it paid well, and made him more tolerant of trade than ever.

He took the upper part of a house in Southampton Row, and furnished it almost entirely with wedding-gifts; among other things, a beautiful semi-grand piano by Érard--the gift of my father. Everything was charming there and in the best taste.

Leah was better at furnishing a house than at drawing and music-making; it was an occupation she revelled in.

It is not perhaps for me to say that their cellar might hold its own with that of any beginners in their rank of life!

Well, and so they were married at Marylebone Church, and I was Barty's best man (he was to have been mine, and for that very bride). Nobody else was there but the family, and Ida, whose husband was abroad; the sun shone, though it was not yet May--and then we breakfasted; and John Gilpin made a very funny speech, though with tears in his voice; and as for poor Maman-belle-mère, as Barty called her, she was a very Niobe.

They went for a fortnight to Boulogne. I wished them joy from the bottom of my heart, and flung a charming little white satin slipper of Mrs. Gibson's; it alighted on the carriage--our carriage, by-the-way; we had just started one, and now lived at Lancaster Gate.

It was a sharp pang--almost unbearable, but, also, almost the last. The last was when she came back and I saw how radiant she looked. And as for Barty, he was like

"the herald Mercury, New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill!"

and he had shaved off his beard and mustache to please his wife.

* * * * *

"From George du Maurier, Esqre., A.R.W.S., Hampstead Heath, to the Right Honble. Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P.:

"My Dear Maurice,--In answer to your kind letter, I shall be proud and happy to illustrate your biography of Barty Josselin; but as for editing it, vous plaisantez, mon ami; un amateur comme moi! who'll edit the editor? Quis custodiet?...

"You're mistaken about Malines. I only got back there a week or two before he left it. I remember often seeing him there, arm in arm with his aunt, Lady Caroline Grey, and being told that he was a monsieur anglais, qui avait mal aux yeux (like me); but in Düsseldorf, during the following winter, I knew him very well indeed.

"We, and the others you tell me you mention, had a capital time in Düsseldorf. I remember the beautiful Miss Royce they were all so mad about, and also Miss Gibson, whom I admired much the most of the two, although she wasn't quite so tall--you know my craze for lovely giantesses.

"Josselin and I came to London at about the same time, and there again I saw much of him, and was immensely attracted by him, of course--as we all were, in the very pleasant little artistic clique you tell me you describe; but somehow I was never very intimate with him--none of us were, except, perhaps, Charles Keene.

"He went a great deal into smart society, and a little of the guardsman still clung to him, and this was an unpardonable crime in those Bohemian days.

"He was once seen walking between two well-known earls, in the Burlington Arcade, arm in arm!

"Z---- (to whom a noble lord was as a red rag to a bull) all but cut him for this, and we none of us approved of his swell friends, Guardsmen and others. How we've all changed, especially Z----, who hasn't missed a levée for twenty years, nor his wife a drawing-room!

"Josselin and I acted in a little French musical farce together at Cornelys's; he had a charming voice and sang beautifully, as you know.

"Then he married, and a year after I did the same; and though we lived near each other for a little while, we didn't meet very often, beyond dining together once or twice at each other's houses. They lived very much in the world.

"It will be very difficult to draw his wife. I really think Mrs. Josselin was the most beautiful woman I ever saw; but she used to be very reserved in those early days, and I never felt quite at my ease with her. I'm sure she was sweetness and kindness itself; she was certainly charming at her own dinner-table, where she was less shy.

"Millais's portrait of her is very good, and so is Watts's; but the best idea of her is to be got from Josselin's little outlines in 'The Discreet Princess,' and these are out of print. If you have any, please lend them to me, and I will faithfully return them. I have more than once tried to draw her in Punch, from memory, but never with success.

"I used to call her 'La belle dame sans merci.'

"I've often, however, drawn Josselin, as you must remember, and people have recognized him at once. Thanks for all his old sketches of school, etc., which will be very useful.

"I wish I had known the Josselins better. But when one lives in Hampstead one has to forego many delightful friendships; and then he grew to be such a tremendous swell! Good heavens!--Sardonyx, etc. I never could muster courage even to write and congratulate him.

"It never occurred to any of us, either in Düsseldorf or London, to think him what is called clever; he never said anything very witty or profound. But he was always funny in a good-natured, jovial manner, and made me laugh more than any one else.