. 777. Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs BY ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE AUTHOR OF RECORDS OF TENNYSON, RUSKIN, BROWNING " ETC. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1895 Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS All rights reserved. TO GEORGE AND ELIZABETH MURRAY SMITH These chapters out of the past (and how many more that are not written here) are affectionately 2>eDtcateD BY THE WRITER THE END HOUSE, WIMBLEDON September 13, 1894 Le bonheur ma pr<*te plus d'tm lien fragile Mais c'est adversite qui ma fait un ami CONTENTS PAGE I. MY POET I II. MY MUSICIAN 15 III. MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 29 IV. MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 43 v. MY WITCHES' CALDRON 55 VI. IN KENSINGTON 83 VII. TO WEIMAR AND BACK IOI viii. VIA WILLIS'S ROOMS TO CHELSEA 119 IX. IN VILLEGGIATURA 141 X. TOUT CHEMIN 165 XI. MRS. KEMBLE 185 MY POET I Mv father lived in good company, so that even as children we must have seen a good many poets and remarkable people, though we were not always conscious of our privileges. Things certainly strike children oddly, partially, and for such unexpected reasons. They are so busy in early life with all that is going on on every side, that one person or an- other person, the visitor in the drawing-room, the tortoise-shell cat on the garden wall, the cook's little boy who has come in to partake of cold pudding, all seem very nearly as important one as the other. Perhaps I should not have been so much impressed by my first conscious sight of a poet, if I had then realized all the notabilities who came to our house from time to time. My special poet was a French- man. I first heard his name in London, at a class which I attended in company with a good many other little girls my contemporaries, which class, indeed, still continues, and succeeding generations receive the decorations, the flr/sidences and the sous prc'sidcnccs, I fear I personally never attained to. My poet was a hair-dresser by profession, and a 4 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS barber as well. His name was Jasmin (Jaquou Jansemin in the langue d'Oc}. He was born in 1798 at Agen, in the south of France ; " born," he writes, " of a humpback father and a halting moth- er in the corner of an old street, in a crowded dwelling, peopled by many rats, on Holy Thursday, at the hour when pancakes are tossed." The hump- back father was also a poet in his way, and com- posed songs for the itinerant players of the neigh- borhood. So soon as Jasmin could walk he used to accompany his father to the booths, but what he liked better still was gathering fagots in the little islands of the Garonne. " Bareheaded, barefoot- ed," he writes, " we rowed across the stream. I was not alone: there were twenty of us there were thirty of us. We started at the stroke of the mid-day hour, singing in choir." In the evening the children returned as they had left " thirty voices chaunting the same cadence, and thirty fag- ots dancing on thirty heads." They were so poor that Jacques felt it bitterly because his parents could not afford to send him to school. One day he was playing in the market-place when he saw his grandfather carried by to the hospital. It was there the Jasmins were in the habit of dying. But a cousin taught him to read ; he became appren- ticed to a barber ; he rose to be a hair-dresser, and prospered in his vocation, so that he was able to MY POET 5 save his father from the usual fate of the Jasmins. The hair -dresser christened his first poems Les Pa- pillotcs, in honor of his profession ; which songs, says he, brought a silver streamlet through his shop, and upon this silver streamlet he floated to better fortunes than were usual to the Jasmin family. One day, in a fit of poetic ardor, he broke the terrible arm-chair in which they had all been in the habit of being carried to the hospital. Jasmin, after he became celebrated, would never abandon his home or his little shop, but from time to time he went for a journey ; sometimes he would come to Paris, where he was kindly recognized by other authors more fortunate in their worldly circum- stances, and he would be made to repeat his own songs by the great ladies who took him up. Chief among them was Lady Elgin, who lived in Paris then, and who was a good friend to all literary as- pirants. Longfellow was also among Jasmin's ad- mirers, and translated some of his works. Much of all this I have since read in the Biographic A r a- tionalc. As children at our French classes we had only learned some of his lines by heart. I used to break down in utter confusion when my turn came to recite, but at the same time I believe I took in a great deal more than I had any idea of, as I sat there incompetent, wool-gathering. In that long. bare room, only ornamented by a few large maps and 6 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS with a flowing border of governesses, there came to one many of those impressions which are not dates or facts, and which don't, alas ! count for good marks, but which nevertheless are very useful and agreeable possessions in after- days. We used to have delightful French lessons in literature and poetry, and I still remember the dazzling visions of troubadours evoked by our teacher troubadours amid the golden landscapes of the south of France, as described in the Mysteries of Udolpho ; the po- ems themselves as he quoted them almost seemed to have wings and to come flying out of the well-thumbed Rccueil ! We had lessons in morality and in experience as well as in literature. I can still hear M. Roche in his melodious voice quoting " de tout laurier un poison est 1'essence," and praising the philosophical aptness of the illustra- tion, which seemed to me so splendid that I was quite overpowered by it as I went home with my governess along South Audley Street. There was another heart-rending poem about an angel stand- ing by a cradle and contemplating its own image in the face of an infant, " reflected as in a stream." The angel finally carries away the poor baby, and the mother kneels weeping by the empty cradle. It was a sort of Christmas-card of a poem well suit- ed to the sentimental experience of a little girl of twelve or thirteen years old, and I then and there MY POET 7 determined that Reboul was my favorite author, after all. But there were many others besides Re- boul. Poor Andre Chenier we were all in love with, and Jasmin aforesaid held his own among the worthy recipients of that golden flower of poesy which played such an important part in our early education, and which was (so we learned) yearly be- stowed by the inhabitants of Toulouse upon the most successful competitors in the art. I used to picture the flower itself as a radiant, quivering ob- ject covered with delicate, glittering workmanship. Perhaps nowadays I realize that golden flowers of poesy are also bestowed in the south of England in Waterloo Place, or Bedford Street, Covent Gar- den, shall we say? round golden tokens which are not without their own special graces. But to return to my memoirs. Our life was di- vided between London and Paris, where our grand- parents d\velt, and where we spent a part of every year, and all my recent studies and experiences rushed into my mind one day soon after our re- turn to France, when my grandmother told me that she had been asked to a party at Lady Elgin's to meet a poet, that his name was Jasmin, and that she was going to take me with her! My heart leaped with excitement ; Jasmin the South gold- en flowers prdsidences a grown-up party the portals of life seemed to fly open with those of our porte-cochere as the carriage, containing my grand- mother and me in our Sunday best, drove off into the dark streets. We were escorted down-stairs by the cook, with an extra lantern, I remember, and my grandfather in his little black silk toque waved farewell over the staircase. We started expectant, rolling over the rattling stones ; we crossed the bridge and saw the dark river below us reflecting the lights I remember no stars, but a damp and drizzly darkness overhead, which, for some reason, added to my excitement. We reached the ancient faubourg before very long, where the oil-lamps swung by chains across the streets; we turned into the Rue de Varennes, where Lady Elgin lived, and the coachman rapped at the great closed gates of the house, which opened with a grinding sound, and we walked across the court-yard. The apart- ment was on the ground-floor of a fine, melancholy old house. I followed my grandmother in her brown velvet gown and her diamond brooch into the reception- room. I remember being surprised to find the gay world so dark on the whole, and talking in such a confused and subdued murmur. I had expected chandeliers, bursts of laughter, people in masks and dominoes. I had taken my ideas from bon- bon-boxes and crackers. But it was evidently all right my grandmother looked greatly pleased and MY POET g animated. I saw her speaking to one person and to another in her dignified way; her manners were true grandmother's manners kind, but distant and serious. We considered our grandmother a very important personage, and I remember feeling not a little proud of her beauty and dignity as we moved along. She was not one of your " remains ;" she was a very noble-looking old lady, holding her head high, and her diamond cap-pin flashed as she moved across the room. My grandmother looked pleased and animated, as I have said, and when her friends came up to speak to her she introduced me to some of them. Almost the very first person she greeted, but to whom she did not introduce me, was a handsome, rather ro- mantic, fashionable - looking gentleman, with a^ quantity of dark hair, and a glass in one eye, lean- ing against the wall by the door as we entered. She said a few words as we passed. I heard some- thing about " Lady Charlotte," and then we walked on, and presently we came upon another girl, younger than myself and very distinguished look- ing, in a plaid frock, with beautiful shining braids of thick hair, who seemed quite at home and used to the house ; she was with her mother, a regal- looking little woman, with a fine profile and a gold crown ; I can still see her in a long green velvet robe slowly crossing the room ; she was a well- IO CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS known person Mrs. Chapman, the celebrated Abo- litionist. The little girl was her youngest daugh- ter. While Mrs. Chapman and my grandmother were talking to one another, little Anne Chapman, who seemed to know most of the people, began telling me who they all were. A great many pages out of M. Roche's Rccueil were present. There were all sorts of notable folks murmuring to one another in the big rooms. " Who was the gentle- man in the doorway?" ''Oh, he is Mr. Locker," said little Anne ; " he is married to Lady Charlotte Lady Elgin's daughter; didn't I know? they had only come over from England the day before." "And which is the poet?" said I, eagerly. " There he is, in the middle of the room," said the little girl. " Oh, where?" said I. " Oh, not that T For suddenly, just under the swinging chandelier, I see a head, like the figure-head of a ship a jolly, red, shiny, weather-beaten face, with large, round, prom- inent features, ornamented with little pomatumy wisps of hair, and a massive torso clothed in a mag- nificent frilled shirt over a pink lining. ..." That the poet? not that," I falter, gazing at Punchinello, high-shouldered, good-humored ! " Yes, of course it is that," said the little girl, laughing at my dis- may ; and the crowd seems to form a circle, in the centre of which stands this droll being, who now begins to recite in a monotonous voice. MY POET II I can understand French well enough, but not one single word of what he is saying. It sounds perfectly unintelligible, something like chi, chou, cha, atchioii, atchiou, atchion ! And so it goes on, and on, and on. The shirt frill beats time, the monotonous voice rises and falls. It leaves off at last, the poet wipes the perspiration from his brow ; there is a moment's silence, then a murmur of ad- miration from the crowd which closes round him. I see the Punchinello being led up to somebody to be thanked and congratulated ; my heart goes down, down ; more murmurs, more exclamations. The little girl is gone, I am all alone with my dis- appointment, and then my grandmother calls me to her side and says it is time to come away. As we move towards the door again, we once more pass Mr. Locker, and he nods kindly, and tells me he knows my father. " Well, and what do you think of Jasmin?" he asks; but I can't answer him, my illusions are dashed. As we drive off through the streets the rain is still falling, the oil-lamps are swinging; we cross the bridge once more, but how dull, how dark, how sad it all seems ! My grand- mother, sitting upright in the dark carriage, says she has spent a very pleasant evening, and that she is delighted with Jasmin's simplicity and original- ity. I who had longed to see a poet ! who had pictured something so different! I swallowed down 12 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS as best I could that gulp of salt-water which is so apt to choke us when we first take our plunge into 1 * the experience of life. " He didn't look much like a poet, and I couldn't understand what he said," I faltered. " Of course you could not understand the patois, but have you not enjoyed your evening?" said my grandmother, disappointed. I had the grace to try to speak cheerfully. " I liked the little girl very much, and and and I liked talking to Mr. Locker, but then he isnt a poet," said I. I can't help laughing even now as I conjure up the absurd little dream of the past and the bitterness of that childish disappointment. How little do we mortals recognize our good-fortune that comes to us now and again in a certain humorous disguise. Why, I had been in a world of poets ! A poet had greeted me, a poet had sung to me, I had been hustled by poets ; there in the crowd (for all I know to the contrary) were Lamartine and Cha- teaubriand and Girardin and Merimee so, at least, some one who was present on this occasion re- minds me. And as for Frederick Locker, does not his caged music like that of the bird of Wood Street echo along the arid pavements with sweet- est and most welcome note to charm the passers- by as the echoes of " London Lyrics " fall upon the listening ear? And the red face was also that of a MY POET 13 true poet, born to sing his sweet, unpretending song from a true heart, and to bring music into humble places. " A poet of the people, writing in his dia- lect, celebrating public occasions and solemnities," says Sainte-Beuve, " which somehow remind one of the Middle Ages; belonging" (so he continues) "to the school of Horace and to the school of Theocritus and to that of Gray, and to that of all those charming studious inspirations which aim at perfection in all their work." MY MUSICIAN II ONE'S early life is certainly a great deal more amusing to look back to than it used to be when it was going on. For one thing it isn't nearly so long now as it was then, and remembered events come cheerfully scurrying up one after another, while the intervening periods are no longer the portentous cycles they once were. And another thing to consider is that the people walking in and out of the by-gone mansions of life were not, to our newly-opened eyes, the interesting personages many of them have since become ; then they were men walking as trees before us, without names or histories; noiv some of the very names mean for us the history of our time. Very young people's eyes are certainly of more importance to them than their ears, and they all see the persons they are destined to spend their lives with long before the figures begin to talk and to explain themselves. My grandmother had a little society of her own at Paris, in the midst of which she seemed to reign from dignity and kindness of heart ; her friends, it must be confessed, have not as yet become historic, 1 8 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS but she herself was well worthy of a record. Grand- mothers in books and memoirs are mostly alike stately, old-fashioned, kindly, and critical. Mine was no exception to the general rule. She had been one of the most beautiful women of her time ; she was very tall, with a queenly head and carriage ; she always moved in a dignified w r ay. She had an odd taste in dress, I remember, and used to walk out in a red merino cloak trimmed with ermine, which gave her the air of a retired empress wearing out her robes. She was a woman of strong feeling, somewhat imperious, with a passionate love for lit- tle children, and with extraordinary sympathy and enthusiasm for any one in trouble or in disgrace. How benevolently she used to look round the room at her many proteges, with her beautiful gray eyes ! Her friends as a rule were shorter than she was and brisker, less serious and emotional. They adopted her views upon politics, religion, and homoeopathy, or at all events did not venture to contradict them. But they certainly could not reach her heights, and her almost romantic passion of feeling. A great many of my earliest recollections seem to consist of old ladies armies of old ladies, so they appear to me, as I look back through the larger end of my glasses to the time when my sister and I were two little girls living at Paris. I re- member once that after a long stay in England with MY MUSICIAN 19 our father, the old ladies seemed changed some- how to our more experienced eyes. They were the same, but with more variety ; not all alike as they had seemed before, not all the same age ; some were younger, some were older than we had re- membered them one was actually married ! Our grandmother looked older to us this time when we came back to Paris ; we were used to seeing our father's gray hair, but that hers should turn white too seemed almost unnatural. The very first day we walked out with her after our return, we met the bride of whose marriage we had heard while we were away. She was a little dumpy, good- natured woman of about forty-five, I suppose shall I ever forget the thrill with which we watched her approach, hanging with careless grace upon her husband's arm ? She wore light, tight kid gloves upon her little fat hands, and a bonnet like a bride's cake, i Marriage had not made her proud as it does some people ; she recognized us at once and intro- duced us to the gentleman. " Very 'appy to make your acquaintance, miss," said he. " Mrs. C. 'ave often mentioned you at our place." Children begin by being Philistines. As we parted I said to my grandmother that I had always known people dropped their h's, but that I didn't know one ever married them. My grandmother seemed trying not to laugh, but she answered gravely that 2O CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS Mr. and Mrs. C. looked very happy, h's or no h's. And so they did, walking off along those illumi- nated Elysian fields gay with the echoes of Paris in May, while the children capered to itinerant music, and flags were flying and penny trumpets ringing, and strollers and spectators were lining the way, and the long interminable procession of carriages in the centre of the road went rolling steadily towards the Bois de Boulogne. As we walked homewards evening after evening the sun used to set splendidly in the very centre of the great trium- phal arch at the far end of the avenue, and flood everything in a glorious tide of light. What indeed did an aspirate more or less matter at such a mo- ment ! I don't think we ever came home from one of our walks that we did not find our grandfather sit- ting watching for our grandmother's return. We used to ask him if he didn't find it very dull doing nothing in the twilight, but he used to tell us it was his thinking-time. My sister and I thought thinking dreadfully dull, and only longed for can- dles and Chambers 's Miscellany. A good deal of thinking went on in our peaceful home ; we should have liked more doing. One day was just like an- other ; my grandmother and my grandfather sat on either side of the hearth in their two accus- tomed places ; there was a French cook in a white MY MUSICIAN 21 cap who brought in the trays and the lamp at the appointed hour; there was Chambers on the book- shelf, Pickwick, and one or two of my father's books, and The Listener, by Caroline Fry, which used to be my last desperate resource when I had just finished all the others. We lived in a sunny little flat on a fourth floor, with windows east and west and a wide horizon from each, and the sound of the cries from the street below, and the con- fusing roll of the wheels when the windows were open in summer. In winter time we dined at five by lamp-light at the round table in my grand- father's study. After dinner we used to go into the pretty blue drawing-room where the peat fire would be burning brightly in the open grate, and the evening paper would come in with the tea. I can see it all still, hear it, smell the peat, and taste the odd herbaceous tea and the French bread and butter. On the band of the Constitutional newspaper was printed " M. le Major Michel Esch- mid." It was not my grandfather's name or any- thing like it, but he would gravely say that when English people lived in France they must expect to have their names gallicised, and his paper cer- tainly found him out evening after evening. While my grandmother with much emphasis read the news (she was a fervent republican, and so was my grandfather), my sister and I would sit unconscious 22 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS of politics and happy over our story-books until the fatal, inevitable moment when a ring was heard at the bell and evening callers were announced. Then we reluctantly shut up our books, for we were told to get our needle-work when the com- pany came in, and we had to find chairs and hand teacups, and answer inquiries, and presently go to bed. The ladies Avould come in in their bonnets, with their news and their comments upon the' public events, which, by the way, seemed to go off like fireworks in those days expressly for our edifica- tion. Ours was a talkative, economical, and active little society Cranford en Voyage is the impres- sion which remains to me of those early surround- ings. If the ladies were one and all cordially at- tached to my grandmother, to my grandfather they were still more devoted. A Major is a Ma- jor. He used to sign their pension papers, admin- ister globules for their colds, give point and sup- port to their political opinions. I can see him still sitting in his arm-chair by the fire with a little semi- circle round about the hearth. Ours was anything but a meek and disappointed community. \Ve may have had our reverses and very important reverses they all seem to have been but we had all had spirit enough to leave our native shores and settle in Paris, not without a certain implied disap- MY MUSICIAN 23 proval of the other people who went on living in England regardless of expense. My father did not escape this criticism. Why, they used to say, did he remain in that nasty smoky climate, so bad for health and spirits? Why didn't he settle in Paris and write works upon the French ? Why didn't I write and coax him to come, and tell him that it was our grandmother's wish that he should do so ; that the speaker, Mademoiselle Trotkins (or who- ever it might be), had told me to write? I remem- ber going through an early martyrdom at these friendly hands, and bitterly and silently resent- ing their indignation with any one who could pre- fer that black and sooty place London to Paris. At the same time they allowed that the layers were becoming more exorbitant every day, and as for the fruiticre at the corner, she was charging no less than forty sous for her Isyngny. We always talked in a sort of sandwich of French and Eng- lish. Oddly enough, though we talked French, and some of us even looked French, we knew no French people. From time to time at other houses I used to hear of real foreigners, but I don't remem- ber seeing any at ours, except a past 'cur who some- times came, and a certain Viscomte de B. (I had nearly written Bragelonne), whose mother, I be- lieve, was also English. Jcuncs fillcs, jcuncs flcurs, he used to say, bowing to the young ladies. This 24 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS was our one only approach to an introduction to French society. But all the same one cannot live abroad without imbibing something of the coun- try, of the air and the earth and the waters among which one is living. Breath and food and raiment are a part of one's life after all, and a very consid- erable part; and all the wonderful tide of foreign sunshine and the cheerful crowds and happy voices outside, and the very click of pots and pans in the little kitchen at the back seemed to have a character of their own. And so, though we knew nothing of the French, we got to know France and to feel at home there beneath its blue sky, and I think to this day a holiday abroad is ten times more a holi- day than a holiday at home. From mere habit, one seems to be sixteen again, and one's spirits rise and one's exigencies abate. Besides the dwell- ers in the appartcmcnts and the regular customers of the extortionate fruitiere, there used to be pass- ing friends and acquaintances who visited us on their way to other resorts to Italy, to the Ger- man baths. Some stopped in Paris for a week or two at a time, others for a few days' only. I re- member three Scotch ladies, for whom my grand- mother had a great regard, who were not part of our community, but who used to pass through Paris, and always made a certain stay. ... I was very much afraid of them, though interested at the same time MY MUSICIAN 25 as girls arc in unknown quantities. They were well connected and had estates and grand rela- tions in the distance, though they seemed to live as simply as we did. One winter it was announced that they had taken an apartment for a few wee.ks, and next morning I was sent with a note to one of them by my grandmother. They were tall, thin ladies, two were widows, one was a spinster ; of the three the unmarried one frightened me most. On this occasion, after reading the note, one of the widow ladies said to the spinster, Miss X., who had her bonnet on, " Why, you were just going to call on the child's grandmother, were you not? Why don't you take her back with you in the car- riage?" "I must first go and see how he is this morning," said Miss X., somewhat anxiously, " and then I will take her home, of course. Are the things packed ?" A servant came in carrying a large bas- ket with a variety of bottles and viands and nap- kins. I had not presence of mind to run away as I longed to do, and somehow in a few minutes I found myself sitting in a little open carriage with the Scotch lady, and the basket on the opposite seat. I thought her, if possible, more terrible than ever she seemed grave, preoccupied. She had a long nose, a thick brown complexion, grayish sandy hair, and was dressed in scanty cloth skirts gray and sandy too. She spoke to me, I believe, but 26 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS my heart was in my mouth ; I hardly dared even listen to what she said. We drove along the Champs Elysees towards the Arc and then turned into a side street, and presently came to a house at the door of which the carnage stopped. The lady got out, carefully carrying her heavy basket, and told me to follow, and we began to climb the shiny stairs one, two flights I think then we rang at a bell and the door was almost instantly opened. It was opened by a slight, delicate-looking man with long hair, bright eyes, and a thin, hooked nose. When Miss X. saw him she hastily put down her basket upon the floor, caught both his hands in hers, began to shake them gently, and to scold him in an affectionate reproving way for having come to the door. He laughed, said he had guessed who it was, and motioned to her to enter, and I followed at her sign with the basket followed into a narrow little room, with no furniture in it what- ever but an upright piano against the wall and a few straw chairs standing on the wooden shiny floor. He made us sit down with some courtesy, and in reply to her questions said he was pretty well. Had he slept? He shook his head. Had he eaten ? He shrugged his shoulders and then he pointed to the piano. He had been compos- ing something I remember that he spoke in an abrupt, light sort of way would Miss X. like to MY MUSICIAN 27 hear it? "She would like to hear it," she an- swered, " of course, she would dearly like to hear it ; but it would tire him to play ; it could not be good for him." He smiled again, shook back his long hair, and sat down immediately ; and then the music began and the room was filled with con- tinuous sound, he looking over his shoulder now and then to see if we were liking it. The lady sat absorbed and listening, and as I looked at her I saw tears in her eyes great clear tears rolling down her cheeks while the music poured on and on. I can't, alas, recall that music ! I would give anything to remember it now; but the truth is, I was so interested in the people that I scarcely listened. When he stopped at last and looked round, the lady started up. " You mustn't play any more," she said ; " no more, no more, it's too beautiful " and she praised him and thanked him in a tender, motherly, pitying sort of way, and then hurriedly said we must go ; but as we took leave she added, almost in a whisper with a humble apologizing look " I have brought you some of that jelly, and my sister sent some of the wine you fancied the other day ; pray, pray try to take a little." He again shook his head at her, seeming more vexed than grateful. " It is very wrong ; you shouldn't bring me these things," he said in French. " I won't play to you if you do " but she 28 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS put him back softly, and hurriedly closed the door upon him and the offending basket, and hastened away. As we were coming down-stairs she wiped her eyes again. By this time I had got to under- stand the plain, tall, grim, warm-hearted woman; all my silly terrors were gone. She looked hard at me as we drove away. " Never forget that you have heard Chopin play," she said with emotion, " for soon no one will ever hear him play any more." Sometimes reading the memoirs of the great musician, the sad story of his early death, of his passionate fidelity, and cruel estrangement from the companion he most loved, I have remembered this little scene with comfort and pleasure, and known that he was not altogether alone in life, and that he had good friends who cared for his genius and tended him to the last. Of their affec- tion he was aware. But of their constant secret material guardianship he was unconscious ; the basket he evidently hated, the woman he turned to with most grateful response and dependence. He was to the very end absorbed in his music, in his art, in his love. He had bestowed without counting all that he had to give : he poured it forth upon others, never reckoning the cost ; and then dying away from it all, he in turn took what came to him as a child might do, without ponder- ing or speculating overmuch. MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH Ill I BEGAN life at four or five years old as a fervent Napoleon ist. The great emperor had not been dead a quarter of a century when I was a little child. He was certainly alive in the hearts of the French people and of the children growing up among them. Influenced by the cook, we adored his memory, and the concierge had a clock with a laurel wreath which from some reason kindled all our enthusiasm. As a baby holding my father's finger I had stared at the second funeral of Napoleon sweeping up the great roadway of the Champs Elysees. The ground was white with new-fallen snow, and I had never seen snow before ; it seemed to me to be a part of the funeral, a mighty pall indeed spread for the obsequies of so great a warrior. It was the snow I thought about, though I looked with awe at' the black and glittering carriages o o o which came up like ships sailing past us, noiseless- ly one by one. They frightened me, for I thought there was a dead emperor in each. This weird procession gave a strange importance to the mem- 32 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS ory of the great emperor, and also to the little marble statuette of him on the nursery chimney- piece. It stood with folded arms contemplating the decadence of France, black and silent and re- proachful. France was no longer an empire, only a kingdom just like any other country ; this fact I and the cook bitterly resented. Besides the statu- ette there was a snuff-box, belonging I know not to whom, that was a treasure of emotional awe. It came out on Sundays, and sometimes of an evening just before bed -time. At first as you looked you saw nothing but the cover of a wooden box ornamented by a drawing in brown sepia, the sketch of a tombstone and a weeping willow-tree nothing more. Then if you looked again, indi- cated by ingenious twigs and lines there gradually dawned upon you the figure, the shadowy figure of him who lay beneath the stone. Napoleon, pale and sad, with folded arms, with his cocked hat crushed forward on his brow, the mournful shade of the conqueror who had sent a million of other men to Hades before him. As we gazed we hated the English. It is true I was very glad they always conquered everybody, and that my grandpapa was a major in their army; but at the same time the cook and I hated the perfidious English, and we felt that if Napoleon had not been betrayed he would still have been rei^nincr over us here in Paris. MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 33 Every day we children used to go with our bonne to play round about the Arc de Triomphe near which w r e lived, and where, alternating with ornamental rosettes, the long lists of Napoleon's battles and triumphs were carved upon the stone. The bonne sat at work upon one of the stone benches which surround the Arc, we made gravel pies on the step at her feet and searched for shells in the sand, or, when we were not prevented by the guardian, swung on the iron chains which divide the enclosure from the road. We paid no atten- tion whatever to the inscriptions, in fact we couldn't read very \vell in those days. We hardly ever looked at the groups of statuary, except that there was one great arm carrying a shield, and a huge leg like the limb in the Castle of Otranto which haunted us, and which we always saw, though we tried not to see it. I never remember being very light-hearted or laughing at my play up by the Arc, a general sense of something grim and great and strange and beyond my small ken impressed itself upon me as we played. \Vhen I had night- mares at night the Arc de Triomphe, with its writhing figures, was always mixed up with them. One day the guardian in his brass buttons, being in a good humor, allowed us all to climb up with- out paying to the flat lead terrace on the top. There were easy steps inside the walls, and slits 34 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS for light at intervals ; and when we climbed the last steep step and came out upon the sum- mit, we saw the great view, the domes and the pinnacles and gilt weathercocks of the lovely city all spreading before us, and the winding river, and the people looking like grains of sand blown by the wind, and the carriages crawling like insects, and the palace of the Tuileries in its lovely old gardens shining like a toy. But somehow the world from a monumental height is quite different from what it seems from a curb-stone, where much more human impressions are to be found ; and that disembodied Paris, spreading like a vision, never appeared to me to be the same place as the noisy, cheerful, beloved city of my early childish recol- lections. The first house in which we lived at Paris was an old house in an old avenue enclosed by iron gates which were shut at night. It was called the Av- enue Sainte Marie and led from the Faubourg du Roule to the Arc de Triomphe. The avenue was planted with shady trees ; on one side there were houses, on the other convent walls. At the door of one of the houses an old man sat in his chair, who used to tell us, as we passed by, that in a few months he would be a hundred years old, and then they would put him into the papers. I used to play in the court-yard belonging to the house in which MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 35 we lived. There was a pump and there was a wall with a row of poplar trees beyond it. There was a faded fresco painted on the wall, a dim fountain, a pale Italian garden, a washed-out bird flying away, with a blue tail, across long streaks of mildew that had come from the drippings of the trees. Frescos must have been in fashion at the time when the Avenue Sainte Marie was built, for there was also a dim painting on the convent wall opposite our portc-cocJicrc, representing a temple in a garden, and clouds, and another bird with outstretched wings. From beyond this wall we used to hear the bells and the litanies of the nuns. One night I dreamed that I was walking in the convent garden and that my father came out of the temple to fetch me home, and that the bird flapped its wings with a shrill cry. I used to dream a great deal when I was a little child, and then wake up in my creaking wooden bed and stare at the dim floating night- light like a little ship on its sea of oil. Then from the dark corners of the room there used to come all sorts of strange things sailing up upon the dark- ness. I could see them all, looking like painted pictures. There were flowers, birds, dolls, toys, shining things of every description. I have since heard that this seeing pictures in the dark is not an uncommon faculty among children. I had a vague feeling that the pictures came from the 36 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS house of the nuns. My sister being a baby, I had only the porter's niece to play with. She was older than I was, and used to go to school at the convent. She used to wear a black stuff pin- afore and a blue ribbon with the image of the Virgin round her neck. As we played we could hear other music than that of the nuns, the brilliant strains of Monsieur Ernest's piano in the apartment over ours. He was a kind young man, very fond of children, who used to open the window and play to us brilliant dances and marches, which we de- lighted in. When he ceased we went back to our games. It was later in life that with the help, either of Justine or another relation of the family, I tried to polish up the stairs as a surprise for the porter on his return from an errand. We got the long brooms and sticks out of the lodge where there was nobody to be seen, only an odd smell and a great pot sim- mering by the fire. One of us carried a feather broom, the other a brush with a strap to it, and a great stick with a bit of wax at one end. Then we set to work, not forgetting the hissing sound. Justine flapped about with the feather broom and duster; I tried to work my foot with the heavy brush ; but the brush flies off, down I come on my nose with a scream, the broom clatters echo- ing down the stairs, the waxed stick falls over the MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 37 bannisters, doors open, voices are heard, I have thumped my nose, bumped my forehead, but I do not mind the pain the disgrace,' the failure, are what are so terrible to bear ! I cannot clearly remember when I became an Orleanist, but I think I must have been about six years old at the time, standing tiptoe on the afore- said curb-stone. My grandmother had changed her cook and her apartment, and I had happened to hear my grandfather say that Napoleon was a rascal who had not been betrayed by the English. Then came a day shall I ever forget it ? when a yellow carriage jingled by with a beautiful little smiling boy at the window, a fair-haired, blue-eyed prince. It was the little Comte de Paris, who would be a king some day, they told me, and who was smiling and looking so charming that then and there I deserted my colors and went over to the camp of the Orleans. Alas! that the lilies of France should have been smirched and soiled by base and vulgar intrigues, and that my little prince should have stepped down unabashed, as a gray-headed veteran, from the dignified shrine of his youth. I remember once hearing my father say of the Due d'Aumale, " He has everything in his favor good looks, dig- nity, fine manners, intellect, riches, and, above all, misfortune ;" and with all of these I invested the image of my o\vn particular little prince. 38 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS One micareme, on that mysterious pagan feast of the butchers, when the fat ox, covered with gar- lands and with gilded horns, is led to sacrifice through the streets of Paris, I also, to my great satisfaction, was brought forth to join the proces- sion by a couple of maids, one of whom carried a basket. I remember finding my stumpy self in a court of the Tuileries, the fairy ox having been brought thither for the benefit of the king, and I was hustled to the front of a crowd and stood be- tween my two protectors looking up at a window. Then comes an outcry of cheering, and a venerable, curly-headed old gentleman, Louis Philippe him- self, just like all his pictures, appears for an instant behind the glass, and then the people shout again and again, and the window opens, and the king steps out on to the balcony handing out an old lady in a bonnet and frizzed white curls, and, yes, the little boy is there too. Hurrah, hurrah ! for all the kings and queens ! And somebody is squeez- ing me up against the basket, but I am now an Or- leanist and ready to suffer tortures for the kind old grandpapa and the little boy. Now that I am a gray-headed woman I feel as if I could still stand in the crowd and cry hurrah for honest men who, with old Louis Philippe, would rather give up their crowns than let their subjects be fired upon ; and if my little prince, instead of shabbily intriguing MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 39 with adventurers, had kept to his grandfather's peacetul philosophy, I could have cried hurrah for him still with all my heart. I suppose we have most of us, in and out of our pinafores, stood by triumphal archways put up for other people, and moralized a little bit before pro- ceeding to amuse ourselves with our own advent- ures further on. As I have said, the Arc de Tri- omphe seems mixed up with all my early life. I remember looking up at it on my way to my first school in an adjoining street, crossing the open space, and instead of stopping to pick up shells as usual, casting, I dare say, a complaisant glance of superiority at the gods of war in their stony chariots, who, after all, never had much education. I was nicely dressed in a plaid frock, and wore two tails of hair tied with ribbons, a black apron, and two little black pantalettes. It was the admired costume of all the young ladies of the school to which I was bound. On this occasion the stony gods witnessed my undue elation and subsequent discomfiture unmoved. The triumphal arch was certainly not intended for my return. I was led home that evening, after a day mostly spent in the corner, crestfallen and crushed by my inferiority to all the other young ladies of the school in their black pinafores and pantalettes. 4-O CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS But the images round about the Arc are not all of discomfitures and funerals and terrible things. There were also merry-makings to be remembered. Did not the Siamese Twins themselves set up their booths in its shadow in company with various wild Bedouins their companions? I thought it cruel of the nurse not to take me in to see the show, and indeed on one occasion I ran away from home to visit it on my own account. The expedition was not a success, but Siam has always seemed to me an interesting country ever since. Besides the twins and their booth, there were cafes and resting- places in those days all round about the Arc, and people enjoying themselves after their long day's work with song and laughter. Wild flowers were still growing at the upper end of the Champs Elysees on a green mound called the Pelouse. In the year '48, when we walked out with our grandparents, the Pelouse had been dug up and levelled, I think, to give work to the starving peo- ple. It was a year of catastrophes and revolutions; a sort of " General Post " among kings and gov- ernments. Many of the promenaders (my grand- parents among them) used to wear little tricolor ro- settes to show their sympathies with the Republic. Shall I ever forget the sight of the enthusiastic crowds lining the way to see the President entering Paris in a cocked hat on a curveting Arabian steed MY TRIUMPHAL ARCH 41 at the head of his troops? to be followed in a year or two by the still more splendid apparition of Na- poleon III. riding into Paris along the road the great Emperor's hearse had taken a new emperor, glittering and alive once more, on a horse so beau- tiful and majestic that to look upon it was a martial education ! The pomp and circumstance of war were awak- ened again, and troops came marching up the av- enues as before, and, what is even more vivid to my mind, a charming empress presently rose be- fore us, winning all hearts by her grace and her beautiful toilettes. My sister and I stood by the roadside on her wedding-day and watched her car- riage rolling past the Arc to St. Cloud ; the morn- ing had been full of spring sunshine, but the after- noon was bleak and drear, and I remember how we shivered as we stood. Some years later, when we were no longer little girls, but young ladies in crin- olines, we counted the guns fired for the birth of the Prince Imperial at the Tuileries. MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IV OUR father was away in America, and we were living once more with our grandparents. We were children no longer, but were young ladies supposed to be finishing our education. It will be seen that it was of a fitful and backward description. Macau- lay's Essays, Ivanhoe and the Talisman, Herodotus, Milman's History of the Jcivs, and one or two stray scraps of poetry represented our studies. Then came a vast and hopeless chaos in our minds, reach- ing as far back as the times of Charlemagne and Clovis, and Bertha with the long foot, and Frede- gonde who was always plunging her dagger into somebody's back. The early Merovingians will for me ever be associated with a faint smell of snuff and a plaid linen pocket-handkerchief carefully folded, with a little, old, short, stumpy figure, in a black cap and dressed in a scanty black skirt. The figure is that of my Professor of History. An old, old lady, very short, very dignified, uttering little grunts at intervals, and holding a pair of spectacles in one hand and a little old black fat book in the other, from which, with many fumblings and snuff- 46 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS takings, the good soul would proceed to read to us of murder, battle, rapine, and sudden death, of kings, crowns, dynasties, and knights in armor, while we, her pupils, listened, trying not to laugh when she turned two pages at once, or read the same page twice over with great seriousness. My dear grandmother, who was always inventing ways of helping people, and who firmly believed in all her proteges, having visited our Madame once or twice and found her absorbed in the said history book, had arranged that a series of historical lect- ures, with five-franc tickets of admission to the course, should be given by her during the winter months; and that after the lecture (which used to take place in our sitting-room, and which was at- tended by a certain number of ladies) we should all adjourn for tea to the blue drawing-room, where the Major meanwhile had been able to enjoy his after-dinner nap in quiet. He refused to attend the course, saying, after the first lecture, that he found it difficult to follow the drift of Madame's argu- ments. There used to be a class of four girls my sister and myself, our cousin Amy, and Laura C., a friend of my own age and then the various ladies, in bonnets, from up-stairs and down-stairs and next door. The lecture lasted an hour by the clock; then the meeting suddenly adjourned, and by the time the golden flower-vase pendule in the drawing- MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 47 room struck ten everybody was already walking down the shiny staircase and starting for home. Paris streets at night may be dark and muddy, or freezing cold, but they never give one that chill, vault-like feeling which London streets are apt to produce when one turns out from a warm fireside into the raw night. The ladies thought nothing of crossing the road and walking along a boulevard till they reached their own doors. Good old Madame used to walk off with those of her pupils who lived her way ; they generally left her at the bright chemist's shop round the corner, where Madame Marlin, the chemist's wife, would administer an evening dose of peppermint-water to keep out the cold so we used to be told by Madame. The old lady lived in one of the tall, shabby houses at the top of the Faubourg, just behind the Arc. We used to find her sitting in a small crowded room, with a tiny ante-room, and an alcove for her bed. There she lived with her poodle, Bibi, among the faded treasures and ancient snuff-boxes and books and portraits and silhouettes of a lifetime; grim effigies of a grim past somewhat softened by dust and time. In the midst of all the chaos one lovely miniature used to hang, shining like a star through the clouds of present loneliness and the spiders' webs of age and poverty. This was the por- trait of the beautiful Lady Almeria Carpenter, the 48 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS friend of Sir Joshua, with whom in some mysterious, romantic way Madame was connected. Another equally valued relic was a needlebook which had been used by the Duchesse de Praslin on the day when her husband murdered her. Madame's sister had been governess there for many years, and had loved the duchess dearly and been valued by her, and many and mysterious were the confidences poured into my grandmother's ear concerning this sad tragedy. Our cheery, emphatic, mysterious old lady was very popular among us all. One of her kindest friends was my father's cousin, Miss R., who had lived in Paris all her life, and whose visiting-list com- prised any one in trouble or poor or lonely and afflicted. I think if it had not been for her help and that of my grandmother our good old friend would have often gone through sore trials. When my father himself came to Paris to fetch us away, he was interested in the accounts he heard of the old lady from his mother and cousin. And Madame is the heroine of a little story which I have seen in print somewhere, and which I know to be true, for was I not sent one day to search for a certain pill-box in my father's room, of which he proceeded to empty the contents into the fireplace, and then, drawing a neat banker's roll from his pocket, to fill up the little cube with a certain number of new napoleons, packing them in closely up to the brim. After MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 49 which, the cover being restored, he wrote the fol- lowing prescription in his beautiful, even handwrit- ing: "Madame P. ... To be taken occasionally when required. Signed Dr. W. M. T." Which medi- cine my grandmother, greatly pleased, promised to administer to her old friend after our departure. P.S. The remembrance of this pill-box, and of my father's kind hands packing up the napoleons, came to me long after at a time when misfortunes of every kind had fallen upon the familiar friends and places of our early youth, when the glare of burn- ing Paris seemed to reach us far away in our Eng- lish homes, and we almost thought we could hear the thunders breaking on the unhappy city. We thought of our poor old lady, alone with her dear Bibi, in the midst of all this terror and destruction. As we sat down to our legs of mutton we pictured the horrible salmis and fricandeanx of rats and mice to which our neighbors were reduced, the sufferings so heroically borne. Every memory of the past rose up to incite us to make some effort to come to the assistance of our poor old friend ; and at last it occurred to me to ask Baroness Mayer de Rothschild, who was always ready with good help for others, whether it would be possible to communicate with my besieged old lady. I do not know by what means perhaps if I knew, 50 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS I ought not to say how communications had been established between the English Rothschilds and those who were still in Paris. Some trusty and de- voted retainer, some Porthos belonging to the house, had been able to get into Paris carrying let- ters and messages and food, and he was, so the Baroness now told me, about to return again. By this means I was told that I might send my letters and a draft on the bank in Paris so that poor Madame could obtain a little help of which she must be in cruel need; and this being accom- plished, the letter written and the money sent off, I was able with an easier mind to enjoy my own share of the good things of life. Time passed, the siege was raised, and then came a day when, urged by^ circumstances, and perhaps also by a certain curiosity, I found myself starting for Paris with a friend, under the escort of Mr. Cook, arriving after a night's journey through strange and never-to-be- forgotten experiences at the Gare du Nord a de- serted station among streets all empty and silent. Carriages were no longer to be seen, every figure was dressed in black, and the women's sad faces and long, floating crape veils seemed strangely symbolical and visionary, as I walked along to the house of my father's cousin, Charlotte R., who had been my friend ever since I could remember. She was expecting me in her home to which she had MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 51 only been able to return a few days before. It is not my purpose here to describe the strange and pathetic experiences and the sights we saw to- gether during that most eventful week; the sun- shine of it all, the smoking ruins, the piteous his- tories, the strange rebound of life even in the midst of its ashes. The Arc itself was wrapped in sack- cloth to preserve the impassive gods from the in- juries of war. The great legs and arms we repacked in straw and saw-dust to protect them. One of my first questions was for Madame. " She is particu- larly well," said my cousin, smiling. " She has added many thrilling histories to repertoire, Madame Mar- tin's escape from the obus, Bibi's horror of the Prussians you must come and see her, and hear it all for yourself." " I particularly want to see her," said I. I was in a self-satisfied and not unnatural frame of mind, picturing my old lady's pleasure at the meeting, her eloquent emotion and satisfac- tion at the trouble I had taken on her behalf. I hoped to have saved her life ; at all events I felt that she must owe many little comforts to my ex- ertions, and that her grateful benediction awaited me ! Dear old Madame was sitting with her poodle on her knees in the same little dark and crowded chamber. She put down her spectacles, shut up her book I do believe it was still the little black 52 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS History of France. She did not look in the least surprised to see me walk in. The room smelt of snuff just as usual ; Bibi leaped up from her lap, barking furiously. " Ah ! my dear child," said the old lady calmly, " how do you do ? Ah, my dear Miss R., I am delighted to see you again ! Only this day I said to Madame Martin, ' I think Miss R. will be sure to call this afternoon ; it is some day since she come.' " Then turning to me, " Well, my dear A., and how do you, and how do you all ? Are you come to stay in our poor Paris ? Are Mr. and Mrs. T. with you? Oh! oh! Oh, those Prussians! those abominable monsters! My poor Bibi, he was ready to tear them to pieces ; he and I could not sleep for the guns. Madame Martin, she say to me, 'Oh ! Madame, can you believe such wicked- ness?' I say to her, 'it is abominable.' Oh, there is no word for it !" All this was oddly familiar, and yet strangely thrilling and unreal as was all the rest. There is no adequate expression for the strange waking night- mare which seems to seize one when by chance one meets a whole country suffering from one over- powering idea, and when one hears the story of each individual experience in turn repeated and re- peated. At last, my own personal interests rising up again, I said, not without some curiosity : " And MY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY 53 now I want to ask you, did you get my letter, Madame, and did you receive the money safely from Messrs. Rothschilds' bank?" " I thank you, my dear child. I received it I was about to mention the subject I knew you would not forget your old friend," said Madame solemnly. " I needed the money very much," with a shake of the head. " I was all the more grateful that it came at the time it did. You will be grati- fied, I know, to learn the use to which I put it. They had come round to every house in the street only that morning. Madame Martin was with me." Here Madame took a pinch of snuff very seriously. " She go to the banker's for me, and she took the money at once and inscribe my name on the list." "The list?" said I, much bewildered. " I subscribe it," said Madame, " to the cannon which was presented by our qnarticr to the city of Paris." "What, all of it?" said I. " Yes, all of it," said she. " Do you suppose I should have kept any of it back?" MY WITCHES' CALDRON V IT happily does not always follow that one cares for an author in exact proportion to the sale of his books, or even to the degree of their merit ; other- wise some might be overpowered by friends, and others remain solitary all their lives long. It also does not always follow that people who write books are those who see most of one another. On the contrary, authors as a rule, I think, prefer play- mates of other professions than their own, and don't keep together in the same way that soldiers do for instance, or dandies, or lawyers, or members of Parliament. Lawyers, politicians, soldiers, and even doctors, do a great deal of their work together in one another's company; but the hours don't suit for literary people, and one rarely hears of five or six authors sitting down in a row to write books. They are generally shut up apart in different studies, with strict orders given that nobody is to be shown in. This was my father's rule, only it was constantly broken ; and many persons used to pass in and out during his working-times, coming to consult him, or to make suggestions ; some came to call, others 58 CHAPTERS FROM SOME UNWRITTEN MEMOIRS brought little poems and articles for the CornJiill. . . . As I write on it seems to me that my memory is a sort of Witches' Caldron, frpm which rise one by one these figures of the past, and they go by in turn and vanish one by one into the mist some are kings and queens in their own right, some are friends, some are dependants. From my caldron rise many figures crowned and uncrowned, some of whom I have looked upon once perhaps, and then realized them in after-life from a different point of view. Now, perhaps, looking back, one can tell their worth better than at the time ; one knows which were the true companions, which were the teachers and spiritual pastors, which were but shad ows after all. The most splendid person I ever re member seeing had a little pencil sketch in his hand, which he left behind him upon the table. It was a very feeble sketch ; it seemed scarcely possi- ble that so grand a being should not be a bolder draughtsman. He appeared to us one Sunday morning in the sunshine. When I came down to' breakfast I found him sitting beside my father at the table, with an untasted cup of tea before him ; he seemed to fill the bow-window with radiance as if he were Apollo ; he leaned against his chair with one elbow resting on its back, with shining studs and curls and boots. We could see his horse look- ing in at us over the blind. It was indeed a si