In Bohemia With Du Maurier Part 5

Erst, they're short. Then they breathe in their mystical tone An essence, a spirit, a draught which alone Can content Billy's l.u.s.t, for the weird and unknown (Billy's out of his depth) they've an undefined sense Of the infinite 'mersed in their sorrow intense (Billy's sinking! A rope! Some one quick! d.a.m.n it! hence That mystical feeling so sweetly profound Which weaves round the senses a spell (Billy's drowned) (Here run for the drags of the Royal Humane!) A mystical feeling, half rapture, half pain, Such as moves in sweet melodies, such as entrances In Chopin's 'Etudes,' and in Schubert's 'Romances.'

Ah! Chopin's 'Impromptu'! Schubert's 'Serenade'!

Have you ever heard these pretty decently played?

If you haven't, old fellow, I'll merely observe That a treat most delicious you have in reserve.

Lord! How Billy's soul grazes in diggins of clover, While Stefani rapidly fingers them over, Feelingly, fervidly fingers them over.

Illusion that enervates! Feverish dream Of excitement magnetic, inspired, supreme, Or despairing dejection, alternate, extreme!

Gad! These opium-benumbing performances seem, In their sad wild unresting irregular flow Just expressly concocted for William Barlow.

Oh! dear Raggedy, oh!

Why, they ravish the heart, sir, of Billy Barlow."

Du Maurier's stay on the Continent had come to a close some time before mine, and to that circ.u.mstance I owe several letters in which he speaks of his first experiences in London. He revelled in the metamorphosis he was going through, and ill.u.s.trated the past and the present for my better comprehension. There on one side of the Channel he shows the dejected old lion of Malines gnawing his tobaccoless clay pipe, and then on the other the n.o.ble beast stalking along jauntily with tail erect and havannah alight. He wrote in high spirits:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"DEAR BOBTAIL,--I need not tell you how very jolly it was to get your letter and to hear good news of you. My reason for not writing was that I intended to make my position before giving of my news to anybody. I was just funky and blue about it at first, but fortunately I was twigged almost immediately, and, barring my blessed idleness, am getting on splendaciously just now. Lots of my things have been out. I'm going in for becoming a swell.

"How strange to think of such a change. I'm leading the merriest of lives, and only hope it will last. Living with Henley, No. 85, Newman Street; very jolly and comfortable.

Chumming with all the old Paris fellows again, all of them going ahead. There's Whistler is already one of the great celebrities here--Poynter getting on. This is a very jolly little village, and I wish you were over here. They do make such a fuss with an agreeable fellow like you or me, for instance. But I suppose Paris is just as jolly in its way.

My ideas of Paris are all Boheme, quartier latin, &c., et si c'etait a recommencer, ma foi je crois que je dirais 'zut.'

This is a hurried and absurd letter to write to an old pal like you, but I hardly ever have time for a line--out late every night and make use of what little daylight there is in Newman Street to draw. 'S'il faisait au moins clair de Lune pendant le jour dans ce sacre pays.' I daresay I shall treat myself to a trip over to Paris as soon as the weather is jollier. I intend to go abroad this summer to do some etchings 'qui seront aux pommes.' Is there any chance whatever of your coming over here before? You mustn't form your opinion of my performances by what you may happen to see, as half of what I do is spoiled by bad engraving (that's why I intend to etch), and what I have done, bar one or two things, are merely little chic sketches for money. I have many plans; among others I intend to bring out a series in _Punch_, with which I shall take peculiar care--something quite original. I think you would precious soon get more portraits than you could paint here, but if you are getting on so well in Paris, of course it would be madness to leave. But I do not like the idea of your not being one of us--such a band of brothers full of jolly faults that dovetail beautifully. It was quite a freak of mine coming over here; I did it against everybody's advice--came over with a ten-pound note and made the rest. 'Your friend Bobtail seems to be the only man who had no doubt of your talent,' writes my mother. 'Enfin c'est prouve que je suis au moins bon a quelque chose.' Do you go much into the world?

I go knocking about as happily as possible, singing and smoking cigars everywhere. Jimmy Whistler and I go 'tumbling'

together, as Thackeray says. Would you were here to tumble with us! Enfin, mon bon, ecris moi vite."

When at last I too returned to London I was privileged to take my humble share in the "tumbling," as also in the steady process that was gradually to wean us from Bohemia. We tumbled pretty regularly into the Pamphilon, a restaurant within a stone's throw of Oxford Circus, of the familiar type that exhibits outside its door a bill of fare with prices appended, to be studied by those who count their shillings and pence as we did. We had got beyond the days when no wines are sour and when tough meat pa.s.ses muster, if there is only plenty of it; we wanted a sound dinner, and we got it at the Pamphilon; to wind up we adjourned to the coffee-room and talked and read and smoked.

Stacey Marks, Poynter, Jimmy Whistler, and Charles Keene were among the crew, and others not so well known to fame. Pleasant hours those and gemuthliche, as the Germans say; how different the after-dinner clay pipe or cheap weed of those times to the post-prandial havannah we now complacently whiff at our friend's Maecenas' hospitable table!

Yes, things have changed, my dear Rag, since the day we were paying our bill, and you addressed the waiter with superb affability: "Here, Charles, is a penny for you. I know it isn't much, but I can't afford more."

It is hard to fancy anything less like Bohemia than Regent Street, but a little incident that occurred as I walked down that busy thoroughfare one afternoon recalls the best traditions of the land in which practical jokes abound. I was going along without any definite aim, killing time and gathering wool, flaneing, in fact; perhaps there was a touch of the foreigner about me, for I had only lately returned from abroad; anyway I suddenly found myself singled out as a fit subject to be victimised. I felt a hand stealthily sliding into my pocket; on the spur of the moment I grasped that hand in as much of an iron grip as I could muster. Then--I hardly know why--I waited quite a number of seconds before I turned round. When I did, it was du Maurier's face that I beheld, blanched with terror. Those seconds had been ages to him. Good heavens! had he made a mistake? Was it not Bobtail's but another man's hand that was clutching his wrist? Thank Heaven, it was Bobtail's!

There never was an occasion, before or after, I feel absolutely sure, when du Maurier was more truly glad to see me. His colour rapidly returned, and he swore that of all the bonnes blagues this was the best; but for all that, one thing is certain--he has never since attempted to pick pockets in Regent Street.

A delightful compromise between Bohemia and the land where well-regulated Society rules supreme, was the ground on which stood Moray Lodge, the residence of Arthur Lewis, the head of the well-known firm of Lewis and Allenby.

We have read of him before:--

"Sir Lewis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden Hill, a house of many windows, and, whichever window he looks out of, he sees his own garden and very little else.

There was no pleasanter or more festive house than his in London, winter or summer."

I quote this, as probably it may not be known to everybody that Sir Lewis was knighted on the memorable occasion of Trilby's birthday, when she was presented at the drawing--and every other--room. With much kindly fore-thought his friend and biographer allows him to be eighty years old in the early sixties, thereby enabling him to have attained to-day the ripe old age of one hundred and fourteen.

Well, he was one of du Maurier's earliest friends, and when Taffy the Laird, and Little Billie, "a-smokin' their pipes and cigyars,"

told the cabby to drive to Mechelen Lodge, I found my way to what I called Moray Lodge, and met them there. And there too, to be sure, was Glorioli, "the tall, good-looking swarthy foreigner from whose scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded lips issued the most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or boy."

As we now empty one or the other of the million bottles that are about, marked "De Soria, Bordeaux," we often think with grat.i.tude of the great wine-grower and still greater singer, so correctly described as "singing best for love or glory in the studios of his friends."

To return to Arthur Lewis:--

He occupied an exceptional position, inasmuch as he had made his house a centre towards which intellectual London gravitated. When he had done this, that, and the other to make his bachelor days memorable to a host of friends, he wound up by marrying one of England's fairest women, our great actress, Kate Terry. It was in those early days that Ellen, the debutante, was introduced to the dramatic world as "Kate Terry's sister." Since then Kate, having elected to rest on her laurels, is proud to be referred to by the younger generation as "Ellen Terry's sister."

In early life Lewis had various roads open to him. Born, as he was, with the capacity of a man of business, the means and opportunities of a man of leisure, and the talents of an artist, he managed to follow the three roads at the same time, and they all led to well-deserved success. He was to be found at his desk in Regent Street, at his easel in the studio, or on the threshold of that big billiard and reception room which he had built to entertain his friends. Himself an artist, and for many years a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy, he was on terms of close friendship with the men who had made their mark in the art-world, and with many who were destined to become famous. He was a Maecenas of the right sort, knowing a good thing when he came across it, and frequently acquiring it before the sleepy world awoke to its merits.

I well recollect the enthusiasm with which he welcomed the first pictures Joseph Israels exhibited in England in 1862. Neither in the English nor in the Dutch department of the Exhibition could he ascertain whether these two pictures, "The Drowned Fisherman" and "Washing the Cradle," were for sale. But luck would have it that he was introduced to Israels at the Academy _soiree_, and the artist, a.s.suring him that the pictures were "certainly for sale," Lewis secured the coveted works, and was thus the first to establish Israels' fame in England.

The gatherings in Moray Lodge were unique in their way. It was characteristic of the master and the house that they made everybody feel at home, from the t.i.tled aristocrat in the dress-suit to the free-and-easy brother-brush or pen, and the sometimes out-at-elbow friend Bohemian.

There was the Duke of Sutherland, the Marquis of Lorne, Lord Dufferin, Mr. Frederic Leighton, a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy, Fred Walker, who sang tenor in the choir, of which more presently, and who on several occasions designed the cards of invitation for Lewis.

There was Lord Houghton, Charles d.i.c.kens, Wilkie Collins, Rossetti, Landseer, Daubigny, Gustave Dore, Arthur Sullivan, Leech, Keene, Tenniel, &c., &c. It is as hard to pa.s.s those names over without comment as it must have been to run the gauntlet of Scylla and Charybdis, for every one of them brings back some recollection, and calls upon the pen to start a paragraph with an "I well remember."

But that would lead me away from Moray Lodge and the famous Sat.u.r.day evenings, and I never was, and am not now, in a hurry to get away from that hospitable mansion.

The billiard-table was boxed over on the gala nights and transformed into a buffet. It was covered with bottles and gla.s.ses, pipes and cigars, and towards the close of the evening with mountains of oysters. The amount we consumed on one occasion was 278 dozen, as I happen to know. But the great attraction at these gatherings was the part-singing of the twenty-five "Moray Minstrels." John Foster was the conductor, and led them to such perfection that the severest critic of the day, dear old crabbed Henry F. Chorley, proclaimed them the best representatives of the English school of glee-singing.

Another no less interesting feature was the performance of small theatrical pieces. Du Maurier and Harold Power had given us charming musical duologues, like "Les Deux Aveugles," by Offenbach, and "Les Deux Gilles," with great success, and that led to further developments and far-reaching consequences. A small party of friends were dining with Lewis. "What shall we get up next?" was the question raised.

"Something new and original," suggested the host. "Now, Sullivan, you should write us something." "All right," said Sullivan, "but how about the words? Where's the libretto?" "Oh, I'll write that," said Burnand.

And thus those two were started. "c.o.x and Box," a travesty of "Box and c.o.x," was read and rehea.r.s.ed a fortnight afterwards at Burnand's house, and the following Sat.u.r.day it was performed at Moray Lodge.

Du Maurier was "Box," Harold Power "c.o.x," and John Foster "Sergeant Bouncer." Du Maurier's rendering of "Hush-a-by, Bacon," was so sympathetic and tender that one's heart went out to the contents of the frying-pan, wishing them pleasant dreams.

Then there was his famous duet with "Box," reciting their marriage to one and the same lady, and the long recitative in which the printer describes his elaborate preparations for suicide.

How he solemnly walked to the cliff and heard the seagulls' mournful cry--and looked all around--there was n.o.body nigh. Then (disposing his bundle on the brink)--"Away to the opposite side I walked." ("Away"

on the high A, that Sullivan put in on purpose for du Maurier, who possessed that chest-note in great fulness.)

I must skip a few years and speak of a drawing that appeared in _Punch_ in 1875,[4] and which has a special interest for me; it brings back to my mind a happy thought of du Maurier's, which is closely connected with a particularly happy thought of my own, that took root then and has flourished ever since.

[Footnote 4: Published by kind permission of the proprietors of _Punch_.]

I must explain that there was a time when I had to console myself with the reflection that the course of true love never runs smooth. A lady whom in my mind I had selected as a mother-in-law, by no means reciprocated my feelings of respect and goodwill. But the young lady, her daughter, fortunately sided with me, and had, in fact, given her very willing consent to the change in her mother's position which I had suggested. I was naturally anxious to a.s.sure that young lady as frequently and as emphatically as possible how much I appreciated her a.s.sistance, and how determined I was never to have any other mother-in-law but the one of my choice; nor could there be anything obscure in such a declaration, as of three sisters in the family that particular one was the only unmarried one. But neither in obscure nor in explicit language was I allowed to approach her; a blockade was declared and rigorously enforced, and we were soon separated by a distance of some few hundred miles.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I can look back complacently on the troubles of those days now that twenty years have elapsed since I emerged victorious from the contest; but then the future looked blank and bleak, and I felt nonplussed and down-hearted. Knowing, however, what a faint heart is said never to win, I was anxious to keep mine up to the mark, and with a view to stimulating its buoyancy I went to make a friendly call on du Maurier.

He would, I felt sure, be sympathetic, and, whatever else might be wanting in that troublesome eye of his, there would be a certain vivifying twinkle in it that could always set me up.

It was as I expected, and I had the full benefit of the eye, and of an ear, too, that he lent willingly as I told him how matters stood.

"Well," he said, "if you can't smuggle in a letter, let's smuggle in your portrait. It will be rather a joke if she comes across you in _Punch_. I've just got a subject in which I can use you."

To be sure, I jumped at the idea, only beseeching him to make me as handsome as he possibly could, without losing sight of the main object, viz., that the young lady should be able to recognise me. Her mother too, I felt sure, would not fail to be duly impressed, for to figure in _Punch_ would raise me in her estimation as a person of no small importance.

The drawing was made and published, and the scheme worked well; coupled, perhaps, with a few millions of other influences, and with the a.s.sistance of the Fates, it achieved the desired result, and before a year had elapsed the original drawing could be presented by du Maurier to the young lady, now become a bride, as a memento of bygone troubles.

One more digression suggested by the name of Arthur Sullivan; it shall be the last. I am not going back to the time when we were boys together in Leipsic, but will only mention him in connection with Carry; this time Carry in another form.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Shortly after that big wave intervened that separated her from us a happy chance put me in possession of a dog, the most affectionate and lovable of Skye terriers.