"^^v ?)o-v.i^(><. PAULINE FORE MOFFITT LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE WORKS BY GEORGE MOORE A MODERN LOVER. A mummer's wife. A DRAMA IN MUSLIN. ESTHER WATERS. CELIBATES. EVELYN INNES. SISTER TERESA. THE UNTILLED FIELD. THE LAKE. MODERN PAINTING. IMPRESSIONS AND OPINIONS. THE STRIKE AT ARLINGFORD, MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE BY GEORGE MOORE LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1906 Copyright 1906 hy William Heinemarm. CONTENTS I. SPRING IN LONDON, . 1 II. FLOWERING NORMANDY, 7 III. A WAITRESS, .... 12 IV. THE END OF MARIE PELLB6RIN, 22 V. LA BUTTE, .... 42 VI. SPENT LOVE, . . . 60 VII. Ninon's table d'h6tb, 75 VIII. THE LOVERS OF ORELAY, 96 IX. IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS, . 226 X. A REMEMBRANCE, . 265 XI. BRING IN THE LAMP, . 269 XII. SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON, . 286 XIII. RESURGAM, . 297 Vll MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE I S I sit at my window on Sunday morn- spring in ing, lazily watching the sparrows London — restless black dots that haunt the old tree at the corner of King's Bench Walk — I begin to distinguish a faint green haze in the branches of the old lime. Yes, there it is green in the branches ; and I 'm moved by an impulse — the impulse of spring is in my feet; indiarubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I would see London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, to stop — pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs — to call a hansom, and to notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement Danes. The quality of the green is exquisite on the smoke- black wall. London can be seen better on Sundays than on week-days ; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, celebrated for licentious literature. The blue and white sky shows above a seventeenth- 2 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPRING IN century gable^ and a few moments after we are LONDON jj^ Drury Lane. The fine weather has enticed the population out of grim courts and alleys ; skipping- ropes are whirling everywhere. The children hardly escape being run over. Coster girls sit wrapped in shawls contentedly like rabbits at the edge of a burrow ; the men smoke their pipes in sullen groups, their eyes on the closed doors of the public house. At the corner of the great theatre a vendor of cheap ices is rapidly absorbing the few spare pennies of the neighbourhood. The hansom turns out of the lane into the great thoroughfare, a bright glow like the sunset fills the roadway, and upon it a triangular block of masonry and St. Giles' church rise, the spire aloft in the faint blue and delicate air. Spires are so beautiful that we would fain believe that they will outlast creeds ; religion or no religion we must have spires, and in town and country — spires showing between trees and rising out of the city purlieus. The spring tide is rising; the almond-trees are in bloom, that one growing in an area spreads its Japanese decoration fan-like upon the wall. The hedges in the time-worn streets of Fitzroy Square light up — how the green runs along ! The spring is more winsome here than in the country. One must be in London to see the spring. I can see the spring from afar dancing in St. John's Wood, haze and sun playing together like a lad and a lass. The sweet air, how tempting ! How excit- ing ! It melts on the lips in fond kisses, instilling MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 3 a delicate gluttony of life. I should like to see spring in girls in these gardens walking through shadowy ^<*ndon alleys,, lit here and there by a ray. I should like to see girls walking hand in hand, catching at branches, as girls do when dreaming of lovers. But alas ! the gardens are empty ; only some daffodils ! But how beautiful is the curve of the flower when seen in profile, and still more beautiful is the starry yellow when the flower is seen full face. That antique flower carries my mind back — not to Greek times, for the daffodil has lost something of its ancient loveliness ; it reminds me more of a Wedg- wood than of a Greek vase. My nonsense thoughts amuse me ; I follow my thoughts as a child follows butterflies ; and all this ecstasy in me, and about me^ is the joy of health — my health and the health of the world. This April day has set my brain and my blood on fire. Now I must ponder by this old canal ! It looks as if it had fallen into disuse^ and that is charming ; an abandoned canal is a perfect symbol of — well, I do not know of what. A river flows or rushes, even an artificial lake harbours water-fowl, children sail their boats upon it ; but a canal does nothing. Here comes a boat ! The canal has not been aban- doned. Ah ! that boat has interrupted my dreams, and I feel quite wretched. I had hoped that the last had passed twenty years ago. Here it comes with its lean horse, the rope tightening and stretching, a great black mass with ripples at the prow and a figure bearing against the rudder. A canal reminds 4 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPRING IN me of my childhood ; every child likes a canal. A LONDON canal recalls the first wonder. We all remember the wonder with which we watched the first barge, the wonder which the smoke coming out of the funnel excited. When my father asked me why I *d like to go to Dublin better by canal than by railroad, I couldn't tell him. Nor could I tell any one to-day why I love a canal. One never loses one's fondness for canals. The boats glide like the days, and the toiling horse is a symbol ! how he strains, sticking his toes into the path ! There are visits to pay. Three hours pass — of course women, always women. But at six I am free, and I resume my meditations in declining light as the cab rolls through the old brick streets that crowd round Golden Square ; streets whose names you meet in old novels ; streets full of studios where Hayden, Fuseli, and others of the rank historical tribe talked art with a big A, drank their despair away, and died wondering why the world did not recognise their genius. Children are scrambling round a neglected archway, striving to reach to a lantern of old time. The smell of these dry faded streets is peculiar to London ; there is something of the odour of the original marsh in the smell of these streets ; it rises through the pave- ment and mingles with the smoke. Fancy follows fancy, image succeeds image ; till all is but a seem- ing, and mystery envelops everything. That white Arch seems to speak to me out of the twilight. I would fain believe it has its secret to reveal. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 5 London wraps herself in mists; blue scarfs are falling spring in — trailing. London has a secret ! Let me peer into i^ondon her veiled face and read. I have only to fix my thoughts to decipher — what ? I know not. Some- thing . . . perhaps. But I cannot control my thoughts. I am absorbed in turn by the beauty of the Marble Arch and the perspective of the Bayswater Road, fading like an apparition amid the romance of great trees. As I turn away, for the wind thrills and obliges me to walk rapidly, I think how fortunate I am to experience these emotions in Hyde Park, whereas my fellows have to go to Switzerland and to climb up Mont Blanc to feel half what I am feeling now as I stand looking across the level park watching the sunset, a dusky one. The last red bar of light fades, and nothing remains but the grey park with the blue of the suburb behind it, flowing away full of mist and people, dim and mournful to the pallid lights of Kensington ; and its crowds are like strips of black tape scattered here and there. By the railings the tape has been wound into a black ball, and, no doubt, the peg on which it is wound is some preacher promising human nature deliver- ance from evil if it will forgo the spring time. But the spring time continues, despite the preacher, over yonder, under branches swelling with leaf and noisy with sparrows, the spring is there amid the boys and girls, boys dressed in ill-fitting suits of broadcloth, daffodils in their buttonholes ; girls hardly less coarse, creatures made for work, escaped 6 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPRING IN for a while from the thraldom of the kitchen, now LONDON doing the business of the world better than the preacher; poor servants of sacred spring. A woman in a close-fitting green cloth dress passes me to meet a young man ; a rich fur hangs from her shoulders ; and they go towards Park Lane^ towards the wilful little houses with low balconies and pendent flower-baskets swinging in the areas. Cir- cumspect little gardens ! There is one, Greek as an eighteenth-century engraving, and the woman in the close-fitting green cloth dress, rich fur hanging from her shoulders, almost hiding the pleasant waist, enters one of these. She is Park Lane. Park Lane supper-parties and divorce are written in her eyes and manner. The old beau, walking swiftly lest he should catch cold, his moustache clearly dyed, his waist certainly pinched by a belt, he, too, is Park Lane. And those two young men, talking joyously — admirable specimens of Anglo-Saxons, slender feet, varnished boots, health and abundant youth — they, too, are characteristic of Park Lane. Park Lane dips in a narrow and old-fashioned way as it enters Piccadilly, Piccadilly has not yet grown vulgar, only a little modern, a little out of keeping with the beauty of the Green Park, of that beautiful dell, about whose mounds I should like to see a comedy of the Restoration acted. I used to stand here, at this very spot, twenty years ago, to watch the moonlight between the trees, and the shadows of the trees floating over that beautiful dell ; I used to think of Wycherly's MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 7 comedy, Love in St. James's Park, and I think of spring in it still. In those days the Argyle Rooms, Kate '^ondon Hamilton's in Panton Street, and the Cafe de la Regence were the fashion. But Paris drew me from these, towards other pleasures, towards the Nouvelle Athenes and the Elysee Montmartre ; and when I returned to London after an absence of ten years I found a new London, a less English London. Paris draws me still, and I shall be there in three weeks when the chestnuts are in bloom. II On my arrival in Paris, though the hour was that flowering stupid hour of seven in the morning, while I walked normandy up the grey platform, my head was filled with memories of the sea, for all the way across it had seemed like a beautiful blue plain without begin- ning or end, a plain on which the ship threw a little circle of light, moving always like life itself, with darkness before and after. I remembered how we steamed into the long winding harbour in the dusk, half an hour before we were due — at day- break. Against the green sky, along the cliffs edge a line of broken paling zigzagged ; one star shone in the dawning sky, one reflection wavered in the tranquil harbour. There was no sound except the splashing of paddle-wheels, and not wind enough to take the fishing-boats out to sea ; the boats rolled in the tide, their sails only half filled. From the deck of the steamer we watched the strange 8 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE FLOWERING crcws, wild-looking men and boys, leaning over NORMANDY ^j^^ bulwai'ks ; and I remembered how I had sought for the town amid the shadow, but no- where could I discover trace of it ; yet I knew it was there, smothered in the dusk, under the green sky, its streets leading to the cathedral, the end of every one crossed by flying but- tresses, and the round roof disappearing amid the chimney-stacks. A curious, pathetic town, full of nuns and pigeons and old gables and strange dormer windows, and courtyards where French nobles once assembled — fish will be sold there in a few hours. Once I spent a summer in Dieppe. And during the hour we had to wait for the train, during the hour that we watched the green sky widening between masses of shrouding cloud, I thought of ten years ago. The town emerged very slowly, and only a few roofs were visible when the fisher-girl clanked down the quays with a clumsy movement of the hips, and we were called upon to take our seats in the train. We moved along the quays, into the suburbs, and then into a quiet garden country of little fields and brooks and hill- sides breaking into cliffs. The fields and the hills were still shadowless and grey, and even the orchards in bloom seemed sad. But what shall I say of their beauty when the first faint lights appeared, when the first rose clouds appeared above the hills .^ Orchard succeeded orchard, and the farmhouses were all asleep. There is no such journey in the world as the journey from Dieppe to MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 9 Paris on a fine May morning. Never shall I forget flowering the first glimpse of Rouen Cathedral in the diamond normandy air, the branching river and the tall ships anchored in the deep current. I v^^as dreaming of the cathedral v^^hen we had left Rouen far behind us, and when I awoke from my dream we were in the midst of a flat green country, the river winding about islands and through fields in which stood solitary poplar-trees, formerly haunts of Corot and Daubigny. I could see the spots where they had set their easels — that slight rise with the solitary poplar for Corot, that rich river bank and shady backwater for Daubigny. Soon after I saw the first weir, and then the first hay-boat ; and at every moment the river grew more serene, more gracious, it passed its arms about a flat, green-wooded island, on which there was a rookery ; and sometimes we saw it ahead of us, looping up the verdant landscape as if it were a gown, running through it like a white silk ribbon, and over there the green gown disappearing in fine muslin vapours, drawn about the low horizon. I did not weary of this landscape, and was sorry when the first villa appeared. Another and then another showed beween the chestnut trees in bloom ; and there were often blue vases on the steps and sometimes lanterns in metal work hung from wooden balconies. The shutters were not yet open, those heavy French shutters that we all know so well, and that give the French houses such a look of comfort, of ease, of long tradition. Sud- 10 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE FLOWERING dciily thc aspect of a street struck me as a place I NORMANDY j^^^j knowii, and I said, ' Is it possible that we are passing through Asnieres ? ' The name flitted past, and I was glad I had recognised Asnieres, for at the end of that very long road is the restaurant where we used to dine, and between it and the bridge is the bal where we used to dance. It was there that I saw the beautiful Blanche D'Antigny surrounded by her admirers. It was there she used to sit by the side of the composer of the musical follies which she sang — in those days I thought she sang enchantingly. Those were the days of L'QEil, Creve, and Chilperic. She once passed under the chestnut-trees of that dusty little hal de hanlieue with me by her side, proud of being with her. She has gone and Julia Baron has gone ; Hortense has outlived them all. She must be very old, eighty- five at least. It would be wonderful to hear her sing Mon cher amajit, je te jure in the quavering voice of eighty-five ; it would be wonderful to hear her sing it because she doesn't know how wonderful she is ; the old light of love requires an interpreter, and she has had many ; many great poets have voiced her woe and decadence. Not five minutes from that bal was the little house in which Herve lived, and to which he used to invite us to supper ; and where, after supper, he used to play to us the last music he had composed. We listened, but the public would listen to it no longer. Sedan had taken all the tinkle out of it, and the poor compositeur toque never caught the public ear MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 11 again. We listened to his chirpy scores, believing flowering that they would revive that old nervous fever which normandy was the Empire when Hortense used to dance, when Hortense took the Empire for a springboard, when Paris cried out. Cascade ma Jille, Hortense, cascade. The great Hortense Schneider, the great goddess of folly, used to come down there to sing the songs which were intended to revive her triumphs. She was growing old then, her days were over, and Herve's day was over. Vainly did he pile parody upon parody ; vainly did he seize the conductor's baton ; the days of their glory had gone. Now Asnieres itself is forgotten; the modern youth has chosen another suburb to disport himself in ; the ballroom has been pulled down, and never again will an orchestra play a note of these poor scores ; even their names are unknown. A few bars of a chorus of pages came back to me, remembered only by me, all are gone, like Hortense and Blanche and Julia. But after all I am in Paris. Almost the same Paris ; almost the same George Moore, my senses awake as before to all enjoyment, my soul as en- rapt as ever in the divine sensation of life. Once my youth moved through thy whiteness, O City, and its dreams lay down to dreams in the freedom of thy fields ! Years come and years go, but every year I see city and plain in the happy exaltation of spring, and departing before the cuckoo, while the blossom is still bright on the bough, it has come to me to think that Paris and May are one. 12 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE III Feeling that he would never see Scotland again, Stevenson wrote in a preface to Catriona : — ' I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny.' Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But however vacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will be remembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forget the ' laughter and the tears ' and the ' sudden freshet,' and a simpler phrase will form itself in our memories. The emotion that Stevenson had to express transpires only in the words, '^ romance of destiny, ultimate islands.* Who does not feel his destiny to be a romance, and who does not admire the ultimate island whither his destiny will cast him } Giacomo Cenci, whom the Pope ordered to be flayed alive, no doubt admired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, a raised plank, so that the executioner might con- veniently roll up the skin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating a tambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 13 sure it admired in some remote way the romance of a wait- destiny that had taken it from the woodland and ^*^^^ cast it upon its ultimate island — in this case a barrow. But neither of these strange examples of the romance of destiny seems to me more wonder- ful than the destiny of a wistful Irish girl whom I saw serving drinks to students in a certain ultimate cafe in the Latin Quarter ; she, too, no doubt, admired the destiny which had cast her out, ordain- ing that she should die amid tobacco smoke, serving drinks to students, entertaining them with what- ever conversation they desired. Gervex, Mademoiselle D'Avary, and I had gone to this cafe after the theatre for half an hour's dis- traction. I had thought that the place seemed too rough for Mademoiselle D'Avary, but Gervex had said that we should find a quiet corner, and we had happened to choose one in charge of a thin, delicate girl, a girl touched with languor, weakness, and a grace which interested and moved me ; her cheeks were thin, and the deep grey eyes were wistful as a drawing of Rossetti ; her waving brown hair fell over the temples, and was looped up low over the neck after the Rossetti fashion. I had noticed how the two women had looked at each other, one woman healthful and rich, the other poor and ailing ; I had guessed the thought that had passed across their minds. Each had doubtless asked and wondered why life had come to them so differently. But first I must tell who was Mademoiselle D'Avary, and how I came to know her. I had gone to 14 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE A WAIT- Tortoni, a once celebrated cafe at the corner of the REss p^^jg Taitbout, the clining-place of Rossini, When Rossini had earned an income of two thousand pounds a year, it is recorded that he said, ' Now I 've done with music, it has served its turn, and I 'm going to dine every day at Tortoni's.' Even in my time Tortoni was the rendezvous of the world of art and letters; every one was there at five o'clock, and to Tortoni I went the day I arrived in Paris. To be seen there would make known the fact that I was in Paris. Tortoni was a sort of publication. At Tortoni I had discovered a young man, one of my oldest friends, a painter of talent — he had a picture in the Luxembourg — and a man who was beloved by women. Gervex, for it was he, had seized me by the hand, and with voluble eagerness had told me that I was the person he was seeking : he had heard of my coming and had sought me in every cafe from the Madeleine to Tortoni. He had been seeking me because he wished to ask me to dinner to meet Mademoiselle D'Avary : we were to fetch her in the Rue des Capucines. I write the name of the street, not because it matters to my little story in what street she lived, but because the name is an evocation. Those who like Paris like to hear the names of the streets, and the long stair- case turning closely up the painted walls, the brown painted doors on the landings, and the bell rope, are evocative of Parisian life; and Mademoiselle D'Avary is herself an evocation, for she was an actress of the Palais Royal. My friend, too, is an MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 15 evocation ; he was one of those whose pride is not a wait- to spend money upon women, whose theory of life is that ' If she likes to come round to the studio when one's work is done, 7ious pouvons faire la fete ensemble.' But however defensible this view of life may be, and there is much to be said for it, I had thought that he might have refrained from saying when I looked round the drawing- room admiring it — a drawing-room furnished with sixteenth-century bronzes, Dresden figures, etageres covered with silver ornaments, three drawings by Boucher — Boucher in three periods, a French Boucher, a Flemish Boucher, and an Italian Boucher — that I must not think that any of these things were presents from him, and from saying when she came into the room that the bracelet on her arm was not from him. It had seemed to me in slightly bad taste that he should remind her that he made no presents, for his remark had clouded her joyousness ; I could see that she was not so happy at the thought of going out to dine with him as she had been. It was chez Foyoz that we dined, an old-fashioned restaurant still free from the new taste that likes walls painted white and gold, electric lamps and fiddlers. After dinner we had gone to see a play next door at the Odeon, a play in which shepherds spoke to each other about singing brooks, and stabbed each other for false women, a play diversi- fied with vintages, processions, wains and songs. Nevertheless it had not interested us. And during 16 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE A WAIT- the entr'actes Gervex had paid visits in various parts of the house, leaving Mademoiselle D'Avary to make herself agreeable to me. I dearly love to walk by the perambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers. After the play he had said, 'Allo7is hoire un bock,' and we had turned into a students' cafe, a cafe furnished with tapestries and oak tables, and old-time jugs and Medicis gowns, a cafe in which a student occasionally caught up a tall bock in his teeth, emptied it at a gulp, and after turning head over heels, walked out without having smiled. Mademoiselle D'Avary's beauty and fashion had drawn the wild eyes of all the students gathered there. She wore a flower-enwoven dress, and from under the large hat her hair showed dark as night ; and her southern skin filled with rich tints, yellow and dark green where the hair grew scanty on the neck ; the shoulders drooped into opulent sugges- tion in the lace bodice. And it was interesting to compare her ripe beauty with the pale deciduous beauty of the waitress. Mile. D'Avary sat, her fan wide-spread across her bosom, her lips parted, the small teeth showing between the red lips. The waitress sat, her thin arms leaning on the table, joining very prettily in the conversation, betraying only in one glance that she knew that she was only a failure and Mademoiselle D'Avary a success. It was some time before the ear caught the slight accent, an accent that was difficult to trace to any country. Once I heard a southern intonation, and then a northern, finally I heard an unmistakable English intonation, and said — MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 17 But you 're English/ a wait- ' I 'm Irish. I m from Dublin.' ^^^® And thinking of a girl reared in its Dublin con- ventions, but whom the romance of destiny had cast upon this ultimate cafe, I asked her how she had found her way here ; and she told me she had left Dublin when she was sixteen ; she had come to Paris six years ago to take a situation as nursery governess. She used to go with the children into the Luxembourg Gardens and talk to them in English. One day a student had sat on the bench beside her. The rest of the story is easily guessed. But he had no money to keep her, and she had to come to this cafe to earn her living. ' It doesn't suit me, but what am I to do } One must live, and the tobacco smoke makes me cough.' I sat looking at her, and she must have guessed what was passing in my mind, for she told me that one lung was gone ; and we spoke of health, of the South, and she said that the doctor had advised her to go away south. Seeing that Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary were engaged in conversation, I leaned forward and devoted all my attention to this wistful Irish girl, so interesting in her phthisis, in her red Medicis gown, her thin arms showing in the long rucked sleeves. I had to offer her drink ; to do so was the custom of the place. She said that drink harmed her, but she would get into trouble if she refused drink ; perhaps I would not mind paying for a piece of beef-steak instead, She had been B 18 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE A WAIT- ordered raw steak ! I have only to close my eyes to see her going over to the corner of the cafe and cutting a piece and putting it away. She said she would eat it before going to bed, and that would be two hours hence, about three. While talking to her I thought of a cottage in the South amid olive and orange trees, an open window full of fragrant air, and this girl sitting by it. * I should like to take you south and attend upon you.' ' I 'm afraid you would grow weary of nursing me. And I should be able to give you very little in return for your care. The doctor says I 'm not to love any one.' We must have talked for some time, for it was like waking out of a dream when Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary got up to go, and seeing how interested I was, he laughed, saying to Mademoiselle D'Avary that it would be kind to leave me with my new friend. His pleasantry jarred, and though I should like to have remained, I followed them into the street, where the moon was shining over the Luxembourg Gardens. And as I have said before, I dearly love to walk by a perambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers : but it is sad to find oneself alone on the pavement at midnight. Instead of going back to the cafe, I wandered on, thinking of the girl I had seen, and of her certain death, for she could not live many months in that cafe. We all want to think at midnight, under the moon, when MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 19 the city looks like a black Italian engravings and a wait- poems come to us as we watch a swirling river. Not only the idea of a poem came to me that night, but on the Pont Neuf the words began to sing together, and I jotted down the first lines before going to bed. Next morning I continued my poem, and all day was passed in this little composition. We are alone ! Listen, a little while, And hear the reason why your weary smile And lute-toned speaking are so very sweet. And how my love of you is more complete Than any love of any lover. They Have only been attracted by the grey Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim And delicate form, or some such other whim. The simple pretexts of all lovers; — I For other reason. Listen whilst I try To say. I joy to see the sunset slope Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm. In mildly modulated phrases ; thus Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening's sad serenity. . . . I would possess your dying hours ; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I plead For them. Although I never loved as yet, Methinks that I might love you ; I would get From out the knowledge that the time was brief. That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm Beyond all other loves, for now the arm 20 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames Its passion ; love perhaps it is not, yet To see you fading like a violet, Or some sweet thought, would be a very strange And costly pleasure, far beyond the range Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I Will choose a country spot where fields of rye And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains. Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes. To pass our honeymoon ; a cottage where The porch and windows are festooned with fair Green leaves of eglantine, and look upon A shady garden where we '11 walk alone In the autumn sunny evenings ; each will see Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange-tree, The garden's length, is far, and you will rest From time to time, leaning upon my breast Your languid lily face. Then later still Unto the sofa by the window-sill Your wasted body I shall carry, so That you may drink the last left lingering glow Of evening, when the air is filled with scent Of blossoms ; and my spirits shall be rent The while with many griefs. Like some blue day That grows more lovely as it fades away, Gaining that calm serenity and height Of colour wanted, as the solemn night Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever ; I shall weep A day and night large tears upon your face. Laying you then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of you ; and deem It happiness to know that you are far MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 21 From any base desires as that fair star a wait- Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. ^^^^ Death takes but little, yea, your death has given Me that deep peace, and immaculate possession Which man may never find in earthly passion. Good poetry of course not, but good verse, well turned every line except the penultimate. The elision is not a happy one, and the mere suppres- sion of the ' and ' does not produce a satisfying line. Death takes but little, Death I thank for giving Me a remembrance, and a pure possession Of unrequited love. And mumbling the last lines of the poem, I hastened to the cafe near the Luxembourg Gardens, wondering if I should find courage to ask the girl to come away to the South and live, fearing that I should not, fearing it was the idea rather than the deed that tempted me ; for the soul of a poet is not the soul of Florence Nightingale. I was sorry for this wistful Irish girl, and was hastening to her, I knew not why; not to show her the poem — the very thought was intolerable. Often did I stop on the way to ask myself why I was going, and on what errand. Without discovering an answer in my heart I hastened on, feeling, I suppose, in some blind way that my quest was in my own heart. I would know if it were capable of making a sacrifice ; and sitting down at one of her tables I waited, but she did not come, and I asked the 22 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE A WAIT- student by me if he knew the girl generally ^^^® in charge of these tables. He said he did^ and told me about her case. There was no hope for her, only a transfusion of blood could save her ; she was almost bloodless. He described how blood could be taken from the arm of a healthy man and passed into the veins of the almost bloodless. But as he spoke things began to get dim and his voice to grow faint ; I heard some one saying, * You 're very pale,' and he ordered some brandy for me. The South could not save her ; practically nothing could, and I returned home thinking of her. Twenty years have passed, and I am thinking of her again. Poor little Irish girl ! Cast out in the end by a sudden freshet on an ultimate cafe. Poor little heap of bones ! And I bow my head and admire the romance of destiny which ordained that I, who only saw her once, should be the last to remember her. Perhaps I should have forgotten her had it not been that I wrote a poem, a poem which I now inscribe and dedicate to her nameless memory. IV THE END Octave Barres liked his friends to come to his OF MARIE g^-^^jQ g^y^^ j^ fg^ Qf ^jg ^jjQ believed in his talent PELLEGRIN it., i /. i , , i used to drop in during the afternoon, and little by little I got to know every picture, every sketch ; but one never knows everything that a painter has done, and one day, coming into the studio, I caught MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 23 sight of a full-length portrait I had never seen the end before on the easel. «^ ^^^'^ ' It was in the back room turned to the wall/ he said. ' I took it out thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decoration might buy it,' and he turned away not liking to hear my praise of it ; for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised nor abused. ' I painted it before I knew how to paint/ and standing before me, his palette in his hand, he expounded his new aestheticism : that up to the beginning of the nine- teenth century all painting had been done first in monochrome and then glazed, and what we know as solid painting had been invented by Greuze. One day in the Louvre he had perceived something in Delacroix, something not wholly satisfactory; this something had set him thinking. It was Rubens, however, who had revealed the secret ! It was Rubens who had taught him how to paint ! He admitted that there was danger in retracing one's steps, in beginning one's education over again ; but what help was there for it, since painting was not taught in the schools. I had heard all he had to say before, and could not change my belief that every man must live in the ideas of his time, be they good or bad. It is easy to say that we must only adopt Rubens' method and jealously guard against any infringement on our personality; but in art our personality is deter- mined by the methods we employ, and Octave's portrait interested me more than the Pegasus 24 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END decoration, or the three pink Venuses holding a OP MARIE basket of flowers above their heads. The portrait was crude and violent, but so was the man that had painted it ; he had painted it when he was a disciple of Manet's, and the methods of Manet were in agreement with my friend's temperament. We are all impressionists to-day, we are eager to note down what we feel and see, and the carefully prepared rhetorical manner of Rubens was as in- compatible with Octave's temperament as the manner of John Milton is with mine. There was a thought of Goya in the background, in the contrast between the grey and the black, and there was something of Manet's simplifications in the face, but these echoes were faint, nor did they matter, for they were of our time. In looking at his model he had seen and felt something; he had noted this harshly, crudely, but he noted it ; and to do this is after all the main thing. His sitter had inspired him. The word ' inspired ' offended him ; I withdrew it ; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and he admitted that : to see that thin, olive-complexioned girl with fine delicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head like feathers — she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing — compelled one to paint ; and after admiring the face I admired the black silk dress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with black lace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls upon her neck. I was interested in the quality of the painting, so MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE^ 25 different from Octave's present painting, but I was the end more interested in the woman herself. The picture ®^ marie , T 1- 1 PELLEGRIN revealed to me something in human nature that 1 had never seen before, something that I had never thought of. The soul in this picture was so intense that I forgot the painting, and began to think of her. She was unlike any one I had ever met in Octave Barres' studio ; a studio beloved of women ; the women one met there seemed to be of all sorts, but in truth they were all of a sort. They began to arrive about four o'clock in the afternoon, and they stayed on until they were sent away. He allowed them to play the piano and sing to him ; he allowed them, as he would phrase it, to grouiller about the place, and they talked of the painters they had sat to, of their gowns, and they showed us their shoes and their garters. He heeded them hardly at all, walking to and fro thinking of his painting, of his archaic painting. I often wondered if his appearance counted for anything in his renunciation of modern methods, and certainly his appearance was a link of association ; he did not look like a modern man, but like a sixteenth-century baron ; his beard and his broken nose and his hierarchial air contributed to the resemblance; the jersey he wore reminded one of a cuirass, a coat of mail. Even in his choice of a dwelling-place he seemed instinctively to avoid the modern ; he had found a studio in the street, the name of which no one had ever heard before ; it was found with difficulty. And the studio, too, it was hidden behind great crumbling walls, in the 26 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END middle of a plot of ground in which some one was OF MARIE growing cabbages. Octave was always, as he would phrase it, dans une deche epouvantable, but he managed to keep a thoroughbred horse in the stable at the end of the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon as the light failed. He would say, Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette, mais mon cheval m' attend. And the women liked to see him mount, and many thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he rode away. But who was this refined girl ? this — a painting tells things that cannot be translated into words — this olive-skinned girl who might have sat to Raphael for a Virgin, so different from Octave's usual women ? They were of the Montmartre kin ; but this woman might be a Spanish princess. And remembering that Octave had said he had taken out the portrait hoping that the Russian who had ordered the Pegasus might buy it, the thought struck me that she might be the prince's mistress. His mistress ! Oh, what fabulous fortune ! What might her history be ? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seemingly endless chatter about his method of painting ; I had heard all he was saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his present manner, ' for there are good things in the picture,' I said, ' and the model — you seem to have been lucky with your model.' Yes, she was nice to paint from, but it was MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 27 difficult to get her to sit. A concierge s daughter — the end you wouldn't think it, would you ? ' My astonish- ^^ ^^^^^ , , \ , , 1 1 , AT PELLEGRIN ment amused him^ and he began to laugh. * You don't know her ? ' he said. ^ That is Marie Pelle- grin/ and when I asked him where he had met her he told me, at Alphonsine's ; but I did not know where Alphonsine's was. ' I 'm going to dine there to-night. I 'm going to meet her ; she 's going back to Russia with the Prince ; she has been staying in the Quartier Breda on her holiday. Sacre nom ! half-past five, and I haven't washed my brushes yet ! ' In answer to my question, what he meant by going to the Quartier Breda for a holiday, he said — ' I '11 tell you all about that in the carriage.' But no sooner had we got into the carriage than he remembered that he must leave word for a woman who had promised to sit to him, and swear- ing that a message would not delay us for more than a few minutes he directed the coachman. We were shown into a drawing-room, and the lady ran out of her bedroom, wrapping herself as she ran in a peignoir, and the sitting was discussed in the middle of a polished parquet floor. We at last returned to the carriage, but we were hardly seated when he remembered another appointment. He scribbled notes in the lodges of the concierges, and between-whiles told me all he knew of the story of Marie Pellegrin. This delicate woman that I had felt could not be of the Montmartre kin was the daughter of a concierge on the Boulevard Exterieur. She had 28 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END run away from home at fifteen^ had danced at the OF MARIE El 3^g Montmartre. PELLEGRIN "^ Sa jupe avait des trousj Elle aimait des voyous, lis ont des yeux si doux. But one day a Russian prince had caught sight of her, and had built her a palace in the Champs Ely sees ; but the Russian prince and his palace bored her. The stopping of the carriage interrupted Octave's narrative. ' Here we are,' he said, seizing a bell hanging on a jangling wire, and the green door in the crumbling wall opened, and I saw an under- sized woman — I saw Alphonsine ! And her portrait, a life-sized caricature drawn by Octave, faced me from the whitewashed wall of the hencoop. He had drawn her two cats purring about her legs, and had written under it, lis viennent apres le mou. Her garden was a gravelled space ; I think there was one tree in it. A tent had been stretched from wall to wall ; and a seedy-looking waiter laid the tables (there were two), placing bottles of wine in front of each knife and fork, and bread in long sticks at regular intervals. He was con- stantly disturbed by the ringing of the bell, and had to run to the door to admit the company. Here and there I recognised faces that I had already seen in the studio ; Clementine, who last year was studying the part of Elsa and this year was singing, Lafemme defeu, la cut, la cui, la ciiisiniere, in a cafe chantant ; MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 29 and Margaret Byron who had just retreated from the end Russia— a disastrous campaiffn hers was said to have ^^ marie T 7 j> PELLEGRIN been. The greater number were nors concours, tor Alphonsine's was to the aged courtesan what Chelsea Hospital is to the aged soldier. It was a sort of human garden full of the sound and colour of October. I scrutinised the crowd. How could any one of these women interest the woman whose por- trait I had seen in Barr^s' studio.^ That one, for instance, whom I saw every morning in the Rue des Martyres, in a greasy peignoir, going marketing, a basket on her arm. Search as I would I could not find a friend for Marie among the women nor a lover among the men — neither of those two stout middle-aged men with large whiskers, who had probably once been stockbrokers, nor the withered journalist whom I heard speaking to Octave about a duel he had fought recently ; nor the little sandy Scotchman whose French was not understood by the women and whose English was / nearly unintelligible to me ; nor the man who looked like a head-waiter — Alphonsine's lover ; he had been a waiter, and he told you with the air of Napoleon describing Waterloo that he had ^ created ' a certain fashionable cafe on the Boulevard. I could not attribute any one of these men to Marie ; and Octave spoke of her with indifference ; she had interested him to paint, and now he hoped she would get the Russian to buy her picture. ' But she 's not here/ I said, so MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END ^She '11 be here presently/ Octave answered, and OP MARIE }^g went on talking to Clementine, a fair, pretty woman whom one saw every night at the Rat Mort. It was when the soup-plates were being taken away that I saw a young woman dressed in black coming across the garden. It was she, Marie Pellegrin. She wore a dress similar to the one she wore in her portrait, a black silk covered with lace, and her black hair was swathed about her shapely little head. She was her portrait and something more. Her smile was her own, a sad little smile that seemed to come out of a depth of her being, and her voice was a little musical voice, irresponsible as a bird's, and during dinner I noticed how she broke into speech abruptly as a bird breaks into song, and she stopped as abruptly. I never saw a woman so like herself, and sometimes her beauty brought a little mist into my eyes, and I lost sight of her, or very nearly, and I went on eating mechanically. Dinner seemed to end suddenly, and before I knew that it was over we were getting up from table. As we went towards the house where coffee was being served, Marie asked me if I played cards, but I excused myself, saying that I would prefer to sit and look at her ; and just then a thin woman with red hair, who had arrived at the same time as Marie, and who had sat next her at dinner, was introduced to me, and I was told that she was Marie's intimate friend, and that the two lived together whenever Marie returned to Montraartre. She was known as MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SI La Glue ; her real name was Victorine. She had sat the end for Manet's picture of Olympe, but that was years ^^ marie ago. The face was thinner, but I recognised the red hair and the brown eyes^ small eyes set closely, reminding one of des petits verves de cognac. Her sketch-book was being passed round, and as it came into my hands I noticed that she did not wear stays and was dressed in old grey woollen. She lit cigar- ette after cigarette, and leaned over Marie with her arm about her shoulder, advising her what cards to play. The game was baccarat, and in a little while I saw that Marie was losing a great deal of money, and a little later I saw La Glue trying to persuade her away from the card-table. 'One more deal.' That deal lost her the last louis she had placed on the table. ' Some one will have to pay my cab,' she said. We were going to the Elysee Montmartre, and Alphonsine lent her a couple of louis, pour passer sa soiree J and we all went away in carriages, the little horses straining up the steep streets; the plumes of the women's hats floating over the carriage hoods. Marie was in one of the front carriages, and was waiting for us on the high steps leading from the street to the hal. ' It 's my last night,' she said, ' the last night I shall see the Elysee for many a month.' ' You '11 soon be back again .'' ' ' You see, I have been offered five hundred thou- sand francs to go to Russia for three years. Fancy, three years without seeing the Elysee/ and she 32 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END looked round as an angel might look upon Paradise OF MARIE ^^^ ^£ which she is about to be driven. ' The trees PELLEGRIN , ,. , , , . , ■, , ^.^ n . i > are beautiiul, she said, ' they re like a lairy tale ; and that is exactly what they were like, rising into the summer darkness, unnaturally green above the electric lights. In the middle of a circle of white globes the orchestra played upon an estrade, and every one w^hirled his partner as if she were a top. ' I always sit over there under the trees in the angle,' she said ; and she was about to invite me to come and sit with her, when her attention was dis- tracted from me ; for the people had drawn together into groups, and I heard everybody whispering, ' That 's Marie Pellegrin.' Seeing her coming, her waiter with much ostentation began to draw aside tables and chairs, and in a few minutes she was sitting under her tree, she and La Glue together, their friends about them, Marie distributing ab- sinthe, brandy, and cigarettes. A little procession suddenly formed under the trees and came towards her, and Marie was presented with a great basket of flowers, and all her company with bouquets ; and a little cheer went up from different parts of the bal, Vive Marie Pellegrin, la reine de I' Ely see. The music began again, the people rushed to see a quadrille where two women, with ease, were kick- ing off men's hats ; and while watching them I heard that a special display of fireworks had been arranged in Marie's honour, the news having got about that this was her last night at the Elysee. A swishing sound was heard ; the rocket rose to its height high MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 33 up in the thick sky. Then it dipped over, the star the end fell a little way and burst : it melted into turquoise ^^' marie blue, and changed to ruby red, beautiful as the colour of flowers, roses or tulips. The falling fire changed again and again. And Marie stood on a chair and watched till the last sparks vanished. ' Doesn't she look like my picture now ? ' said Octave. ^ You seemed to have divined her soul.' He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. ^I 'm not a psychologist, I am a painter. But I must get a word with her,' and with a carelessness that was almost insolence, he pushed his way into the crowd and called her, saying he wanted to speak to her; and they walked round the bal together. I could not understand his indifference to her charm, and asked myself if he had always been so in- different. In a little while they returned. ^ I '11 do my best,' I heard her say, and she ran back to join her companions. ' I suppose you 've seen enough of the Elysee .'' ' 'Ah! qu elle est jolie ce soir ; et elle ferait joliment marcher le Russe.' We walked on in silence. Octave did not notice that he had said anything to jar my feelings ; he was thinking of his portrait, and presently he said that he was sorry she was going to Russia. ' I should like to begin another portrait, now that I have learned to paint.' * Do you think she '11 go to Russia ? ' 'Yes, she'll go there; but she'll come back one c 34. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END of these days^ and I '11 get her to sit again. It is OF MARIE extraordinary how little is known of the art of PELLEGRiN p^jjj^-jjjg . |-j^g ^j.^ jg forgotten. The old masters did perfectly in two days what we spend weeks fumbling at. In two days Rubens finished his grisaille, and the glazing was done with certainty, with skill, with ease in half an hour ! He could get more depth of colour with a glaze than any one can to-day, however much paint is put on the canvas. The old masters had method, now there 's none. One brush as well as another, rub the paint up or down, it doesn't matter so long as the canvas is covered. Manet began it, and Cezanne has — well, filed the petition : painting is bankrupt.' I listened to him a little wearily, for I had heard all he was saying many times before, but Octave always talked as he wanted to talk, and this even- ing he wanted to talk of painting, not of Marie, and I was glad when we came to the spot where our ways parted. ' You know that the Russian is coming to the studio to-morrow ; I hope he '11 buy the portrait.' ' I hope he will,' I said. ' I 'd buy it myself if I could afford it.' ^ I 'd prefer you to have something I have done since, unless it be the woman you 're after . . . but one minute. You 're coming to sit to me the day after to-morrow ? ' ^ Yes,' I said, ' I '11 come.* ' And then I '11 be able to tell you if he has bought the picture.' MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 35 Three days afterwards I asked Octave on the the end threshold if the Russian had bought the portrait, and of marie he told me nothing had been definitely settled yet. p^^^^^^^^in Marie had gone to St. Petersburg with the prince, and this was the last news I had of her for many months. But a week rarely passed without some- thing happening to remind me of her. One day a book of travels in Siberia opened at a passage telling how a boy belonging to a tribe of Asiatic savages had been taken from his deserts, where he had been * found deserted and dyings and brought to Moscow. The gentleman who had found him adopted and educated him, and the reclaimed savage became in time a fashionable young man about town, betray- ing no trace of his origin until one day he happened to meet one of his tribe. The man had come to Moscow to sell skins ; and the smell of the skins awoke a longing for the desert. The reclaimed savage grew melancholy ; his adopted father tried in vain to overcome the original instinct ; presents of money did not soothe his homesickness. He disappeared, and was not heard of for years until one day a caravan came back with the news of a man among the savages who had betrayed himself by speaking French. On being questioned he denied any knowledge of French ; he said he had never been to St. Petersburg, nor did he wish to go there. And what was this story but the story of Marie Pellegrin, who, when weary of Russian princes and palaces, returned for her holiday to the Quartier Breda ? 36 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END A few days afterwards I heard in Barres' studio pellegr\ *^^* ^^^ ^^^ escaped from Russia ; and that evening I went to Alphonsine's to dinner, hoping to see her there. But she was not there. There was no one there except Clementine and the two stockbrokers ; and I waited eagerly for news of her. I did not like to mention her name, and the dreary dinner was nearly over before her name was mentioned. I heard that she was ill ; no, not dying, but very ill. Alphonsine gave me her address; a little higher up on the same side as the Cirque Fernando, nearly facing the Elysee Montmartre. The number I could inquire out, she said, and I went away in a cab up the steep and stony Rue des Martyres, noticing the cafe and then the brasserie and a little higher up the fruit-seller and the photographer. When the mind is at stress one notices the casual, and mine was at stress, and too agitated to think. The first house we stopped at happened to be the right one, and the concierge said, ' the fourth floor.' As I went upstairs I thought of La Glue, of her untidy dress and her red hair, and it was she who answered the bell and asked me into an unfur- nished drawing-room, and we stood by the chimney- piece. ' She 's talking of going to the Elysee to-night. Won't you come in ? She 'd like to see you. There are three or four of us here. You know them. Clementine, Margaret Byron ? ' And she mentioned some other names that I did not remember, and opening a door, she cried, ^ Marie,' here's a visitor MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 37 for you, a gentleman from Alphonsine's. You the end know, dear, the Englishman, Octave Barres' «^ ^^^^^ ^ . ' ® PELLEGRIN iriend. She gave me her hand, and I held it a long while. ' Comme les Anglais sont gentils. Des qu'on est malade ' I don't think Marie finished the sentence, if she did I did not hear her ; but 1 remember quite well that she spoke of my distaste for cards. ' You didn't play that night at Alphonsine's when I lost all my money. You preferred to look at Victorine's drawings. She has done some better ones. Go and look at them, and let's finish our game. Then I '11 talk to you. So you heard about me at Alphonsine's } They say I 'm very ill, don't they } But now that I 've come back I '11 soon get well. I 'm always well at Montmartre, amn't I, Victorine .'' ' ' Nous ne sommes pas installes encore,' Marie said, referring to the scarcity of furniture, and to the clock and candelabra which stood on the floor. But if there were too few chairs, there was a good deal of money and jewellery among the bed-clothes; and Marie toyed with this jewellery during the games. She wore large lace sleeves, and the thin arms showed delicate and slight when she raised them to change her ear-rings. Her small beauty, fashioned like an ivory, contrasted with the coarse features about her, and the little nose with beautifully shaped nostrils, above all the mouth, fading at the ends into faint indecisions. Every now and then a tenderness came over her face ; 38 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END Octave had seen the essential in her, whatever he OP MARIE might say ; he had painted herself — her soul ; and PELLEGRIN » «^ . , -, \.. ^ n ■ ^ Mane s soul rose up like a water-flower m her eyes, and then the soul sank out of sight, and I saw another Marie, une grue, playing cards with five others from Alphonsine's, losing her money and her health. A bottle of absinthe stood on a beautiful empire table that her prince had given her, and Bijou, Clementine's little dog, slept on an em- broidered cushion. Bijou was one of those dear little Japanese or Chinese spaniels, those dogs that are like the King Charles. She was going to have puppies, and I was stroking her silky coat thinking of her coming trouble, when I suddenly heard Clementine's voice raised above the others, and looking up I saw a great animation in her face. I heard that the cards had not been fairly dealt, and then the women threw their cards aside, and La Glue told Clementine that she was not wanted — that elle ferait bien de debarraser les planches, that was the expression she used. I heard further accusa- tions, and among them the plaintive voice of Marie begging of me not to believe what they said. The women caught each other by the hair, and tore at each other's faces, and Marie raised herself up in bed and implored them to cease ; and then she fell back crying. For a moment it seemed as if they were going to sit down to cards again, but suddenly everybody snatched her own money and then every- body snatched at the money within her reach ; and, calling each other thieves, they struggled through MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 39 the door^ and I heard them quarrelHng all the way the end down the staircase. Bijou jumped from her chair ^^ marie •* ^ ^ PELLEGRIN and lollowed her mistress. ' Help me to look/ Marie said, and looking I saw her faint hands seeking through the bed-clothes. Some jewellery was missing, a bracelet and some pearls as well as all her money, Marie fell back among the pillows unable to speak, and every moment I dreaded a flow of blood. She began to cry, and the little lace handkerchief was soon soaking. I had to find her another. The money that had been taken had been paid her by a Jburnisseur in the Quartier, who had given her two thousand francs for her garniture de ckemiuee. A few francs were found among the bed-clothes, and these few francs, she said, were sufficient pour passer sa soiree, and she begged me to go to the dressmaker to inquire for the gown that had been promised for ten o'clock. ' I shall be at the Elysee by eleven. Au revoir, au revoir I Let me rest a little now. I shall see you to-night. You know where I always sit, in the left-hand corner, they always keep those seats for me/ Her eyes closed, I could see that she was already asleep, and her calm and reasonable sleep reminded me of her agitated and unreasonable life ; and I stood looking at her, at this poor butterfly who was lying here all alone, robbed by her friends and associates. But she slept contentedly, having found a few francs that they had overlooked amid the bed-clothes, enough to enable her to pass her even- 40 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE END ing at the Elysee ! The prince might be written OF MARIE iq . but he^ no doubt, was weary of her inabihty to lead a respectable life, and knew, no doubt, that if he were to send her money, it would go as his last gift had gone. If she lived, Marie would one day be selling fried potatoes on the streets. And this decadence — was it her fault.'' Octave would say, ' Quest ce que celapeut nousjaire, unejille plus ou moins Jichue . . . sije pouvais reussir un peu dans ce sacre metier ! ' This was how he talked, but he thought more profoundly in his painting ; his picture of her was something more than mere sarcasm. She was going to the Elysee to-night. It was just six o'clock, so she wanted her dress by ten. I must hasten away to the dressmaker at once ; it might be wiser not — she lay in bed peaceful and beautiful ; at the Elysee she would be drinking absinthe and smoking cigarettes until three in the morning. But I had promised : she wouldn't for- give me if I didn't, and I went. The dressmaker said that Madame Pellegrin would have her dress by nine, and at half-past ten I was at the Elysee waiting for her. How many times did I walk round the gravel path, wearying of the unnatural green of the chestnut leaves and of the high kicking in the quadrilles } Now and then there would be a rush of people, and then the human tide would disperse again under the trees among the zinc chairs and tables, for the enjoyment of bocks and cigars. I noticed that Marie's friends spent their evening in MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 41 the left-hand corner ; but they did not call me to the end OP MARIE PELLEGRIN drink with them, knowing well that I knew the ^^ ^^^^^ money they were spending was stolen money. I left the place discontented and weary, glad in a way that Marie had not come. No doubt the dressmaker had disappointed her, or maybe she had felt too ill. There was no time to go to inquire in the morning, for I was breakfasting with Octave, and in the afternoon sitting to him. We were in the middle of the sitting, he had just sketched in my head, when we heard footsteps on the stairs. ' Only some women,' he said ; ' I 've a mind not to open the door.' ^But do,' I said, feeling sure the women were Marie's friends bringing news of her. And it was so. She had been found dead on her balcony dressed in the gown that had just come home from the dressmaker. I hoped that Octave would not try to pass the matter off with some ribald jest, and I was sur- prised at his gravity. 'Even Octave,' I said, ' refrains, on ne blague pas la mart.' ' But what was she doing on the balcony ? ' he asked. ' What I don't understand is the balcony,' We all stood looking at her picture trying to read the face. ^ I suppose she went out to look at the fireworks ; they begin about eleven.' It was one of the women who had spoken, and her remark seemed to explain the picture. 42 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE LA BUTTE To-morrow I shall drive to breakfast, seeing Paris continuously unfolding, prospect after prospect, green swards, white buildings, villas engarlanded ; to-day I drive to breakfast through the white torridities of Rue Blanche. The back of the coach- man grows drowsier, and would have rounded off into sleep long ago, had it not been for the great paving-stones that swing the vehicle from side to side, and we have to climb the Rue Lepic, and the poor little fainting animal will never be able to draw me to the Butte. So I dismiss my carriage, half out of pity, half out of a wish to study the Rue Lepic, so typical is it of the upper lower classes. In the Rue Blanche there are portes-cochcres, but in Rue Lepic there are narrow doors, partially grated, open on narrow passages at the end of which, squeezed between the wall and the stairs, are small rooms where concierges sit, eternally en camisole, amid vegetables and sewing. The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellow walls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavy middle- aged woman, en camisole, passing between the cook- ing stove in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the men sitting at their trades in the windows. The smell of leather follows me for several steps ; a few doors further a girl sits trimming a bonnet, her mother beside her. The girl looks up, pale with the exhausting heat. At the corner of the next MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 43 street there is the marchand de vins, and opposite la butte the dirty little charbonnier, and standing about a little hole which he calls his boidique a group of women in discoloured peignoirs and heavy carpet slippers. They have baskets on their arms. Every- where traces of meagre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretch common in our London streets — the man with bare feet_, the furtive and frightened creature, gnawing a crust and drawing a black, tattered shirt about his consumptive chest. The asphalt is melting, the reverberation of the stones intolerable, my feet ache and burn. At the top of the street I enter a still poorer neighbourhood, a still steeper street, but so narrow that the shadow has already begun to draw out on the pavements. At the top of the street is a stairway, and above the stairway a grassy knoll, and above the knoll a windmill lifts its black and motionless arms. For the mill is now a mute ornament, a sign for the Bal du Moulin de la Galelte. As I ascend, the street grows whiter, and at the Butte it is empty of everything except the white rays of noon. There are some dusty streets, and silhouetting against the dim sky a dilapidated fagade of some broken pillars. Some stand in the midst of ruined gardens, circled by high walls crumbling and white, and looking through a broken gateway I see a fountain splashing, but nowhere the inhabitants that correspond to these houses — only a 44 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE LA BUTTE workwoman, a grisette, a child crying in the dust. The Butte Montmartre is full of suggestion ; grand folk must at some time have lived there. Could it be that this place was once country ^ To-day it is full of romantic idleness and abandonment. On my left an iron gateway, swinging on rusty hinges, leads on to a large terrace^ at the end of which is a row of houses. It is in one of these houses that my friend lives, and as I pull the bell I think that the pleasure of seeing him is worth the ascent, and my thoughts float back over the long time I have known Paul. We have known each other always, since we began to write. But Paul is not at home. The servant comes to the door with a baby in her arms, another baby ! and tells me that Monsieur et Madame are gone out for the day. No breakfast, no smoke, no talk about literature, only a long walk back — cabs are not found at these heights — a long walk back through the roasting sun. And it is no consolation to be told that I should have written and warned them I was coming. But I must rest, and ask leave to do so, and the servant brings me in some claret and a siphon. The study is better to sit in than the front room, for in the front room, although the shutters are closed, the white rays pierce through the chinks, and lie like sword-blades along the floor. The study is pleasant and the wine refreshing. The house seems built on the sheer hillside. Fifty feet — more than that — a hundred feet MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 45 under me there are gardens, gardens caught some- la butte how in the hollow of the hill, and planted with trees, tall trees, for swings hang out of them, other- wise I should not know they were tall. From this window they look like shrubs, and beyond the houses that surround these gardens Paris spreads out over the plain, an endless tide of bricks and stone, splashed with white when the sun shines on some railway station or great boulevard : a dim reddish mass, like a gigantic brickfield, and far away a line of hills, and above the plain a sky as pale and faint as the blue ash of a cigarette. I cannot look upon this city without emotion ; it has been all my life to me. I came here in my youth, I relinquished myself to Paris, never extending once my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Ville d'Avray, Fontainebleau — and Paris has made me. How much of my mind do I owe to Paris ? And by thus acquiring a father- land more ideal than the one birth had arrogantly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I have doubled my span of life. Do I not exist in two countries ? Have I not furnished myself with two sets of thoughts and sensations ? Ah ! the delicate de- light of owning un pays ami — a country where you may go when you are weary to madness of the routine of life, sure of finding there all the sensa- tions of home, plus those of irresponsible caprice. The pleasure of a literature that is yours with- out being wholly your own, a literature that is like an exquisite mistress, in whom you find consola- tion for all the commonplaces of life ! The com- 46 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE LA BUTTE parison is perfect, for although I know these French folk better than all else in the world, they must ever remain my pleasure, and not my work in life. It is strange that this should be so, for in truth I know them strangely well. I can see them living their lives from hour to hour ; I know what they would say on any given occasion. There is Paul. I understand nothing more completely than that man's mind. I know its habitual colour and every varying shade, and yet I may not make him the hero of a novel when I lay the scene in Montmartre, though I know it so well. I know when he dresses, how long he takes to dress, and what he wears. I know the breakfast he eats, and the streets down which he passes — their shape, their colour, their smell. I know exactly how life has come to him, how it has affected him. The day I met him in London ! Paul in London ! He was there to meet une petite fermiere with whom he had become in- fatuated when he went to Normandy to finish his novel. Paul is foncierement bon ; he married her, and this is their abode. There is the salle-a-manger, furnished with a nice sideboard in oak, and six chairs to match ; on the left is their bedroom, and there is the baby's cot, a present from le grand, le cher et illustre rnaitre. Paul and Mrs. Paul get up at twelve, and they loiter over breakfast ; some friends come in and they loiter over les petits veires. About four Paul begins to write his article, which he finishes or nearly finishes before dinner. They loiter over dinner until it is time for Paul to take MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 47 his article to the newspaper. He loiters in the la butte printing office or the cafe until his proof is ready, and when that is corrected he loiters in the many cafes of the Faubourg Montmartre^ smoking inter- minable cigars, finding his way back to the Butte between three and four in the morning. Paul is fat and of an equable temperament. He believes in naturalism all the day, particularly after breakfast, over les petits verves. He never said an unkind word to any one, and I am sure never thought one. He used to be fond of grisettes, but since he married he has thought of no one but his wife. // ecrit des choses raides, but no woman ever had a better hus- band. And now you know him as well as I do. Here are his own books : The End of Lucie Pellegrin, the story that I have just finished writing. I think I must explain how it was that I have come to re- write one of Paul's stories, the best he ever wrote. I remember asking him why he called her Lucie, and he was surprised to hear her name was Marie ; he never knew her, he had never been to Alphon- sine's, and he had told the story as he had picked it up from the women who turned into the Rat Mort at midnight for a soupe a I'oignon. He said it was a pity he did not know me when he was writing it, for I could have told him her story more sympa- thetically than the women in the Rat Mort, supply- ing him with many pretty details that they had never noticed or had forgotten. It would have been easy for me to have done this, for Marie Pellegrin is enshrined in my memory like a minia- 48 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE LA BUTTE ture in a case. I press a spring, and I see the beautifully shaped little head^ the pale olive face, the dark eyes, and the blue-black hair. Marie Pellegrin is really part of my own story, so why should I have any scruple about telling it ? Merely, because my friend had written it from hearsay? Whereas I knew her, I saw her on her deathbed. Chance made me her natural historian. Now I think that every one will accept my excuses, and will acquit me of plagiarism. I see the Rougon-Macquart series, each volume presented to him by the author, Goncourt, Huys- mans, Duranty, Ceard, Maupassant, Hennique, etc., in a word, the works of those with whom I grew up, those who tied my first literary pinafore round my neck. But here are Les Moralites Legendaires by Jules Laforgue, and Les Illuminations by Rimbaud. Paul has not read these books ; they were sent to him, I suppose, for review, and put away on the bookcase, all uncut ; their authors do not visit here. And this sets me thinking that one knows very little of any generation except one's own. True that I know a little more of the symbolists than Paul. I am the youngest of the naturalists, the eldest of the symbolists. The naturalists affected the art of painting, the symbolists the art of music ; and since the symbolists there has been no artistic manifestation — the game is played out. When Huysmanns and Paul and myself are dead, it will be as impossible to write a naturalistic novel as to revive the megatherium. Where is Hennique ? MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 49 When Monet is dead it will be as impossible to la butte paint an impressionistic picture as to revive the ichthyosaurus. A little world of ideas goes by every five-and-twenty years, and the next that emerges will be incomprehensible to me, as incom- prehensible as Monet was to Corot. . . . Was the young generation knocking at the door of the Opera Comique last night? If the music was the young generation, I am sorry for it. It was the second time I had gone. I had been to hear the music, and I left exasperated after the third act. A friend was with me and he left, but for different reasons ; he suffered in his ears j it was my intelli- gence that suffered. Why did the flute play the chromatic scale when the boy said, '// faut que cela soit un grand navire ' ? and why were all the cellos in motion when the girl answered, ^ Cela on bien tout autre chose ' } I suffered because of the divorce of the orchestra and singers, uniting perhaps at the end of the scene. It was speaking through music, no more, monotonous as the Sahara, league after league, and I lost amid sands. A chord is heard in Lohetigrifi to sustain Elsa's voice, and it performs its purpose ; a motive is heard to attract attention to a certain part of the story, and it fills its purpose, when Ortrud shrieks out the motive of the secret, and in its simplest form, at the church door, the method may be criticised as crude, but the crudest melodrama is better than this desert wandering. While I ponder on the music of the younger genera- tion, remembering the perplexity it had caused me. 50 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE LA BUTTE I hear a vagrant singing on the other side of the terrace : — I w ■:^—-^ -=|: ^^^ Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou and I say, ' I hear the truth in the mouth of the vagrant minstrel, one who possibly has no trou wherein to lay his head.' Et moi aussi,je reste dans mon trou, et mon trou est assez heau pour quejy reste, car mon trou est — Richard Wagner. My trou is the Ring — the Sacrosanct Ring. Again I fall to musing. The intention of Liszt and Wagner, and Strauss was to write music. However long Wotan might ponder on Mother Earth the moment comes when the violins begin to sing; ah! how the spring uncloses in the orchestra, and the lovers fly to the woods ! . . . The vagrant continued his wail, and forgetful of Paul, forgetful of all things but the philosophy of the minstrel of the Butte, I picked my way down the tortuous streets repeating : — P_^-i i ~^. ^^ Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou VI SPENT ^ ^'^ §^^^1? *^ s^^ dear and affectionate friends. LOVE The train would take me to them, that droll little MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 51 chemin de fer de ceintiire, and it seems a pity to miss spent the Gare St. Lazare, its Sunday morning tumult of ^^^^ Parisians starting with their mistresses and their wives for a favourite suburb. I never run up these wide stairways leading to the great wide galleries full of bookstalls (charming yellow notes), and pierced with little guichets painted round with blue, without experiencing a sensation of happy light- ness — a light-headedness that I associate with the month of May in Paris. But the tramway that passes through the Place de la Concorde goes as far as Passy, and though I love the droll little chemin de fer de ceinture I love this tramway better. It speeds along the quays between the Seine and the garden of the Champs Elysees, through miles of chestnut bloom, the roadway chequered with shadows of chestnut leaves; the branches meet overhead, and in a faint delirium of the senses I catch at a bloom, cherish it for a moment, and cast it away. The plucky little steamboats are making for the landing-places, stemming the cur- rent. I love this sprightly little river better than the melancholy Thames, along whose banks satur- nine immoralities flourish like bulrushes ! Behold the white architecture, the pillars, the balustraded steps, the domes in the blue air, the monumented swards ! Paris, like all pagan cities, is full of statues. A little later we roll past gardens, gaiety is in the air. . . . And then the streets of Passy begin to appear, mean streets, like London streets. I like them not; but the railway station 52 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT is compensation; the little railway station like a LOVE house of cards under toy trees, and the train steam- ing out into the fanciful country. The bright wood along which it speeds is like the season's millinery. It is pleasant to notice everything in Paris, the flymen asleep on their box-seats, the little horses dozing beneath the chestnut trees, the bloused workmen leaning over a green-painted table in an arbour, drinking wine at sixteen sous the litre, the villas of Auteuil, rich wood-work, rich iron railings, and the summer hush about villas engarlanded. Auteuil is so French, its symbolism enchants me. Auteuil is like a flower, its petals opening out to the kiss of the air, its roots feeling for way among the rich earth. Ah, the land of France, its vine- yards and orchards, its earthly life ! Thoughts come unbidden, my thoughts sing together, and I hardly knowing what they are singing. My thoughts are singing like the sun ; do not ask me their meaning; they mean as much and as little as the sun that I am part of — the sun of France that I shall enjoy for thirty days. May takes me to dear and affectionate friends who await me at Auteuil, and June takes me away from them. There is the villa ! And there amid the engar- landing trees my friend, dressed in pale yellow, sits in front of his easel. How the sunlight plays through the foliage, leaping through the rich, long grass; and amid the rhododendrons in bloom sits a little girl of four, his model, her frock and cap impossibly white under the great, gaudy greenery. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 53 Year after year the same affectionate welcome, spent the same spontaneous welcome in this garden of '^ove rhododendrons and chestnut bloom. I would linger in the garden, but I may not, for breakfast is ready et il ne faut pas faire manquer la messe a Madame, ha messe ! How gentle the word is, much gentler than our word, mass, and it shocks us hardly at all to see an old lady going away in her carriage pour entendre la rnesse. Religion purged of faith is a pleasant, almost a pretty thing. Some fruits are better dried than fresh ; religion is such a one, and religion, when nothing is left of it but the pleasant, familiar habit, may be defended, for were it not for our habits life would be unrecorded, it would be all on the flat, as we would say if we were talking about a picture, without perspective. Our habits are our stories, and tell whence we have come and how we came to be what we are. This is quite a pretty reflection, but there is no time to think the matter out — here is the doctor ! He lifts his skull- cap, and how beautiful is the gesture ; his dignity is the dignity that only goodness gives; and his goodness is a pure gift, existing independent of formula, a thing in itself, like Manet's painting. It was Degas who said, " A man whose profile no one ever saw," and the aphorism reminds us of the beautiful goodness that floats over his face, a light from Paradise. But why from Paradise .'* Paradise is an ugly ecclesiastical invention, and angels are an ugly Hebrew invention. It is unpardonable to think of angels in Auteuil j an angel is a prig com- 54 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT pared to the dear doctor, and an angel has wings. ix)VE Well, so had this admirable chicken, a bird that was grown for the use of the table, produced like a vegetable. A dear bird that was never allowed to run about and weary itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life ; it became a capon in tender years, and then a pipe was intro- duced into its mouth and it was fed by machinery until it could hardly walk, until it could only stagger to its bed, and there it lay in happy diges- tion until the hour came for it to be crammed again. So did it grow up without knowledge or sensation or feeling of life, moving gradually, peace- fully, towards its predestined end — a delicious re- past ! What better end, what greater glory than to be a fat chicken } The carcases of sheep that hang in butchers' shops are beginning to horrify the con- science of Europe. To cut a sheep's throat is an offensive act, but to clip out a bird's tongue with a long pair of scissors made for the purpose, is genteel. It is true that it beats its wings for a few moments, but we must not allow ourselves to be disturbed by a mere flutter of feathers. Man is merciful, and saved it from life. It grew like an asparagus ! And talking of asparagus, here are some from Argenteuil thick as umbrellas and so succulent! A word about the wine. French red wines in England always seem to taste like ink, but in France they taste of the sun. Melons are better in June — that one comes, no doubt, from LOVE MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 55 Algeria. It is, however, the kind I like best, the spent rich, red melon that one eats only in France; a thing of the moment, unrememberable ; but the chicken will never be forgotten ; twenty years hence I shall be talking of a chicken, that in becoming a fat chicken acquired twenty years of immortality — which of us will acquire as many ? As we rise from table the doctor calls me into his studio : for he would give me an excellent cigar before he bids me good-bye ; and having lighted it I follow my friend to the studio at the end of the garden, to that airy drawing-room which he has furnished in pale yellow and dark blue. On the walls are examples of the great modern masters — Manet and Monet. That view of a plain by Monet — is it not facile ? It flows like a Japanese water- colour: the low horizon evaporating in the low light, the spire of the town visible in the haze. And look at the celebrated Legon de Danse by Degas — that dancer descending the spiral stair- case, only her legs are visible, the staircase cutting the picture in twain. On the right is the dancing class and the dancing master ; something has gone wrong, and he holds out his hands in entreaty ; a group of dancers are seated on chairs in the fore- ground, and their mothers are covering their shoul- ders with shawls — good mothers anxious for their daughter's welfare, for their advancement in life. This picture betrays a mind curious, inquisitive and mordant ; and that plaid shawl is as unexpected as an adjective of Flaubert's. A portrait by Manet A 56 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT hangs close by, large, permanent and mysterious as ^^^^ nature. Degas is more intellectual, but how little is intellect compared with a gift like Manet's. Yesterday I was in the Louvre, and when wearied with examination and debate — I had gone there on a special errand — I turned into the Salle Carree for relaxation, and there wandered about, waiting to be attracted. Long ago the Mona Liza was my adven- ture, and I remember how Titian's ' Entombment ' enchanted me ; another year I delighted in the smooth impartiality of a Terbourg interior ; but this year Rembrandt's portrait of his wife held me at gaze. The face tells of her woman's life, her woman's weakness, and she seems conscious of the burden of her sex, and of the burden of her own special lot — she is Rembrandt's wife, a servant, a satellite, a watcher. The emotion that this picture awakens is an almost physical emotion. It gets at you like music, like a sudden breath of perfume. When I approach, her eyes fade into brown shadow, but when I withdraw they begin telling her story. The mouth is no more than a little shadow, but what wistful tenderness there is in it ! and the colour of the face is white, faintly tinted with bitumen, and in the cheeks some rose madder comes through the yellow. She wears a fur jacket, but the fur was no trouble to Rembrandt, he did not strive for realism. It is fur, that is sufficient. Grey pearls hang in her ears, there is a brooch upon her breast, and a hand at the bottom of the picture passing out of the frame, and that hand reminds one as the MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 57 chin does, of the old story that God took a little spent clay and made man out of it. That chin and that ^^^^ hand and arm are moulded without display of know- ledge, as Nature moulds. The picture seems as if it had been breathed upon the canvas. Did not a great poet once say that God breathed into Adam ? and here it is even so. The other pictures seem dry and insignificant, the Mona Liza, celebrated in literature, hanging a few feet away, seems factitious when compared with this portrait ; I have heard that tedious smile excused on the ground that she is smiling at the nonsense she hears talked about her ; that hesitating smile which held my youth in tether, has come to seem but a grimace ; and the pale mountains no more mysterious than a globe or map seen from a little distance. The Mona Liza is a sort of riddle, an acrostic, a poetical decoction, a ballade, a rondel, a villanelle or ballade with double burden, a sestina, that is what it is like, a sestina or chant royal. The Mona Liza being litera- ture in intention rather than painting, has drawn round her many poets. We must forgive her many mediocre verses for the sake of one incomparable prose passage. She has passed out of that mysterious misuse of oil paint, that arid glazing of terre verte, and has come into her possession of eternal life, into the immortality of Pater's prose. Degas is wilting already ; year after year he will wither, until one day some great prose writer will arise and transfer his spirit into its proper .medium — litera- ture. The Mona Liza and the Le9on de Danse are 58 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT intellectual pictures, they were painted with the LOVE brains rather than with the temperaments^ and what is any intellect compared with a gift like Manet's ! Leonardo made roads, Degas makes witticisms. Yesterday I heard one that delighted me far more than any road would, for I have given up bicycling. Somebody was saying he did not like Daumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long while. ' If you were to show Raphael,' he said at last, 'a Daumier, he would admire it, he would take off his hat, but if you were to show him a Cabanel, he would say with a sigh, '' That is my fault ! " ' My reverie is broken by the piano ; my friend is playing, and it is pleasant to listen to music in this airy studio. But there are women I must see, women whom I see every time I go to Paris, and too much time has been spent in the studio — I must go. But where shall I go } My thoughts strike through the little streets of Passy, measuring the distance between Passy and the Arc de Triomphe. For a moment I think that I might sit under the trees and watch the people returning from the races. Were she not dead I might stop at her little house in the fortifications among the lilac trees. There is her portrait by Manet on the wall, the very toque she used to wear. How wonderful the touch is ; the beads — how well they are rendered ! And while thinking of the extraordinary handicraft, I remember his studio, and the tall fair woman like a tea-rose coming into it : Mary MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 59 Laurant ! The daughter of a peasant, and the spent mistress of all the great men of that time — i-o\E perhaps I should have said of all the distinguished men. I used to call her toute la lyre. The last time I saw her we talked about Manet. She said that every year she took the first lilac to lay upon his grave. Is there one of her many lovers who brings flowers to her grave } What was so rememberable about her was her pleasure in life, and her desire to get all the pleasure, and her consciousness of her desire to enjoy every moment of her life. Evans, the great dentist, settled two thousand a year upon her, and how angry he was one night on meeting Manet on the staircase. In order to rid herself of her lover she invited him to dinner, intending to plead a sick headache after dinner. . . . She must go and lie down. But as soon as her guest was gone she took off the peignoir which hid her ball dress, and signed to Manet, who was waiting at the street corner, with her handkerchief. But as they went down- stairs together whom should they meet but the dentist qui a ouhlie ses carnets. And he was so dis- appointed at meeting his beautiful but deceitful mistress that he didn't visit her again for three or four days. His anger mattered very little to Mary, for another lover had settled two thousand a year upon her, and having four thousand a year or there- abouts, she dedicated herself to the love and con- versation of those who wrote books and music, and painted pictures. We humans are more compli- 60 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT cated than animals, and we love through the LOVE imagination, at least the imagination stimulates the senses, acting as a sort of adjuvant. The barmaid falls in love with No. 1, because he wipes a glass better than No. 2, and Mary fell in love with Coppee on account of his sonnet le li/s, and she grew in- different when he wrote poems like la nom^rice or Le petit epicier de Montrouge qui cassait le sucre avec melancoUe. And it was at this time when their love- story was at wane that I became a competitor. But one day Madame Albazi came to Manet's studio, a splendid creature in a carriage drawn by Russian horses from the Steppes, so she said ; but who can tell whether a horse comes from the Steppes or from the horse-dealers ? Nor does it matter when the lady is extraordinarily attractive, when she inspires the thought — a mistress for Attila ! That is not exactly how Manet saw her : but she looks like that even in his pastel. In it she holds a tortoiseshell fan widespread across her bosom, and it was on one of the sticks of the fan that he signed his name. A great painter always knows where to sign his pictures, and he never signs twice in the same place. She had come to tell Manet that she could not sit that day, she was going to the Bois, and after some conversation she asked me and a young man who happened to be in Manet's studio at the time to go there with her, and we went there drawn by the Russian horses, the young man and I wondering all the while which was going to be the Countess's lover. We played hard MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 6l for her ; but that day I was wiser than he ; I let spent him talk and recite poetry and jingle out all the aphorisms that he had been collecting for years, feeling his witticisms were in vain, for she was dark as a raven and I was as gold as a sunflower. It was at the corner of the Rue Pontiere that we got rid of him. Some days afterwards she sat to Manet. The pastel now hangs in the room of a friend of mine : I bought it for him. The picture of a woman one knows is never so agreeable a com- panion as the picture of a woman one has never seen. One's memory and the painter's vision are in conflict, and I like to think of the long deli- cate nose, and the sparkling eyes, and a mouth like red fruit. The pastel once belonged to me, it used to hang in my rooms, for with that grace of mind which never left him, Manet said one day, 'I always promised you a picture,' and searching among the pastels that lined the wall he turned to me saying, ^ Now I think that this comes to you by right.' When I fled from Paris hurriedly and left my things to be sold, the countess came to the sale and bought her picture. She sold it years afterwards to a picture-dealer, tempted by the price that Manet's pictures were fetching, and hear- ing that it was for sale, I bought it, as I have said, for a friend of mine. And now I have told the whole story, forgetting nothing except that it was years afterwards, when I had written ' Les Confessions d'un jeune Anglais ' in the Revue Independante, that Mary Laurant asked me — oh ! she was very enterprising, 62 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT she sent the editor of the Revue to me ; an appoint- ment was made. She was wonderful in the garden. She said the moment I arrived, ' Now, my dear , you must go ; I want to be alone with our friend here. Mary was beautiful, but she liked one to love her for her wit, to admire her wit, and when I asked her why she did not leave Evans, the great dentist, she said, '^ That would be a base thing to do. I content myself by deceiving him,' and then — this confidence seemed to have a par- ticular significance — ' I am not a woman,' she said, * that is made love to in a garden.' Her garden was a nook at the fortifications, hidden among lilac bushes. She wished to show me her house, and we went indoors and talked for a long time in her boudoir. But I knew she was Mallarme's mistress at the time, so nothing came of this caprice litleraire. My thoughts run upon women, and why not } On what would you have them run.-* on copper- mines.'* Woman is the legitimate subject of all men's thoughts. We pretend to be interested in other things. In the smoking-rooms I have listened to men talking about hunting, and I have said to myself, ^Your interest is a pretence : of what woman are you thinking } ' We forget women for a little while when we are thinking about art, but only for a while. The legitimate occupation of man's mind is woman, and listening to my friend who is playing music — music I do not care to hear, Brahms — I fall to thinking which of the women I have known in years past would interest me most to visit. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 63 In the spring weather the walk from Passy to spent the Champs Elysees would be pleasant and not too ^^^^ far ; I like to see the swards and the poplars and the villas, the tall iron railings, and the flower vases hidden in bouquets of trees. These things are Paris; the mind of the country, that mind which comes out of a long past, and which may be defined as a sort of ancestral beauty and energy is manifested everywhere in Paris ; and a more beautiful day for seeing the tall, white houses and the villas and the trees and the swards can hardly be imagined. I should be interested in all these things, but ray real interest would be in one little hillside, a line of houses, eight or nine, close by the Arc de Triomphe, the most ordinary in the avenue. She liked the ordinary, and I have often wondered what was the link of association ? Was it no more than her blonde hair drawn up from the neck, her fragrant skin, or her perverse subtle senses.^ It was something more, but you must not ask me to explain further. I like to remember the rustle of a flowered dress she wore as she moved, drifting like a perfume, passing from her frivolous bedroom into the drawing-room. A room without taste, stiff and middle-class, notwithstanding the crowns placed over the tall portraits. I see a picture of two chil- dren ; but she is the fairer, and in her pale eyes and thinly-curved lips there is a mixture of yearn- ing and restlessness. As the child was so is the woman, and Georgette has lived to paper one entire wall of her bedroom with trophies won in 64 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT the battlefields of ardently danced cotillons. The ^^^^ other child is of a stricter nature, and even in the picture her slightly darkened ringlets are less wanton than her sister's. Her eyes are more pen- sive, and any one could have predicted children for one and cotillon favours for the other. We often sat on her bedroom balcony reading, talk- ing, or watching the sky growing pale beyond Mont Valerien, the shadow drifting and defining and shaping the hill. In hours like the present, dream- ing in a studio, we remember those who deceived us, those who made us suffer, and in these hours faces, fragments of faces, rise out of a past, the line of a bent neck, the whiteness of a hand ; and the eyes. I remember her eyes ; one day in an orchard, in the lush and luxuriance of June, her husband was walking in front with a friend, and I was pleading. * Well,' she said, raising her eyes, ' you can kiss me now.' But her husband was in front, and he was a thick-set man, and there was a stream, and I fore- saw a struggle — and an unpleasant one : confess and be done with it ! — I didn't dare to kiss her, and I don't think she ever forgave me that lack of courage. All this is twenty years ago, and is it not silly to spend the afternoon thinking of such rubbish } But it is of such rubbish that our lives are made. Shall I go to her now and see her in her decadence } Grey hair has not begun to appear yet in the blonde, it will never turn grey, but she was shrivelling a little the last time I saw her. And next year she will be older. At her age a year MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 65 counts for double. Others are more worthy of a visit, spent But if I don't go to her this year I shall go next. ^^^^ In imagination I go past her house, thinking of a man she used to talk about, ' the man she left her 'ome for' ; that is how the London street girl would word it. He had been the centre of a disgraceful scandal in his old age, a sordid but characteristic end for the Don Juan of the nineteenth century. Perhaps she loved the big, bearded man whose photograph she had once shown me. He killed himself for not having enough money to live as he wished to live. That was her explanation. I think there was some blackmail ; she had to pay some money to the dead man's relations for letters. These sensual American women are like orchids, and who would hesitate between an orchid and a rose ? She liked dark, rough men who looked as if they could carry trunks, or she liked women. She once said to me, ^ Girls make better lovers than men.' It was twenty years ago since she turned round on me in the gloom of her brougham un- expectedly, and it was as if some sensual spirit had come out of a world of perfume and lace. In imagination I have descended the Champs Elysees, and have crossed the Place de la Concorde, and the Seine is flowing past just as it flowed when the workmen were building Notre Dame, just as it will flow a thousand years hence. A thousand years hence men will stand watching its current, thinking of little blonde women, and the shudder they can send through the flesh ; they can, but not E 66 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT twenty years afterwards. The Reverend Donne ^ovEj j^^g j^ ^^^^ certain ghosts do not raise the hair but the flesh ; mine do no more than to set me thinking that rivers were not created to bear ships to the sea, but to set our memories flowing. Full many a time have I crossed the Pont Neuf on my way to see another woman — an American ! The time comes when desire wilts and dies, but the sexual interest never dies, and we take pleasure in thinking in middle life of those we enjoyed in youth. She, of whom I am thinking, lives far away in the Latin Quarter, in an ill-paven street. How it used to throw my carriage from side to side ! I have been there so often that I know all the shops, and where the shops end, and there is a whitewashed wall oppo- site her house; the street bends there. The con- cierge is the same, a little thicker, a little heavier ; she always used to have a baby in her arms, now there are no more babies ; her children, I suppose, have grown up and have gone away. There used to be a darkness at the foot of the stairs, and I used to slip on those stairs, so great was my haste ; the very tinkle of the bell I remember, and the trepidation in which I waited. Her rooms looked as if they had never been sat in ; even the studio was formal, and the richly- bound volumes on the tables looked as if they had never been opened. She only kept one servant, a little, red-headed girl, and seeing this girl back again after an absence of many years, I spoke to Lizzie of the old days. Lizzie told me her servant's MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 67 story. She had gone away to be married, and after spent ten years of misfortune had returned to her old ^^^"^ mistress, to this demure, discreet and sly New Englander, who concealed a fierce sensuality under a homely appearance. Lizzie must have had many lovers, but I knew nothing of her except her sensu- ality, for she had to let me into that secret. She was a religious woman, a devout Protestant, and thinking of her my thoughts are carried across the sea, and I am in the National Gallery looking at Van Eyke's picture, studying the grave sensuality of the man's face — he speaks with uplifted hand like one in a pulpit, and the gesture and expression tell us as plainly as if we heard him that he is ad- monishing his wife (he is given to admonition), informing her that her condition — her new preg- nancy — is an act of the Divine Will. She listens, but how curiously ! with a sort of partial compre- hension afloat upon her face more of the guinea-pig than of the rabbit type. The twain are sharply differentiated, and one of the objects of the painter seems to have been to show us how far one human being may be removed from another. The husband is painfully clear to himself, the wife is happily unconscious of herself. Now everything in the pic- ture suggests order ; the man's face tells a mind the same from day to day, from year to year, the same passions, the same prayers ; his apparel, the wide-brimmed hat, the cloak falling in long straight folds, the peaked shoon, are an habitual part of him. We see little of the room, but every one remembers 68 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT the chandelier hanging from the ceiling reflected ^^^ in the mirror opposite. These reflections have lasted for three hundred years, they are the same to-day as the day they were painted, and so is the man; he lives again, he is a type that Nature never wearies of reproducing, for I suppose he is essential to life. This sober Flemish interior expresses my mistress's character almost as well as her own apart- ment used to do. I always experienced a chill, a sense of formality, when the door was opened, and while I stood waiting for her in the prim drawing-room. Every chair was in its appointed place, large gilt-edged illustrated books lay upon the tables. . . . There was not much light in her rooms; heavy curtains clung about the windows, and tapestries covered the walls. In the passage there were oak chests, and you can imagine, reader, this woman waiting for me by an oak table, a little ashamed of her thoughts, but unable to overcome them. Once I heard her playing the piano, and it struck me as an aifectation. As I let my thoughts run back things forgotten emerge ; here comes one of her gowns ! a dark-green gown, the very same olive green as the man's cloak. She wore her hair short like a boy's, and though it ran all over her head in little curls, it did not detract at all from the New England type, the woman in whose speech Biblical phraseology still lingers. Lizzie was a miraculous survival of the Puritans who crossed the Atlantic in the Mayjlower and settled in New England. Paris had not changed MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 69 her. She was le grave Puritan du tableau ; the reader spent will notice that I write le grave Puritan, for of his sub- ^^^^ missive, childlike wife there was nothing in Lizzie except her sex. As her instinct was in conflict with her ideals, her manner was studied, and she affected a certain cheerfulness which she dared not allow to subside. She never relinquished her soul, never fell into confidence, so in a sense we always remained strangers, for it is when lovers tell their illusions and lonelinesses that they know each other, the fiercest spasm tells us little, and it is forgotten, whereas the moment when a woman sighs and breaks into a simple confidence is remembered years afterwards, and brings her before us though she be under- ground, or a thousand miles away. These inti- macies she had not, but there was something true and real in her, something which I cannot find words to express to-day ; she was a clever woman, that was it, and that is why I pay her the homage of an annual visit. These courteous visits began twenty years ago; they are not always pleasant, yet I endure them. Our conversation is often laboured, there are awkward and painful pauses, and during these pauses we sit looking at each other, thinking no doubt of the changes that time has wrought. One of her chief charms was her figure — one of the prettiest I have ever seen — and she still retains a good deal of its grace. But she shows her age in her hands ; they have thickened at the joints, and they were such slender hands. Last year she spoke of herself as an old woman, 70 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT and the remark seemed to me disgraceful and use- ^^^^ less^ for no man cares to hear a woman whom he has loved call herself old; why call attention to one's age^ especially when one does not look it; and last year she looked astonishingly young for fifty-five ; that was her age^ she said. She asked me my age ; the question was unpleasant^ and before I was aware of it I had told her a lie, and I hate those who force me to tell lies. The interview grew painful, and to bring it to a close she asked me if I would care to see her husband. We found the old man alone in his studio^, looking at an engraving under the light of the lamp, much more like a picture than any of his paintings. She asked him if he remembered me, and he got up muttering something, and to help him I mentioned that I had been one of his pupils. The dear old man said of course he remembered, and that he would like to show me his pictures, but Lizzie said — I suppose it was nervousness that made her say it, but it was a strangely tactless remark, — ^ I don't think, dear, that Mr. cares for your pictures,' How- ever celebrated one may be, it is always mortifying to hear that some one, however humble the person may be, does not care for one's art. But I saved the situation, and I think my remarks were judi- cious and witty. It is not always that one thinks of the right words at the right moment, but it would be hard to improve on the admonition that she did rae a wrong, that like every one who liked art, I had changed my opinion many times, but MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 71 after many wanderings had come back to the spent truth, and in order to deceive the old man I ^^^^ spoke of Ingres. I had never failed in that love, and how could I love Ingres without loving him ? The contrary was the truth, but the old man's answer was very sweet. Forgetful of his own high position, he answered, ' We may both like Ingres, but it is not probable that we like the same Ingres.' I said I did not know any Ingres I did not admire, and asked him which he admired, and we had a pleasant conversation about the Apotheosis of Homer, and the pictures in the Musee de Mont- auban. Then the old man said, ' I must show Mr. my pictures.' No doubt he had been thinking of them all through the conversation about the Musee de Montauban. ' 1 must show you my Virgin,' and he explained that the face of the Infant Jesus was not yet finished. It was wonderful to see this old man, who must have been nearly eighty, taking the same interest in his pictures as he took fifty years ago. Some stupid reader will think, perchance, that it mattered that I had once loved his wife. But how could such a thing matter ? Think for a moment, dear reader, for all readers are dear, even the stupidest, and you will see that you are still entangled in con- ventions and prejudices. Perhaps, dear reader, you think that she and I should have dropped on our knees and confessed. Had we done so, he would have thought us two rude people, and nothing more. What will happen to her when he dies.'* Will 72 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT she return to Boston ? Shall I ever see her again ? ^^^^ Last year I vowed that I would not, and I think it would please her as well if I stayed away. . . . And she is right, for so long as I am not by her she is with me. But in the same room, amid the familiar furniture, we are divided by the insuperable past, and to retain her I must send her away. The idea is an amusing one; I think I have read it somewhere, it seems to me like something I have read. Did I ever read of a man who sent his mistress away so that his possession might be more complete ? Whether I did or didn't, matters little, the idea is true to me to-day — in order to possess her I must never see her again. A pretty adventure it would be, never- theless, to spend a week paying visits to those whom I loved about that time ; and I can imagine a sort of Beau Brummel of the emotions going every year to Paris to spend a day with each of his mistresses. There were others about that time. There was Madame . The name is in itself beautiful, characteristically French, and it takes me back to the middle centuries, to the middle of France, for I always thought that that tall woman, who spoke so quickly and so sincerely, dealing out her soul rapidly as one might cards, must have been born near Tours. She was so French that she must have come from the very heart of France ; she was French as the wine of France ; as Balzac, who came also from Tours ; and her voice, and her thoughts, and her words transported one ; by her side one was really in France ; and, as her lover, MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 73 one lived through every circumstance of a French spent love-story. She lived in what is called in Paris ^^^^ an hotel ; it had its own concierge^ and it was nice to hear the man say, 'Oui, monsieur, Madame la Marquise est chez elle,' and it was flattering to wait for a marquise in a boudoir stretched with blue silk, under a Louis xvi. rock crystal chandelier ; yes^ and to hear her say, ' I 'm afraid you 're thinking of me a great deal.' She leaned her hands on the back of the chair, making it easy for me to take them. She said they had not done any kitchen work for five hundred years, and at the time that seemed a very witty thing to say. The drawing-room opened on to a conservatory twenty feet high ; it nearly filled the garden, and the marquise used to receive her visitors there. I do not remember who was the marquise's lover when the last fete was given, nor what play was acted; only that the ordinary guests lingered over their light refreshments, scenting the supper, and that to get rid of them we had to bid the mar- quise ostentatiously good-night. Creeping round by the back of the house, we gained the bedrooms by the servants' staircase, and hid there until the ordinary guests in decency could delay no longer. As soon as the last one was gone the stage was removed, and the supper tables were laid out. Shall I ever forget the moment when the glass roof of the con- servatory began to turn blue, and the shrilling of awakening sparrows ! How haggard we all were, but we remained till eight in the morning. That fete was paid for with the last remnant of the poor 74 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE SPENT marquise's fortune. Afterwards she was very poor, ^^^^ and Suzanne, her daughter, went on the stage and discovered a certain talent for acting which has been her fortune to this day. I will go to the Vaudeville to-night to see her ; we might arrange to go together to see her mother's grave. To visit the grave, and to strew azaleas upon it, would be a pretty piece of sentimental mockery. But for my adventure there should be seven visits ; Madame would make a fourth ; I hear that she is losing her sight, and lives in a chateau about fifty miles from Paris, a chateau built in the time of Louis xiii., with high-pitched roofs and many shutters, and formal gardens with balustrades and fish-ponds, yes et des charmilles — charmilles — what is that in English } — avenues of clipped limes. To walk in an avenue of clipped limes with a woman who is nearly blind, and talk to her of the past, would be indeed an adventure far 'beyond the range of formal man's emotion.' Madame interrupted our love-story. She would be another — that would be five — and I shall think of two more during dinner. But now I must be moving on ; the day has ended ; Paris is defining itself upon a straw-coloured sky. I must go, the day is done ; and hearing the last notes trickle out — somebody has been playing the prelude to Tristan — I say, ' Another pretty day passed, a day of meditation on art and women — and what else is there to meditate about ? To-morrow will happily be the same as to-day, and to-morrow I shall again meditate on art and women, and the day after I MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 75 shall be occupied with what I once heard dear old spent M'Cormac^ Bishop of Galway, describe in his sermon ^^^^ as " the degrading passion of ' loave.' " ' VII The day dies in sultry languor. A warm night ninon's breathes upon the town^ and in the exhaustion of table light and hush of sound life strikes sharply on the ear and brain. It was early in the evening when I returned home, and, sitting in the window, I read till sur- prised by the dusk ; and when ray eyes could no longer follow the printed page, holding the book between finger and thumb, my face resting on the other hand, I looked out on the garden, allowing my heart to fill with dreams. The book that had interested me dealt with the complex technique of the art of the Low Countries — a book written by a painter. It has awakened in me memories of all kinds, heartrending struggles, youthful passion, bitter disappointments ; it has called into mind a multitude of thoughts and things, and, wearied with admiring many pictures and arguing with myself, I am now glad to exchange my book for the gentle hallucinations of the twilight. I see a line of leafage drawn across the Thames, but the line dips, revealing a slip of grey water with no gleam upon it. Warehouses and a factory chim- ney rise ghostly and grey, and so cold is that grey tint that it might be obtained with black and 76 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's white; hardly is the warmth of umber needed. TABLE Behind the warehouses and the factory chimney the sky is murky and motionless, but higher up it is creamy white, and there is some cloud move- ment. Four lamps, two on either side of the factory chimney, look across the river; one con- stantly goes out — always the same lamp — and a moment after it springs into its place again. Across my window a beautiful branch waves like a feather fan. It is the only part of the picture worked out in detail. I watch its soft and almost impercept- ible swaying, and am tempted to count the leaves. Bielow it, and a little beyond it, between it and the river, night gathers in the gardens ; and there, amid serious greens, passes the black stain of a man's coat, and, in a line with the coat, in the beautifully swaying branch, a belated sparrow is hopping from twig to twig, awakening his mates, in search for a satisfactory resting-place. In the sharp towers of Temple Gardens the pigeons have gone to sleep. I can see the cots under the conical caps of slate. The gross, jaded, uncouth present has slipped from me as a garment might, and I see the past like a little show, struggles and heartbreakings of long ago, and watch it with the same indifferent curiosity as I would the regulated mimicry of a stage-play. Pictures from the past come and go without an effort of will ; many are habitual memo- ries, but the one before me arises for the first time — for fifteen years it has lain submerged, and now MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 77 like a water weed or flower it rises — the Countess ninon's Ninon de Calvador's boudoir ! Her boudoir or her ^f ^f ® D HOTE drawing-room, be that as it may, the room into which I was ushered many years ago when I went to see her. I was then a young man, very thin, with sloping shoulders, and that pale gold hair that Manet used to like to paint. I had come with a great bouquet for Ninon, for it was son jour defete, and was surprised and somewhat disappointed to meet a large brunette with many creases in her neck, a loose and unstayed bosom ; one could hardly imagine Ninon dressed otherwise than in a peignoir — a blue peig7wir seemed inevitable. She was sitting by a dark, broad-shouldered young man when I came in ; they were sitting close together ; he rose out of a corner and showed me an impres- sionistic picture of a railway station. He was one of the many young men who at that time thought the substitution of dots of pink and yellow for the grey and slate and square brush-work of Bastien Lepage was the certain way to paint well. I learned afterwards, during the course of the even- ing, that he was looked at askance, for even in Montmartre it was regarded as a dishonour to allow the lady with whom you lived to pay for your dinner. Villiers de L'Isle Adam, who had once been Ninon's lover, answered the reproaches levelled against him for having accepted too largely of her hospitality with, ' Que de bruit pour quelques cotelettes ! ' and his transgressions were forgiven him for the sake of the mot which seemed to summarise 78 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's the moral endeavour and difficulties of the entire ^f®?^ quarter. When Villiers was her lover Villiers was D HOTE ^ middle-aged, and Ninon was a young woman ; but when I knew her she was interested in the young generation, yet she kept friends with all her old lovers, never denying them her board. How funny was the impressionist's indignation against Villiers. He charged him with having squandered a great part of Ninon's fortune, but Villiers' answer to the young man was, ' he talks like the concierge in my story of Les demoiselles de Bienfillatre.' Poor Villiers was not much to blame ; it was part of Ninon's temperament to waste her money, and the canvases round the room testified that she spent a great deal on modern art. She certainly had been a rich woman ; rumour credited her with spending fifty thousand francs a year, and in her case rumour said no more than the truth, for it would require at least that to live as she lived, keeping open house to all the literature, music, painting, and sculpture done in Montmartre. At first sight her hospitality seems unreasonable, but when one thinks one sees that it conforms to the rules of all hospitality. There must be a principle of selection, and were the rates she entertained less amusing than the people one meets in Grosvenor Square or the Champs Elysees } Any friend could introduce another, that is common practice, but at Ninon's there was a restriction which I never met elsewhere — no friend could bring another unless the newcomer was a rate — in other words, unless he had MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 79 written music or verse, or painted or carved, in a ninon s TABLE way that did not appeal to the taste of the ordinary j^'h^te public ; inability to reach the taste of the general public was the criterion that obtained there. The windows of Ninon's boudoir opened upon the garden, and on my expressing surprise at its size and at the large trees that grew there, she gave me permission to admire and investigate ; and I walked about the pond interested in the numerous ducks, in the cats, in the companies of macaws and cocka- toos that climbed down from their perches and strutted across the swards. I came upon a badger and her brood, and at my approach they dis- appeared into an enormous excavation, and behind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep, and retreated hurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. ' That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera/ I said ; ' she sings all the diiferent parts — soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass.' At that time we were all talking about her, and I stood by the window listening until suddenly a well-known smell interrupted her. It was Ninon's cat that had misconducted herself. A window was thrown open, but the ventilation did not prove sufficient. Augusta and her admirers had to leave the piano, and they came from the house glad to breathe the evening air. How dear to me are flowered gowns and evening skies and women with scarfs about their shoulders. Ah ! what a beautiful evening it was ! And how well do I remember the poet comparing the darkening sky to a blue veil 80 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's with the moon like a gold beetle upon it. One of TABLE the women had brought a guitar with her, and again D HOTE Augusta's voice streamed up through the stillness, till, compelled by the beauty of the singing, we drew nearer; as the composer sang her songs attitudes grew more abandoned, and hands fell pen- sively. Among the half-seen faces I caught sight of a woman of exceeding fairness ; her hair had only a faint tinge of gold in it ; and Ninon remem- bered that she was a cousin of hers, one whom she had not seen for many years. How Clare had dis- covered her in the Rue la Moine she could not tell. It was whispered that she was the wife of a rich commergant at Tours. This added to the mystery, and later in the evening the lady told me she had never been in artistic society before, and begged me to point out to her the celebrities present, and to tell her why they were celebrated. ^Who is he — that one slouching towards the pond, that one wearing grey trousers and a black jacket? — oh !* My companion's exclamation was caused by a new sight of Verlaine ; at that moment he had lifted off his hat (the evening was still warm), and the great bald skull, hanging like a cliff" over the shaggy eyebrows, shaggy as furze bushes, frightened her. The poet continued his walk round the pond, and, turning suddenly towards us, he stopped to speak to me. I was but a pretext; he clearly wished to speak to my companion. But how Strangely did he suit his conversation to her, yet MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 81 how characteristic of his genius were the words I ninon's heard as I turned away, thinking to leave them '^f^}'^ Ti HOTP together — ' If I were in love with a young girl or with a young man ? ' My companion ran forward quickly and seized my arm. ^ You must not leave me with him,' she said. On account of his genius Verlaine was a little slow to see things outside of himself — all that was within him was clear, all without him obscure ; so we had some difficulty in getting rid of him, and as soon as he was out of hearing my companion inquired eagerly who he was, and I was astonished at the perception she showed. ' Is he a priest ? I mean was he ever a priest?' 'A sort of cross between a thieves' kit- chen and a presbytery. He is the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest verses in the French language — a sort of ambling song like a robin's. You have heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide ; the robin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig ; his song is but a tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision of his own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with a lead pencil, never troub- ling himself to inquire if what he traces is good or ill. He knows that society regards him as an outcast, but society's point of view is not the only one, that he knows too, and also, though he be a lecher, a crapulous and bestial fellow at times, at other times he is a poet, a visionary, the only poet that Catholicism has produced since Dante. Huysmans, the apologist of Gilles de Rais, — there 82 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's he is over yonder, talking to the impressionist TABLE painter, that small thin man with hair growing thickly, low down on his forehead — Huysmans somewhere in his description of the trial of the fifteenth-century monster, the prototype, so it is said, of the nursery tale of Blue Beard, speaks of the white soul of the Middle Ages ; he must have had Verlaine on his mind, for Verlaine has spoken of himself as a mediaeval Catholic, that is to say, a Catholic in whom sinning and repentance alternates regularly as night and day. Verlaine has not cut the throats of so many little boys as Gilles de Rais, but Gilles de Rais always declares himself to be a good Catholic. Verlaine abandons himself to the Church as a child to a fairy tale; he does not trouble to argue whether the Con- ception of the Virgin was Immaculate ; the mediaeval sculptors have represented her attired very prettily in cloaks with long folds, they have put graceful crowns upon her head, and Verlaine likes these things; they inspire him to write, he feels that belief in the Church is part of himself, and his poetical genius is to tell his own story ; he is one of the great soul-tellers. From a literary point of view there is a good deal to be said in favour of faith when it is not joined with practice ; acceptation of dogma shields one from controversy ; it allows Verlaine to concentrate himself entirely upon things ; it weans him away from ideas — the curse of modern literature — and makes him a sort of divine vagrant living his life in the tavern and in the hospital. It is only MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 83 those who have freed themselves from all prejudice ninon's that get close to life, who get the real taste of life — table the aroma as from a wine that has been many years in bottle. And Verlaine is aware that this is so. Sometimes he thinks he might have written a little more poetry, and he sighs,, but he quickly recovers. " After all, I have written a good many volumes, and what would art be without life, without love ?" He has a verse on that subject; I wish I could remember it for you. His verse is always so winsome, so delicate, slender as the birch- tree, elegiac like it ; a birch bending over a lake's edge reminds me of Verlaine. He is a lake poet, but the lake is in a suburb not far from a casino. What makes me speak about the lake is that for a long time I thought these verses : Ton ame est un lac d'amour Dont mes pensees sent les cygnes. Vois comme ils font le tour . . . were Verlaine's, but they are much less original ; their beauty, for they are beautiful, is conventional ; numbers of poets might have written them, whereas nobody but Verlaine could have written any of his, really his own, poetry. His desires go sometimes as high as the crucifix ; very often they are in the gutter, hardly poetry at all, having hardly any beauty except that of truth, and of course the beauty of a versification that haunts in his ear, for he hears a song in French verse that no French poet has ever heard before, and a song so fluent. 84 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's ranging from the ecstasy of the nightingale to the TABLE robin s little homily. D HOTE Qui, c'etait par un soir joyeux de cabaret, Un de ces soirs plutot trop cliauds ou Ton dirait Que le gaz du plafond conspire a notre perte Avec le vin du zinc, saveur naive et verte. On s'amusait beaucoup dans la boutique et on Entendait des soupirs voisins d'accordeon Que ponctuaieut des pieds frappant presque en cadence. Quand la porte s'ouvrit de la salle de danse Vomissant tout un flot dont toi, vers ou j'etais, Et de ta voix fait que soudain je me tais, S'il te plait de me donner un ordre peremptoire. Tu t'ecrias ' ' Dieu, qu'il fait chaud ! Patron, a boire ! " 'She was from Picardy; and he tells of her horrible accent, and in elegy number five he con- tinues the confession, telling how his well beloved used to get drunk. Tu lis le saut de. . . . Seine et, dupuis morte-vive, Tu gardes le vertige et le gout du ne'ant.' ' But how can a man confess such things ? ' my companion asked me, and we stood looking at each other in the midst of the gardens until an ape, cattling prettily, ran towards me and jumped into my arms, and looking at the curious little wizened face, the long arms covered with hair, I said : — * Verlaine has an extraordinary power of expres- sion, and to be ashamed of nothing but to be ashamed is his genius, just as it was Manet's. It is to his shamelessness that we owe his most MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 85 beautiful poems, all written in garrets, in taverns, ninon's in hospitals — yes, and in prison/ table D HOT£ ' In prison ! But he didn't steal, did he ? ' and the commergcmt' s wife looked at me with a frightened air, and I think her hand went towards her pocket. 'No, no; a mere love-story, a dispute with Rambaud in some haunt of vice, a knife flashed, Rambaud was stabbed, and Verlaine spent three years in prison. As for Rambaud, it was said that he repented and renounced love, entered a monas- tery, and was digging the soil somewhere on the shores of the Red Sea for the grace of God. But these hopes proved illusory ; only Verlaine knows where he is, and he will not tell. The last certain news we had of him was that he had joined a caravan of Arabs, and had wandered somewhere into the desert with these wanderers, preferring savagery to civilisation. Verlaine preferred civilised savagery, and so he remained in Paris ; and so he drags on, living in thieves' quarters, getting drunk, writing beautiful poems in the hospitals, coming out of hospitals and falling in love with drabs. Dans ces femmes d'ailleurs je n'ai pas trouve I'ange Qu'il eut fallu pour remplacer ce diable, toi ! L'une, fille du Nord, native d'un Crotoy, Etait rousse, mal grasse et de prestance molle ; Elle ne m'adressa guere qu'une parole Et c' etait d'un petit cadeau qu'il s'agissait. L'autre, pruneau, d'Agen, sans cesse croassait. En revanche, dans son accent d'ail et de poivre, Une troisieme, recemment chanteuse au Havre, 86 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE NINON S TABLE d'hote AfFectait de dandinement des matelots At m' . . . enguelait comme un gabier tancant les flots, Mais portrait beau vraiment, sacredie, quel dommage La quatrieme etait sage comme une image, Chatain clair, peu de gorge et priait Dieu parfois : Le diantre soit de ses sacres signes de croix ! Les seize autres, autant du moins que ma me'moire Surnage en ce vortex, contaient toutes I'histoire Connue, un amant chic, puis des vieux, puis ^^'ilot" Tantot bien, tantot moins, le clair cafe falot Les terasses I'ete, I'hiver les brasseries Et par degres I'humble trottoir en theories En attendant les bons messieurs compatissants Capables d'un louis et pas trop repoussants Quorum ego parva pars erim, me disais-je. Mais toutes, comme la premiere du cortege, Des avant la bougie eteinte et le rideau Tire, n'oubliaient pas le "mon petit cadeau." ^ In the verses I have just quoted, you remember, he says that the fourth was chaste as an image, her hair was pale brown, she had scarcely any bosom, and prayed to God sometimes. He always hated piety when it interfered with his pleasure, and in the next verse he says, " The devil take those sacred signs of the Cross.'" ' But do you know any of these women ? ' 'Oh yes; we all know the terrible Sara. She beats him.' The commerqant's wife asked if she were here. ' He wanted to bring her here, in fact he did bring her once, only she was so drunk that she could not get beyond the threshold, and Ninon's lover, the MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 87 painter you saw painting the steam-engines, was ninon's charged to explain to the poet that Sara's intern- '^^^^'^ 111 ,1 1 1 I^ HOTE perance rendered her impossible in respectable society. '^I know Sara has her faults," he mur- mured in reply to all argument, and it was impos- sible to make him see that others did not see Sara with his eyes. " I know she has her faults," he repeated, '^ and so have others. We all have our faults." And it was a long time before he could be induced to come back : hunger has brought him.' ^And who is that hollow-chested man? How pathetic he looks with his goat-like beard.' 'That is the celebrated Cabaner. He will tell you, if you speak to him, that his father was a man like Napoleon, only more so. He is the author of many aphorisms ; " that three military bands would be necessary to give the impression of silence in music" is one. He comes every night to the Nouvelle Athenes, and is a sort of rallying-point ; he will tell you that his ballad of "The Salt Herring" is written in a way that perhaps Wagner would not, but which Liszt certainly would under- stand.' ' Is his music ever played } Does it sell ? How does he live .'' Not by his music, I suppose ? ' ' Yes, by his music, by playing waltzes and polkas in the Avenue de la Motte Piquet. His earnings are five francs a day, and for thirty-five francs a month he has a room where many of the disin- herited ones of art, many of those you see here, sleep. His room is furnished — ah, you should see 88 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's it ! If Cabaner wants a chest of drawers he buys '^^^}'^ a fountain, and he broke off the head of the Venus de Milo, saying that now she no longer reminded him of the people he met in the streets ; he could henceforth admire her without being troubled by any sordid recollection. I could talk to you for hours about his unselfishness, his love of art, his strange music, and his stranger poems, for his music accompanies his own verses.' ^Is he too clever for the public, or not clever enough } ' ' Now you 're asking me the question we 've been asking ourselves for the last ten years. . . . The man fumbling at his shirt collar over yonder is the celebrated Villiers de L'Isle Adam.' And I remember how it pleased me to tell this simple-minded woman all I knew about Villiers. 'He has no talent whatever, only genius, and that is why he is a rate,' I said. But the woman was not so simple as I had imagined, and one or two questions she put to me led me to tell her that Villiers' genius only appeared in streaks like gold in quartz. ' The comparison is an old one, but there is no better one to explain Villiers, for when he is not inspired his writing is very like quartz.' ' His great name ' ' His name is part of his genius. He chose it, and it has influenced his writings. Have I not heard him say, '^ Car je porte en moi les richesses sthiles d'un grand nombre de rois oublies " ' ? MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 89 ' But is he a legitimate descendant ? ' ninon's ' Legitimate in the sense that he desired the ^f ^^^ , - , , , . D HOTE name more than any of those who ever bore it legitimately/ At that moment Villiers passed by me, and I introduced him to her, and very soon he began to tell us that his Eve had just been published, and the success of it was great. ^ On ma dit hier de passer a la caisse . . . I' edition etait epuisee, vous voyez — il paraitj la fortune est venue . . . meme a rnoi.' But Villiers was often tiresomely talkative about trifles, and as soon as I got the chance I asked him if he were going to tell us one of his stories, re- minding him of one I had heard he had been telling lately in the brasseries about a man in quest of a quiet village where he could get rest, a tired com- poser, something of that kind. Had he written it ? No, he had not written it yet, but now that he knew I liked it he would get up earlier to-morrow. Some one took him away from us, and I had to tell my companion the story. ' Better,' I said, ' he should never write it, for half of it exists in his voice, and in his gestures, and every year he gets less and less of himself onto the paper. One has to hear him tell his stories in the cafe — how well he tells them ! You must hear him tell how a man, recovering from a long illness, is advised by his doctor to seek rest in the country, and how, seeing the name of a village on the map that touches his imagination, he takes the train^ 90 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE NiNON*s feeling convinced he will find there an Arcadian TABLE simplicity. But the village he catches siffht of D HOTE ^ , - ° ,11 from the carriage window is a morose and lonely village, in the midst of desolate plains. And worse than Nature are the human beings he sees at the station ; they lurk in corners, they scrutinise his luggage, and gradually he believes them all to be robbers and assassins. ^He would escape but he dare not, for he is being followed, so turning on his pursuers he asks them if they can direct him to a lodging. The point of Villiers' story is how a suspicion begins in the man's mind, how it grows like a cancer, and very soon the villagers are convinced he is an anarchist, and that his trunks are full of material for the manufacture of bombs. And this is why they dare not touch them. So they follow him to the farmhouse whither they have directed him, and tell their fears to the farmer and his wife. Villiers can improvise the consultations in the kitchen at midnight in the cafe, but when morning comes he cannot write, his brain is empty. You must come some night to the Nouvelle Athenes to hear him ; leaning across the table he will tell the terror of the hinds and farmer, how they are sure the house is going to be blown up. The sound of their feet on the staircase inspires terror in the wretched convalescent. He sits up in bed, listen- ing, great drops of sweat collected on his forehead. He dare not get out of bed, but he must ; and Villiers can suggest the sound of feet on the creak- MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 91 ing stairs, — yes, and the madness of the man piling ninon's furniture against the door, and the agony of those table outside hearing the noise within. When they break into the room they find a dead man ; for terror has killed him. You must come to the Nouvelle Ath^nes to hear Villiers tell his story. I '11 meet you there to-morrow night. . . . Will you dine with me ? The dinner there is not really too bad ; perhaps you '11 be able to bear with it.' The commergant' s wife hesitated. She promised to come, and she came ; but she did not prove an interesting mistress; why, I cannot remember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to think of the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, in which one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of the years I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blue eyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort of sensual Christ? He, too, was after the commerqant' s wife. And didn't he select her as the subject of his licentious verses — reassure yourself, reader, licen- tious merely from the point of view of prosody. ' Ta nuque est de santal sur les vifs frissons d'or, Mais c'est une autre, que j 'adore.' The commerqant' s wife, forgetful of me, charmed by the poet, by the excitement of hearing herself made a subject of a poem, drew nearer. Strange, is it not, that I should remember a few words here and there "^ 92 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's ' II m'aime, il m'aime^ pas et selon Fantique rit TABLE Elle effleuret la Maguerite/ D HOTB The women still sit, circlewise, as if enchanted, the night inspires him, and he improvises trifle after trifle. One remembers fragments. Some time afterwards Cabaner was singing the song of ' The Salt Herring.' ' He came along holding in his hands dirty, dirty, dirty, A big nail pointed, pointed, pointed, And a hammer heavy, heavy, heavy. He propped the ladder high, high, high. Against the wall white, white, white. He went up the ladder high, high, high. Placed the nail pointed, pointed, pointed. Against the wall — toe ! toe ! toe ! He tied to the nail a string long, long, long. And at the end of it a salt herring, dry, dry, dry. Then letting fall the hammer heavy, heavy, heavy, He got down from the ladder high, high, high. Picked up the hammer and went away, away, away. Since then at the end of the string long, long, long, A salt herring dry, dry, dry. Has swung slowly, slowly, slowly. Now I have composed this story simple, simple, simple. To make all serious men mad, mad, mad. And to amuse little children, tiny, tiny, tiny.' This was the libretto on which Cabaner wrote music ' that Wagner would not understand, but which Liszt would listen to.' Dear, dear Cabaner, how well I can see thee with thy goat-like beard, and the ape in the tree interrupting thee ; he was not like Liszt, he chattered all night. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 93 An ape broke his chain earlier in the evening ninon's and it was found impossible to persuade him to table come down, and the brute seemed somehow determined that we should not hear Cabaner. Soon after the cocks began answering each other, though it was but midnight ; and so loud was their shrilling that I awoke, surprised to find myself sitting at my window in King's Bench Walk. A moment ago I was in Madame Ninon de Calvador's garden, and every whit as much as I am now in King's Bench Walk. Madame Ninon de Calvador — what has become of her ? Is the rest of her story unknown ? As I sit look- ing into the darkness, a memory suddenly springs upon me. Villiers, who came in when dinner was half over, brought a young man with him. Fumbling at his shirt collar, apologising for being late, assuring us that he had dined, he introduced his friend to the company as a young man of genius, of extraordi- nary genius. Don't I remember Villiers' nervous, hysterical voice ! Don't I remember the journalist's voice when he asked Ninon's lover if he sold his pictures, creating at once a bad impression ? By some accident a plate was given to him, out of which one of the cats had been fed. The plate might have been given to any one else : Villiers would not have minded, and as for Cabaner, he never knew what he was eating; but it was given to the journalist. Now I remember the young man mis- conducted himself badly ; he struck the table with his fist, and said, Et bien, je casse tout. Yes, it was 94 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Ninon's he who wrote the article entitled ' Ninon's Table TABLE d'hote' in the Gil Bias, and from it she learned for the first time how the world viewed her hospi- tality, how misinterpreted were her efforts to benefit the arts and the artists. Somebody told me this story : who I cannot tell ; it is all so long ago. But it seems to me that I remember hearing that it was this article that killed her. The passing of things is always a moving subject for meditation, and it is strange how accident will bring back a scene, explicit in every detail — a tree taking shape upon the dawning sky, the hairy ugliness of the ape in its branches, and along the grey grass a waddling squad of the ducks betaking themselves to the pond, a poet talking to a com- mergant's wife, Madame de Calvador leaning on a lover's arm. Had I a palette I could match the blue of the peignoir with the faint grey sky. I could make a picture out of that dusky suburb. Had I a pen I could write verses about these people of old time, but the picture would be a shrivelled thing com- pared with the dream, and the verses would limp. The moment I sought a pen the pleasure of the meditation, which is still with me, which still en- dures, would vanish. Better to sit by my window and enjoy what remains of the mood and the memory. The mood has nearly past, the desire of action is approaching. ... I would give much for another memory, but memory may not be beckoned, and my mind is dark now, dark as that garden; MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 95 the swaying, fan-like bough by my window is nearly ninon's one mass of green ; the last sparrow has fallen table ° , _. , D HOTE asleep. I hear nothing. ... I hear a horse trot- ting in the Strand. VIII I had come a thousand miles — rather more, the nearly fifteen hundred — in the hope of picking lovers op up the thread of a love-story that had got entangled some years before and had been broken off abruptly. A strange misadventure our love-story had been ; for Doris had given a great deal of herself while denying me much, so much that at last, in de- spair, I fled from a one-sided love-affair; too one-sided to be borne any longer, at least by me. And it was difficult to fly from her pretty, inveigling face, delightful and winsome as the faces one finds on the panels of the early German masters. One may look for her face and find it on an oak panel in the Frankfort Gallery, painted in pale tints, the cheeks faintly touched with carmine. In the background of these pictures there are all sorts of curious things ; very often a gold bower with roses clamber- ing up everywhere. Who was that master who painted cunning virgins in rose bowers ? The master of Cologne, was it not ? I have forgotten. No matter. Doris's hair was darker than the hair of those virgins, a rich gold hair, a mane of hair growing as luxuriously as the meadows in June. 95 96 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE And the golden note was continued everywhere, in LOVERS OP ^Yie eyebrows, in the pupils of the eyes, in the freckles along her little nose so firmly and beauti- fully modelled about the nostrils ; never was there a more lovely or affectionate mouth, weak and beautiful as a flower; and the long hands were curved like lilies. There is her portrait, dear reader, prettily and truthfully painted by me, the portrait of a girl I left one afternoon in London more than seventeen years ago, and that I had lost sight of, I feared for ever. Thought of her? Yes, I thought of her occasionally. Time went by, and I wondered if she were married. What her husband was like, and why I never wrote. It were surely unkind not to write. . . . Reader, you know those little regrets. Perhaps life would be all on the flat without regret. Regret is like a mountain-top from which we survey our dead life, a mountain-top on which we pause and ponder, and very often looking into the twilight we ask ourselves whether it would be well to send a letter or some token. Now we had agreed upon one which should be used in case of an estrangement — a few bars of Schumann's melody, ' The Nut Bush,' should be sent, and the one who should receive it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all difference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me, perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase : pride perhaps kept her from sending it ; in any case five years are a long while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; but one day the sight of a MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 97 woman who had known her brought her before my the eyes, and 1 asked if Doris were married. The woman ^<>vers of could not tell me ; she had not seen her for many years ; they, too, were estranged, and I went home saying to myself, ^ Doris must be married. What sort of husband has she chosen ? Is she happy ? Has she a baby ? O shameful thought ! ' Do you re- member, dear reader, how Balzac, when he had come to the last page of Massimilla Doni, declares that he dare not tell you the end of this adventure. One woi*:tj he says, will suffice for the worshippers of the ideal : ' Massimilla Doni was expecting.' Then in a passage that is pleasanter to think about than to read — for Balzac when he spoke about art was something of a sciolist, and I am not sure that the passage is altogether grammatical — he tells how the ideas of all the great artists, painters and sculptors — the ideas they have wrought on panels and in stone — escaped from their niches and their frames — all these disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed and wept. It would be as disgraceful for Doris to be ' expecting ' as it was for Massimilla Doni, and I like to think of all the peris, the nymphs, the sylphs, the fairies of ancient legend, all her kins- folk gathering about her bed, deploring her con- dition, regarding her as lost to them — were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there in spirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be ^expecting' or even married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had 98 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE suddenly resolved to break silence; I sent her a LOVERS OF little note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time ; but though we had been estranged she had not been forgotten ; a little commonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, of regret. And this note was sent by a messenger duly instructed to ask for an answer. The news the messenger brought back was somewhat disappointing. The lady was away, but the letter would be forwarded to her. ' She is not married,' I thought, 'were she married ''fl^r name would be sent to me. . . . Perhaps not.' Other thoughts came into my mind, and I did not think of her again for the next two days, not till a long telegram was put into my hand. Doris ! It had come from her. It had come more than a thousand miles, ^ regardless of expense.' I said, ' This telegram must have cost her ten or twelve shillings at the least.' She was delighted to hear from me; she had been ill, but was better now, and the telegram concluded with the usual ' Am writing.' The letter that arrived two days afterwards was like herself, full of impulse and affection ; but it contained one phrase which put black misgiving into my heart. In her description of her illness and her health, which was returning, and how she had come to be staying in this far-away Southern town, she alluded to its dulness, saying that if I came there virtue must be its own reward. ' Stupid of her to speak to me of virtue,' I muttered, 'for she must know well enough that it was her partial virtue that had MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 99 separated us and caused this long estrangement/ the And I sat pondering, trying to discover if she ^^^^^^ ^^ 1. 1 , 1 1 \n 11 1 ORELAY apphed the phrase to herseli or to the place where she was staying. How could it apply to the place ? All places would be a paradise if At the close of a long December evening I wrote a letter^ the answer to which would decide whether I should go to her, whether I should undertake the long journey. 'The journey back will be detestable,' I muttered, and taking up the pen again I wrote, ' Your letter contains a phrase which fills me with dismay : you say, " Virtue must be its own reward," and this would seem that you are determined to be more aggressively Platonic than ever. Doris, this is ill news indeed ; you would not have me consider it good news, would you ? ' Other letters followed, but I doubt if I knew more of Doris's intentions when I got into the train than I did when I sat pondering by my fireside, • trying to discover her meaning when she wrote that vile phrase, ' Virtue must be its own reward.' But somehow I seemed to have come to a decision, and that was the main thing. We act obeying a law deep down in our being, a law which in normal circumstances we are not aware of. I asked myself as I drove to the station if it were possible that I was going to undertake a journey of more than a thousand miles in quest — of what ? Doris's pretty face ! It might be pretty no longer ; yet she could not have changed much. She had said she was sure that in ten minutes we should be talking just 100 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE as we used to in old times. Even so, none but LOVERS OF jnadmen travel a thousand miles in search of a ORELAY /> A 1 , T 1 pretty lace. And it M^as the madman that is m us all that was propelling me, or it was the primitive man who crouches in some jungle of our being. Of one thing I was sure, that I was no longer a con- ventional citizen of the nineteenth century ; I had gone back two or three thousand years, for all char- acteristic traits, everything whereby I knew myself, had disappeared ! Yet I seemed to have met myself somewhere, in some book or poem or opera. ... I could not remember at first, but after some time I began to perceive a shadowy similarity between myself and — dare I mention the names ? — the heroes of ancient legend — Menelaus or Jason — which ? Both had gone a thousand miles on Beauty's quest. The colour of Helen's hair isn't mentioned in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Jason's quest was a golden fleece, and so was mine. And it was the primitive hero that I had discovered in myself that helped me to face the idea of the journey, for there is nothing that wearies me so much as a long journey in the train. When I was twenty I started with the intention of long travel, but the train journey from Calais to Paris wearied me so much that I had rested in Paris for eight years, to return home then on account of some financial embarrassments. During those eight years I had often thought of Italy and the south of France, but the train journey of sixteen or seventeen or eighteen hours to the Italian frontier had always MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 101 seemed so much like what purgatory must be that the the heaven of Italy on the other side had never ^^o^ers op •^ ORELAY tempted me sufficiently to undertake it. A com- panion would be of no use; one cannot talk for fifteen or sixteen hours, and while debating with myself whether I should go to Plessy, I often glanced down the long perspective of hours. Everything, pleasure and pain alike, is greater in imagination than in reality — there is always a reaction, and having anticipated more than mortal weariness, I was surprised to find that the first two hours in the train had passed very pleasantly. It seemed that I had only been in the train quite a little while when it stopped, yet Laroche is more than an hour from Paris, quite a countryside station, and it seems strange that the Cote d'Azur should stop there. That was the grand name of the train that I was travelling by. Think of any English company running a train and calling it ' The Azure Shore ' ! Think of going to Euston or to Charing Cross, saying you are going by ' The Azure Shore ' ! So long as the name of this train endures, it is im- possible to doubt that the French mind is more picturesque than the English, and one no longer wonders why the French school of painting, etc. A fruit-seller was crying his wares along the plat- form, and just before we started from Laroche breakfast was preparing on board the train; I thought a basket of French grapes — the grapes that grow in the open air, not the leathery hot-house grapes filled with lumps of glue that we eat in 102 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE England — would pass the time. I got out and LOVERS OP bought a basket from him. On journeys like these one has to resort to many various little expedients. Alas ! The grapes were decaying ; only the bunch on the top was eatable; nor was that one worth eating, and I began to think that the railway com- pany's attention should be directed to the fraud, for in my case a deliberate fraud had been effected. The directors of the railway would probably think that passengers should exercise some discrimination; it were surely easy for the passenger to examine the quality of a basket of grapes before purchasing — that would be the company's answer to my letter. The question of a letter to the newspaper did not arise, for French papers are not like ours — they do not print all the letters that are sent to them. The French public has no means of ventilating its griev- ances ; a misfortune no doubt, but not such a mis- fortune as it seems, when one reflects on how little good a letter addressed to the public press does in the way of remedying abuses. I don't think we stopped again till we got to Lyons, and all the way there I sat at the window looking at the landscape — the long, long plain that the French peasant cultivates unceasingly. Out of that long plain came all the money that was lost in Panama, and all the money invested in Russian bonds — five milliards came out of the French peasant's stockings. We passed through La Beauce. I believe it was there that Zola went to study the French peasant before he wrote La Terre. Huys- MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 103 mans, with that benevolent malice so characteristic the of him, used to say that Zola's investigation was i^overs of ft -t . . . ORELAY limited to going out once tor a drive m a carriage with Madame Zola. The primitive man that had risen out of some jungle of my being did not view this immense and highly cultivated plain sympatheti- cally. It seemed to him to differ little from the town, so utterly was nature dominated by man and portioned out. On a subject like this one can meditate for a long time, and I meditated till my meditation was broken by the stopping of the train. We were at Lyons. The tall white-painted houses reminded me of Paris — Lyons, as seen from the windows of La Cote d'Azur at the end of a grey December day might be Paris. The climate seemed the same ; the sky was as sloppy and as grey. At last the train stopped at a place from which I could look down a side street, and I decided that Lyons wore a more provincial look than Paris, and I thought of the great silk trade and the dull minds of the merchants . . . their dinner-parties, etc. I noticed everything there was to notice in order to pass the time ; but there was so little of interest that I wrote out a telegram and ran with it to the office, for Doris did not know what train I was coming by, and it is pleasant to be met at a station, to meet one familiar face, not to find oneself amid a crowd of strangers. Very nearly did I miss the train ', my foot was on the footboard when the guard blew his whistle. ^ Just fancy if I had missed the train,' I said, and setting myself in my seat I added, ' now, 104 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE let us study the landscape ; such an opportunity as LOVERS OP .1 • • » this may never occur again. The long plain cultivated with tedious regularity that we had been passing through before we came to Lyons flowed on field after field ; it seemed as if we should never reach the end of it, and looking on those same fields, for they were the same, I said to myself, ' If I were an economist that plain would interest me, but since I got Doris's letter I am primitive man, and he abhors the brown and the waving field, and " the spirit in his feet " leads him to some grassy glen where he follows his flocks, listening to the song of the wilding bee that sings as it labours amid the gorse. What a soulless race that plain must breed,' I thought; ^ what soulless days are lived there ; peasants going forth at dusk to plough and turning home at dusk to eat, procreate and sleep.* At last a river appeared flowing amid sparse and stunted trees and reeds, a great wide sluggish river with low banks, flowing so slowly that it hardly seemed to flow at all. Rooks flew past, but they are hardly wilding birds ; a crow — yes, we saw one; and I thought of a heron rising slowly out of one of the reedy islands; maybe an otter or two survives the persecution of the peasant, and I liked to think of a poacher picking up a rabbit here and there ; hares must have almost disappeared, even the flock and the shepherd. France is not as picturesque a country as Eng- land ; only Normandy seems to have pasturage, there alone the shepherd survives along the banks MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 105 of the Seine. Picardy, though a swamp, never con- the veys an idea of the wild ; and the middle of France, covers of ORFT A V which I looked at then for the first time, shocked me, for primitive man, as I have said, was uppermost in me, and I turned away from the long plain, ' dreary,* I said, ' uneventful as a boarding-house/ But it is a long plain that has no hill in it, and when I looked out again a whole range showed so picturesquely that I could not refrain, but turned to a travelling companion to ask its name. It was the Esterelles ; and never shall I forget the pictur- esqueness of one moment — the jagged end of the Esterelles projecting over the valley, showing against what remained of the sunset, one or two bars of dusky red, disappearing rapidly amid heavy clouds massing themselves as if for a storm, and soon after night closed over the landscape. ^ Henceforth,' I said, ^ I shall have to look to my own thoughts for amusement, and in my circum- stances there was nothing reasonable for me to think of but Doris. Some time before midnight I should catch sight of her on the platform. It seemed to me wonderful that it should be so, and I must have been dreaming, for the voice of the guard crying out that dinner was served awoke me with a start. It is said to be the habit of my countrymen never to get into conversation with strangers in the train, but I doubt if that be so. Everything depends on the tact of him who first breaks silence; if his manner inspires confidence in his fellow-traveller 106 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE he will receive such answers as will carry the con- LovERs OP versation on for a minute or two, and in that time both will have come to a conclusion whether the conversation should be continued or dropped. A pleasant little book might be written about train acquaintances. If I were writing such a book I would tell of the Americans I met once at Nurem- berg, and with whom I travelled to Paris ; it was such a pleasant journey. I should have liked to have kept up their acquaintance, but it is not the etiquette of the road to do so. But I am writing no such book ; I am writing the quest of a golden fleece, and may allow myself no further deflection in the narrative; I may tell, however, of the two very interesting people I met at dinner on board La Cote d'Azur, though some readers will doubt if it be any integral part of my story. The woman was a typical French woman, pleasant and agreeable, a woman of the upper middle classes, so she seemed to me, but as I knew all her ideas the moment I looked at her, conversation with her did not flourish ; or would it be more true to say that her husband interested me more, being less familiar? His accent told me he was French ; but when he took off his hat I could see that he had come from the tropics — Algeria, I thought ; not unlikely a soldier. His talk was less stilted than a soldier's, and I began to notice that he did not look like a French- man, and when he told me that he lived in an oasis in the desert and was on his way home, his Oriental appearance I explained by his long resi- MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 107 dence among the Arabs. He had lived in the the desert since he was fourteen. ' Almost a Saharian,' i^overs of I said to him. And during dinner and long after dinner we sat talking of the difference between the Oriental races and the European ; of the various Arab patois. He spoke the Tunisian patois and wrote the language of the Koran, which is understood all over the Sahara and the Soudan, as well as in Mecca. What interested me, perhaps even more than the language question, was the wilding's enterprise in attempting to cultivate the desert. He had already enlarged his estate by the discovery of two ancient Roman wells, and he had no doubt that all that part of the desert lying between the three oases could be brought into cultivation. In ancient times there were not three oases but one ; the wells had been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of acres had been laid waste by the Numidians in order, I think he told me, to save themselves from the Saracens who were following them. He spent eight months of every year in his oasis, and begged of me, as soon as I had wearied of Cannes, to take the boat from Marseilles — I suppose it was from Marseilles — and spend some time with him in the wild. 'Visitors,' he said, 'are rare. You'll be very welcome. The railway will take you within a hundred miles ; the last hundred miles will be accomplished on the back of a dromedary ; I shall send you a fleet one and an escort.' * Splendid,' I answered. ' I see myself arriving 108 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE sitting high up on the hump gathering dates — I LOVERS OP suppose there are date palms where you are ? Yes? ORELAY ^^ , . , 1 , , — and wearing a turban and a bournous. ' Would you like to see my bournous ? ' he said, and opening his valise he showed me a splendid one which filled me with admiration, and only shame forbade me to ask him to allow me to try it on. Ideas haunt one. When I was a little child I insisted on wearing a turban and going out for a ride on the pony, flourishing a Damascus blade which my father had brought home from the East. Nothing else would have satisfied me ; my father led the pony, and I have always thought this fantasy exceedingly characteristic ; it must be so, for it awoke in me twenty years afterwards ; and fanciful and absurd as it may appear, I certainly should have liked to have worn my travelling companion's bournous in the train if only for a few minutes. All this is twelve years ago, and I have not yet gone to visit him in his oasis, but how many times have I done so in my imagination, seeing myself arriving on the back of a dromedary crying out, ^ Allah! Allah? And Mahommad is his prophet!' But though one can go on thinking year after year about a bournous, one cannot talk for more than two or three hours about one ; and though I looked forward to spending at least a fortnight with my friends, and making excursions in the desert, find- ing summer, as Fromentin says, chez lui, I was glad to say good-bye to my friends at Marseilles. I was still far from the end of my journey, and so weary MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 109 of talk that at first I was doubtful whether it would the be worth while to engage again in conversation, i^overs of but a pleasant gentleman had got into my carriage, and he required little encouragement to tell me his story. His beginnings were very humble, but he was now a rich merchant. It is always interesting to hear how the office-boy gets his first chance ; the first steps are the interesting ones, and I should be able to tell his story here if we had not been inter- rupted in the middle of it by his little girl. She had wearied of her mother, who was in the next carriage, and had come in to sit on her father's knee. Her hair hung about her shoulders just as Doris's had done five years ago, taking the date from the day that I journeyed in quest of the golden fleece. She was a winsome child, with a little fluttering smile about her lips and a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she was tired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long train journeys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spoke with a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good, but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, I thought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. One cannot remember everything, and I have forgotten at what station these people got out; they bade me a kindly farewell, telling me that in about two hours and a half I should be at Plessy, and that I should have to change at the next station, and this lag end of my journey dragged itself out no MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE very wearily. Plessy is a difficult place to get LOVERS OF ^^ Qjjg j^^g ^^ change, and while waiting for the ORELAY . _ 11, , train 1 seemed to lose heart; nothing seemed to matter, not even Doris. But these are momentary capitulations of the intellect and the senses, and when I saw her pretty face on the platform I con- gratulated myself again on my wisdom in having sent her the telegram. How much pleasanter it was to walk with her to the hotel than to walk there alone ! ' She is/ I said to myself, ' still the same pretty girl whom I so bitterly reproached for selfishness in Cumberland Place five years ago.' To compliment her on her looks, to tell her that she did not look a day older, a little thinner, a little paler, that was all, but the same enchanting Doris, was the facile inspiration of the returned lover. And we walked down the platform talking, my talk full of gentle reproof — why had she waited up.^ There was a reason. . . . My hopes, till now buoyant as corks, began to sink. ' She is going to tell me that I cannot come to her hotel. Why did I send that telegram from Lyons ? ' Had it not been for that telegram I could have gone straight to her hotel. It was just the telegram that had brought her to the station, and she had come to tell me that it was impossible for me to stay at her hotel. After thirty hours of travel which hotel I stayed at mattered little, but to-morrow and the next day, the long week we were to spend together passed before my eyes, the tedium of the afternoons, the Irritation and emptiness of Platonic evenings — / MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 111 ' Heavens ! what have I let myself in for/ I the thought, and my mind went back over the long ^j^^j^j^^ journey and the prospect of returning hredouille, as the sportsmen say. But to argue about details with a woman, to get angry, is a thing that no one versed in the arts of love ever does. We are in the hands of women always ; it is they who decide, and our best plan is to accept the different hotel with- out betraying disappointment, or as little as possible. But we had not seen each other for so long that we could not part at once. Doris said that I must come to her hotel and eat some supper. No ; I had dined on board the train, and all she could per- suade me to have was a cup of chocolate. Over that cup of chocolate we talked for an hour, and then I had to bid her good-night. The moon looked down the street coldly; I crossed from shadow to light, feeling very weary in all my body, and there was a little melancholy in my heart, for after all I might not win Doris. There was sleep, however, and sleep is at times a good thing, and that night it must have come quickly, so great was the refreshment I experienced in the morning when my eyes opened and, looking through mosquito curtains (themselves symbols of the South), were delighted by the play of the sunlight flickering along the flower-papered wall. The impulse in me was to jump out of bed at once and to throw open les croisees. And what did I see ? Tall palm- trees in the garden, and above them a dim, alluring sky, and beyond them a blue sea in almost the 112 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE same tone as the sky. And what did I feel ? Soft LOVERS OF perfumed airs moving everywhere. And what was ORELAY \ , - T rr^, the image that rose up in my mind ? The sensuous gratification of a vision of a woman bathing at the edge of a summer wood, the intoxication of the odour of her breasts. . . . Why should I think of a woman bathing at the edge of a summer wood } Because the morning seemed the very one that Venus should choose to rise from the sea and come into one's bedroom. Forgive my sensuousness, dear reader; remember that it was the first time I breathed the soft Southern air, the first time I saw orange-trees; remember that I am a poet, a modern Jason in search of a golden fleece. ' Is this the garden of the Hesperides ? ' I asked myself, for nothing seemed more unreal than the golden fruit hanging like balls of yellow worsted among dark and sleek leaves ; it reminded me of the fruit I used to see when I was a child under glass shades in lodging- houses ; but I knew, nevertheless, that I was looking upon orange-trees, and that the golden fruit growing amid the green leaves was the fruit I used to pick from the barrows when I was a boy ; the fruit of which I ate so much in boyhood that I cannot eat it any longer ; the fruit whose smell we associate with the pit of a theatre ; the fruit that women never weary of, high and low. It seemed to me a wonderful thing that at last I should see oranges growing on trees ; and I felt so happy that morning that I could not but wonder at my happiness, and seeking for a cause for it I stumbled on the reflection that perhaps after MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE US all happiness is no more than a faculty for being the surprised. The valet de chambre brought in my bath, oREiiAY and while I bathed and dressed I reflected on the luck of him who in middle age can be astonished by a blue sky, and still find the sunlight a bewitchment. But who would not be bewitched by the pretty sunlight that finds its way into the gardens of Plessy ? Moreover, I knew I was going to walk with Doris by a sea blue as any drop-curtain, and as she came towards me, her parasol aslant, she seemed to be but a figure on a drop-curtain. Are we not all figures on drop-curtains, and is not all drop-curtain, and La Belle Helene perhaps the only true reality ? Amused by the idea of Jason or Paris or Menelaus in Plessy, I asked Doris what music was played by the local orchestra, and she told me it played ' The March of Aida ' every evening. ' On the cornet,' I said, understanding at once that the mission of Plessy was to redeem one from the coil of one's daily existence, from Hebrew literature and its concomitants, bishops, vicars and curates — all these, especially bishops, are regarded as being serious ; whereas French novels and their concomitants, pretty girls, are supposed to represent the trivial side of life. A girl becomes serious only when she is en- gaged to be married ; the hiring of the house in which the family is reared is regarded as serious; in fact all prejudices are serious ; every deflection from the normal, from the herd, is looked upon as trivial; and I suppose that this is right : the world could not do without the herd nor could the herd do without H 114 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE US — the eccentrics who go to Plessy in quest of a LOVERS OP orolden fleece instead of putting stoves in the parish ORELAY , , , IT 11 churches (stoves and organs are always regarcled as too devilishly serious for words). Once I had a conversation with my archbishop about the Book of Daniel, and were I to write out his lordship's erudition I might even be deemed sufficiently serious for a review in the Church Gazette. But looking back on this interview^ and judging it with all the impartiality of which my nature is capable^, I cannot in truth say that I regard it as more serious than pretty Doris's fluent conversation, or the melancholy aspect of his Lordship's cathedral as more serious than the pretty Southern sunlight glancing along the seashore^ lighting up the painted houses, and causing Doris to shift her parasol. What a splendid article I might write on the trivial side of seriousness, but discussion is always trivial ; I shall be much more serious in trying to recall the graceful movement of her waist, and how prettily her parasol enframed her face. True that almost every face is pretty against the distended silk full of sunlight and shadow, but Doris's, I swear to you, was as pretty as any mediaeval virgin despite its modernness. Memlinc himself never designed a more appealing little face. Think of the enchantment of such a face after a long journey, by the sea that the Romans and the Greeks used to cross in galleys, that I used to read about when I was a boy. There it was, and on the other side the shore on which Carthage used to stand; there it MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 115 was, a blue bay with long red hills reaching out, the reminding me of hills I had seen somewhere, I think covers of in a battle piece by Salvator Rosa. It seemed to me that I had seen those hills before — no, not in a picture; had I dreamed them, or was there some remembrance of a previous existence struggling in my brain ? There was a memory somewhere, a broken memory, and I sought for the lost thread as well as I could, for Doris rarely ceased talk- ing. '^And there is the restaurant,* she said, flinging up her parasol, ' built at the end of those rocks.* We were the first swallows to arrive ; the flocks would not be here for about three weeks. So we had the restaurant to ourselves, the waiter and doubtless the cook ; and they gave us all their attention. Would we have breakfast in the glass pavilion? How shall I otherwise describe it, for it seemed to be all glass. The scent of the sea came through the window, and the air was like a cordial — it intoxicated ; and looking across the bay one seemed to be looking on the very thing that Whistler had sought for in his Nocturnes, and that Steer had nearly caught in that picture of children paddling, that dim, optimistic blue that allures and puts the world behind one, the dream of the opium-eater, the phrase of the syrens in Tannhauser, the phrase which begins like a barcarole ; but the accompani- ment tears underneath until we thrill with ex- pectation. As I looked across the bay Doris seemed but a 116 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE little thing, almost insignificant, and the thought LOVERS OP ^^j^g ^j^^^ J j^^jj jjQ^ gQj^g £qj, nothine even if I did ORELAY , . . . , ° not succeed in winning her. ' Doris, dear, forgive me if I am looking at this bay instead of you, but I Ve never seen anything like this before,' and feeling I was doing very poor justice to the emotions I was experiencing, I said, ' Is it not strange that all this is at once to me new and old ? I seem, as it were, to have come into my inheritance/ ' Your inheritance ! Am I not ' ' Dearest, you are. Say that you are my inherit- ance, my beautiful inheritance ; how many years have I waited for it }' As I took her in my arms she caught sight of the waiter, and turning from her I looked across the bay, and my desire nearly died in the infinite sweetness blowing across the bay. * Azure hills, not blue ; hitherto I have only seen blue.' 'They're blue to-day because there is a slight mist, but they are in reality red.' ^A red-hilled bay,' I said, ^and all the slopes flecked with the white sides of villas.* ' Peeping through olive-trees.' 'Olive-trees, of course. I have never yet seen the olive; the olive begins at Avignon or there- abouts, doesn't it? It was dark night when we passed through Avignon.' * You'll see very few trees here ; only olives and ilex/ MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 117 ' The ilex I know, and there is no more beautiful the tree than the ilex. ^^^^'^^ «*^ ORELAY Were not the crocuses that grew Under that ilex tree. As beautiful in scent and hue As ever fed the bee ? ' ' Whose verses are those ? ' 'Shelley's, I know no others. Are the lines very wonderful } They seem no more than a state- ment, yet they hang about my memory. I am glad I shall see the ilex tree.' 'And the eucalyptus — plenty of eucalyptus trees.' ' That was the scent that followed us this morning as we came through the gardens.' ' Yes, as we passed from our hotel one hung over the garden wall, and the wind carried its scent after us. The arrival of the waiter with hors d'oeuvres dis- tracted our attention from the olive-tree to its fruit. I rarely touch olives, but that morning I ate many. Should we have mutton cutlets or lamb } Doris said the Southern mutton was detestable. 'Then we'll have lamb.' An idea came into my head, and it was this, that I had been mistaken about Doris's beauty. Hers was not like any face that one may find in a panel by Memlinc. She was like something, but I could not lay my thoughts on what she was like. ' A sail would spoil the beauty of the bay,' I said when the waiter brought in the coffee, and left us 118 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE — we hoped for the last time. Taking hands and LOVERS OF going to the window we sat looking across the sail- less bay. ' How is it that no ships come here ? Is the bay looked upon as a mere ornament, and reserved exclusively for the appreciation of visitors ? Those hills, too, look as if they had been designed in a like intent. . . . How much more beautiful the bay is without a sail — why I cannot tell, but ' ' But what ? ' ' A great galley rowed by fifty men would look well in this bay. . . . The bay is antiquity, and those hills ; all the morning while talking to you a memory or a shadow of a memory has fretted in my mind like a fly on a pane. Now I know why I have been expecting a nymph to rise out of those waves during breakfast. For a thousand years men be- lieved that nymphs came up on those rocks, and that satyrs and their progeny might be met in the woods and on the hillsides. Only a thin varnish has been passed over these beliefs. One has only to come here to look down into that blue sea-water to believe that nymphs swim about those rocks; and when we go for a drive among those hillsides we '11 keep a sharp look-out for satyrs. Now I know why I like this country. It is heathen. Those mountains — how different from the shambling Irish hills from whence I have come ! And you, Doris, you might have been dug up yesterday, though you are but two-and-twenty. You are a thing of yester age, not a bit like the little Memlinc head which I imagined you to be like when I MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 119 was coming here in the train, nor like anything the done by the Nuremberg painters. You are a covers of Tanagra figure, and one of the finest. In you I read all the winsomeness of antiquity. But I must look at the bay now, for I may never see anything like it again ; never have I seen anything like it before. Forgive me, remember that three days ago I was in Ireland, the day before yesterday I was in England, yesterday I was in Paris. I have come out of the greyness of the North. When I left Paris all was grey, and when the train passed through Lyons a grey night was gathering ; now I see no cloud at all : the change is so wonderful. You cannot appre- ciate my admiration. You have been looking at the bay for the last three weeks, and la cote d'azur has become nothing to you now but palms and promen- ades. To me it is still quite different. I shall always see you beautiful, whereas Plessy may lose her beauty in a few days. Let me enjoy it while I may.' ' Perhaps I shall not outlast Plessy } ' 'Yes, you will. Do you know, Doris, that you don't look a day older since the first time I saw you walking across the room to the piano in your white dress, your gold hair hanging down over your shoulders. It has darkened a little, that is all.' 'It is provoking you should see me when I am thin. I wish you had seen me last year when I came from the rest cure. I went up more than a stone in weight. Every one said that I didn't look 120 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE more than sixteen. I know I didn't, for all the LOVERS OF ^ojnen were jealous of me.' As I sat watching the dissolving line of the horizon, lost in a dream, I heard my companion say— ' Of what are you thinking ? ' * I 'm thinking of something that happened long ago in that very bay.' ' Tell me about it ' ; and her hand sought mine for a moment. ' Would you like to hear it ? I 'd like to tell it, but it's a long, long story, and to remember it would be an effort. The colour of the sea and the sky is enough ; the warmth of the sunlight pene- trates me ; I feel like a plant ; the only difference between me and one of those palm-trees ' ' I am sure those poor palms are shivering. There is not enough heat here for them ; they come from the south, and you come from the north.' ' I suppose that is so. They grow, but they don't flourish here. However, my mood is not philan- thropic; I cannot pity even a palm-tree at the present moment. See how my cigar smoke curls and goes out ! It is strange, Doris, that I should meet you here, for some years ago it was arranged that I should come here ' * With a woman } ' ' Yes, of course. How can it be otherwise ? Our lives are woven along and across with women. Some men find the reality of their lives in women, others, as we were saying just now, in bishops.' MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 121 ' Tell me about the woman who asked you to the come here? Did you love her? And what pre- ^®^^^® ^^ vented you from coming here with her ? ' ' It is one of the oddest stories — odd only because it is like myself. Every character creates its own stories ; we are like spools, and each spool fills itself up with a different-coloured thread. The story, such as it is, began one evening in Victoria Street at the end of a long day's work. A letter began it. She wrote asking me to dine with her, and her letter was most welcome, for I had no plans for that evening. I do not know if you know that curious dread of life which steals through the twilight; it had just laid its finger on my shoulder when the bell rang, and I said, " My visitor is welcome, whoever she or he may be." The visitor would have only spent a few minutes perhaps with me, but Gertrude's letter — that was her name — was a promise of a long and pleasant evening, for it was more than a mere invitation to dinner. She wrote : " I have not asked any one to meet you, but you will not mind dining alone with me. I hope you will be able to come, for I want to consult you on a matter about which I think you will be able to advise me." As I dressed I wondered what she could have to propose, and with my curi- osity enkindled I walked to her house. The evening was fine — I remember it — and she did not live far from me; we were neighbours. You see I knew Gertrude pretty well, and I liked her. There had been some love passages between us, but I had 122 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE never been her lover ; our story had got entangled, LOVERS OF and as I went to her I hoped that this vexatious O'RP'T A V knot was to be picked at last. To be Gertrude's lover would be a pleasure indeed, for though a woman of forty, a natural desire to please, a witty mind and pretty manners, still kept her young ; she had all the appearance of youth ; and French gowns and underwear that cost a little fortune made her a woman that one would still take a pleasure in making love to. It would be pleasant to be her lover for many reasons. There were disadvantages, however, for Gertrude, though never vulgar herself, liked vulgar things. Her friends were vulgar ; her flat, for she had just left her husband, was opulent, over- decorated ; the windows were too heavily curtained, the electric light seemed to be always turned on, and as for the pictures — well, we won t talk of them ; Gertrude was the only one worth looking at. And she was rather like a Salon picture, a Gervex, a Boldeni — I will not be unjust to Gertrude, she was not as vulgar as a Boldeni. She had a pretty cooing manner, and her white dress fell grace- fully from her slender flanks. You can see her, can't you, coming forward to meet me, rustling a little, breathing an odour of orris root, taking my hand and very nearly pressing it against her bosom ? Gertrude knew how to suggest, and no sooner had the thought that she wished to inspire passed through my mind than she let go my hand, saying, '' Come, sit down by me, tell me what you have been doing"; and her charm was that it MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 123 was impossible to say whether what I have described, the dress, manner, and voice, was unconscious or inten- ^®^^^® ^^ \ ' ' ORELAY tional/ ' Probably a little of both/ Doris said. ' I see you understand. You always understand.' ' And to make amends for the familiarity of press- ing your hand to her bosom she would say, " I hope you will not mind dining alone with me," and immediately you would propound a little theory that two is company, and three is a county council, unless indeed the three consist of two men and one woman. A woman is never really happy unless she is talking to two men, woman being at heart a polyandrist.' ' Doris, you know me so well that you can invent my conversations.* ' Yes, I think I can. You have not changed ; I have not forgotten you though we have not seen each other for five years ; and now go on, tell me about Gertrude.' ' Well, sitting beside her on the sofa — ' ' Under the shaded electric light,' interrupted Doris. ' — I tried to discover — not the reason of this in- vitation to dinner ; of course it was natural that old friends should dine together, but she had said in her letter that she wished to talk to me about some matter on which she thought I could advise her. The servant would come in a moment to announce that dinner was ready, and if Gertude did not tell me at once I might, if the story were a long one. 124 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE have to wait till dinner was over; her reluctance LOVERS OF J.Q confide in me seemed to point to pecuniary help. ORELAY ,xr . -i i i ^ f i Was it possible that Gertrude was going to ask me to lend her money ? If so, the loan would be a heavy one, more than I could afford to lend. That is the advantage of knowing rich people ; when they ask for money they ask for more than one can afford to lend, and one can say with truth, '' Were I to lend you five hundred pounds, I should not be able to make ends meet at the end of the year." Her reluctance to confide in me seemed incompre- hensible, unless indeed she wanted to borrow money. But Gertrude was not that kind, and she was a rich woman. At last, just before the servant came into the room, she turned round saying that she had sent for me because she wished to speak to me about a yacht. Imagine my surprise. To speak to me about a yacht ! If it had been about a picture. The door opened, the servant announced that dinner was ready, and we had to talk in French during dinner, for her news was that she had hired a yacht for the winter in order that she might visit Greece and the Greek Islands. But she did not dare to travel in Greece alone for six months, and it was diffi- cult to find a man who was free and whom one could trust. She thought she could trust me, and remem- bering that I had once liked her, it had occurred to her to ask me if I would like to go with her. I shall never forget how Gertrude confided her plan to me, the charming modesty with which she mur- mured, '* Perhaps you do still, and you will not bore MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 125 me by claiming rights over me. I don't mind your the making love to me, but I don't like rights. You ^-o^ers op 1 1 . T TTTi x^ 1 n ORELAY know what 1 mean. When we return to England you will not pursue me. You know what I have suffered from such pursuits ; you know all about it ? " . Is it not curious how a woman will sometimes paint her portrait in a single phrase; not paint, but indicate in half-a-dozen lines her whole moral ! nature ? Gertrude exists in the words I have quoted just as God made her. And now I have to tell you' about the pursuit. When Gertrude mentioned it I had forgotten it; a blankness came into my face, and she said, "Don't you remember?" "Of course, of course," I said, and this is the story within the story. ^One day after lunch Gertrude, getting up, walked unconsciously towards me, and quite natur- ally I took her in my arms, and when I had told her how much I liked her, and the pleasure I took in her company, she promised to meet me at a hotel in Lincoln. We were to meet there in a fortnight's time; but two days before she sent for me, and told me that she would have to send me away. I really did like Gertrude, and I was quite overcome, and a long hour was spent begging of her to tell why she had come to this determination. One of course says unjust things, one accuses a woman of cruelty ; what could be the meaning of it ? Did she like to play with a man as a cat plays with a mouse ? But Gertrude, though she seemed dis- tressed at my accusations, refused to give me any explanation of her conduct; tears came into her 126 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE eyes — they seemed like genuine tears — and it was ORELAY difficult to believc that she had taken all this trouble merely to arrive at this inexplicable and most disagreeable end. Months passed without my hearing anything of Gertrude, till one day she sent me a little present, and in response to a letter she invited me to come to see her in the country. And, walking through some beautiful woods, she told me the reason why she had not gone to Lincoln. A Pole whom she had met at the gam- bling tables at Monte Carlo, was pursuing her, threatening her that if he saw her with any other man, he would murder her and her lover. This at first seemed an incredible tale, but when she entered into details, there could be no doubt that she was telling the truth, for had she not on one occasion very nearly lost her life through this man ? They were in Germany together, she and the Pole, and he had locked her up in her room without food for many hours, and coming in suddenly he had pressed the muzzle of a pistol against her temple, and pulled the trigger. Fortunately, it did not go off. "It was a very near thing,*' she said; "the cartridge was indented, and I made up my mind that if things went any further, I should have to tell my husband." "But things can't go further than an indented cartridge," I answered. " What you tell me is terrible "; and we talked for a long time, walking about the woods, fearing that the Pole might spring from behind every bush, the pistol in his hand. But he did not appear; she MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 127 evidently knew where he was, or had made some the compact with him. Nevertheless, at the close of ^^^^^^ ®^ 1 , T 1 111 . ORELAY the day, 1 drove through the summer evening not having got anything from Gertrude except a promise that if she should find herself free, she would send for me. Weeks and months went by during which I saw Gertrude occasionally; you see love-stories, once they get entangled, remain entangled; that is what makes me fear that we shall never be able to pick the knot that you have tied our love-story into. Misadventure followed misadventure. It seems to me that I behaved very stupidly on many occasions ; it would take too long to tell you how — when I met her at the theatre I did not do exactly what I should have done ; and on another occasion when I met her driving in a suburb, I did not stop her cab, and so on and so on until, resolved to bring matters to a crisis, Gertrude had sent me an invitation to dinner, and her plan was the charming one which I have told you, that we should spend six months sailing about the Greek Islands in a yacht. We left the dining-room and returned to the drawing-room, she telling me that the yacht had been paid for — the schooner, the captain, the crew, everything for six months ; but I not unnaturally pointed out to her that I could not accept her hospitality for so long a time, and the greater part of the evening was spent in trying to persuade her to allow me to pay — Gertrude was the richer — at least a third of the upkeep of the yacht must come out of my pocket. 128 MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE THE The prospect of a six months' cruise among the ORBLAY Lov F Qj.gg]^ Islands kindled my imagination, and while listening to Gertrude I was often in spirit far away, landing perchance at Cyprus, exalted at the prospect of visiting the Cyprians' temple ; or perchance standing with Gertrude on the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east ; the sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner east- ward. I imagined how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes. '^ What a delicious book my six months with Gertrude will be ! " I said as I walked home, and the title of the book was an inspiration, "An Unsentimental Journey." It was Gertrude's own words that had suggested it. Had she not said that she did not mind my making love to her, but she did not like rights ? She couldn't complain if I wrote a book, and I imagined how every evening when the lover left her the chronicler would sit for an hour recording his impressions. Very often he would continue writing until the pencil dropped from his hand, till he fell asleep in the chair. An immediate'note-taking would be necessary, so fugi- tive are impressions, and an analysis of his feelings, their waxing and their waning ; he would observe himself as an astronomer observes the course of a somewhat erratic star, and his descriptions of him- MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 129 self and of her would be interwoven with descrip- the LOVE ORELAY tions of the seas across which Menelaus had gone ^^^ after Helen's beauty — beauty^ the noblest of men's quests. ' For once Nature seemed to me to put into the hands of the artist a subject perfect in its every part ; the end especially delighted me_, and I imagined our gc~^\'