Peter Ibbetson Part 14

After this disappointment I got myself a big dog (like Byron, Bismarck, and Wagner), but not in the spirit of emulation. Indeed, I had never heard of either Bismarck or Wagner in those days, or their dogs, and I had lost my pa.s.sion for Byron and any wish to emulate him in any way; it was simply for the want of something to be fond of, and that would be sure to love me back again.

He was not a big dog when I bought him, but just a little ball of orange-tawny fluff that I could carry with one arm. He cost me all the money I had saved up for a holiday trip to Pa.s.sy. I had seen his father, a champion St. Bernard, at a dog-show, and felt that life would be well worth living with such a companion; but _his_ price was five hundred guineas. When I saw the irresistible son, just six weeks old, and heard that he was only one-fiftieth of his sire's value, I felt Pa.s.sy must wait, and became his possessor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTHOS AND HIS ATTENDANT SQUIRE.]

I gave him of the best that money could buy--real milk at fivepence a quart, three quarts a day, I combed his fluff every morning, and washed him three times a week, and killed all his fleas one by one--a labour of love. I weighed him every Sat.u.r.day, and found he increased at the rate of six to nine weekly; and his power of affection increased as the square of his weight. I christened him Porthos, because he was so big and fat and jolly; but in his n.o.ble puppy face and his beautiful pathetic eyes I already foresaw for his middle age that distinguished and melancholy grandeur which characterized the sublime Athos, Comte de la Fere.

He was a joy. It was good to go to sleep at night and know he would be there in the morning. Whenever we took our walks abroad, everybody turned round to look at him and admire, and to ask if he was good-tempered, and what his particular breed was, and what I fed him on.

He became a monster in size--a beautiful, playful, gracefully galumphing, and most affectionate monster, and I, his happy Frankenstein, congratulated myself on the possession of a treasure that would last twelve years at least, or even fourteen, with the care I meant to take of him. But he died of distemper when he was eleven months old.

I do not know if little dogs cause as large griefs when they die as big ones; but I settled there should be no more dogs--big or little--for me.

After this I took to writing verses and sending them to magazines, where they never appeared. They were generally about my being reminded, by a tune, of things that had happened a long time ago: my poetic, like my artistic vein, was limited.

Here are the last I made, thirty years back. My only excuse for giving them is that they are so _singularly prophetic_.

The reminding tune (an old French chime which my father used to sing) is very simple and touching; and the old French words run thus:

_"Orleans, Beaugency!

Notre Dame de Clery!

Vendome! Vendome!

Quel chagrin, quel ennui De compter toute la nuit Les heures--Les heures!"_

That is all. They are supposed to be sung by a mediaeval prisoner who cannot sleep; and who, to beguile the tediousness of his insomnia, sets any words that come into his head to the tune of the chime which marks the hours from a neighboring belfry. I tried to fancy that his name was Pasquier de la Mariere, and that he was my ancestor.

THE CHIME.

_There is an old French air, A little song of loneliness and grief-- Simple as nature, sweet beyond compare-- And sad--past all belief!

Nameless is he that wrote The melody--but this I opine: Whoever made the words was some remote French ancestor of mine.

I know the dungeion deep Where long he lay--and why he lay therein; And all his anguish, that he could not sleep For conscience of a sin._

I see his cold, hard bed; I hear the chimes that jingled in his ears As he pressed nightly, with that wakeful head, A pillow wet with tears.

Oh, restless little chime!

It never changed--but rang its roundelay For each dark hour of that unhappy time That sighed itself away.

And ever, more and more, Its burden grew of his lost self a part-- And mingled with his memories, and wore Its way into his heart.

And there it wove the name Of many a town he loved, for one dear sake, Into its web of music; thus he came His little song to make.

Of all that ever heard And loved it for its sweetness, none but I Divined the clew that, as a hidden word, The notes doth underlie.

That wail from lips long dead Has found its echo in this breast alone!

Only to me, by blood-remembrance led, Is that wild story known!

And though 'tis mine, by right Of treasure-trove, to rifle and lay bare-- A heritage of sorrow and delight The world would gladly share--

Yet must I not unfold For evermore, nor whisper late or soon, The secret that a few slight bars thus hold Imprisoned in a tune.

For when that little song Goes ringing in my head, I know that he, My luckless lone forefather, dust so long, Relives his life in me!

I sent them to ----'s Magazine, with the six French lines on at the which they were founded at the top. ----'s _Magazine_ published only the six French lines--the only lines in my handwriting that ever got into print. And they date from the fifteenth century!

Thus was my little song lost to the world, and for a time to me. But long, long afterwards, I found it again, where Mr. Longfellow once found a song of _his_: "in the heart of a friend"--surely the sweetest bourne that can ever be for any song!

Little did I foresee that a day was not far off when real blood remembrance would carry me--but that is to come.

Poetry, friendship and love having failed, I sought for consolation in art, and frequented the National Gallery, Marlborough House (where the Vernon collection was), the British Museum, the Royal Academy, and other exhibitions.

I prostrated myself before t.i.tian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Veronese, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Signorelli--the older the better; and tried my best to honestly feel the greatness I knew and know to be there; but for want of proper training I was unable to reach those heights, and, like most outsiders, admired them for the wrong things, for the very beauties they lack--such transcendent, ineffable beauties of feature, form, and expression as an outsider always looks for in an old master, and often persuades himself he finds there--and oftener still, _pretends_ he does!

I was far more sincerely moved (although I did not dare to say so) by some works of our own time--for instance, by the "Vale of Rest," the "Autumn Leaves," "The Huguenot" of young Mr. Millais--just as I found such poems as _Maud_ and _In Memoriam_, by Mr. Alfred Tennyson, infinitely more precious and dear to me than Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.

Indeed, I was hopelessly modern in those days--quite an every-day young man; the names I held in the warmest and deepest regard were those of then living men and women. Darwin, Browning, and George Eliot did not, it is true, exist for me as yet; but Tennyson, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, Millais, John Leech, George Sand, Balzac, the old Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset!

I have never beheld them in the flesh; but, like all the world, I know their outer aspect well, and could stand a pretty stiff examination in most they have ever written, drawn, or painted.

Other stars of magnitude have risen since, but of the old galaxy four at least still shine out of the past with their ancient l.u.s.tre undimmed in my eyes--Thackeray; dear John Leech, who still has power to make me laugh as I like to laugh; and for the two others it is plain that the Queen, the world, and I are of a like mind as to their deserts, for one of them is now an ornament to the British peerage, the other a baronet and a millionaire; only I would have made dukes of them straight off, with precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury, if they would care to have it so.

It is with a full but humble heart that I thus venture to record my long indebtedness, and pay this poor tribute, still fresh from the days of my unquestioning hero-worship. It will serve, at least, to show my reader (should I ever have one sufficiently interested to care) in what mental lat.i.tudes and longitudes I dwelt, who was destined to such singular experience--a kind of reference, so to speak--that he may be able to place me at a glance, according to the estimation in which he holds these famous and perhaps deathless names.

It will be admitted, at least, that my tastes were normal, and shared by a large majority--the tastes of an every-day young man at that particular period of the nineteenth century--one much given to athletics and cold tubs, and light reading and cheap tobacco, and endowed with the usual discontent; the last person for whom or from whom or by whom to expect anything out of the common.

But the splendor of the Elgin Marbles! I understood that at once--perhaps because there is not so much to understand. Mere physically beautiful people appeal to us all, whether they be in flesh or marble.

By some strange intuition, or natural instinct, I _knew_ that people ought to be built like that, before I had ever seen a single statue in that wondrous room. I had divined them--so completely did they realize an aesthetic ideal I had always felt.

I had often, as I walked the London streets, peopled an imaginary world of my own with a few hundreds of such beings, made flesh and blood, and pictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, with minds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of the world for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream should have a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions of such people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seeking enough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosen for my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus, with, of course, the nose and hands and feet (of which time has bereft him) restored, and all mutilations made good.

And for my mistress and companion I had duly selected no less a person than the Venus of Milo (no longer armless), of which Lintot possessed a plaster-cast, and whose beauties I had foreseen before I ever beheld them with the bodily eye.

"Monsieur n'est pas degoute!" as Ibbetson would have remarked.

But most of all did I pant for the music which is divine.

Alas, that concerts and operas and oratorios should not be as free to the impecunious as the National Gallery and the British Museum--a privilege which is not abused!

Impecunious as I was, I sometimes had pence enough to satisfy this craving, and discovered in time such realms of joy as I had never dreamed of; such monarchs as Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven, and others, of whom my father knew apparently so little; and yet they were more potent enchanters than Gretry, Herold, and Boieldieu, whose music he sang so well.

I discovered, moreover, that they could do more than charm--they could drive my weary self out of my weary soul, and for a s.p.a.ce fill that weary soul with courage, resignation, and hope. No t.i.tian, no Shakespeare, no Phidias could ever accomplish that--not even Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray or Mr. Alfred Tennyson.