Chapter XV.
I returned to Europe touching at Bombay and getting just a whiff of the
intoxicating perfume of that wonder-land with its noble, though sad,
spiritual teaching which is now beginning through the Rig Veda to inform
the best European thought.
I stopped too at Alexandria and ran up to Cairo for a week to see the
great Mosques: I admired their splendid rhetoric; but fell in love with
the desert and its Pyramids and above all with the Sphinx and her
eternal questioning of sense and outward things. Thus by easy, memorable
stages that included Genoa and Florence and their storied palaces and
churches and galleries, I came at length to Paris.
I distrust first impressions of great places or events or men. Who could
describe the deathless fascination of the mere name and first view of
Paris to the young student or artist of another race! If he has read and
thought, he will be in a fever; tears in his eyes, heart thrilling with
joyful expectancy, he will wander into that world of wonders!
I got to the station early one summer morning and sent my baggage at
once by fiacre to the Hotel Meurice in the rue Rivoli; the same old
hotel that Lever the novelist had praised, and then I got into a little
Victoria and drove to the Place de la Bastille. The obvious café life of
the people did not appeal to me; but when I saw the Glory springing from
the Column of July, tears flooded my eyes, for I recalled Carlyle’s
description of the taking of the prison.
I paid the cocher and wandered up the rue Rivoli, past the Louvre, past
the blackened walls with the sightless windows of the Tuileries palace—a
regret in their desolate appeal, and so to the Place de la Gréve with
its memories of the guillotine and the great revolution, now merged in
the Place de la Concorde. Just opposite I could distinguish the gilt
dome of the Church of the Invalides where the body of Napoleon lies as
he desired: “On the banks of the Seine, in the midst of that French
people I have loved so passionately!”
And there were the horses of Marly ramping at the entrance to the Champs
Elysées and at the far end of the long hill, the Arch! The words came to
my lips:
Up the long dim road where thundered
The army of Italy onward
By the great pale arch of the Star.
It was the deep historic sense of this great people that first won me
and their loving admiration of their poets and artists and guides. I can
never describe the thrill it gave me to find on a small house a marble
plaque recording the fact that poor de Musset had once lived there, and
another on the house wherein he died. Oh, how right the French are to
have a Place Malherbe, and Avenue Victor Hugo, an Avenue de la Grande
Armée too, and an Avenue de L’Imperatrice as well, though it has since
been changed prosaically into the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.
From the Place de la Concorde I crossed the Seine and walked down the
quays to the left, and soon passed the Conciergerie and Ste Chapelle
with its gorgeous painted glass-windows of a thousand, years ago and
there before me on the Ile de la Cité, the twin towers of Notre Dame
caught my eyes and breath and finally, early in the afternoon I turned
up the Boul’ Mich and passed the Sorbonne and then somehow or other lost
myself in the old rue St. Jacques that Dumas père and other
romance-writers had described for me a thousand times.
I little tired at length having left the Luxemburg gardens far behind
with their statues which I promised myself soon to study more closely, I
turned into a little wine-shop restaurant kept by a portly and pleasant
lady whose name I soon learned was Marguerite. After a most excellent
meal I engaged a large room on the first floor looking on the street,
for forty francs a month, and if a friend came to live with me, why
Marguerite promised with a large smile to put in another bed for an
additional ten francs monthly and supply us besides with coffee in the
morning and whatever meals we wanted at most reasonable prices: there I
lived gaudy, golden days for some three heavenly weeks.
I threw myself on French like a glutton and this was my method, which I
don’t recommend but simply record, though it brought me to understand
everything said by the end of the first week. I first spent five whole
days on the grammar, learning all the verbs, especially the auxiliary
and irregular verbs by heart, till I knew them as I knew my Alphabet. I
then read Hugo’s Hernani with a dictionary in another long day of
eighteen hours and the next evening went to the gallery in the Comédie
Française to see the play acted by Sarah Bernhardt as Doña Sol and
Mounet Sully as Hernani. For a while the rapid speech and strange accent
puzzled me; but after the first act I began to understand what was said
on the stage and after the second act I caught every word and to my
delight when I came out into the streets, I understood everything said
to me. After that golden night with Sarah’s grave, _traînante_ voice in
my ears, I made rapid because unconscious progress.
Next day in the restaurant I picked up a dirty torn copy of Madame
Bovary that lacked the first eighty pages. I took it to my room and
swallowed it in a couple of breathless hours, realising at once that it
was a masterwork; but marking a hundred and fifty new words to turn out
in my pocket dictionary afterwards. I learned these words carefully by
heart and have never given myself any trouble about French since.
What I know of it and I know it fairly well now, has come from reading
and speaking it for thirty odd years. I still make mistakes in it
chiefly of gender, I regret to say, and my accent is that of a
foreigner, but taking it by and large I know it and its literature and
speak it better than most foreigners and that suffices me.
After some three weeks Ned Bancroft came from the States to live with
me. He was never particularly sympathetic to me and I cannot account for
our companionship save by the fact that I was peculiarly heedless and
full of human, unreflecting kindness. I have said little of Ned Bancroft
who was in love with Kate Stevens before she fell for Professor Smith;
but I have just recorded the unselfish way he withdrew while keeping
intact his friendship both for Smith and the girl: I thought that very
fine of him.
He left Lawrence and the University shortly after we first met and by
“pull” obtained a good position on the railroad at Columbus, Ohio.
He was always writing to me to come to visit him and on my return from
Philadelphia, in 1875 I think, I stopped at Columbus and spent a couple
of days with him. As soon as he heard that I had gone to Europe and had
reached Paris, he wrote to me that he wished I had asked him to come
with me and so I wrote setting forth my purpose and at once he threw up
his good prospects of riches and honor and came to me in Paris. We lived
together for some six months: he was a tall, strong fellow, with pale
face and gray eyes; a good student, an honorable, kindly, very
intelligent man; but we envisaged life from totally different sides and
the longer we were together, the less we understood each other.
In everything we were antipodes; he should have been an Englishman for
he was a born aristocrat with imperious, expensive tastes, while I had
really become a Western American, careless of dress or food or position,
intent only on acquiring knowledge and, if possible, wisdom in order to
reach greatness.
The first evening we dined at Marguerite’s and spent the night talking
and swapping news. The very next afternoon Ned would go into Paris and
we dined in a swell restaurant on the Grand Boulevard. A few tables away
a tall, splendid-looking brunette of perhaps thirty was dining with two
men: I soon saw that Ned and she were exchanging looks and making signs.
He told me he intended to go home with her: I remonstrated but he was as
obstinate as Charlie, and when I told him of the risks he said he’d
never do it again; but this time he couldn’t get out of it. “I’ll pay
the bill at once”, I said, “and let’s go!” but he would not, desire was
alight in him and a feeling of false shame hindered him from taking my
advice. Half an hour later the lady made a sign and he went out with the
party and when she entered her Victoria, he got in with her; the pair on
the sidewalk, he said, bursting into laughter as he and the woman drove
away together.
Next morning he was back with me early, only saying that he had enjoyed
himself hugely and was not even afraid. Her rooms were lovely, he
declared; he had to give her a hundred francs: the bath and toilette
arrangements were those of a queen: there was no danger. And he treated
me to as wild a theory as Charlie had cherished: told me that the great
_cocottes_ who make heaps of money took as much care of themselves as
gentlemen. “Go with a common prostitute and you’ll catch something; go
with a real topnotcher and she’s sure to be all right!” And perfectly at
ease he went to work with a will.
Bancroft’s way of learning French even was totally different from mine:
he went at the grammar and syntax and mastered them: he could write
excellent French at the end of four months; but spoke it very haltingly
and with a ferocious American accent. When I told him I was going to
hear Taine lecture on the Philosophy of Art and the Ideal in Art, he
laughed at me; but I believe I got more from Taine than he got from his
more exact knowledge of French. When I came to know Taine and was able
to call on him and talk to him, Bancroft too wanted to know him. I
brought them together; but clearly Taine was not impressed, for Ned out
of false shame hardly opened his mouth. But I learned a good deal from
Taine and one illustration of his abides with me as giving a true and
vivid conception of art and its ideal. In a lecture he pointed out to
his students that a lion was not a running beast; but a great jaw set on
four powerful springs of short, massive legs. The artist, he went on,
seizing the _idea_ of the animal may exaggerate the size and strength of
the jaw a little, emphasize too the springing power in his loins and
legs and the tearing strength of his front paws and claws; but if he
lengthened his legs or diminished his jaw, he would denaturalize the
true _idea_ of the beast and would produce an abortion. The ideal,
however, should only be indicated. Taine’s talks, too, on literature and
the importance of the environment even on great men, all made a profound
impression on me. After listening to him for some time I began to see my
way up more clearly. I shall never forget, too, some of his
thought-inspiring words. Talking one day of the convent of Monte Casino,
where a hundred generations of students, freed from all the sordid cares
of existence, had given night and day to study and thought and had
preserved besides the priceless manuscripts of long past ages and so
paved the way for a Renascence of learning and thought, he added
gravely:
“I wonder whether Science will ever do as much for her votaries as
Religion has done for hers: in other words, I wonder will there ever be
a laic Monte Casino!”
Taine was a great teacher and I owe him much kindly encouragement and
even enlightenment.
I add this last word, because his French freedom of speech came as pure
spring water to my thirsty soul. A dozen of us were grouped about him
one day, talking when one student with a remarkable gift for vague
thought and highfalutin’ rhetoric, wanted to know what Taine thought of
the idea that all the worlds and planets and solar systems were turning
round one axis and moving to some divine fulfillment (accomplissement).
Taine, who always disliked windy rhetoric, remarked quietly: “The only
axis in my knowledge round which everything moves to some accomplishment
is a woman’s cunt (le con d’une femme).” They laughed, but not as if the
bold word had astonished them. He used it when it was needed, as I have
often heard Anatole France use it since, and no one thought anything of
it.
In spite of the gorgeous installation of his brunette, Ned at the end of
a week found out how blessed are those described in Holy Writ, who
fished all night and caught nothing. He had caught a dreadful gonorrhea
and was forbidden spirits or wine or coffee till he got well. Exercise,
too, was only to be taken in small doses, so it happened that when I
went out, he had to stay at home and the outlook on the rue St. Jacques
was anything but exhilarating. This naturally increased his desire to
get about and see things, and as soon as he began to understand spoken
French and to speak it a little, he chafed against the confinement and a
room without a bath; he longed for the centre, for the opera and the
Boulevards, and nothing would do but we should take rooms in the heart
of Paris: he would borrow money from his folks, he said.
Like a fool I was willing and so we took rooms one day in a quiet street
just behind the Madeleine, at ten times the price we were paying
Marguerite. I soon found that my money was melting; but the life was
very pleasant. We often drove in the Bois, went frequently to the Opera,
the theatres and music-halls and appraised, too, the great restaurants,
the Café Anglais and the Trois Frères as if we had been millionaires.
As luck would have it, Ned’s venereal disease and the doctors became a
heavy additional expense that I could ill afford. Suddenly one day I
realised that I had only six hundred dollars in the bank: at once I made
up my mind to stop and make a fresh start. I told my resolution to
Bancroft: he asked me to wait: “he had written to his people for money”,
he said, “he would soon pay his debt to me”; but that wasn’t what I
wanted: I felt that I had got off the right road because of him and was
angry with myself for having wasted my substance in profligate living
and worst of all in silly luxury and brainless showing off.
I declared I was ill and was going to England at once; I must make a new
start and accumulate some more money and a few mornings later I bade
Bancroft “Good-bye” and crossed the Channel and went on to my sister and
father in Tenby, arriving there in a severe shivering fit with a bad
headache and every symptom of ague.
I was indeed ill and played out: I had taken double doses of life and
literature, had swallowed all the chief French writers from Rabelais and
Montaigne to Flaubert, Zola and Balzac, passing by Pascal and
Vauvenargues, Renan and Hugo, a glutton’s feast for six months. Then,
too, I had nosed out this artist’s studio and that; had spent hours
watching Rodin at work and more hours comparing this painter’s model
with that: these breasts and hips with those.
My love of plastic beauty nearly brought me to grief at least once and
perhaps I had better record the incident, though it rather hurt my
vanity at the time. One day I called at Manet’s old studio which was
rented now by an American painter named Alexander. He had real power as
a craftsman but only a moderate brain and was always trying by beauty or
something remarkable in his model to make up for his own want of
originality. On this visit I noticed an extraordinary sketch of a young
girl standing where childhood and womanhood meet: she had cut her hair
short and her chestnut-dark eyes lent her a startling distinction.
“You like it?” asked Alexander. “She has the most perfect figure I have
ever seen!”
“I like it”, I replied; “I wonder whether the magic is in the model or
in your brush?” “You’ll soon see”, he retorted, a little piqued, “she’s
due here already” and almost as he spoke she came in with quick, alert
step. She was below medium height; but evidently already a woman.
Without a word she went behind the screens to undress, when Alexander
said: “Well?” I had to think a moment or two before answering.
“God and you have conspired together!” I exclaimed, and indeed his brush
had surpassed itself. He had caught and rendered a childish innocence in
expression that I had not remarked and he had blocked in the features
with superb _brio_:
“It is your best work to date”, I went on, “and almost anyone would have
signed it.”
At this moment the model emerged with a sheet about her and probably
because of my praise Alexander introduced me to Mlle. Jeanne and said I
was a distinguished American writer. She nodded to me saucily, flashing
white teeth at me, mounted the estrade, threw off the sheet and took up
her pose—all in a moment. I was carried off my feet; the more I looked,
the more perfections I discovered. For the first time I saw a figure
that I could find no fault with. Needless to say I told her so in my
best French with a hundred similes. Alexander also I conciliated by
begging him to do no more to the sketch but sell it to me and do
another. Finally he took four hundred and fifty francs for it and in an
hour had made another sketch.
My purchase had convinced Mlle. Jeanne that I was a young millionaire
and when I asked her if I might accompany her to her home, she consented
more than readily. As a matter of fact, I took her for a drive in the
Bois de Boulogne and from there to dinner in a private room at the Café
Anglais. During the meal I had got to like her: she lived with her
mother, Alexander had told me; though by no means prudish, still less
virginal, she was not a _coureuse_. I thought I might risk connection;
but when I got her to take off her clothes and began to caress her sex,
she drew away and said quite as a matter of course: “Why not _faire
minette_?”
When I asked her what she meant, she told me frankly: “We women do not
get excited in a moment as you men do; why not kiss and tongue me there
for a few minutes, then I shall have enjoyed myself and shall be
ready....”
I’m afraid I made rather a face for she remarked coolly: “Just as you
like, you know. I prefer in a meal the _hors d’oeuvres_ to the _pièce de
résistance_ like a good many other women: indeed I often content myself
with the _hors d’oeuvres_ and don’t take any more. Surely you understand
that a woman goes on getting more and more excited for an hour or two
and no man is capable of bringing her to the highest pitch of enjoyment
while pleasing himself.”
“I’m able”, I said stubbornly, “I can go on all night if you please me,
so we should skip appetizers.”
“No, no!” she replied, laughing, “let us have a banquet then, but begin
with lips and tongue!”
The delay, the bandying to and fro of argument and above all, the idea
of kissing and tonguing her sex, had brought me to coolness and reason.
Was I not just as foolish as Bancroft if I yielded to the—an unknown
girl.
I replied finally, “No, little lady, your charms are not for me”, and I
took my seat again at the table and poured myself out some wine. I had
the ordinary American or English youth’s repugnance to what seemed like
degradation, never guessing that Jeanne was giving me the second lesson
in the noble art of seduction, of which my sister had taught me long ago
the rudiments.
The next time I was offered _minette_, I had grown wiser and made no
scruples; but that’s another story. The fact is that in my first visit
to Paris I kept perfectly chaste, thanks in part to the example of Ned’s
blunder; thanks, too, to my dislike of going with any girl sexually whom
I didn’t really care for, and I didn’t care for Jeanne: she was too
imperious and imperiousness in a girl is the quality I most dislike,
perhaps because I suffer from an overdose of the humor. At any rate, it
was not sexual indulgence that broke my health in Paris; but my
passionate desire to learn that had cut down my hours of sleep and
exasperated my nerves: I took cold and had a dreadful recurrence of
malaria. I wanted rest and time to take breath and think.
The little house in a side-street in the lovely Welsh watering-place was
exactly the haven of rest I needed. I soon got well and strong and for
the first time learned to know my father. He came for long walks with
me, though he was over sixty. After his terrible accident seven years
before (he slipped and fell thirty feet into a dry-dock while his ship
was being repaired), one side of his hair and moustache had turned white
while the other remained jet black. I was astonished first by his vigor:
he thought nothing of a ten-mile walk and on one of our excursions I
asked him why he had not given me the nomination I wanted as midshipman.
He was curiously silent and waved the subject aside with: “The Navy for
you? No!” and he shook his head. A few days afterwards, however, he came
back to the subject of his own accord.
“You asked me”, he began, “why I didn’t send you the nomination for the
midshipman’s examination. Now I’ll tell you. To get on in the British
Navy and make a career in it, you should either be well-born or
well-off: you were neither. For a youth without position or money, there
are only two possible roads up: servility or silence, and you were
incapable of both.”
“Oh, Governor, how true and how wise of you!” I cried, “but why, why
didn’t you tell me? I’d have understood then as well as now and thought
the more of you for thwarting me.”
“You forget”, he went on, “that I had trained myself in the other road
of silence: it is difficult for me even now to express myself”, and he
went on with bitterness in voice and accent:
“They drove me to silence: if you knew what I endured before I got my
first step as lieutenant. If it hadn’t been that I was determined to
marry your mother, I could never have swallowed the countless
humiliations of my brainless superiors! What would have happened to you
I saw as in a glass. You were extraordinarily quick, impulsive and
high-tempered: don’t you know that brains and energy and will-power are
hated by all the wastrels and in this world they are everywhere in the
vast majority. Some lieutenant or captain would have taken an
instantaneous dislike to you that would have grown on every
manifestation of your superiority: he would have laid traps for you of
insubordination and insolence probably for months and then in some port
where he was powerful, he would have brought you before a court-martial
and you would have been dismissed from the Navy in disgrace and perhaps
your whole life ruined. The British Navy is the worst place in the world
for genius.”
[Illustration]
That scene began my reconciliation with my father; one more experience
completed it.
I got wet through on one of our walks and next day had lumbago; I went
to a pleasant Welsh doctor I had become acquainted with and he gave me a
bottle of belladonna mixture for external use: “I have not got a proper
poison bottle”, he added, “and I’ve no business to give you this” (it is
forbidden to dispense poisons in Great Britain save in rough octagonal
bottles which betray the nature of their contents to the touch). “I’ll
not drink it”, I said laughing. “Well, if you do”, he said, “don’t send
for me, for there’s more than enough here to kill a dozen men!” I took
the bottle and curiously enough, we talked belladonna and its effects
for some minutes. Richards, (that was his name) promised to send me a
black draught the same evening and he assured me that my lumbago would
soon be cured and he was right: but the cure was not effected as he
thought it would be.
My sister had a girl of all work at this time called Eliza, Eliza Gibby,
if I remember rightly. Lizzie, as we called her, was a slight,
red-haired girl of perhaps eighteen with really large chestnut-brown
eyes and a cheeky pug nose, and freckled neck and arms. I really don’t
know what induced me first to make up to her; but soon I was kissing
her; when I wanted to touch her sex however, she drew away confiding to
me that she was afraid of the possible consequences. I explained to her
immediately that I would withdraw after the first spasm, and then there
would be no more risk. She trusted me and one night she came to my room
in her night-dress. I took it off with many kisses and was really
astounded by her ivory white skin and almost perfect girlish form. I
laid her on the edge of my bed, put her knees comfortably under my
arm-pits and began to rub her clitoris: in a moment the brown eyes
turned up and I ventured to slip in the head of my sex; to my surprise
there was no maidenhead to break through and soon my sex had slipt into
the tightest cunt I had ever met. Very soon I played Onan and like that
Biblical hero “spilt my seed upon the ground”—which in my case was a
carpet.
I then got into bed with her and practiced the whole art of love as I
understood it at that time. A couple of hours of it brought me four or
five orgasms and Lizzie a couple of dozen, to judge by hurried
breathings, inarticulate cries and long kissings that soon became
mouthings.
Lizzie was what most men would have thought a perfect bedfellow; but I
missed Sophy’s science and Sophy’s passionate determination to give me
the utmost thrill conceivable. Still in a dozen pleasant nights we
became great friends and I began to notice that by working in and out
very slowly I could after the first orgasm go on indefinitely without
spending again. Alas! I had no idea at the time that this control simply
marked the first decrease of my sexual power. If I had only known, I
would have cut out all the Lizzies that infested my life and reserved
myself for the love that was soon to oust the mere sex-urge.
Next door to us lived a doctor’s widow with two daughters, the eldest a
medium-sized girl with large head and good grey eyes, hardly to be
called pretty though all girls were pretty enough to excite me for the
next ten years or more. This eldest girl was called Molly—a pet name for
Maria. Her sister Kathleen was far more attractive physically: she was
rather tall and slight, with a lithe grace of figure that was intensely
provocative. Yet though I noted all Kathleen’s feline witchery, I fell
prone for Molly. She seemed to me both intelligent and witty: she had
read widely too and knew both French and German; she was as far above
all the American girls I had met in knowledge of books and art as she
was inferior to the best of them in bodily beauty. For the first time my
mind was excited and interested and I thought I was in love and one late
afternoon or early evening on Castle Hill I told her I loved her and we
became engaged. Oh, the sweet folly of it all! When she asked me how we
should live, what I intended to do, I had no answer ready save the
perfect self-confidence of the man who had already proved himself in the
struggle of life. Fortunately for me, that didn’t seem very convincing
to her: she admitted that she was three years older than I was and if
she had said four, she would have been nearer the truth, and she was
quite certain I would not find it so easy to win in England as in
America: she underrated both my brains and my strength of will. She
confided to me that she had a hundred a year of her own: but that, of
course, was wholly inadequate. So though she kissed me freely and
allowed me a score of little privacies, she was resolved not to give
herself completely. Her distrust of my ability and her delightfully
piquant reserve heightened my passion and once I won her consent to an
immediate marriage. At her best Molly was astonishingly intelligent and
frank. One night alone together in our sitting-room which my father and
sister left to us, I tried my best to get her to give herself to me. But
she shook her head: “it would not be right, dear, till we are married”,
she persisted.
“Suppose we were on a desert island”, I said, “and no marriage
possible?” “My darling!” she said kissing me on the mouth and laughing
aloud, “don’t you know, I should yield then without your urging: you
dear! I want you, Sir, perhaps more than you want me.” But she wore
closed drawers and I didn’t know how to unbutton them at the sides and
though she grew intensely and quickly excited, I could not break down
the final barrier. In any case, before I could win, Fate used her shears
decisively.
One morning I reproached Lizzie for not bringing me up a black draught
Doctor Richards had promised to send me. “It’s on the mantle-piece in
the dining-room”, I said, “but don’t trouble, I’ll get it myself”, and I
ran down as I was. An evening or two later I left the belladonna mixture
the doctor had made up for me on the chimney piece! Like the black
draught it was dark brown in color and in a similar bottle.
Next morning Lizzie woke me and offered me a glassful of dark liquid:
“Your medicine” she said and half asleep still, I told her to leave the
breakfast tray on the table by my bed and then drained the glass she
offered to me. The taste awoke me: the drink had made my whole mouth and
throat dry: I sprang out of bed and went to the looking-glass, yes! yes!
the pupils of my eyes were unnaturally distended: had she given me the
whole draught of belladonna instead of a black draught? I still heard
her on the stairs but why waste time in asking her. I went over to the
table, poured out cup after cup of tea and drained them: then I ran down
to the dining-room where my sister and father were at breakfast. I
poured out their tea and drank cups full of it in silence: then I asked
my sister to get me mustard and warm water and met my father’s question
with a brief explanation and request. “Go to Dr. Richards and tell him
to come at once: I’ve drunk the belladonna mixture by mistake; there’s
no time to lose.” My father was already out of the house! My sister
brought me the mustard and I mixed a strong dose with hot water and took
it as an emetic; but it didn’t work. I went upstairs to my bedroom again
and put my fingers down my throat over the bath: I retched and retched
but nothing came: plainly the stomach was paralysed. My sister came in
crying. “I’m afraid there’s no hope, Nita”, I said, “the Doctor told me
there was enough to kill a dozen men and I’ve drunk it all fasting; but
you’ve always been good and kind to me, dear, and death is nothing.”
She was sobbing terribly, so to give her something to do, I asked her to
fetch me a kettle full of hot water; she vanished downstairs to get it
and I stood before the glass to make up my accounts with my own soul. I
knew now it was the belladonna I had taken, all of it on an empty
stomach: no chance; in ten minutes I should be insensible, in a few
hours dead: dead! was I afraid? I recognized with pride that I was not
one whit afraid or in any doubt. Death is nothing but an eternal sleep,
nothing! Yet I wished that I could have had time to prove myself and
show what was in me! Was Smith right? Could I indeed have become one of
the best heads in the world? Could I have been with the really great
ones had I lived? No one could tell now but I made up my mind as at the
time of the rattlesnake bite, to do my best to live. All this time I was
drinking cold water: now my sister brought the jug of warm water,
saying, “It may make you throw up, dear” and I began drinking it in long
draughts. Bit by bit I felt it more difficult to think, so I kissed my
sister, saying, “I had better get into bed while I can walk, as I’m
rather heavy!” And then as I got into bed I said, “I wonder whether I
shall be carried out next feet-foremost while they chant the Miserere!
Never mind, I’ve had a great draught of life and I’m ready to go if go I
must!”
At this moment Dr. Richards came in: “Now how, how in Goodness’ name,
man, after our talk and all, how did ye come to take it?” His fussiness
and strong Welsh accent made me laugh: “give me the stomach pump,
doctor, for I’m full of liquid to the gullet”, I cried. I took the tube
and pushed it down, sitting up in bed, and he depressed it; but only a
brownish stream came: I had absorbed most of the belladonna. That was
nearly my last conscious thought, only in myself I determined to keep
thinking as long as I could. I heard the Doctor say: “I’ll give him
opium—a large dose”, and I smiled to myself at the thought that the
narcotic opium and the stimulant belladonna would alike induce
unconsciousness, the one by exciting the heart’s action, the other by
slackening it....
Many hours afterwards I awoke: it was night, candles were burning and
Dr. Richards was leaning over me: “do you know me?” he asked and at once
I answered: “Of course I know you, Richards”, and I went on jubilant to
say: “I’m saved: I’ve won through. Had I been going to die, I should
never have recovered consciousness.” To my astonishment his brow
wrinkled and he said, “drink this and then go to sleep again quietly:
it’s all right”, and he held a glass of whitish liquid to my lips. I
drained the glass and said joyously: “Milk! how funny you should give me
milk; that’s not prescribed in any of your books.” He told me afterwards
it was Castor-oil he had given me and I had mistaken it for milk. I
somehow felt that my tongue was running away with me even before he laid
his hand on my forehead to quiet me saying: “There please! don’t talk,
rest! please!” and I pretended to obey him; but couldn’t make out why he
shut me up! I could not recall my words either—why?
A dreadful thought shook me suddenly: had I been talking nonsense? My
father’s face too appeared to be dreadfully perturbed while I was
speaking.
“Could one think sanely and yet talk like a madman? What an appalling
fate!” I resolved in that case to use my revolver on myself as soon as I
knew that my state was hopeless: that thought gave me peace and I turned
at once to compose myself. In a few minutes more I was fast asleep.
The next time I awoke, it was again night and again the Doctor was
beside me and my sister: “Do you know me?” he asked again, and again I
replied: “Of course I know you and Sis here as well.”
“That’s great”, he cried joyously, “now you’ll soon be well again.”
“Of course I shall”, I cried joyously, “I told you that before: but you
seemed hurt; did I wander in my mind?”
“There, there”, he cried, “don’t excite yourself and you’ll soon be well
again!”
“Was it a near squeak?” I asked.
“You must know it was”, he replied, “you took sixty grains of belladonna
fasting and the books give at most quarter of a grain for a dose and
declare one grain to be generally fatal. I shall never be able to brag
of your case in the medical journals”, he went on smiling, “for no one
would ever believe that a heart could go on galloping far too fast to
count, but certainly two hundred odd times a minute for thirty odd hours
without bursting. You’ve been tested”, he concluded, “as no one was ever
tested before and have come back safe! But now sleep again”, he said,
“sleep is Nature’s restorative.”
Next morning I awoke rested but very weak: the Doctor came in and
sponged me in warm water and changed my linen: my nightshirt and a great
part of the sheet were quite brown. “Can you make water?” he asked,
handing me a bed-dish: I tried and at once succeeded.
“The wonder is complete!!” he cried, “I’ll bet, you have cured your
lumbago too”, and indeed I was completely free of pain.
That evening or the next my father and I had a great, heart-to-heart
talk. I told him all my ambitions and he tried to persuade me to take
one hundred pounds a year from him to continue my studies. I told him I
couldn’t, though I was just as grateful. “I’ll get work as soon as I am
strong”, I said; but his unselfish affection shook my very soul and when
he told me that my sister, too, had agreed he should make me the
allowance, I could only shake my head and thank him. That evening I went
to bed early and he came and sat with me: he said that the doctor
advised that I should take a long rest. Strange colored lights kept
sweeping across my sight every time I shut my eyes: so I asked him to
lie beside me and hold my hand. At once he lay down beside me and with
his hand in mine, I soon fell asleep and slept like a log till seven
next morning. I awoke perfectly well and refreshed and was shocked to
see that my father’s face was strangely drawn and white and when he
tried to get off the bed, he nearly fell. I saw then that he had lain
all the night through on the brass edge of the bed rather than risk
disturbing me to give him more room. From that time to the end of his
noble and unselfish life, some twenty-five years later, I had only
praise and admiration for him.
As soon as I began to take note of things, I remarked that Lizzie no
longer came near my room. One day I asked my sister what had become of
her. To my astonishment my sister broke out in passionate dislike of
her: “while you were lying unconscious”, she cried, “and the doctor was
taking your pulse every few minutes, evidently frightened: he asked me
could he get a prescription made up at once: he wanted to inject
morphia, he said, to stop or check the racing of your heart. He wrote
the prescription and I sent Lizzie with it and told her to be as quick
as she could for your life might depend on it. When she didn’t come back
in ten minutes, I got the Doctor to write it out again and sent Father
with it. He brought it back in double-quick time. Hours passed and
Lizzie didn’t return: she had gone out before ten and didn’t get back
till it was almost one. I asked her where she had been? Why she hadn’t
got back sooner? She replied coolly that she had been listening to the
Band. I was so shocked and angry I wouldn’t keep her another moment. I
sent her away at once. Think of it! I have no patience with such
heartless brutes!”
Lizzie’s callousness seemed to me even stranger than it seemed to my
sister. I have often noticed that girls are less considerate of others
than even boys, unless their affections are engaged, but I certainly
thought I had half won Lizzie at least! However, the fact is so peculiar
that I insert it here for what it may be worth.
During my convalescence which lasted three months, Molly went for a
visit to some friends: at the time I regretted it; now looking back I
have no doubt she went away to free herself from an engagement she
thought ill-advised. Missing her I went about with her younger, prettier
sister Kathleen who was more sensuous and more affectionate than Molly.
A little later, Molly went to Dresden to stay with an elder married
sister: thence she wrote to me to set her free and I consented as a
matter of course very willingly. Indeed I had already more real
affection for Kathleen than Molly had ever called to life in me.
As I got strong again I came to know a young Oxford man who professed to
be astonished at my knowledge of literature and one day he came to me
with the news that Grant Allen, the writer, had thrown up his job as
Professor of Literature at Brighton College: “why should you not apply
for it: it’s about two hundred pounds a year and they can do no worse
than refuse you.”
I wrote to Taine at once, telling him of the position and my illness and
asking him to send me a letter of recommendation if he thought I was
fit. By return of post I got a letter from him recommending me in the
warmest way. This letter I sent on to Dr. Bigge, the Headmaster,
together with one from Professor Smith of Lawrence and Dr. Bigge
answered by asking me to come to Brighton to see him. Within twenty-four
hours I went and was accepted forthwith, though he thought I looked too
young to keep discipline. He soon realised that his fears were merely
imaginary: I could have kept order in a cage of hyenas.
A long book would not exhaust my year as a Master in Brighton College;
but only two or three happenings require notice here as affecting my
character and its growth. First of all, I found in every class of thirty
lads, five or six of real ability, and in the whole school three or four
of astonishing minds, well graced, too in manners and spirit. But six
out of ten were both stupid and obstinate and these I left wholly to
their own devices.
Dr. Bigge warned me by a report of my work exhibited on the notice-board
of the Sixth Form that while some of my scholars displayed great
improvement, the vast majority showed none at all. I went to see him
immediately and handed him my written resignation to take place at any
moment he pleased. “I cannot bother with the fools who don’t even wish
to learn”, I said, “but I’ll do anything for the others.”
Most of the abler boys liked me, I believe, and a little characteristic
incident came to help me. There was a Form-master named Wolverton, an
Oxford man and son of a well-known Archdeacon, who sometimes went out
with me to the theatre or the roller-skating rink in West Street. One
night at the rink he drew my attention to a youth in a straw hat going
out accompanied by a woman.
“Look at that”, said Wolverton, “there goes So and So in our colors and
with a woman! Did you see him?”
“I didn’t pay much attention”, I replied, “but surely there’s nothing
unusual in a Sixth Form boy trying his wings outside the nest.”
At the next Masters’ Meeting, to my horror, Wolverton related the
circumstance and ended up by declaring that unless the boy could give
the name of the woman, he should be expelled. He called upon me as a
witness to the fact.
I got up at once and said that I was far too shortsighted to distinguish
the boy at half the distance and I refused to be used in the matter in
any way.
Dr. Bigge thought the offence very grave: “the morals of a boy”, he
declared, “were the most important part of his education: the matter
must be probed to the bottom: he thought that on reflection I would not
deny that I had seen a College boy that night in colors and in
suspicious company.”
I thereupon got up and freed my soul; the whole crew seemed to me mere
hypocrites.
“In the Doctor’s own House”, I said, “where I take evening preparation,
I could give him a list of boys who are known as lovers, notorious even,
and so long as this vice is winked at throughout the school, I shall be
no party to persecuting anybody for yielding to legitimate and natural
passion.” I had hardly got out the last words when Cotteril, the son of
the Bishop of Edinburgh, got up and called upon me to free his House
from any such odious and unbearable suspicion.
I retorted immediately that there was a pair in his house known as “The
Inseparables” and went on to state that my quarrel was with the whole
boardinghouse system and not with individual masters who, I was fain to
believe, did their best.
The Vice-principal, Dr. Newton, was the only one who even recognized my
good motives: he came away from the meeting with me and advised me to
consult with his wife. After this I was practically boycotted by the
masters: I had dared to say in public what Wolverton and others of them
had admitted to me in private a dozen times.
Mrs. Newton, the vice-principal’s wife, was one of the leaders of
Brighton society: she was what the French call une maitresse femme, and
a born leader in any society. She advised me to form girls’ classes in
literature for the half-holidays each week; was good enough to send out
the circulars and lend her drawing-room for my first lectures. In a week
I had fifty pupils who paid me half a crown a lesson and I soon found
myself drawing ten pounds a week in addition to my pay. I saved every
penny and thus came in a year to monetary freedom.
At every crisis in my life I have been helped by good friends who have
aided me out of pure kindness at cost of time and trouble to themselves.
Smith helped me in Lawrence and Mrs. Newton at Brighton out of bountiful
human sympathy.
Before this even I had got to know a man named Harold Hamilton, manager
of the London & County Bank, I think, at Brighton. It amused him to see
how quickly and regularly my balance grew: soon I confided my plans to
him and my purpose: he was all sympathy. I lent him books and his
daughter Ada was assiduous at all my lectures.
In the nick of time for me the war broke out between Chili and Peru:
Chilian bonds dropped from 90 to 60: I saw Hamilton and assured him that
Chili if left alone, could beat all South America: he advised me to wait
and see. A little later Bolivia threw in her lot with Peru and Chilian
bonds fell to 43 or 44. At once I went to Hamilton and asked him to buy
Chilians for all I possessed on a margin of three or four. After much
talk he did what I wished on a margin of ten: a fortnight later came the
news of the first Chilian victory and Chilians jumped to 60 odd and
continued to climb steadily: I sold at over 80 and thus netted from my
first five hundred pounds over two thousand pounds and by Christmas was
free once more to study with a mind at case. Hamilton told me that he
had followed my lead a little later but had made more from a larger
investment.
The most important happening at Brighton I must now relate. I have
already told in a pen-portrait of Carlyle published by Austin Harrison
in the “English Review” some twelve years ago how I went one Sunday
morning and called upon my hero, Thomas Carlyle in Chelsea. I told
there, too, how on more than one Sunday I used to meet him on his
morning walk along the Chelsea embankment, and how once at least he
talked to me of his wife and admitted his impotence.
I only gave a summary of a few talks in my portrait of him; for the
traits did not call for strengthening by repetition; but here I am
inclined to add a few details, for everything about Carlyle at his best,
is of enduring interest!
When I told him how I had been affected by reading Emerson’s speech to
the students of Dartmouth College and how it had in a way forced me to
give up my law-practice and go to Europe to study, he broke in
excitedly:
“I remember well reading that very page to my wife and saying that
nothing like it for pure nobility had been heard since Schiller went
silent. It had a great power with it.... And so that started you off and
changed your way of life?... I don’t wonder ... it was a great Call.”
After that Carlyle seemed to like me. At our final parting too, when I
was going to Germany to study and he wished me “God speed and Goodspeed!
on the way that lies before ye”, he spoke again of Emerson and the
sorrow he had felt on parting with him, deep, deep sorrow and regret,
and he added, laying his hands on my shoulders, “sorrowing most of all
that they should see his face no more forever.” I remembered the passage
and cried:
“Oh, Sir, I should have said that, for mine is the loss, mine the
unspeakable misfortune now”, and through my tears I saw that his eyes
too were full.
He had just given me a letter to Froude, “good, kindly Froude”, who, he
was sure, would help me in any way of commendation to some literary
position “if I have gone, as is most likely”, and in due time Froude did
help me as I shall tell in the proper place.
My pen-portrait of Carlyle was ferociously attacked by a kinsman,
Alexander Carlyle, who evidently believed that I had got my knowledge of
Carlyle’s weakness from Froude’s revelations in 1904. But luckily for
me, Sir Charles Jessel remembered a dinner in the Garrick Club given by
him in 1886 or 1887, at which both Sir Richard Quain and myself were
present. Jessel recalled distinctly that I had that evening told the
story of Carlyle’s impotence as explaining the sadness of his married
life and had then asserted that the confession came to me from Carlyle
himself.
At that dinner Sir Richard Quain said that he had been Mrs. Carlyle’s
physician and that he would tell me later exactly what Mrs. Carlyle had
confessed to him. Here is Quain’s account as he gave it me that night in
a private room at the Garrick. He said:
“I had been a friend of the Carlyles for years: he was a hero to me, one
of the wisest and best of men: she was singularly witty and worldly-wise
and pleased me even more than the sage. One evening I found her in great
pain on the sofa: when I asked her where the pain was, she indicated her
lower belly and I guessed at once that it must be some trouble connected
with the change of life.
“I begged her to go up to her bedroom and I would come in a quarter of
an hour and examine her, assuring her the while that I was sure I could
give her almost immediate relief. She went upstairs. In about ten
minutes I asked her husband, would he come with me? He replied in his
broadest Scotch accent, always a sign of emotion with him:
‘I’ll have naething to do with it. Ye must just arrange it yerselves’.
“Thereupon I went upstairs and knocked at Mrs. Carlyle’s bedroom door:
no reply: I tried to enter: the door was locked and unable to get an
answer I went downstairs in a huff and flung out of the house.
“I stayed away for a fortnight but when I went back one evening I was
horrified to see how ill Mrs. Carlyle looked stretched out on the sofa,
and as pale as death. ‘You’re worse?’ I asked.
‘Much worse and weaker!’ she replied.
‘You naughty obstinate creature!’ I cried.
‘I’m your friend and your doctor and anything but a fool: I’m sure I can
cure you in double-quick time and you prefer to suffer. It’s stupid of
you and worse—Come up now at once and think of me only as your doctor’,
and I half lifted, half helped her to the door: I supported her up the
stairs and at the door of her room, she said:
‘Give me ten minutes, Doctor, and I’ll be ready. I promise you I won’t
lock the door again.’
“With that assurance I waited and in ten minutes knocked and went in.
“Mrs. Carlyle was lying on the bed with a woolly-white shawl round her
head and face. I thought it absurd affectation in an old married woman,
so I resolved on drastic measures: I turned the light full on, then I
put my hand under her dress and with one toss threw it right over her
head. I pulled her legs apart, dragged her to the edge of the bed and
began inserting the speculum in her vulva: I met an obstacle: I
looked—and immediately sprang up: ‘Why, you’re a virgo intacta’ (an
untouched virgin!) I exclaimed.
She pulled the shawl from her head and said: ‘What did you expect?’
‘Anything but that’, I cried, ‘in a woman married these five and twenty
years!’
“I soon found the cause of her trouble and cured it or rather did away
with it: that night she rested well and was her old gay, mutinous self
when I called next day.
“A little later she told me her story.
[Illustration]
“After the marriage”, she said, “Carlyle was strange and out of sorts,
very nervous, he seemed, and irritable. When we reached the house we had
supper and about eleven o’clock I said I would go to bed, being rather
tired: he nodded and grunted something. I put my hands on his shoulders
as I passed him and said “Dear, do you know that you haven’t kissed me
once, all day—this day of days!” and I bent down and laid my cheek
against his. He kissed me; but said: “You, women are always kissing—I’ll
be up soon!” Forced to be content with that I went upstairs, undressed
and got into bed: he hadn’t even kissed me of his own accord, the whole
day!
“A little later he came up, undressed and got into bed beside me. I
expected him to take me in his arms and kiss and caress me.
“‘Nothing of the sort, he lay there, jiggling like’, (“I guessed what
she meant”, said Quain, “the poor devil in a blue funk was frigging
himself to get a cock-stand.”) ‘I thought for some time’, Mrs. Carlyle
went on, ‘one moment I wanted to kiss and caress him; the next moment I
felt indignant. Suddenly it occurred to me that in all my hopes and
imaginings of a first night, I had never got near the reality: silent,
the man lay there jiggling, jiggling. Suddenly I burst out laughing: it
was all too wretched! too absurd!’
“‘At once he got out of bed with the one scornful word ‘Woman!’ and went
into the next room: he never came back to my bed.
“‘Yet he’s one of the best and noblest men in the world and if he had
been more expansive and told me oftener that he loved me, I could easily
have forgiven him any bodily weakness; silence is love’s worst enemy and
after all he never really made me jealous save for a short time with
Lady Ashburnham. I suppose I’ve been as happy with him as I could have
been with anyone yet—’
“That’s my story”, said Quain in conclusion, “and I make you a present
of it: even in the Elysian Fields I shall be content to be in the
Carlyles’ company. They were a great pair!”
Just one scene more. When I told Carlyle how I had made some twenty-five
hundred pounds in the year and told him besides how a banker offered me
almost the certainty of a great fortune if I would buy with him a
certain coal-wharf at Tunbridge Wells (it was Hamilton’s pet scheme), he
was greatly astonished. “I want to know”, I went on, “if you think I’ll
be able to do good work in literature; if so I’ll do my best. Otherwise
I ought to make money and not waste time in making myself another
second-rate writer.”
“No one can tell you that”, said Carlyle slowly, “You’ll be lucky if you
reach the knowledge of it yourself before ye die! I thought my Frederic
was great work; yet the other day you said I had buried him under the
dozen volumes and you may be right; but have I ever done anything that
will live?—”
“Sure”, I broke in, heartsore at my gibe, “Sure, your French Revolution
must live and the “Heroes and Hero Worship”, and “Latter Day Pamphlets”
and, and—”
“Enough”, he cried, “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure”, I repeated. Then he said, “You can be equally sure
of your own place; for we can all reach the heights we are able to
oversee.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFTERWORD TO THE FIRST
VOLUME OF MY LIFE’S STORY.
--------------
I had hardly written “Finis” at the end of this book when the faults in
it, faults both of omission and commission, rose in swarms and robbed me
of my joy in the work.
It will be six or seven years at least before I shall know whether the