Part 87

I'm a liberal conservative, an opportunist, a pessi-optimist, an in-medio-tutissimist, and attend divine service at the Temple Church.

I'm a Philistine, and not ashamed; so was Molière--so was Cervantes. So, if you like, was the late Martin Farquhar Tupper--and those who read him; we're of all sorts in Philistia, the great and the small, the good and the bad.

I'm in the sixties--sound of wind and limb--only two false teeth--one at each side, bicuspids, merely for show. I'm rather bald, but it suits my style; a little fat, perhaps--a pound and a half over sixteen stone! but I'm an inch and a half over six feet, and very big-boned. Altogether, diablement bien conservé! I sleep well, the sleep of the just; I have a good appetite and a good digestion, and a good conceit of myself still, thank Heaven--though nothing like what it used to be! One can survive the loss of one's self-respect; but of one's vanity, never.

What a prosperous and happy life mine has been, to be sure, up to a few short months ago--hardly ever an ache or a pain!--my only real griefs, my dear mother's death ten years back, and my father's in 1870. Yes, I have warmed both hands at the fire of life, and even burnt my fingers now and then, but not severely.

One love disappointment. The sting of it lasted a couple of years, the compensation more than thirty! I loved her all the better, perhaps, that I did not marry her. I'm afraid it is not in me to love a very good wife of my own as much as I really ought!

And I love her children as well as if they'd been mine, and her grandchildren even better. They are irresistible, these grandchildren of Barty's and Leah's--mine wouldn't have been a patch on them; besides, I get all the fun and none of the bother and anxiety. Evidently it was my true vocation to remain single--and be a tame cat in a large, warm house, where there are lots of nice children.

O happy Bob Maurice! O happy sexagenarian!

"O me fortunatum, mea si bona nôrim!" (What would Père Brossard say at this? he would give me a twisted pinch on the arm--and serve me right!)

I'm very glad I've been successful, though it's not a very high achievement to make a very large fortune by buying and selling that which put into a man's mouth is said to steal away his brains!

But it does better things than this. It reconciles and solves and resolves mental discords, like music. It makes music for people who have no ear--and there are so many of these in the world that I'm a millionaire, and Franz Schubert died a pauper. So I prefer to drink beer--as he did; and I never miss a Monday Pop if I can help it.

I have done better things, too. I have helped to govern my country and make its laws; but it all came out of wine to begin with--all from learning how to buy and sell. We're a nation of shopkeepers, although the French keep better shops than ours, and more of them.

I'm glad I'm successful because of Barty, although success, which brings the world to our feet, does not always endear us to the friend of our bosom. If I had been a failure Barty would have stuck to me like a brick, I feel sure, instead of my sticking to him like a leech! And the sight of his success might have soured me--that eternal chorus of praise, that perpetual feast of pudding in which I should have had no part but to take my share as a mere guest, and listen and look on and applaud, and wish I'd never been born!

As it is, I listened and looked on and clapped my hands with as much pride and pleasure as if Barty had been my son--and my share of the pudding never stuck in my throat!

I should have been always on the watch to take him down a peg when he was pleased with himself--to hold him cheap and overpraise some duffer in his hearing--so that I might save my own self-esteem; to pay him bad little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I was out of humor; and I should have been always out of humor, having failed in life.

And then I should have gone home wretched--for I have a conscience--and woke up in the middle of the night and thought of Barty; and what a kind, genial, jolly, large-minded, and generous-hearted old chap he was and always had been--and buried my face in my pillow, and muttered:

"Ach! what a poor, mean, jealous beast I am--un fruit sec! un malheureux raté!"

With all my success, this life-long exclusive cultivation of Barty's society, and that of his artistic friends, which has somehow unfitted me for the society of my brother-merchants of wine--and most merchants of everything else--has not, I regret to say, quite fitted me to hold my own among the "leaders of intellectual modern thought," whose company I would fain seek and keep in preference to any other.

My very wealth seems to depress and disgust them, as it does me--and I'm no genius, I admit, and a poor conversationalist.

To amass wealth is an engrossing pursuit--and now that I have amassed a good deal more than I quite know what to do with, it seems to me a very ignoble one. It chokes up everything that makes life worth living; it leaves so little time for the constant and regular practice of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned is said to soften the manners, and make one an agreeable person all round.

It is even more abrutissant than the mere pursuit of sport or pleasure.

How many a noble lord I know who's almost as beastly rich as myself, and twice as big a fool by nature, and perhaps not a better fellow at bottom--yet who can command the society of all there is of the best in science, literature, and art!

Not but what they will come and dine with me fast enough, these shining lights of culture and intellect--my food is very good, although I say it, and I get noble lords to meet them.

But they talk their real talk to each other--not to me--and to the noble lords who sit by them at my table, and who try to understand what they say. With me they fall back on politics and bimetallism, for all the pains I've taken to get up the subjects that interest them, and keep myself posted in all they've written and done. Precious little they know about bimetallism or politics!

Is it only on account of their pretty manners that my titled friends are such favorites with these highly intellectual guests of mine--and with me? If so, then pretty manners should come before everything else in the world, and be taught instead of Latin and Greek.

But if it's only because they're noble lords, then I'm beginning to think with Mr. Labouchere that it's high time the Upper House were abolished, and its denizens wafted into space, since they make such snobs of us all--including your humble servant, of course, who at least is not quite so snobbish as to know himself for a damned snob and pretend he isn't one.

Anyhow, I'm glad my life has been such a success. But would I live it all over again? Even the best of it? The "forty year"?

Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly not.

I have only met two men of my own age who would live their lives over again. They both cared more for their meals than for anything else in the world--and they have always had four of these every day; sometimes even five! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree with them! affaire d'estomac! They simply want to eat all those meals once more. They lived to feed, and to refeed would re-live!