Part 26

It might be worth while my translating here the record of an impression made by Barty and his surroundings on a very accomplished Frenchman, M. Paroly, of the _Débats_, who paid him a visit in the summer of 1869, at Campden Hill.

I may mention that Barty hated to be interviewed and questioned about his literary work--he declared he was afraid of being found out.

But if once the interviewer managed to evade the lynx-eyed Leah, who had a horror of him, and get inside the studio, and make good his footing there, and were a decently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty would soon get over his aversion--utterly forget he was being interviewed--and talk as to an old friend; especially if the reviewer were a Frenchman or an American.

The interviewer is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached at a single bound! And he is supposed to be a "gentleman," and has no other means of keeping body and soul together! Then he is so prostrate in admiration before your Immensity....

So you give way, and out comes the little note-book, and out comes the little cross-examination.

As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none the better; we know all about you already--all, at least, that we want to know; we have heard it all before, over and over again. But a poor fellow-creature has earned his crust, and goes home the happier for having talked to you about yourself and been treated like a man and a brother.

But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you say; and on what free and easy terms _he_ is with you, of all people in the world!

But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman from America, who has yearned to know you for _so_ many years, and comes perhaps with a letter of introduction--or even without!--not to interview you or write about you (good heavens! he hates and scorns that modern pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and worship at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have done him and his, all the happiness you have given them all--"the debt of a lifetime!"

And you let yourself go before him, and so do your family, and so do your old friends; is _he_ not also a friend, though not an old one? You part with him almost in sorrow, he's so nice! And in three weeks some kind person sends you from the other side such a printed account of you and yours--so abominably true, so abominably false--that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in the dead of night, and most unjustly loathe an entire continent for breeding and harboring such a shameless type of press reptile!

I feel hard-hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I wish him, and those who employ him, a better trade; and a better taste to whoever reads what he writes. But Barty could be hard-hearted to nobody, and always regretted having granted the interview when he saw the published outcome of it.

Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet.

"I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon--a tremendous swell," said Barty, at lunch.

* * * * *

_Leah._ "Who is he?"

_Barty._ "M. Paroly, of the _Débats_."

_Leah._ "What is he when he's at home?"

_Barty._ "A famous journalist; as you'd know if you'd read the French newspapers sometimes, which you never do."

_Leah._ "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you."

_Barty._ "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my acquaintance?"

_Leah._ "And mine--I'll be there and talk to him, too!"

_Barty._ "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and your French, you know! You never _would_ learn French properly, although you've had me to practise on for so many years--not to mention Bob and Ida."

_Leah._ "How unkind of you, Barty! When have I had time to trouble about French? Besides, you always laugh at my French accent and mimic it--and _that's_ not encouraging!"

_Barty._ "My dear, I _adore_ your French accent; it's so unaffected! I only wish I heard it a little oftener."

_Leah._ "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what o'clock is he coming, your Monsieur Paroly?"

_Barty._ "At four-thirty."

_Leah._ "Oh, Barty, _don't_ give yourself away--don't talk to him about your writings, or about yourself, or about your family. He'll vulgarize you all over France. Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman' from America who came to see you, and who told you that _he_ was no interviewer, not _he_! but came merely as a friend and admirer--a distant but constant worshipper for many years! and how you talked to him like a long-lost brother, in consequence! 'There's nobody in the world like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them _all_, and wanted to be an American yourself--till a month after, when he published every word you said, and more, and what sort of cravat you had on, and how silent and cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English wife was--you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin, who should have mated with a countrywoman of his own! and how your bosom friend was a huge, overgrown everyday Briton with a broken nose! _I_ saw what he was at, from the low cunning in his face as he listened; and felt that every single unguarded word you dropped was a dollar in his pocket! How we've all had to live down that dreadfully facetious and grotesque and familiar article he printed about us all in those twenty American newspapers that have got the largest circulation in the world! and how you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that never another American 'gentleman' should enter your house! What names you called him: 'cad!' 'sweep!' 'low-bred, little Yankee penny-a-liner!' Don't you remember? Why, he described you as a quite nice-looking man somewhat over the middle height!"

"Oh yes; damn him, _I_ remember!" said Barty, who was three or four inches over six feet, and quite openly vain of his good looks.

_Leah._ "Well, then, pray be cautious with this Monsieur Paroly you think so much of because he's French. Let _him_ talk--interview _him_--ask him all about his family, if he's got one--his children, and all that; play a game of billiards with him--talk French politics--dance 'La Paladine'--make him laugh--make him smoke one of those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the tops of omnibuses--make him feel your biceps--teach him how to play cup and ball--give him a sketch--then bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys will be there, and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by the yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Minerva, and I'll give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon roses, and shake him warmly by the hand, so that he won't feel ill-natured towards us; and we'll get him out of the house as quick as possible."

* * * * *

Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is a free rendering of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote about him:

"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and define, I bade adieu to the sage and philosopher of Cheyne Row, and had myself transported in my hansom to the abode of the other great _sommité littéraire_ in London, the light one--M. Josselin, to whom we in France also are so deeply in debt.

"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached a bright historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my invisible Jehu guided me at the great trot by verdant country lanes. We turned through lodge gates into a narrow drive in a well-kept garden where there was a lawn of English greenness, on which were children and nurses and many dogs, and young people who played at the lawn-tennis.

"The door of the house was opened by a charming young woman in black with a white apron and cap, like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval, who guided me through a bright corridor full of pictures and panoplies, and then through a handsome studio to a billiard-room, where M. Josselin was playing at _the_ billiard to himself all alone.

"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he is enormously tall, enormously handsome, like a drum-major of the Imperial Guard, except that his lip and chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers; very well dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and a singularly sympathetic voice: he is about thirty-five.

"I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a cigar, a very formidable cigar, very black and very thick and very long. I don't smoke, and am no hand at a cue. Besides, I want to talk about _Étoiles Mortes_, about _Les Trépassées de François Villon_, about _Déjanire et Dalila_!

[Illustration: "'HE PRESENTS ME FIRST TO MADAME JOSSELIN'"]

"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection; his mother, he tells me, was from Normandy--the daughter of fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there as an art student.

"He does not care to talk about _Les Trépassées_ or _Les Étoiles_, or any of his immortal works.

"He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do _la coupe_ properly; and leaning over his billiard-table he shows me how it ought to be done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible nostalgia--a consuming desire to do _la coupe_ in the swimming-baths of Passy against the current; to take a header _à la hussarde_ with his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and the Île des Cygnes--as he used to do when he was a school-boy--and pick up mussels with his teeth.

"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit--just as he prefers metres and centimetres to inches and feet--and ten to twelve!

"After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard-balls; juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye shut.

"I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with honest satisfaction--and this is the man who wrote _La quatrième Dimension_!

"Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had heard them all before--when I was at school.

"'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'à propos of that last story you've just told me; in the _Trépassées de François Villon_ you have omitted "la très-sage Héloïse" altogether.'

"'Oh, have I? How stupid of me!--Abélard and all that! Ah well--there's plenty of time--nous allons arranger tout ça! All that sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half asleep in bed--a--a--I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I take my siesta.'

"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression--things that haunt the memory.

"'Show me a study for Déjanire,' I say.

"'Oh! I'll draw Déjanire for you,' and he takes a soft pencil and a piece of smooth card-board, and in five minutes draws me an outline of a naked woman on a centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty no other hand in the world could produce--so aristocratically delicately English and of to-day--so severely, so nobly and classically Greek. C'est la chasteté même--mais ce n'est pas Déjanire!

"He gives me this sketch, which I rechristen Godiva, and value as I value few things I possess.

"Then he shows me pencil studies of children's heads, from nature, and I exclaim:

"'O Heaven, what a dream of childhood! Childhood is never so beautiful as that.'

"'Oh yes it is, in England, I assure you,' says he. 'I'll show you _my_ children presently; and you, have you any children?'

"'Alas! no,' I reply; 'I am a bachelor.'

"I remark that from time to time, just as the moon veils itself behind a passing cloud, the radiance of his brilliant and jovial physiognomy is eclipsed by the expression of a sadness immense, mysterious, infinite; this is followed by a look of angelic candor and sweetness and gentle heroism, that moves you strangely, even to the heart, and makes appeal to all your warmest and deepest sympathies--the look of a very masculine Joan of Arc! You don't know why, but you feel you would make any sacrifice for a man who looks at you like that, follow him to the death--lead a forlorn hope at his bidding.

"He does not exact from me anything so arduous as this, but passing round my neck his powerful arm, he says:

"'Come and drink some tea; I should like to present you to my wife.'

"And he leads me through another corridor to a charming drawing-room that gives on to the green lawn of the garden.

"There are several people there taking the tea.

"He presents me first to Madame Josselin. If the husband is enormously handsome, the wife is a beauty absolutely divine; she, also, is very tall--très élégante; she has soft wavy black hair, and eyes and eyebrows d'un noir de jais, and a complexion d'une blancheur de lis, with just a point of carmine in the cheeks. She does not say much--she speaks French with difficulty; but she expresses with her smiling eyes so cordial and sincere a welcome that one feels glad to be in the same room with her, one feels it is a happy privilege, it does one good--one ceases to feel one may possibly be an intruder--one almost feels one is wanted there.

"I am then presented to three or four other ladies; and it would seem that the greatest beauties of London have given each other rendezvous in Madame Josselin's salon--this London, where are to be found the most beautiful women in the world and the ugliest.

"First, I salute the Countess of Ironsides--ah, mon Dieu, la Diane chasseresse--la Sapho de Pradier! Then Madame Cornelys, the wife of the great sculptor, who lives next door--a daughter of the ancient gods of Greece! Then a magnificent blonde, an old friend of theirs, who speaks French absolutely like a Frenchwoman, and says thee and thou to M. Josselin, and introduces me to her brother, un vrai type de colosse bon enfant, d'une tenue irréprochable [thank you, M. Paroly], who also speaks the French of France, for he was at school there--a school-fellow of our host.

"There are two or three children, girls, more beautiful than anything or anybody else in the house--in the world, I think! They give me tea and cakes, and bread and butter; most delicious tartines, as thin as wafers, and speak French well, and relate to me the biographies of their animals, une vraie ménagerie which I afterwards have to visit--immense dogs, rabbits, hedgehogs, squirrels, white mice, and a gigantic owl, who answers to the name of Minerva.

"I find myself, ma foi, very happy among these wonderful people, and preserve an impression of beauty, of bonhomie, of naturalness and domestic felicity quite unlike anything I have ever been privileged to see--an impression never to be forgotten.

"But as for _Étoiles Mortes_ and _Les Trépassées de François Villon_, I really have to give them up; the beautiful big dogs are more important than all the books in the world, even the master's--even the master himself!

"However, I want no explanation to see and understand how M. Josselin has written most of his chefs-d'oeuvre from the depths of a happy consciousness habituated to all that is most graceful and charming and seductive in real life--and a deeply sympathetic, poignant, and compassionate sense of the contrast to all this.

"Happy mortal, happy family, happy country where grow (poussent) such people, and where such children flourish! The souvenir of that so brief hour spent at Gretna Lodge is one of the most beautiful souvenirs of my life--and, above all, the souvenir of the belle châtelaine who filled my hansom with beautiful roses culled by her own fair hand, which gave me at parting that cordial English pressure so much more suggestive of _Au revoir_ than _Adieu_!

"It is with sincere regret one leaves people who part with one so regretfully.

"Alphonse Paroly."

* * * * *

Except that good and happy women have no history, I should almost like to write the history of Barty's wife, and call it the history of the busiest and most hard-working woman in Great Britain.

Barty left everything to her--to the very signing of cheques. He would have nothing to do with any business of any kind.

He wouldn't even carve at lunch or dinner. Leah did, unless _I_ was there.

It is but fair to say he worked as hard as any man I know. When he was not writing or drawing, he was thinking about drawing or writing; when they got to Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside the grounds.

There he would garden with gardeners or cut down trees, or do carpenter's work at his short intervals of rest, or groom a horse.

How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his gardening or the rest!

I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue-books and wrote my endless correspondence with the help of a secretary--only too glad, both of us, to be disturbed by festive and frolicsome young Bartys of either sex--by their dogs--by their mother!

Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery by which life was carried on in this big house, and social intercourse, and the education of the young, and endless hospitalities.

She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and Euclid during their preparation times for the school where they spent the day, two miles off. Such Latin! such geometry! She could never master the ablative absolute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's _le que retranché_, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B what was sufficiently obvious to her without.

"Who helps you in your Latin, my boy?" says the master, with a grin.

"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was his mother who had coached him wrong.

"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also?" says the master, with a broader grin still.

"Yes, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Your father's French, I suppose?"

"I dare say, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Ah, I thought so!"

All of which was very unfair to Barty, whose Latin, like that of most boys who have been brought up at a French school, was probably quite as good as the English school-master's own, except for its innocence of quantities; and Blanchet and Legendre are easier to learn than Euclid, and stick longer in the memory; and Barty remembered well.

Then, besides the many friends who came to the pleasant house to stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there were pious pilgrims from all parts of the world, as to a shrine--from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind legs--a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty and of the female sex.

Barty was a man's man par excellence, and loved to forgather with men. The only men he couldn't stand were those we have agreed to call in modern English the Philistines and the prigs--or both combined, as they can sometimes be; and this objection of his would have considerably narrowed his circle of male acquaintances but that the Philistines and the prigs, who so detest each other, were so dotingly fond of Barty, and ran him to earth in Marsfield.

The Philistines loved him for his world-wide popularity; the prigs in spite of it! They loved him for himself alone--because they couldn't help it, I suppose--and lamented over him as over a fallen angel.

He was happiest of all with the good denizens of Bohemia, who have known want and temptation and come unscathed out of the fire, but with their affectations and insincerities and conventionalities all burnt away.

Good old Bohemia--alma mater dolorosa; stern old gray she-wolf with the dry teats--marâtre au coeur de pierre! It is not a bad school in which to graduate, if you can do so without loss of principle or sacrifice of the delicate bloom of honor and self-respect.

Next to these I think he loved the barbarians he belonged to on his father's side, who, whatever their faults, are seldom prigs or Philistines; and then he loved the proletarians, who had good, straightforward manners and no pretension--the laborer, the skilled artisan, especially the toilers of the sea.

In spite of his love of his own sex, he was of the kind that can go to the devil for a pretty woman.

He did not do this; he married one instead, fortunately for himself and for his children and for her, and stuck to her and preferred her society to any society in the world. Her mere presence seemed to have an extraordinarily soothing influence on him; it was as though life were short, and he could never see enough of her in the allotted time and space; the chronic necessity of her nearness to him became a habit and a second nature--like his pipe, as he would say.

Still, he was such a slave to his own æsthetic eye and ever-youthful heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased him more than the sight of anything else on earth; he delighted in her proximity, in the rustle of her garments, in the sound of her voice; and lovely woman's instinct told her this, so that she was very fond of Barty in return.

He was especially popular with sweet, pretty young girls, to whom his genial, happy, paternal manner always endeared him. They felt as safe with Barty as with any father or uncle, for all his facetious love-making; he made them laugh, and they loved him for it, and they forgot his Apolloship, and his Lionhood, and his general Immensity, which he never remembered himself.