Chapter M: And Mme. Camille Flammarion, at Juvisy 115 (3)

One day I asked my mother and Mr. Morris to invite the newcomer to our table. I discovered with regret that conversation between us would be impossible because he spoke only French and we only English. By means, however, of pantomime and much good will on both sides, we managed to make him understand our intention.

Our polite intercourse consisted in nods and smiles and bows and in making our hands and arms go this way and that way. As soon, however, as we had become acquainted our relations were at once established on a very comfortable basis.

He went with us to the theatre every time we played, that was three times a week, and we took our meals together. During the three months in which we were in Jamaica, I never took the trouble to find out his name. As a general principle I am always less concerned with my friends’ names than with my friends themselves.

After Jamaica we returned to New York and I hardly ever thought of Kingston again.

Two years later, when I was dancing at the Folies-Bergère, an elegant gentleman, accompanied by a friend, asked for an interview. He turned out to be our Jamaica companion and his friend the Minister of Finance of Haiti.

In the meantime he had learned English and was able to tell me that the period at which we had seen him at Kingston was only a few months after the breaking out of a revolution in Haiti. Our friend’s father, one of the leading bankers of the island, had been assassinated, and he himself had been obliged to escape in a small boat. He had been rescued at sea and brought to Kingston. All the while he was in Jamaica he had been trying to communicate with his friends, by way of New York, and he had not been able to learn whether his mother, his brothers, and his sisters were dead or alive.

A short time after our departure he got into communication with his family and discovered that affairs were beginning to improve. He returned home and found everybody safe and sound, except, of course, his unfortunate father.

After having told me this story, which explained his sadness at the time of our first meeting, he asked me:

“How can I be of service to you? You seem to have everything that success can bring, but there is one thing I can do, and one which, I am sure, will give you great pleasure. I can present you to my old friend, Alexandre Dumas,” he added, with a pretty smile.

“Really,” I said, overcome with joy. “Are you really willing to introduce me to the author of _La Dame aux Camélias_?”

“Yes, indeed,” he replied.

That was worth a dozen visits to Jamaica, and I thanked him effusively.

A few days later he came to take me to Marly, where the great writer lived.

During the journey in the railway carriage M. Poulle taught me a French phrase, which I was to say when Dumas extended his hand: “Je suis très contente de serrer votre main” (“I am delighted to grasp your hand”). And of course, when the psychological moment arrived, I phrased the words all askew. Instead of taking one of his hands I grasped both and emphatically and with stress on each word, I said: “Je suis très contente de votre main serrée” (“I am delighted with your close-fisted hand”). I did not understand his reply, but my friend later on told me that Dumas had replied: “My hand is not close-fisted, but I know what you mean, child. My friend Poulle has related to me his experiences in Jamaica, and I open my heart and my hand in your service.”

The gesture he made is the only thing which I remember, for all the rest was Greek to me.

From this time on a great friendship, a great sympathy, subsisted between us, although we were unable to understand each other. Among the important men whom I have met few have exercised upon me a charm such as that of Dumas. At first a little cold, almost stiff in manner, he became, on further acquaintance, exquisitely affable, and of a gallantry suggestive of the fine manners of the old days. At first his words continued obscure to me, but gradually, as I became familiar with the French language, I fell under the irresistible charm of his conversation, with its beautifully logical and rounded phrases, enamelled as it was with sparkling flashes of wit. Dumas had practically two voices, two styles of speech; one which he employed in ordinary circumstances, as in asking certain questions, or in giving orders; the other the one in which he discussed a subject that greatly interested him.

Very tall, with a somewhat dreamy look, he would survey you for a long time, whilst deep in his eyes there gleamed a light of profound and intelligent good will.

His hands, well modelled and large, were very handsome, and he had an almost feminine love of being well groomed.

At breakfast one morning some one asked me if I was very fond of M. Dumas, and I replied in French, which I still understood only imperfectly: “I am very fond of her.”

Dumas, convulsed with laughter, said something that I did not get, but which was translated for me thus:

“He says that he has been taken for a whole lot of things, but never before for a woman.”

Dumas smiled again and kissed my hand, a circumstance that I have always remembered.

Another time we were at Marly-le-Roi and the Count Primoli took a number of photographs of us and of the garden, in which only a single yellow rose was left.

Dumas picked this flower and gave it to me.

“My dear sir,” I said, “it is the last one in the garden. You ought not to give it to me.”

M. Poulle, who served as translator, rendered this reply:

“Oh, very well. Since it is so valuable, what are you going to give me in exchange?”

I replied that a woman could give only one thing for so pretty a thought as that suggested by the rose.

“And that is?” he asked.

I drew his face toward mine and kissed him.

_Photo_ _Ellis_]

Just at this moment Count Primoli took a snap-shot of us, a picture which I have never had the pleasure of owning. I have, however, something better than a picture. I have kept the rose.

Conversing with Dumas I learned from him some things about which I shall think as long as I live. One day, still with M. Poulle’s assistance as interpreter, we were speaking of _La Dame aux Camélias_ and of the Demi-Monde and the character of the women who compose it. He then said something that I shall never forget:

“When we find one of God’s creatures in whom we perceive nothing good, the fault is perhaps in us.”

Another day I was driving two pretty Arab ponies that Dumas had bought for his grandchildren. We had reached the bottom of a hillock, and the horses were eager to climb it as quickly as they could.

He said to me:

“Hold them back. They will have to become of age before they will learn that one should not go up hill on the gallop.”

When I asked, “What is it that urges them to run this way,” he replied:

“They are like men. They want to hurry and get through with whatever annoys them.”

Once Alexandre Dumas came to call on me at the Grand Hotel, and from that time on the people about the house looked upon me as a being apart, for it was commonly said that Alexandre Dumas paid as few visits as the Queen of England.

The last time that I saw him was in Paris, Rue Ampère, where he lived in a magnificent _appartement_.

I remember that there was with him a certain M. Singer, an old friend of Dumas’, who asked him if he was “indiscreet” and who rose to take leave. Dumas took him by the arm and extending his free hand to me, said:

“Indiscreet! Certainly not. All my friends ought to know Loie and be fond of her.”

When I took leave of him he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a big photograph, enlarged after a portrait of him when he was a child. On the photograph were these words:

“From your little friend Alexandre.”

And this is one of my most precious souvenirs.

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