Fragments Of An Autobiography Part 16

"Hus.h.!.+ let her rest. Ma sainte! See now--that halo of light around her head--a vision." He spoke with an effort, but on that early Sunday morning he told me how deeply he loved Madeleine.

The sun rose once more on Claude; never again the moon. He was still sitting on that chair when his head dropped to move no more. We were all present. Madeleine knelt by his side and buried her face in the grey rug she had so often laid across his knees. She held his lifeless hand and wept in silent anguish until we led her away.

Did she know, poor Madeleine, that she too had but a few years to live?

that the germs of the unrelenting disease which had carried off her friend, her lover, were at work within her?

I was with her when she too closed her eyes,--so peacefully, serenely.

It was a vision of love that pa.s.sed away from amongst us.

"I am quite happy. You will lay me by his side?"

"Yes, Madeleine,--yes."

And now that I have said what I wanted to say about those friends of my early days, and followed them to the closing chapters of their lives, I ought perhaps at once to turn over a new leaf and record a fresh impression. But it is hard to dismiss memories which one has evoked. Why should one? Nothing in good old Nature is abrupt; the sun sets and day fades into night; in the rainbow yellow merges into green, and green into blue, and it seems but in keeping with the ways of Nature that there should be something to read between the lines of a slightly sketched life-story, and something to be thought out between heterogeneous chapters. They cannot but be varying if they are to depict the motley crowd of figures that go to make up one's own experiences.

Such chapters are like the various pieces on the programme of a musical recital. There we are taken from a fugue to a notturno, from a grande valse to a moons.h.i.+ne sonata; and the pianist, if by some chance he happens to be a musician, leads us with a few improvised chords, from one mood to another, from flats to sharps, major to minor.

So then my starting-point is once more Dupont, and before I think of other friends, I find myself speculating as to what he might have achieved, and to what honours he might have attained, had he lived. What would he have thought of to-day, and what would to-day have thought of him? To be sure he would be wearing a bit of red ribbon in his b.u.t.ton-hole, as all distinguished Frenchmen do; and who is not distinguished? By this time he would have been an Academician, royal or national, a Membre de l'Inst.i.tut, perhaps even one of the forty "Immortals," if he had taken to the pen, as we know painters will sometimes do. In the eyes of the rising generation the Immortals mostly take rank with any other old fogeys, and Dupont would have fared no better than his contemporaries at the hands of the _Nous avons change tout cela's_ of the day.

It could not have been otherwise; for, alas! (and I have not sought to disguise it) he had none of their distinctive qualities. He never loved the un-beautiful for its own sake, nor was he a man of the prominent-wart school. In his compositions elevated thought and subtle expression had a fatal tendency to eclipse the non-essentials; his luminary rays were painted without regard for the laws of decomposition, and his atmospheric vibrations, if he attempted them at all, were not worth speaking of. Besides, the least practised art-student of to-day would not fail to notice that his careful drawing of hands, or the graceful lines of his draperies, would monopolise attention, to the detriment of the backgrounds, which had a way of receding, so that the main interest of the picture could never be said to concentrate upon them.

The enchantress, Art, is ever making new victims. Just now she is wedded to the new master, the variety painter, and is on her wedding-trip, fully equipped with new fas.h.i.+ons of tone and colour, rich too in new values; and she travels along happily unconscious--some ignorance is bliss--over the treacherous roads designed by the "new" perspective, past tottering towers, over warped planes, and down steep inclines, pluckily standing her ground where those fallen angels, the old masters, would have feared to tread.

It's the old suit once more before us; young folks versus old fogeys, the traditional battle-royal, to be fought to-day, as it will be fought to the end of all time. I say, Hurrah for the young ones! Perhaps they are leading us a step or two backwards, but I verily believe it is only to _reculer pour mieux sauter_, to back, we should say, the better to jump. So let us keep the line clear for youth and strength; we can't do without their vigorous onslaughts. Where would the old tree of art be, if it were not for the new shoots?

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER VI

A TRIP TO AMERICA IN 1883

I well remember a chance remark of mine which led to my crossing the ocean.

"Well, if I can get a cabin in your boat, we'll go too, but I'm afraid it's too late now, at the eleventh hour."

That was said to Irving and Ellen Terry, who were preparing to leave on their first visit to the States in 1883.

I had never given a trip to America a serious thought; a consultation at Cook's office and subsequent trunk-packing usually meant a flight to the sunny South or the glorious East; but a new country, and a civilised one into the bargain, had failed to attract me. I had heard over and over again that the Americans were a practical people, and that, to be sure, meant inartistic, and I knew they could talk, build, and make money-piles bigger than we can, and that again did not predispose me in their favour. In fact I may say, without boasting, that I cherished about as many prejudices as does the average Englishman when he seeks to form his opinion regarding those unhappily not included in the magic circle to which he belongs, and I felt that, if ever I visited my young American cousins, it would be to give them the benefit of my superior old-world experience.

I may say at once that I had not been in the country long, before I found it desirable to climb down, discovering that it was quite as much as I could do to keep my footing at all on one or the other of the scaling ladders I had tried to ascend. But for all my ups and downs, one thing is certain: it was a happy thought that led me to take my pa.s.sage to New York, and a specially happy one to cross with Irving and Ellen Terry.

"I count myself in nothing else so happy As in a soul remembering my good friends."

--_Richard II._

So wrote Irving in my alb.u.m, dating the lines from the "Atlantic Ocean, 20th October 1883."

It was indeed a time of good and friendly relations we had on that Atlantic, meeting at a sort of poet's corner of the captain's table at dinner-time, and later again, when we could discuss the merits of the nocturnal Welsh rarebit, or of the comforting nightcap. Those expressive legs of his, with which we are all so familiar, were a constant source of delight to me. In the smoking saloon he would know how to stretch them till they gave you a sense of absolute rest; and when he got up, you felt they must originally have been designed for sea-legs. When sometimes I paced the deck by their side, I felt I could now really boast of being in the same boat with my ill.u.s.trious friend, and of more than that: for once in a way, I was actually treading the same boards with him.

I think he thoroughly enjoyed what was to him an unknown experience, a ten days' rest; but I doubt whether he took it as a holiday; he had books and papers to keep him company that looked suspiciously like business, and when he reclined full length on his steamer-chair, contemplating the rolling sea through his eye-gla.s.ses, he looked as if he were meditating a revival of "The Tempest," and consulting with Neptune and aeolus as to the best way of producing it.

As for Ellen Terry, she was _facile princeps_ on our floating city, fascinating everybody, from captain and crew, _via_ first and second cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, down to the emigrant's crowing baby. There had been a grand gathering to see her and Irving off. Friends had come, laden with parting gifts; golden-haired children were there, bringing baskets full of flowers that should intertwine themselves with their dear Ellen's existence, till others could be gathered to greet her on her arrival.

When the bell sounded, recalling the visitors to the tender that had brought them, the process of leave-taking went through its acutest stage; there were the cordial grips and moist eyes, the crisp, resonant kisses, and the long, silent embraces. "Good-bye; take care of him, take care of her, till I come back! Good-bye, again!"

Ay! some of us had taken return tickets, some had not. Which of us would return?

We got sorted at last; all the good clothes on our side; the new suits, ulsters, and dresses to be bodily introduced into the country that produces the like only at ruinous prices. We all looked brand new, as if we were equipped for our respective honeymoons. Soon we were pa.s.sing the last outstretched arm of land, that seemed to bid us one more farewell; but the greeting only came from Cinderella, the Emerald Isle, and we, I suppose being an English vessel, refused to hug the coast, and made for the open sea, whence for some time we could see her knowingly wink her revolving Cyclopean eye at us.

The moon had risen majestically; it could not do otherwise with those Lyceists on board. We had achieved something like order in our cabins, and were reappearing above to have a look at one another. Ellen was leaning over the bulwarks with one of those flowers in her hand, which by any other name would smell as sweet. She was still gazing sh.o.r.ewards, as if she would keep on saying Good-bye until to-morrow; a living picture, long lines of beauty flowing from her shoulders to her feet, such as natural grace will evolve even from the slender material of a travelling dress.

But for all that, she must not be imagined as addicted to mooning or posing; just the reverse, she was the most practical soul on board, ever active and thoughtful. Before the first twenty-four hours had pa.s.sed, all those hothouse grapes the old friends had brought had found their way to the new friends, the steerage pa.s.sengers; so, too, what of shawls and wraps she could lay her hands on. "I have hidden away one or two warm things," said her maid, "or there would be nothing of the kind left for her."

For a day or two we had very rough weather, and the attendance at poet's corner was small; our first night in particular set many of us wis.h.i.+ng that Columbus had minded his own business and not gone out of his way to discover a new continent. If a s.h.i.+p would only roll and pitch, an average land-lubber might have a chance, but it has a nasty trick of seceding from beneath you when you are lying on your back, and leaving that back to follow as best it can. This particular hiatus was not new to me, but such a multiplicity of noises as made that night hideous I had never encountered before. The wiseacres said that a cargo of pig-iron had been badly stowed in the s.h.i.+p's entrails, and was trying to knock a hole in its side, and so it sounded. The drillings of the screw I could recognise as it doggedly worked its way, occasionally writhing in impotent rage as it was lifted out of the water; but all the other squeaking, grating, bond-bursting sounds I could not a.n.a.lyse. As for my cabin, it soon presented the appearance of a Pandemonium. There was no provision for securing anything, so portmanteaux were colliding with one another, and with various articles of furniture and crockery that had put in an appearance; my dressing-case was sliding along the floor like a schoolboy on the ice, and in fact every mortal thing was on the alert, trying to find its ever-s.h.i.+fting centre of gravity. For all that I went to sleep, to dream of alligators and lifebelts, and of the list of the saved, amongst whom I could not find my name.

That chivalrous White Star Company had constructed a special state-room on deck for their guest, the histrionic star, and had furnished it comfortably, as I know full well, for when, after the demoralising experiences of that night, I had crawled to the surface limp and crushed, a ministering angel at once took me in hand, laid me out in full state in that room of hers, propped me with cus.h.i.+ons, tended me with creature comforts, and finally willed me to sleep. When after some hours I came out vivified and refreshed, I found her squatting on the deck in true schoolgirl fas.h.i.+on, writing letters in her big handwriting.

Later on what on _terra firma_ I call my better half had also emerged from below, and was organising a personally conducted five-o'clock tea, made attractive by certain canisters in her private possession. Full justice was done to the popular meal by the small but select circle of friends come together on that occasion.

As we proceeded, many an incident occurred, partly connected with the vagaries of the Atlantic, partly with the thousand and one social and humanitarian interests awakened on board a floating city. They seemed noteworthy then, but to-day, and to make a long voyage short, I will only say that it's an ill wind that can't leave off blowing, and it's a long water-course that has no landing-stage, and that consequently, after a good deal of boisterous weather, the sea calmed down and we arrived safely in New York harbour. On the morning when the pilot came on board, we were most of us still in our berths; but Ellen was up and on deck, and the first to shake hands with him, and greet him with a hearty "Good-morning, Mr. Pilot!"

The first thing that happened to me on arriving in the free country, was that I was most courteously but resolutely deprived of my liberty by the interviewers. Hobn.o.bbing as I was with Irving and Ellen Terry, they had evidently taken me for somebody, and, under that mistaken impression, at once proceeded to extract copy from me.

What a splendid inst.i.tution that interviewing is! The stranger has from the first a unique opportunity of showing himself just as he wishes to appear. He can drape himself in dignity, or pose for the free and easy; he can borrow good works from his friends and virtues from good books, and throw in as much soft-soap and blarney as he thinks the natives can stand. What I may have said I don't know; but I am quite sure I missed my chance. I was much too innocent then, and probably told the truth.

On Ellen the interviewers must have doted from the first; she was so charmingly impulsive, so spontaneous and overflowing with copy. I dare say she gave them points about Art and the Drama, from Sophocles _via_ Shakespeare down to the last thing out; but I only remember the delightful insight into her personal habits and tastes she let them have when she chose to take the world into her confidence.

"What do I drink?" she said on one occasion. "Very little wine, I am so nervous. The doctor restricts me to milk, but restrictions and doctors combined will never come between me and my tea. I must have tea--tea or death--three times a day, and, as Johnson said about Mrs. Woffington and her tea, 'It is strong, and red as blood.' I take English tea, which I buy by the caddy, and wherever I am, there are my caddy and my dog--Fussy and caddy. Without them 'Oth.e.l.lo's occupation's gone.'"

At the custom-house I gave the customary tip, for I had been confidentially informed that no official on the landing-stage, calling himself a gentleman, would misinterpret my courtesy, or allow himself to be unfairly influenced by it. I had fully expected that, by some ingenious mechanical device, my luggage would be landed simultaneously with myself, and placed on certain square yards of the American Continent set apart for our temporary use. I had imagined the custom-house a many-storied edifice in keeping with the high tariff it enforced. Instead, however, of any such expectations being realised, I found myself in a large open shed, from which I could watch the luggage as it was being ejected in a most primitive way from our s.h.i.+p, with a good riddance shove from above, and a "look out" shout from below.

An army of porters made a rush for it, and began strewing it all over the place, getting everybody's belongings thoroughly mixed, and generally acting as if they were shuffling a pack of cards before commencing a new game.

The new game took the shape of a free fight, which was waged with varying fortunes for two or three hours. By dint of displaying much energy in the attainment of my own ends, to the detriment of everybody else's, I succeeded in regrouping the greater part of my effects; not without sorrow can I look back, however, to that field-day, and the sad losses I sustained, the latter conclusively proving to me that within the carefully guarded precincts of the custom-house no thieves are admitted except on business.

The process of clearing and of being cleared out once terminated, I drove to the "Brevoort," that most respectable of hotels, founded, I believe, by a party that came over in the _Mayflower_, a house second only in antiquity to some "Noah's Ark Hotel" in Philadelphia. I went there because the last, not least, of the Henrys had selected it for his headquarters. As soon as the rescued trunks reached me I unpacked my writing materials, and, following ill.u.s.trious examples, at once sat down to write a book about America, and the manners and customs of its inhabitants. But, unlike the ill.u.s.trious ones, I thought better of it, and got up again. The fact that I have now once more taken up the pen, evidently with the same purpose, somewhat recalls Jean Paul Richter's story of the tippler, who, for once resisting temptation, pa.s.ses the door of the public-house, and then, proud of his achievement, turns back that he may reward himself for so much self-denial. So, too, do I appear to be tardily, but none the less surely, succ.u.mbing to temptation; and the parallel goes even further, for, as the tippler in all probability did not rest satisfied with one gla.s.s, so I feel a morbid craving to write as many volumes on America, as there are kinds of drinks at the bar of a big New York hotel. If such volumes, full of pleasant memories, are destined never to appear, it will only be because publishers are, perhaps providentially, placed as protecting buffers between the public and the author. A few chapters may, however, possibly be allowed to pa.s.s, so I let them take their chance.

"Dis moi qui tu hantes, et je te dirai qui tu es," says the French proverb, which, freely translated, might be made to say: "Tell me whom you knew in America, and I will tell you what you thought of the country." Well, I think I knew just the right people, and from that you can gather what my impressions were. I certainly started fair, equipped as I was with a batch of letters of introduction. These, according to American usage, I posted to their addresses, and then sat in state at a given time, waiting for the friends of my friends to come and make friends with me. One letter, however, I carefully kept, and only showed to those who I thought would appreciate it. It was that best and kindest of men, Robert Browning, who had given it me, and to this day, when I read it, it seems more like music than like epistolary prose to me. It ran thus:--

"19 WARWICK CRESCENT, W.,

_11th August 1884_.