(Alas! and ah me! These instructions would have been carried out to the letter but that the place itself is no more; and, with a conviction that I should be merely acting just as they would have wished, I took it on myself to mingle with their ashes those of a very sweet and darling child of theirs, dearer to them and to me and to us all than any creature ever born into this cruel universe; and I scattered a portion of these precious remains to the four winds, close by the old spot we so loved.)
Yes, that was a memorable holiday; the charming fête de St. Cloud was in full swing – it was delightful to haunt it once more with those dear young people so little dreamt of when Barty and I first got into scrapes there, and were duly punished by Latin verbs to conjugate in our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.
Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de Boulogne for the little "Mare aux Biches," where his father had fallen under the sword of Lieutenant Rondelys; but we never managed to find it: perhaps it had evaporated; perhaps the does had drunk it all up, before they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German invader – or inside him; for he was fond of French venison, as well as of French clocks! He was a most omnivorous person.
Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we relieved ourselves at last of that long homesickness of years, and could almost believe we were boys again, as we dived into such old and well‐remembered streets as yet remained.
There were still some slums we had loved; one or two of them exist even now. Only the other day I saw the Rue de Cléry, the Rue de la Lune, the Rue de la Montagne – all three on the south side of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle: they are still terrible to look at from the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight – the houses so tall, so irregular, the streets so narrow and winding and black. They seemed to us boys terrible, indeed, between eight and nine on a winter's evening, with just a lamp here and there to make their darkness visible. Whither they led I can't say; we never dared explore their obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have ended in the cour des miracles for all we knew – it was nearly fifty years ago – and they may be quite virtuous abodes of poverty to‐day; but they seemed to us then strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of long winter nights. Evidently, to us in those days, whoever should lose himself there would never see daylight again; so we loved to visit them after dark, with our hearts in our mouths, before going back to school.
We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures – dingy moths, silent but ominous night‐jars, forlorn women of the town – ill‐favored and ill‐dressed, some of them all but middle‐aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks looking for a situation.
They never spoke to us, and seemed to be often brutally repulsed by whatever men they did speak to – mostly men in blouses.
"Ô dis‐donc, Hôrtense! qu'y faît froid! quand donc qu'y s'ra ônze heures, q'nous allions nous coûcher?"
So said one of them to another one cold, drizzly night, in a raucous voice, with low intonations of the gutter. The dimly felt horror and despair and pathos of it sent us away shivering to our Passy omnibus as fast as our legs could carry us.
That phrase has stuck in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now – they need walk those evil streets no more…
When we had exhausted it all, and we felt homesick for England again, it was good to get back to Marsfield, high up over the Thames – so beautiful in its rich October colors which the river reflected – with its old trees that grew down to the water's edge, and brooded by the boat‐house there in the mellow sunshine.
And then again when it became cold and dreary, at Christmas‐time there was my big house at Lancaster Gate, where Josselins were fond of spending some of the winter months, and where I managed to find room for them all – with a little squeezing during the Christmas holidays when the boys came home from school. What good times they were!
"On May 24th, at Marsfield, Berks, the wife of Bartholomew Josselin, of a daughter" – or, as Leah put it in her diary, "our seventh daughter and ninth child – to be called Martia, or Marty for short."
It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for this life, and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's motherly lap, was of a different type to her predecessors – much whiter, and lighter, and slighter; and she made no exhibition of that lusty lung‐power which had so characterized the other little Barties on their introduction to this vale of tears.
Her face was more regularly formed and more highly finished, and in a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn and pathetic that it would sometimes make Mrs. Jones, who had lost babies of her own, shed motherly tears merely to look at her.
Even I felt sentimental about the child; and as for Barty, he could talk of nothing else, and made those rough and hasty silver‐point studies of her head and face – mere sketches – which, being full of obvious faults, became so quickly famous among æsthetic and exclusive people who had long given up Barty as a writer on account of his scandalous popularity.
Alas! even those silver‐points have become popular now, and their photogravures are in the shop‐windows of sea‐side resorts and in the back parlors of the lower middle‐class; so that the æsthetic exclusives who are up to date have had to give up Barty altogether. No one is sacred in those days – not even Shakespeare and Michael Angelo.
We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the piano‐organ, and "nous autres" of the cultured classes will have to fall back on Balfe and Byron and Landseer.
In a few months little Marty became famous for this extra beauty all over Henley and Maidenhead.
She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and her mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there was one person who idolized her more than all the rest, it was I, Bob Maurice.
She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety and many alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant visitor at Marsfield Lodge. It was fortunate, for her sake, that the Josselins had left Campden Hill and made their home in Marsfield.
Nine of these children – including one not yet born then – developed there into the finest and completest human beings, take them for all in all, that I have ever known; nine – a good number!
"Numero Deus impare gaudet."
Or, as poor Rapaud translated this (and was pinched black and blue by Père Brossard in consequence):
"Le numéro deux se réjouit d'être impair!" (Number two takes a pleasure in being odd!)
The three sons – one of them now in the army, as becomes a Rohan; and one a sailor, as becomes a Josselin; and one a famous actor, the true Josselin of all – are the very types of what I should like for the fathers of my grandchildren, if I had marriageable daughters of my own.
And as for Barty's daughters, they are all – but one – so well known in society and the world – so famous, I may say – that I need hardly mention them here; all but Marty, my sweet little "maid of Dove."
When Barty took Marsfield he and I had entered what I have ever since considered the happiest decade of a successful and healthy man's life – the forties.
"Wait till you get to forty year!"
So sang Thackeray, but with a very different experience to mine. He seemed to look upon the fifth decade as the grave of all tender illusions and emotions, and exult!
My tender illusions and emotions became realties – things to live by and for. As Barty and I "dipped our noses in the Gascon wine" – Vougeot‐Conti & Co. – I blessed my stars for being free of Marsfield, which was, and is still, my real home, and for the warm friendship of its inhabitants who have been my real family, and for several years of unclouded happiness all round.
Even in winter what a joy it was, after a long solitary walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast, what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so cultivated! Music was a special inherited gift of the entire family, and no trouble or expense was ever spared to make the best and the most of it.
Roberta became the most finished and charming amateur pianist I ever heard, and as for Mary la rossignolle– Mrs. Trevor – she's almost as famous as if she had made singing her profession, as she once so wished to do. She married happily instead, a better profession still; and though her songs are as highly paid for as any – except, perhaps, Madame Patti's – every penny goes to the poor.
She can make a nigger melody sound worthy of Schubert and a song of Schumann go down with the common herd as if it were a nigger melody, and obtain a genuine encore for it from quite simple people.
Why, only the other night she and her husband dined with me at the Bristol, and we went to Baron Schwartzkind's in Piccadilly to meet Royal Highnesses.
Up comes the Baron with:
"Ach, Mrs. Drefor! vill you not zing zomzing? ze Brincess vould be so jarmt."
"I'll sing as much as you like, Baron, if you promise me you'll send a checque for £50 to the Foundling Hospital to‐morrow morning," says Mary.
"I'll send another fifty, Baron," says Bob Maurice. And the Baron had to comply, and Mary sang again and again, and the Princess was more than charmed.
She declared herself enchanted, and yet it was Brahms and Schumann that Mary sang; no pretty little English ballad, no French, no Italian.
"Aus meinen Thränen spriessen
Viel' blühende Blumen hervor;
Und meine Seufze warden
Ein Nachtigallen Chor…"
So sang Mary, and I declare some of the royal eyes were moist.
They all sang and played, these Josselins; and tumbled and acted, and were droll and original and fetching, as their father had been and was still; and, like him, amiable and full of exuberant life; and, like their mother, kind and appreciative and sympathetic and ever thoughtful of others, without a grain of selfishness or conceit.
They were also great athletes, boys and girls alike; good swimmers and riders, and first‐rate oars. And though not as good at books and lessons as they might have been, they did not absolutely disgrace themselves, being so quick and intelligent.
Amid all this geniality and liveliness at home and this beauty of surrounding nature abroad, little Marty seemed to outgrow in a measure her constitutional delicacy.
It was her ambition to become as athletic as a boy, and she was persevering in all physical exercises – and throw stones very straight and far, with a quite easy masculine sweep of the arm; I taught her myself.
It was also her ambition to draw, and she would sit for an hour or more on a high stool by her father, or on the arm of his chair, and watch him at his work in silence. Then she would get herself paper and pencil, and try and do likewise; but discouragement would overtake her, and she would have to give it up in despair, with a heavy sigh and a clouded look on her lovely little pale face; and yet they were surprisingly clever, these attempts of hers.
Then she took to dictating a novel to her sisters and to me: it was all about an immense dog and three naughty boys, who were awful dunces at school and ran away to sea, dog and all; and performed heroic deeds in Central Africa, and grew up there, "booted and bearded, and burnt to a brick!" and never married or fell in love, or stooped to any nonsense of that kind.
This novel, begun in the handwriting of all of us, and continued in her own, remained unfinished; and the precious MS. is now in my possession. I have read it oftener than any other novel, French or English, except, perhaps, Vanity Fair!
I may say that I had something to do with the development of her literary faculty, as I read many good books to her before she could read quite comfortably for herself: Evenings at Home, The Swiss Family Robinson, Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe, books by Ballantyne, Marryat, Mayne Reid, Jules Verne, etc., and Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, and then her father's books, or some of them.
But even better than her famous novel were the stories she improvised to me in a small boat which I often rowed up‐stream while she steered – one story, in particular, that had no end; she would take it up at any time.
She had imagined a world where all trees and flowers and vegetation (and some birds) were the size they are now; but men and beasts no bigger than Lilliputians, with houses and churches and buildings to match – and a family called Josselin living in a beautiful house called Marsfield, as big as a piano organ.
Endless were the adventures by flood and field of these little people: in the huge forest and on the gigantic river which it took them nearly an hour to cross in a steam‐launch when the wind was high, or riding trained carrier‐pigeons to distant counties, and the coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy, where everything was on a similar scale.
It would astonish me to find how vivid and real she could make these imaginations of hers, and to me how fascinating – oddly enough she reserved them for me only, and told no one else.
There was always an immensely big strong man, one Bobby Maurice, a good‐natured giant, nearly three inches high and over two ounces in weight, who among other feats would eat a whole pea at a sitting, and hold out an acorn at arm's‐length, and throw a pepper‐corn over two yards – which has remained the record.
Then, coming back down‐stream, she would take the sculls and I the tiller, and I would tell her (in French) all about our school adventures at Brossard's and Bonzig, and the Lafertés, and the Revolution of February; and in that way she picked up a lot of useful and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished Fräulein Werner, the German governess, who yet knew French almost as well as her own language – almost as well as Mr. Ollendorff himself.
She also changed one of the heroes in her famous novel, Tommy Holt, into a French boy, and called him Rapaud!
She was even more devoted to animals than the rest of the family: the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange bull‐terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph in a beautiful round hand —
"Here lies Kitty, full of grace;
Died of an abbess in her face!"
This was her first attempt at verse‐making, and here's her last, from the French of Sully‐Prudhomme:
"If you but knew what tears, alas!
One weeps for kinship unbestowed,
In pity you would sometimes pass
My poor abode!"
If you but knew what balm, for all
Despond, lies in an angel's glance,
Your looks would on my window fall
As though by chance!"
If you but knew the heart's delight
To feel its fellow‐heart is by,
You'd linger, as a sister might,
These gates anigh!"
If you but knew how oft I yearn
For one sweet voice, one presence dear,
Perhaps you'd even simply turn
And enter here!"
She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the original!
Her intimate friendship with Chucker‐out, the huge St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me.
It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the print‐sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at these works of art, although – and I hope it is not libellous to say so – the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and charm to Chucker‐out, who was champion of his day. And as for the little girls —Ah, mon Dieu!
Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't possess one, as I've got an æsthetic character to keep up; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist – except Briton Riviere – will stoop to so easily understood a subject?
A great master would not be above painting a small child or a big dog separately – why should he be above putting them both in the same picture? It would be too obvious, I suppose – like a melody by Mozart, or Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Serenade, and other catchpenny tunes of the same description.
I was also very intimate with Chucker‐out, who made more of me than he even did of his master.
One night I got very late to Marsfield by the last train, and, letting myself in with my key, I found Chucker‐out waiting for me in the hall, and apparently in a very anxious frame of mind, and extremely demonstrative, wanting to say something more than usual – to confide a trouble, to confess!
We went up into the big music‐room, which was still lighted, and lay on a couch together; he, with his head on my knees, whimpering softly as I smoked and read a paper.
Presently Leah came in and said:
"Such an unfortunate thing happened; Marty and Chucker‐out were playing on the slope, and he knocked her down and sprained her knee."
As soon as Chucker‐out heard Marty's name he sat up and whined piteously, and pawed me down with great violence; pawed three buttons off my waistcoat and broke my watch‐chain – couldn't be comforted; the misadventure had been preying on his mind for hours.
I give this subject to Mr. Briton Riviere, who can paint both dogs and children, and everything else he likes. I will sit for him myself, if he wishes, and as a Catholic priest! He might call it a confession – and an absolution! or, "The Secrets of the Confessional."
The good dog became more careful in future, and restrained his exuberance even going down‐stairs with Marty on the way to a ramble in the woods, which excited him more than anything; if he came down‐stairs with anybody else, the violence of his joy was such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body‐guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles – never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility – almost fussy about it.
I have been fond of many dogs, but never yet loved a dog as I loved big Chucker‐out – or Choucroûte, as Coralie, the French maid, called him, to Fräulein Werner's annoyance (Choucroûte is French for sauerkraut); and I like to remember him in his splendid prime, guarding his sweet little mistress, whom I loved better than anything else on earth. She was to me a kind of pet Marjorie, and said such droll and touching things that I could almost fill a book with them. I kept a diary on purpose, and called it Martiana.
She was tall, but lamentably thin and slight, poor dear, with her mother's piercing black eyes and the very fair curly locks of her papa – a curious and most effective contrast – and features and a complexion of such extraordinary delicacy and loveliness that it almost gave one pain in the midst of the keen pleasure one had in the mere looking at her.
Heavens! how that face would light up suddenly at catching the unexpected sight of some one she was fond of! How often it has lighted up at the unexpected sight of "Uncle Bob"! The mere remembrance of that sweet illumination brightens my old age for me now; and I could almost wish her back again, in my senile selfishness and inconsistency. Pazienza!
Sometimes she was quite embarrassing in her simplicity, and reminded me of her father.
Once in Dieppe – when she was about eight – she and I had gone through the Établissement to bathe, and people had stared at her even more than usual and whispered to each other.
"I bet you don't know why they all stare so, Uncle Bob?"
"I give it up," said I.
"It's because I'm so handsome– we're all handsome, you know, and I'm the handsomest of the lot, it seems! You're not handsome, Uncle Bob. But oh! aren't you strong! Why, you could tuck a piou‐piou under one arm and a postman under the other and walk up to the castle with them and pitch them into the sea, couldn't you? And that's better than being handsome, isn't it? I wish I was like that."
And here she cuddled and kissed my hand.
When Mary began to sing (under Signor R.) it was her custom of an afternoon to lock herself up alone with a tuning‐fork in a large garret and practise, as she was shy of singing exercises before any one else.
Her voice, even practising scales, would give Marty extraordinary pleasure, and me, too. Marty and I have often sat outside and listened to Mary's rich and fluent vocalizings; and I hoped that Marty would develop a great voice also, as she was so like Mary in face and disposition, except that Mary's eyes were blue and her hair very black, and her health unexceptionable.
Marty did not develop a real voice, although she sang very prettily and confidentially to me, and worked hard at the piano with Roberta; she learned harmony and composed little songs, and wrote words to them, and Mary or her father would sing them to her and make her happy beyond description.
Happy! she was always happy during the first few years of her life – from five or six to twelve.
I like to think her happiness was so great for this brief period, that she had her full share of human felicity just as if she had lived to the age of the Psalmist.
It seemed everybody's business at Marsfield to see that Marty had a good time. This was an easy task, as she was so easy to amuse; and when amused, herself so amusing to others.
As for me, it is hardly too much to say that every hour I could spare from business and the cares of state was spent in organizing the amusement of little Marty Josselin, and I was foolish enough to be almost jealous of her own father and mother's devotion to the same object.
Unlike her brothers and sisters, she was a studious little person, and fond of books – too much so indeed, for all she was such a tomboy; and all this amusement was designed by us with the purpose of winning her away from the too sedulous pursuit of knowledge. I may add that in temper and sweetness of disposition the child was simply angelic, and could not be spoiled by any spoiling.
It was during these happy years at Marsfield that Barty, although bereft of his Martia ever since that farewell letter, managed, nevertheless, to do his best work, on lines previously laid down for him by her.
For the first year or two he missed the feeling of the north most painfully – it was like the loss of a sense – but he grew in time accustomed to the privation, and quite resigned; and Marty, whom he worshipped – as did her mother – compensated him for the loss of his demon.
Inaccessible Heights, Floréal et Fructidor, The Infinitely Little, The Northern Pactolus, Pandore et sa Boîte, Cancer and Capricorn, Phœbus et Séléné followed each other in leisurely succession. And he also found time for those controversies that so moved and amused the world; among others, his famous and triumphant confutation of Canon – , on one hand, and Professor – , the famous scientist, on the other, which has been compared to the classic litigation about the oyster, since the oyster itself fell to Barty's share, and a shell to each of the two disputants.
Orthodox and agnostic are as the poles asunder, yet they could not but both agree with Barty Josselin, who so cleverly extended a hand to each, and acted as a conductor between them.
That irresistible optimism which so forces itself upon all Josselin's readers, who number by now half the world, and will probably one day include the whole of it – when the whole of it is civilized – belonged to him by nature, by virtue of his health and his magnificent physique and his happy circumstances, and an admirably balanced mind, which was better fitted for his particular work and for the world's good than any special gift of genius in one direction.
His literary and artistic work never cost him the slightest effort. It amused him to draw and write more than did anything else in the world, and he always took great pains, and delighted in taking them; but himself he never took seriously for one moment – never realized what happiness he gave, and was quite unconscious of the true value of all he thought and wrought and taught!
He laughed good‐humoredly at the passionate praise that for thirty years was poured upon him from all quarters of the globe, and shrugged his shoulders at the coarse invective of those whose religious susceptibilities he had so innocently wounded; left all published insults unanswered; never noticed any lie printed about himself – never wrote a paragraph in explanation or self‐defence, but smoked many pipes and mildly wondered.
Indeed he was mildly wondering all his life: at his luck – at all the ease and success and warm domestic bliss that had so compensated him for the loss of his left eye and would almost have compensated him for the loss of both.
"It's all because I'm so deuced good‐looking!" says Barty – "and so's Leah!"
And all his life he sorrowed for those who were less fortunate than himself. His charities and those of his wife were immense – he gave all the money, and she took all the trouble.
"C'est papa qui paie et maman qui régale," as Marty would say; and never were funds distributed more wisely.
But often at odd moments the Weltschmerz, the sorrow of the world, would pierce this man who no longer felt sorrows of his own – stab him through and through – bring the sweat to his temples – fill his eyes with that strange pity and trouble that moved you so deeply when you caught the look; and soon the complicated anguish of that dim regard would resolve itself into gleams of a quite celestial sweetness – and a heavenly message would go forth to mankind in such simple words that all might read who ran…
All these endowments of the heart and brain, which in him were masculine and active, were possessed in a passive form by his wife; instead of the buoyant energy and boisterous high spirits, she had patience and persistency that one felt to be indomitable, and a silent sympathy that never failed, and a fund of cheerfulness and good sense on which any call might be made by life without fear of bankruptcy; she was of those who could play a losing game and help others to play it – and she never had a losing game to play!
These gifts were inherited by their children, who, moreover, were so fed on their father's books – so imbued with them – that one felt sure of their courage, endurance, and virtue, whatever misfortunes or temptations might assail them in this life.
One felt this especially with the youngest but one, Marty, who, with even more than her due share of those gifts of the head and heart they had all inherited from their two parents, had not inherited their splendid frames and invincible health.
Roderick, alias Mark Tapley, alias Chips, who is now the sailor, was, oddly enough, the strongest and the hardiest of the whole family, and yet he was born two years after Marty. She always declared she brought him up and made a man of him, and taught him how to throw stones, and how to row and ride and swim; and that it was entirely to her he owed it that he was worthy to be a sailor – her ideal profession for a man.
He was devoted to her, and a splendid little chap, and in the holidays he and she and I were inseparable, and of course Chucker‐out, who went with us wherever it was – Hâvre, Dieppe, Dinard, the Highlands, Whitby, etc.
Once we were privileged to settle ourselves for two months in Castle Rohan, through the kindness of Lord Whitby; and that was the best holiday of all – for the young people especially. And more especially for Barty himself, who had such delightful boyish recollections of that delightful place, and found many old friends among the sailors and fisher people – who remembered him as a boy.
Chips and Marty and I and the faithful Chucker‐out were never happier than on those staiths where there is always such an ancient and fishlike smell; we never tired of watching the miraculous draughts of silver herring being disentangled from the nets and counted into baskets, which were carried on the heads of the stalwart, scaly fishwomen, and packed with salt and ice in innumerable barrels for Billingsgate and other great markets; or else the sales by auction of huge cod and dark‐gray dog‐fish as they lay helpless all of a row on the wet flags amid a crowd of sturdy mariners looking on, with their hands in their pockets and their pipes in their mouths.
Then over that restless little bridge to the picturesque old town, and through its long, narrow street, and up the many stone steps to the ruined abbey and the old church on the East Cliff; and the old churchyard, where there are so many stones in memory of those who were lost at sea.
It was good to be there, in such good company, on a sunny August morning, and look around and about and down below: the miles and miles of purple moor, the woods of Castle Rohan, the wide North Sea, which turns such a heavenly blue beneath a cloudless sky; the two stone piers, with each its lighthouse, and little people patiently looking across the waves for Heaven knows what! the busy harbor full of life and animation; under our feet the red roofs of the old town and the little clock tower of the market‐place; across the stream the long quay with its ale‐houses and emporiums and jet shops and lively traffic; its old gabled dwellings and their rotting wooden balconies. And rising out of all this, tier upon tier, up the opposite cliff, the Whitby of the visitors, dominated by a gigantic windmill that is – or was – almost as important a landmark as the old abbey itself.