Peter Ibbetson Part 31

Oh, Joachim! oh, Clara Schumann! oh, Piattil--all of whom I know so well, but have never heard with the fleshly ear! Oh, others, whom it would be invidious to mention without mentioning all--a glorious list!

How we have made you, all unconscious, repeat the same movements over and over again, without ever from you a sign of impatience or fatigue!

How often have we summoned Liszt to play to us on his own favorite piano, which adorned our own favorite sitting-room! How little he knew (or will ever know now, alas!) what exquisite delight he gave us!

Oh, Patt.i.t, Angelina! Oh, Santley and Sims Reeves! Oh, De Soria, nightingale of the drawing-room, I wonder you have a note left!

And you, Ristori, and you, Salvini, et vous, divine Sarah, qui debutiez alors! On me dit que votre adorable voix a perdu un peu de sa premiere fraicheur. Cela ne m'etonne pas! Bien sur, nous y sommes pour quelque chose!

And then the picture-galleries, the museums, the botanical and zoological gardens of all countries--"Magna sed Apta" had s.p.a.ce for them all, even to the Elgin Marbles room of the British Museum, which I added myself.

What enchanted hours have we spent among the pictures and statues of the world, weeding them here and there, perhaps, or hanging them differently, or placing them in what we thought a better light! The "Venus of Milo" showed to far greater advantage in "Magna sed Apta" than at the Louvre.

And when busied thus delightfully at home, and to enhance the delight, we made it shocking bad weather outside; it rained cats and dogs, or else the north wind piped, and snow fell on the desolate gardens of "Magna sed Apta," and whitened the landscape as far as eye could see.

Nearest to our hearts, however, were many pictures of our own time, for we were moderns of the moderns, after all, in spite of our efforts of self-culture.

There was scarcely a living or recently living master in Europe whose best works were not in our possession, so lighted and hung that even the masters themselves would have been content; for we had plenty of s.p.a.ce at our command, and each picture had a wall to itself, so toned as to do full justice to its beauty, and a comfortable sofa for two just opposite.

But in the little room we most lived in, the room with the magic window, we had crowded a few special favorites of the English school, for we had so much foreign blood in us that we were more British than John Bull himself--_plus royalistes que le Roi_.

There was Millais's "Autumn Leaves," his "Youth of Sir Walter Raleigh,"

his "Chill October"; Watts's "Endymion," and "Orpheus and Eurydice"; Burne-Jones's "Chant d'Amour," and his "Laus Veneris"; Alma-Tadema's "Audience of Agrippa," and the "Women of Amphissa"; J. Whistler's portrait of his mother; the "Venus and Aesculapius," by E. J. Poynter; F. Leighton's "Daphnephoria"; George Mason's "Harvest Moon"; and Frederic Walker's "Harbor of Refuge," and, of course, Merridew's "Sun-G.o.d."

While on a screen, designed by H. S. Marks, and exquisitely decorated round the margin with golden plovers and their eggs (which I adore), were smaller gems in oil and water-color that Mary had fallen in love with at one time or another. The immortal "Moonlight Sonata," by Whistler; E, J. Poynter's exquisite "Our Lady of the Fields" (dated Paris, 1857); a pair of adorable "Bimbi" by V. Prinsep, who seems very fond of children; T. R. Lamont's touching "L'Apres Diner de l'Abbe Constantin," with the sweet girl playing the old spinet; and that admirable work of T. Armstrong, in his earlier and more realistic manner, "Le Zouave et la Nounou," not to mention splendid rough sketches by John Leech, Charles Keene, Tenniel, Sambourne, Furniss, Caldecott, etc.; not to mention, also, endless little sketches in silver point of a most impossibly colossal, blackavised, s.h.a.ggy-coated St. Bernard--signed with the familiar French name of some gay troubadour of the pencil, some stray half-breed like myself, and who seems to have loved his dog as much as I loved mine.

Then suddenly, in the midst of all this unparalleled artistic splendor, we felt that a something was wanting. There was a certain hollowness about it; and we discovered that in our case the princ.i.p.al motives for collecting all these beautiful things were absent.

1. We were not the sole possessors.

2. We had n.o.body to show them to.

3. Therefore we could take no pride in them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NURSERY SCHOOL-ROOM.]

And found that when we wanted bad weather for a change, and the joys of home, we could be quite as happy in my old school-room, where the squirrels and the monkey and the hedgehog were, with each of us on a cane-bottomed arm-chair by the wood-fire, each roasting chestnuts for the other, and one book between us, for one of us to read out loud; or, better still, the morning and evening papers she had read a few hours earlier; and marvellous to relate, she had not even _read_ them when awake! she had merely glanced through them carefully, taking in the aspect of each column one after another, from top to bottom--and yet she was able to read out every word from the dream-paper she held in her hands--thus truly chewing the very cud of journalism!

This always seemed to us, in a small but practical way, the most complete and signal triumph of mind over matter we had yet achieved.

Not, indeed, that we could read much, we had so much to talk about.

Unfortunately, the weak part of "Magna sed Apta" was its library.

Naturally it could only consist of books that one or the other of us had read when awake. She had led such an active life that but little leisure had been left her for books, and I had read only as an every-day young man reads who is fond of reading.

However, such books as we _had_ read were made the most of, and so magnificently bound that even their authors would have blushed with pride and pleasure had they been there to see. And though we had little time for reading them over again, we could enjoy the true bibliophilous delight of gazing at their backs, and taking them down and fingering them and putting them carefully back again.

In most of these treats, excursions, festivities, and pleasures of the fireside, Mary was naturally leader and hostess; it could scarcely have been otherwise.

There was once a famous Mary, of whom it was said that to know her was a liberal education. I think I may say that to have known Mary Seraskier has been all that to me!

But now and then I would make some small attempt at returning her hospitality.

We have slummed together in Clerkenwell, Smithfield, Cow Cross, Petticoat Lane, Ratcliffe Highway, and the East India and West India docks.

She has been with me to penny gaffs and music-halls; to Greenwich Fair, and Cremorne and Rosherville gardens--and liked them all. She knew Pentonville as well as I do; and my old lodgings there, where we have both leaned over my former shoulder as I read or drew. It was she who rescued from oblivion my little prophetic song about "The Chime," which I had quite forgotten. She has been to Mr. Lintot's parties, and found them most amusing--especially Mr. Lintot.

And going further back into the past, she has roamed with me all over Paris, and climbed with me the towers of Notre Dame, and looked in vain for the mystic word [Greek: Anagkae]!

But I had also better things to show, untravelled as I was.

She had never seen Hampstead Heath, which I knew by heart; and Hampstead Heath at any time, but especially on a sunny morning in late October, is not to be disdained by any one.

Half the leaves have fallen, so that one can see the fading glory of those that remain; yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, shining like golden guineas and bright copper coins against the rich, dark, business-like green of the trees that mean to flourish all the winter through, like the tall slanting pines near the Spaniards, and the old cedar-trees, and hedges of yew and holly, for which the Hampstead gardens are famous.

Before us lies a sea of fern, gone a russet-brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with little scarlet and orange and lemon-colored leaflets fluttering down, and running after each other on the bright gra.s.s, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites of their leaves in pious resignation to the coming change.

Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into s.p.a.ce. In the midst of it all gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that has become unstuck and tumbled into the landscape with its shiny side up.

On the other side, all London, with nothing but the gilded cross of St.

Paul's on a level with the eye; it lies at our feet, as Paris used to do from the heights of Pa.s.sy, a sight to make true dreamers gaze and think and dream the more; and there we sit thinking and dreaming and gazing our fill, hand in hand, our spirits rushing together.

Once as we sat we heard the clatter of hoofs behind us, and there was a troop of my old regiment out exercising. Invisible to all but ourselves, and each other, we watched the wanton troopers riding by on their meek black chargers.

First came the cornet--a sunny-haired Apollo, a gilded youth, graceful and magnificent to the eye--careless, fearless, but stupid, harsh, and proud--an English Phebus de Chateaupers--the son of a great contractor; I remembered him well, and that he loved me not. Then the rank and file in stable jackets, most of them (but for a stalwart corporal here and there) raw, lanky youths, giving promise of much future strength, and each leading a second horse; and among them, longest and lankiest of them all, but ruddy as a ploughboy, and stolidly whistling _"On revient toujours a ses premiers amours,"_ rode my former self--a sight (or sound) that seemed to touch some tender chord in Mary's nature, where there were so many, since it filled her eyes with tears.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

To describe in full a honey-moon filled with such adventures, and that lasted for three years, is unnecessary. It would be but another superficial record of travel, by another unskilled pen. And what a pen is wanted for such a theme! It was not mere life, it was the very cream and essence of life, that we shared with each other--all the toil and trouble, the friction and fatigue, left out. The necessary earthly journey through time and s.p.a.ce from one joy to another was omitted, unless such a journey were a joy in itself.

For instance, a pleasant hour can be spent on the deck of a splendid steamer, as it cleaves its way through a sapphire tropical sea, bound for some lovely West Indian islet; with a good cigar and the dearest companion in the world, watching the dolphins and the flying-fish, and mildly interesting one's self in one's fellow-pa.s.sengers, the captain, the crew. And then, the hour spent and the cigar smoked out, it is well to shut one's eyes and have one's self quietly lowered down the side of the vessel into a beautiful sledge, and then, half smothered in costly furs, to be whirled along the frozen Neva to a ball at the Winter Palace, there to valse with one's Mary among all the beauty and chivalry of St. Petersburg, and never a soul to find fault with one's valsing, which at first was far from perfect, or one's attire, which was not that of the fashionable world of the day, nor was Mary's either. We were aesthetic people, and very Greek, who made for ourselves fashions of our own, which I will not describe.

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

Where have we not waltzed together, from Buckingham Palace downward? I confess I grew to take a delight in valsing, or waltzing, or whatever it is properly called; and although it is not much to boast of, I may say that after a year or two no better dancer than I was to be found in all Vienna.

And here, by the way, I may mention what pleasure it gave me (hand in hand with Mary, of course, as usual) to renew and improve my acquaintance with our British aristocracy, begun so agreeably many years ago at Lady Cray's concert.

Our British aristocracy does not waltz well by any means, and lacks lightness generally; but it may gratify and encourage some of its members to hear that Peter Ibbetson (ex-private soldier, architect and surveyor, convict and criminal lunatic), who has had unrivalled opportunities for mixing with the cream of European society, considers our British aristocracy quite the best-looking, best-dressed, and best-behaved aristocracy of them all, and the most sensible and the least exclusive--perhaps the most sensible _because_ the least exclusive.

It often snubs, but does not altogether repulse, those gifted and privileged outsiders who (just for the honor and glory of the thing) are ever so ready to flatter and instruct and amuse it, and run its errands, and fetch and carry, and tumble for its pleasure, and even to marry such of its "ugly ducklings" (or shall we say such of its "unprepossessing cygnets?") as cannot hope to mate with birds of their own feather.

For it has the true English eye for physical beauty.

Indeed, it is much given to throw the handkerchief--successfully, of course--and, most fortunately for itself, beyond the pale of its own narrow precincts--nay, beyond the broad Atlantic, even, to the land where beauty and dollars are to be found in such happy combination.

Nor does it disdain the comeliness of the daughters of Israel, nor their shekels, nor their brains, nor their ancient and most valuable blood. It knows the secret virtue of that mechanical transfusion of fluids familiar to science under the name of "endosmoses" and "exosmoses" (I hope I have spelled them rightly), and practises the same. Whereby it shows itself wise in its generation, and will endure the longer, which cannot be very long.

Peter Ibbetson (etc., etc.), for one, wishes it no manner of harm.