Chapter X: Part 10

"Uncle James had caught a cold too, so I went with Grissel; and
found a chemist who'd been in France, and knew what a loch was and
made one for me; and then I went to the gallery, and there was poor
Barty sitting on a crimson velvet couch, under a picture of Milton
dictating _Paradise Lost_ to his daughters (I bought it afterwards,
and I've got it now).

"We said how d'ye do, and sat on the couch together, and I felt
dreadfully nervous and ashamed.

"Then I said:

"'You must think me very odd, Mr. Josselin, to ask you to meet me
like this!'

"'I think it's a very great honor!' he said; 'I only wish I deserved
it.'

"And then he said nothing for quite five minutes, and I think he
felt as uncomfortable as I did.

"'Captain Graham-Reece has asked me to be his wife, and I refused,'
I said.

"'Why did you refuse? He's one of the best fellows I've ever met,'
said Barty.

"'He's to be so rich, and so am I,' I said.

"No answer.

"'It would be right for me to marry a _poor_ man--man with brains
and no money, you know, and help him to make his way.'

"'Reece has plenty of brains too,' said Barty.

"'Oh, Mr. Josselin--don't misunderstand me'--and then I began to
stammer and look foolish.

"'Miss Royce--I've only got L15 in the world, and with that I mean
to go to London and be an artist; and comfort myself during the
struggle by the delightful remembrance of Riffrath and Reece and
yourself--and the happy hope of meeting you both again some day,
when I shall no longer be the poor devil I am now, and am quite
content to be! And when you and he are among the great of the earth,
if you will give me each a commission to paint your portraits I will
do my very best!' (and he smiled his irresistible smile). 'You will
be kind, I am sure, to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, the famous
portrait-painter--who doesn't even bear his father's name--as he has
no right to it.'

"I could have flung my arms round his neck and kissed him! What did
_I_ care about his father's name?

"'Will you think me dreadfully bold and indiscreet, Mr. Josselin, if
I--if I--' (I stammered fearfully.)

"'If you _what_, Miss Royce?'

"'If I--if I ask you if you--if you--think Miss Gibson the most
beautiful girl you ever saw?'

"'Honestly, I think _you_ the most beautiful girl I ever saw!'

"'Oh, that's _nonsense_, Mr. Josselin, although I ought to have
known you would say that! I'm not fit to tie her shoes. What I mean
is--a--a--oh! forgive me--are you very _fond_ of her, as I'm sure
she deserves, you know?'

"'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of
no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I
am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name--'

"'Does she _know_ you're very fond of her?'

"'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.'

"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to
cry, but I managed to keep in my tears.

"Then I got up, and so did he--and he made some joke about Grissel
and the loch-bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked
at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the
Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest
in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it--and talked so
funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't
think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the
while; I got back all my self-respect; I felt so grateful to him
that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically
in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with
him, and laughed me out of it.

"Then I bade him good-bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart,
and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson
and be her friend if she would let me.

"Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no
longer wanted it, for I told her I had changed my mind about Freddy,
and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and
called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma!

"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment
made up for them all.

"She was eighty-two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's
works in the cheap edition without spectacles--thanks, no doubt, to
the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else!

"Et voila comment ca s'est passe.

"It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed,
in your life of Josselin.

"Yours sincerely,

"Julia Ironsides.

"P. S.--I've actually just told mamma--and I'm still her dear,
darling, divine Julia!"

* * * * *

Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Duesseldorf, the most charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.

The little boat was crowded; the ladies found what accommodation they could in what served for a ladies' cabin, and expostulated and bribed their best; fortunately for them, no doubt, there were no English on board to bribe against them.

Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet-bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Duesseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine--especially at night.

Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as comfortable as he could on the after-deck, and read to them from _Maud_, from the _Idylls of the King_, from the _Mill on the Floss_. Then windmills came into sight--Dutch windmills; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored Rotterdam, and found it a most delightful city.

Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for St. Katharine's wharf; the wind had freshened and they soon separated, and met at breakfast next morning in the Thames.

Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as one can smell a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an Irish stew, and the old familiar smell made him glad. However little you may be English, if you are English at all you are more English than anything else, _et plus royaliste que le Roi_!

According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially if he comes home by the Thames.

It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps; but it is singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal relations have not been strained in the meanwhile. And as the Thames narrows itself, the closer, the more genial, the more grateful and comforting this long-anticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems to grow.

Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bulwarks in the sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked at Rotherhithe, and promised himself he would paint it some day, and even sell the picture!

Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom-house officers that they all but forgot to examine the Gibson luggage.

Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's wharf, after so many months? Ah!...

Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons went home with him to Conduit Street in a hired fly. Alas! poor Mrs. Gibson's home-coming was the saddest part for her of the delightful little journey.

And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a four-wheeler to eat the fatted calf in Brunswick Square, washed down with I will not say what vintage. There were so many available from all the wine-growing lands of Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate the wanderers' return!

Let us say Romane-Conti, which is the "cru" that Barty loved best.

* * * * *

Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of sketches under his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the day in Fleet Street, or there-abouts, calling on publishers of illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at dinner-time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll story of his ignominious non-success: his weary waitings in dull, dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to learn--he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by storm.

Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after that--every day of the week he spent under our roof.

Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in Newman Street--a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant smoking-room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.

Gradually boxing-gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).

And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular actors--all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's Street.

But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he could not bear to be alone.

Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who welcomed him with open arms--almost hugged him--and made him two or three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole Household Brigade!--the idea!"

Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the manner of John Leech, which he took to the _British Lion_, just started as a rival to _Punch_. The _British Lion_ died before the sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beautiful volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and others, and made a sketch on the fly-leaf of a lovely female with black hair and black eyes, and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was his old female face of ten years ago; yet, strange to say, the very image of Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).

The great happiness of his life just then was to go to the opera with Mrs. Gibson and Leah and Mr. Babbage (the family friend), who could get a box whenever he liked, and then to sup with them afterwards in Conduit Street, over the Emporium of the "Universal Fur Company," and to imitate Signor Giuglini for the delectation of Mr. Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into absolute worship!

And Leah, so reserved and self-contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti--the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think--whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence turned into sound.

Long life to her and to her voice! Lovely voices should never fade, nor pretty faces either!

Sometimes I replaced Mr. Babbage and escorted Mrs. Gibson to the opera, leaving Leah to Barty; for on fine nights we walked there, and the ladies took off their bonnets and shawls in the box, which was generally on the upper tier, and we looked down on Scatcherd and my mother and sister in the stalls. Then back to Conduit Street to supper. It was easy with half an eye to see the way things were going. I can't say I liked it. No man would, I suppose. But I reconciled myself to the inevitable, and bore up like a stoic.

L'amitie est l'amour sans ailes! A happy intimate friendship, a wingless love that has lasted more than thirty years without a break, is no bad substitute for tumultuous passions that have missed their mark! I have been as close a friend to Barty's wife as to Barty himself, and all the happiness I have ever known has come from them and theirs.

Walking home, poor Mrs. Gibson would confide to me her woes and anxieties, and wail over the past glories of Tavistock Square and all the nice people who lived there, and in Russell Square and Bedford Street and Gower Street, many of whom had given up calling on her now that she lived over a shop. Not all the liveliness of Bond Street and Regent Street combined (which Conduit Street so broadly and genially connected with each other) could compensate her for the lost gentility, the aristocratic dulness and quiet and repose, "almost equal to that of a West End square."

Then she believed that business was not going on well, since Mr. Gibson talked of giving up his Cheapside establishment; he said it was too much for him to look after. But he had lost much of his fun, and seemed harassed and thin, and muttered in his sleep; and the poor woman was full of forebodings, some of which were to be justified by the events that followed.

About this time Leah, who had forebodings too, took it into her head to attend a class for book-keeping, and in a short time thoroughly mastered the science in all its details. I'm afraid she was better at this kind of work than at either drawing or music, both of which she had been so perseveringly taught. She could read off any music at sight quite glibly and easily, it is true--the result of hard plodding--but could never play to give real pleasure, and she gave it up. And with singing it was the same; her voice was excellent and had been well trained, but when she heard the untaught Barty she felt she was no singer, and never would be, and left off trying. Yet nobody got more pleasure out of the singing of others--especially Barty's and that of young Mr. Santley, who was her pet and darling, and whom she far preferred to that sweetest and suavest of tenors, Giuglini, about whom we all went mad. I agreed with her. Giuglini's voice was like green chartreuse in a liqueur-glass; Santley's like a bumper of the very best burgundy that ever was! Oh that high G! Romane-Conti, again; and in a quart-pot! En veux-tu? en voila!

And as for her drawing, it was as that of all intelligent young ladies who have been well taught, but have no original talent whatever; nor did she derive any special pleasure from the masterpieces in the National Gallery; the Royal Academy was far more to her taste; and to mine, I frankly admit; and, I fear, to Barty's taste also, in those days. Enough of the Guardsman still remained in him to quite unfit his brain and ear and eye for what was best in literature and art. He was mildly fond of the "Bacchus and Ariadne," and Rembrandt's portrait of himself, and a few others; as he was of the works of Shakespeare and Milton. But Mantegna and Botticelli and Signorelli made him sad, and almost morose.

The only great things he genuinely loved and revered were the Elgin Marbles. He was constantly sketching them. And I am told that they have had great influence on his work and that he owes much to them. I have grown to admire them immensely myself in consequence, though I used to find that part of the British Museum a rather dreary lounge in the days when Barty used to draw there.

I am the proud possessor of a Velasquez, two Titians, and a Rembrandt; but, as a rule, I like to encourage the art of my own time and country and that of modern France.

And I suppose there's hardly a great painter living, or recently dead, some of whose work is not represented on my walls, either in London, Paris, or Scotland; or at Marsfield, where so much of my time is spent; although the house is not mine, it's my real home; and thither I have always been allowed to send my best pictures, and my best bric-a-brac, my favorite horses and dogs, and the oldest and choicest liquors that were ever stored in the cellars of Vougeot-Conti & Co. Old bachelor friends have their privileges, and Uncle Bob has known how to make himself at home in Marsfield.

Barty soon got better off, and moved into better lodgings in Berners Street; a sitting-room and bedroom at No. 12B, which has now disappeared.

And there he worked all day, without haste and without rest, and at last in solitude; and found he could work twice as well with no companion but his pipe and his lay figure, from which he made most elaborate studies of drapery, in pen and ink; first in the manner of Sandys and Albert Duerer! later in the manner of Millais, Walker, and Keene.

Also he acquired the art of using the living model for his little illustrations. It had become the fashion; a new school had been founded with _Once a Week_ and the _Cornhill Magazine_, it seems; besides those already named, there were Lawless, du Maurier, Poynter, not to mention Holman Hunt and F. Leighton; and a host of new draughtsmen, most industrious apprentices, whose talk and example soon weaned Barty from a mixed and somewhat rowdy crew.

And all became more or less friends of his; a very good thing, for they were admirable in industry and talent, thorough artists and very good fellows all round. Need I say they have all risen to fame and fortune--as becomes poetical justice?

He also kept in touch with his old brother officers, and that was a good thing too.

But there were others he got to know, rickety, unwholesome geniuses, whose genius (such as it was) had allied itself to madness; and who were just as conceited about the madness as about the genius, and took more pains to cultivate it. It brought them a quicker kudos, and was so much more visible to the naked eye.

At first Barty was fascinated by the madness, and took the genius on trust, I suppose. They made much of him, painted him, wrote music and verses about him, raved about his Greekness, his beauty, his yellow hair, and his voice and what not, as if he had been a woman. He even stood that, he admired them so! or rather, this genius of theirs.

He introduced me to this little clique, who called themselves a school, and each other "master": "the neo-priapists," or something of that sort, and they worshipped the tuberose.

They disliked me at sight, and I them, and we did not dissemble!

Like Barty, I am fond of men's society; but at least I like them to be unmistakably men of my own sex, manly men, and clean; not little misshapen troglodytes with foul minds and perverted passions, or self-advertising little mountebanks with enlarged and diseased vanities; creatures who would stand in a pillory sooner than not be stared at or talked about at all.

Whatever their genius might be, it almost made me sick--it almost made me kick, to see the humorous and masculine Barty prostrate in admiration before these inspired epicenes, these gifted epileptoids, these anaemic little self-satisfied nincompoops, whose proper place, it seemed to me, was either Earlswood, or Colney Hatch, or Broadmoor. That is, if their madness was genuine, which I doubt. He and I had many a quarrel about them, till he found them out and cut them for good and all--a great relief to me; for one got a bad name by being friends with such nondescripts.

"Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai ce que tu es!"

Need I say they all died long ago, without leaving the ghost of a name?--and nobody cared. Poetical justice again! How encouraging it is to think there are no such people now, and that the breed has been thoroughly stamped out![1]

[Footnote 1: Editor.]

Barty never succeeded as an illustrator on wood. He got into a way of doing very slight sketches of pretty people in fancy dress and coloring them lightly, and sold them at a shop in the Strand, now no more. Then he made up little stories, which he illustrated himself, something like the picture-books of the later Caldecott, and I found him a publisher, and he was soon able to put aside a few pounds and pay his debts.

Part Eighth

"And now I see with eyes serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned
To warn and comfort and command;
And yet a spirit too and bright
With something of an angel-light."
--Wordsworth.

When Barty had been six months in England, poor Mr. Gibson's affairs went suddenly smash. My father saved him from absolute bankruptcy, and there was lamentation and wailing for a month or so in Conduit Street; but things were so managed that Mr. Gibson was able to keep on the "West End firm," and make with it a new start.

He had long been complaining of his cashier, and had to dismiss him and look out for another; but here his daughter came in and insisted on being cashier herself--(to her mother's horror).

So she took her place at a railed-in desk at the back of the shop, and was not only cashier and bookkeeper, but overseer of all things in general, and was not above seeing any exacting and importunate customer whom the shopmen couldn't manage.

She actually liked her work, and declared she had found her real vocation, and quite ceased to regret Tavistock Square.

Her authority in the emporium was even greater than her father's, who was too fond of being funny. She awed the shopmen into a kind of affectionate servility, and they were prostrate as before a goddess, in spite of her never-failing politeness to them.

Customers soon got into a way of asking to see Miss Gibson, especially when they were accompanied by husbands or brothers or male friends; and Miss Gibson soon found she sold better than any shopman, and became one of the notables in the quarter.

All Mr. Gibson's fun came back, and he was as proud of his daughter as if she'd been proposed to by an earl. But Mrs. Gibson couldn't help shedding tears over Leah's loss of caste--Leah, on whose beauty and good breeding she had founded such hopes; it is but fair to add that she was most anxious to keep the books herself, so that her daughter might be spared this degradation; for no "gentleman," she felt sure, would ever propose to her daughter now.

But she was mistaken.

One night Barty and I dined at a little cagmag he used to frequent, where he fared well--so he said--for a shilling, which included a glass of stout. It was a disgusting little place, but he liked it, and therefore so did I.

Then we called for Mrs. Gibson and Leah, and took them to the Princess's to see Fechter in Ruy Blas, and escorted them home, and had supper with them, a very good supper--nothing ever interfered with the luxuriously hospitable instincts of the Gibsons--and a very merry one. Barty imitated Fechter to the life.

"I 'av ze garrb of a _lacquais_--you 'av ze sole of _wawn_!"

This he said to Mr. Gibson, who was in fits of delight. Mr. Gibson had just come home from his club, and the cards had been propitious; Leah was more reserved than usual, and didn't laugh at Barty, for a wonder, but gazed at him with love in her eyes.

When we left them, Barty took my arm and walked home with me, down Oxford Street and up Southampton Row, and talked of Ruy Blas and Fechter, whom he had often seen in Paris.

Just where a little footway leads from the Row to Queen Square and Great Ormond Street, he stopped and said:

"Bob, do you remember how we tossed up for Leah Gibson at this very spot?"

"I should think I did," said I.

"Well, you had a fair field and no favor, old boy, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, I've long resigned any pretensions, as I wrote you more than a year ago; you may go in and win--si le coeur t'en dit!"

"Well, then, your congratulations, please. I asked her to marry me as we crossed Regent Circus, Oxford Street, on the way home; a hansom came by and scattered and splashed us. Then we came together again, and just opposite Peter Robinson's, she asked me if my mind was quite made up--if I was sure I wouldn't ever change. I swore by the eternal gods, and she said she would be my wife; so there we are, an engaged couple."

I must ask the reader to believe that I was equal to the occasion, and said what I ought to have said.

* * * * *

Mrs. Gibson was happy at last; she was satisfied that Barty was a "gentleman," in spite of the kink in his birth; and as for his prospects, money was a thing that never entered Mrs. Gibson's head, and she loved Barty as a son--was a little bit in love with him herself, I believe; she was not yet forty, and as pretty as she could be.

Besides, a week after, who should call upon her over the shop--there was a private entrance of course--but the Right Honorable Lady Caroline Grey and her niece, Miss Daphne Rohan, granddaughter of the late and niece of the present Marquis of Whitby!

And Mrs. Gibson felt as much at home with them in five minutes as if she'd known them all her life.

Leah was summoned from below, and kissed and congratulated by the two aristocratic relatives of Barty's, and relieved of her shyness in a very short time indeed.

As a matter of fact, Lady Caroline, who knew her nephew well, and thoroughly understood his position, was really well pleased; she had never forgotten her impression of Leah when she met her in the park with Ida and me a year back, and we all walked by the Serpentine together--a certain kind of beauty seems to break down all barriers of rank; and she knew Leah's character both from Barty and me, and from her own native shrewdness of observation. She had been delighted to hear from Barty of Leah's resolute participation in her father's troubles, and in his attempt--so successful through her--to rehabilitate his business. To her old-fashioned aristocratic way of looking at things, there was little to choose between a respectable West End shopkeeper and a medical practitioner or dentist or solicitor or architect--or even an artist, like Barty himself. Once outside the Church, the Army and Navy, or a Government office, what on earth did it matter _who_ or _what_ one was, or wasn't? The only thing she couldn't stand was that horrid form of bourgeois gentility, the pretension to seem something better than you really are. Mrs. Gibson was so naively honest in her little laments over her lost grandeur that she could hardly be called vulgar about it.

Mr. Gibson didn't appear; he was overawed, and distrusted himself. I doubt if Lady Caroline would have liked anything in the shape of jocose familiarity; and I fear her naturalness and simplicity and cordiality of manner, and the extreme plainness of her attire, might have put him at his ease almost a trifle too much.

Whether her ladyship would have been so sympathetic about this engagement if Barty had been a legitimate Rohan--say a son of her own--is perhaps to be doubted; but anyhow she had quite made up her mind that Leah was a quite exceptional person, both in mind and manners. She has often said as much to me, and has always had as high a regard for Barty's wife as for any woman she knows, and has still--the Rohans are a long-lived family. She has often told me she never knew a better, sincerer, nobler, or more sensible woman than Barty's wife.

Besides which, as I have been told, the ancient Yorkshire house of Rohan has always been singularly free from aristocratic hauteur; perhaps their religion may have accounted for this, and also their poverty.

This memorable visit, it must be remembered, happened nearly forty years ago, when social demarcations in England were far more rigidly defined than at present; then, the wife of a costermonger with a donkey did not visit the wife of a costermonger who had to wheel his barrow himself.

We are more sensible in these days, as all who like Mr. Chevalier's admirable coster-songs are aware. Old Europe itself has become less tolerant of distinctions of rank; even Austria is becoming so. It is only in southeastern Bulgaria--and even of this I am not absolutely sure--that the navvy who happens to be of noble birth refuses to work in the same gang with the navvy who isn't; and that's what I call real "esprit de corps," without which no aristocracy can ever hope to hold its own in these degenerate days.

Noblesse oblige!

Why, I've got a Lord Arthur in my New York agency, and two Hon'bles in Barge Yard, and another at Cape Town; and devilish good men of business they are, besides being good fellows all round. They hope to become partners some day; and, by Jove! they shall. Now I've said it, I'll stick to it.

The fact is, I'm rather fond of noble lords: why shouldn't I be? I might have been one myself any day these last ten years; I might now, if I chose; but there! Charles Lamb knew a man who wanted to be a tailor once, but hadn't got the spirit. I find I haven't got the spirit to be a noble lord. Even Barty might have been a lord--he, a mere man of letters!--but he refused every honor and distinction that was ever offered to him, either here or abroad--even the Prussian order of Merit!

Alfred Tennyson was a lord, so what is there to make such a fuss about. Give me lords who can't help themselves, because they were born so, and the stupider the better; and the older--for the older they are the grander their manners and the manners of their womankind.

Take, for instance, that splendid old dow, Penelope, Duchess of Rumtifoozleland--I always give nicknames to my grand acquaintances; not that she's particularly old herself, but she belongs to an antiquated order of things that is passing away--for she was a Fitztartan, a daughter of the ducal house of Comtesbois (pronounced County Boyce); and she's very handsome still.

Have you ever been presented to her Grace, O reader?

If so, you must have been struck by the grace of her Grace's manner, as with a ducal gesture and a few courtly words she recognizes the value of whatever immense achievements yours must have been to have procured you such an honor as such an introduction, and expresses her surprise and regret that she has not known you before. The formula is always the same, on every possible occasion. I ought to know, for I've had the honor of being presented to her Grace seven times this year.

Now this lofty forgetting of your poor existence--or mine--is not aristocratic hauteur or patrician insolence; it is _betise pure et simple_, as they call it in France. She was a daughter of the house of Comtesbois, and the Fitztartans were not the inventors of gunpowder, nor was she.

But for a stately, magnificent Grande Dame of the ancient regime, to meet for the seventh time, and be presented to--for the seventh time--with all due ceremony in the midst of a distinguished conservative crowd--say at a ball at Buckingham Palace--give me Penelope, Dowager Duchess of Rumtifoozleland!

(This seems a somewhat uncalled-for digression. But, anyhow, it shows that when it pleases me to do so I move in the very best society--just like Barty Josselin.)

* * * * *

So here was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere taking unto himself a wife from among the daughters of Heth; from the class he had always disliked, the buyers cheap and the sellers dear--whose sole aim in life is the making of money, and who are proud when they succeed and ashamed when they fail--and getting actually fond of his future father and mother in law, as I was!

When I laughed to him about old Gibson--John Gilpin, as we used to call him--being a tradesman, he said:

"Yes; but what an _unsuccessful_ tradesman, my dear fellow!" as if that in itself atoned or made amends for everything.

"Besides, he's Leah's father! And as for Mrs. Gilpin, she's a _dear_, although she's always on pleasure bent; at all events, she's not of a frugal mind; and she's so pretty and dresses so well--and what a foot!--and she's got such easy manners, too; she reminds me of dear Lady Archibald! that's a mother-in-law I shall get on with.... I wish she didn't make such a fuss about living over the shop; I call that being above one's business in every way."

"Je suis au-dessus de mes affaires," as old Bonzig proudly said when he took a garret over the Mont de Piete, in the Rue des Averses.

* * * * *

Barty's courtship didn't last long--only five or six months--during which he made lots of money by sketching little full-length portraits of people in outline and filling up with tints in water-color. He thus immortalized my father and mother, and Ida Scatcherd and her husband, and the old Scatcherds, and lots of other people. It was not high art, I suppose; he was not a high artist; but it paid well, and made him more tolerant of trade than ever.

He took the upper part of a house in Southampton Row, and furnished it almost entirely with wedding-gifts; among other things, a beautiful semi-grand piano by Erard--the gift of my father. Everything was charming there and in the best taste.

Leah was better at furnishing a house than at drawing and music-making; it was an occupation she revelled in.

It is not perhaps for me to say that their cellar might hold its own with that of any beginners in their rank of life!

Well, and so they were married at Marylebone Church, and I was Barty's best man (he was to have been mine, and for that very bride). Nobody else was there but the family, and Ida, whose husband was abroad; the sun shone, though it was not yet May--and then we breakfasted; and John Gilpin made a very funny speech, though with tears in his voice; and as for poor Maman-belle-mere, as Barty called her, she was a very Niobe.

They went for a fortnight to Boulogne. I wished them joy from the bottom of my heart, and flung a charming little white satin slipper of Mrs. Gibson's; it alighted on the carriage--_our_ carriage, by-the-way; we had just started one, and now lived at Lancaster Gate.

It was a sharp pang--almost unbearable, but, also, almost the last. The last was when she came back and I saw how radiant she looked. And as for Barty, he was like

"the herald Mercury,
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill!"

and he had shaved off his beard and mustache to please his wife.

* * * * *

"From George du Maurier, Esqre., A.R.W.S., Hampstead Heath,
to the Right Honble. Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M.P.:

"My Dear Maurice,--In answer to your kind letter, I shall be proud
and happy to illustrate your biography of Barty Josselin; but as for
editing it, _vous plaisantez, mon ami; un amateur comme moi!_ who'll
edit the editor? _Quis custodiet?_...

"You're mistaken about Malines. I only got back there a week or two
before he left it. I remember often seeing him there, arm in arm
with his aunt, Lady Caroline Grey, and being told that he was a
_monsieur anglais, qui avait mal aux yeux_ (like me); but in
Duesseldorf, during the following winter, I knew him very well
indeed.

"We, and the others you tell me you mention, had a capital time in
Duesseldorf. I remember the beautiful Miss Royce they were all so mad
about, and also Miss Gibson, whom I admired much the most of the
two, although she wasn't quite so tall--you know my craze for lovely
giantesses.

"Josselin and I came to London at about the same time, and there
again I saw much of him, and was immensely attracted by him, of
course--as we all were, in the very pleasant little artistic clique
you tell me you describe; but somehow I was never very intimate with
him--none of us were, except, perhaps, Charles Keene.

"He went a great deal into smart society, and a little of the
guardsman still clung to him, and this was an unpardonable crime in
those Bohemian days.

"He was once seen walking between two well-known earls, in the
Burlington Arcade, arm in arm!

"Z---- (to whom a noble lord was as a red rag to a bull) all but cut
him for this, and we none of us approved of his swell friends,
Guardsmen and others. How we've all changed, especially Z----, who
hasn't missed a levee for twenty years, nor his wife a drawing-room!

"Josselin and I acted in a little French musical farce together at
Cornelys's; he had a charming voice and sang beautifully, as you
know.

"Then he married, and a year after I did the same; and though we
lived near each other for a little while, we didn't meet very often,
beyond dining together once or twice at each other's houses. They
lived very much in the world.

"It will be very difficult to draw his wife. I really think Mrs.
Josselin was the most beautiful woman I ever saw; but she used to be
very reserved in those early days, and I never felt quite at my ease
with her. I'm sure she was sweetness and kindness itself; she was
certainly charming at her own dinner-table, where she was less shy.

"Millais's portrait of her is very good, and so is Watts's; but the
best idea of her is to be got from Josselin's little outlines in
'The Discreet Princess,' and these are out of print. If you have
any, please lend them to me, and I will faithfully return them. I
have more than once tried to draw her in _Punch_, from memory, but
never with success.

"I used to call her '_La belle dame sans merci._'

"I've often, however, drawn Josselin, as you must remember, and
people have recognized him at once. Thanks for all his old sketches
of school, etc., which will be very useful.

"I wish I had known the Josselins better. But when one lives in
Hampstead one has to forego many delightful friendships; and then he
grew to be such a tremendous swell! Good heavens!--_Sardonyx_, etc.
I never could muster courage even to write and congratulate him.

"It never occurred to any of us, either in Duesseldorf or London, to
think him what is called _clever_; he never said anything very
witty or profound. But he was always funny in a good-natured, jovial
manner, and made me laugh more than any one else.

"As for satire, good heavens! that seemed not in him. He was always
well dressed, always in high spirits and a good temper, and very
demonstrative and caressing; putting his arm round one, and slapping
one on the back or lifting one up in the air; a kind of jolty,
noisy, boisterous boon-companion--rather uproarious, in fact, and
with no disdain for a good bottle of wine or a good bottle of beer.
His artistic tastes were very catholic, for he was prostrate in
admiration before Millais, Burne-Jones, Fred Walker, and Charles
Keene, with the latter of whom he used to sing old English duets.
Oddly enough, Charles Keene had for Josselin's little amateur
pencillings the most enthusiastic admiration--probably because they
were the very antipodes of his own splendid work. I believe he
managed to get some little initial letters of Josselin's into
_Punch_ and _Once a Week_; but they weren't signed, and made no
mark, and I've forgotten them.

"Josselin didn't really get his foot in the stirrup till a year or
two after his marriage.

"And that was by his illustrations to his own _Sardonyx_, which are
almost worthy of the letter-press, I think; though still somewhat
lacking in freedom and looseness, and especially in the sense of
tone. The feeling for beauty and character in them (especially that
of women and children) is so utterly beyond anything else of the
kind that has ever been attempted, that technical considerations
no longer count. I think you will find all of us, in or outside the
Academy, agreed upon this point.

"I saw very little of him after he bought Marsfield; but I sometimes
meet his sons and daughters, _de par le monde_.

"And what a pleasure that is to an artist of my particular bent you
can readily understand. I would go a good way to see or talk to any
daughter of Josselin's; and to hear Mrs. Trevor sing, what miles!
I'm told the grandchildren are splendid--chips of the old block too.

"And now, my dear Maurice, I will do my best; you may count upon
that, for old-times' sake, and for Josselin's, and for that of '_La
belle dame sans merci_,' whom I used to admire so enthusiastically.
It grieves me deeply to think of them both gone--and all so sudden!

"Sincerely yours,

"George du Maurier.

"P. S.--Very many thanks for the Chateau Yquem and the Steinberger
Cabinet; _je tacherai de ne pas en abuser trop!_

"I send you a little sketch of Graham-Reece (Lord Ironsides), taken
by me on a little bridge in Duesselthal, near Duesseldorf. He stood
for me there in 1860. It was thought very like at the time."

* * * * *

When the Josselins came back from their honeymoon and were settled in Southampton Row many people of all kinds called on the newly married pair; invitations came pouring in, and they went very much into the world. They were considered the handsomest couple in London that year, and became quite the fashion, and were asked everywhere, and made much of, and raved about, and had a glorious time till the following season, when somebody else became the fashion, and they had grown tired of being lionized themselves, and discovered they were people of no social importance whatever, as Leah had long perceived; and it did them good.

Barty was in his element. The admiration his wife excited filled him with delight; it was a kind of reflected glory, that pleased him more than any glory he could possibly achieve for himself.

I doubt if Leah was quite so happy. The grand people, the famous people, the clever, worldly people she met made her very shy at first, as may be easily imagined.

She was rather embarrassed by the attentions many smart men paid her as to a very pretty woman, and not always pleased or edified. Her deep sense of humor was often tickled by this new position in which she found herself, and which she put down entirely to the fact that she was Barty's wife.

She never thought much of her own beauty, which had never been made much of at home, where beauty of a very different order was admired, and where she was thought too tall, too pale, too slim, and especially too quiet and sedate.

Dimpled little rosy plumpness for Mr. and Mrs. John Gilpin, and the never-ending lively chatter, and the ever-ready laugh that results from an entire lack of the real sense of humor and a laudable desire to show one's pretty teeth.

Leah's only vanity was her fondness for being very well dressed; it had become a second nature, especially her fondness for beautiful French boots and shoes, an instinct inherited from her mother.

For these, and for pretty furniture and hangings, she had the truly aesthetic eye, and was in advance of her time by at least a year.

She shone most in her own home--by her great faculty of making others at home there, too, and disinclined to leave it. Her instinct of hospitality was a true inheritance; she was good at the ordering of all such things--food, wines, flowers, waiting, every little detail of the dinner-table, and especially who should be asked to meet whom, and which particular guests should be chosen to sit by each other. All things of which Barty had no idea whatever.

I remember their first dinner-party well, and how pleasant it was. How good the fare, and how simple; and how quick the hired waiting--and the wines! how--(but I won't talk of that); and how lively we all were, and how handsome the women. Lady Caroline and Miss Daphne Rohan, Mr. and Mrs. Graham-Reece, Scatcherd and my sister; G. du Maurier (then a bachelor) and myself--that was the party, a very lively one.

After dinner du Maurier and Barty sang capital songs of the quartier latin, and told stories of the atelier, and even danced a kind of cancan together--an invention of their own--which they called "_le dernier des Abencerrages_." We were in fits of laughter, especially Lady Caroline and Mrs. Graham-Reece. I hope D. M. has not forgotten that scene, and will do justice to it in this book.

There was still more of the Bohemian than the Guardsman left in Barty, and his wife's natural tastes were far more in the direction of Bohemia than of fashionable West End society, as it was called by some people who were not in it, whatever it consists of; there was more of her father in her than her mother, and she was not sensitive to the world's opinion of her social status.

Sometimes Leah and Barty and I would dine together and go to the gallery of the opera, let us say, or to see Fechter and Miss Kate Terry in the _Duke's Motto_, or Robson in Shylock, or the _Porter's Knot_, or whatever was good. Then on the way home to Southampton Row Barty would buy a big lobster, and Leah would make a salad of it, with innovations of her own devising which were much appreciated; and then we would feast, and afterwards Leah would mull some claret in a silver saucepan, and then we (Barty and I) would drink and smoke and chat of pleasant things till it was very late indeed and I had to be turned out neck and crop.

And the kindness of the two dear people! Once, when my father and mother were away in the Isle of Wight and the Scatcherds in Paris, I felt so seedy I had to leave Barge Yard and go home to Lancaster Gate. I had felt pretty bad for two or three days. Like all people who are never ill, I was nervous and thought I was going to die, and sent for Barty.

In less than twenty minutes Leah drove up in a hansom. Barty was in Hampton Court for the day, sketching. When she had seen me and how ill I looked, off she went for the doctor, and brought him back with her in no time. He saw I was sickening for typhoid, and must go to bed at once and engage two nurses.

Leah insisted, on taking me straight off to Southampton Row, and the doctor came with us. There I was soon in bed and the nurses engaged, and everything done for me as if I'd been Barty himself--all this at considerable inconvenience to the Josselins.

And I had my typhoid most pleasantly. And I shall never forget the joys of convalescence, nor what an angel that woman was in a sick-room--nor what a companion when the worst was over; nor how she so bore herself through all this forced intimacy that no unruly regrets or jealousies mingled in my deep affection and admiration for her, and my passionate gratitude. She was such a person to tell all one's affairs to, even dry business affairs! such a listener, and said such sensible things, and sometimes made suggestions that were invaluable; and of a discretion! a very tomb for momentous secrets.

How on earth Barty would have ever managed to get through existence without her is not to be conceived. Upon my word, I hardly see how I should have got on myself without these two people to fill my life with; and in all matters of real importance to me she was the nearest of the two, for Barty was so light about things, and couldn't listen long to anything that was at all intricate. Such matters bored him, and that extraordinary good sense which underlies all his brilliant criticism of life was apt to fail him in practical matters; he was too headstrong and impulsive, and by no means discreet.

It was quite amusing to watch the way his wife managed him without ever letting him suspect what she was doing, and how, after his raging and fuming and storming and stamping--for all his old fractiousness had come back--she would gradually make him work his way round--of his own accord, as he thought--to complete concession all along the line, and take great credit to himself in consequence; and she would very gravely and slowly give way to a delicate little wink in my direction, but never a smile at what was all so really funny. I've no doubt she often got me to do what she thought right in just the same way--_a mon insu_--and shot her little wink at Barty.

* * * * *

In due time--namely, late in the evening of December 31, 1862--Barty hailed a hansom, and went first to summon his good friend Dr. Knight, in Orchard Street; and then he drove to Brixton, and woke up and brought back with him a very respectable, middle-aged, and motherly woman whose name was Jones; and next morning, which was a very sunny, frosty one, my dear little god-daughter was ushered into this sinful world, a fact which was chronicled the very next day in Leah's diary by the simple entry:

"Jan. 1.--Roberta was born and the coals came in."

When Roberta was first shown to her papa by the nurse, he was in despair and ran and shut himself up in his studio, and, I believe, almost wept. He feared he had brought a monster into the world. He had always, thought that female babies were born with large blue eyes framed with long lashes, a beautiful complexion of the lily and the rose, and their shining, flaxen curls already parted in the middle. And this little bald, wrinkled, dark-red, howling lump of humanity all but made him ill. But soon the doctor came and knocked at the door, and said:

"I congratulate you, old fellow, on having produced the most magnificent little she I ever saw in my life--bar none; she might be shown for money."

And it turned out that this was not the coarse, unfeeling chaff poor Barty took it for at first, but the pure and simple truth.

So, my blessed Roberta, pride of your silly old godfather's heart and apple of his eye, mother of Cupid and Ganymede and Aurora and the infant Hercules, think of your poor young father weeping in solitude at the first sight of you, because you were so hideous in his eyes!

You were not so in mine. Next day--you had improved, no doubt--I took you in my arms and thought well of you, especially your little hands that were very prehensile, and your little feet turned in, with rosy toes and little pink nails like shiny gems; and I was complimented by Mrs. Jones on the skill with which I dandled you. I have dandled your sons and daughters, Roberta, and may I live to dandle theirs!