by George Moore
“When,” he asked, “do you return? Not yet, surely; not before the ‘Grand Prix’?”
“But why should I remain for the ‘Grand Prix ‘?”
“We might go to the fashionable Dieppe and to Trouville afterwards. We might spend a season in Aix-les-Bains in September, and we might from there go on to Spain.”
“But my home is in England; and really, Lewis, if you wish to hear the truth, I will tell you. Your career is in England, and not here. You cannot become a Frenchman because you were born an Englishman, and nobody is a success out of his own country, or happy.”
Lewis felt that she had spoken the truth, and it came to be often discussed between them that we can only really live where we are born. Our minds never wander far from our nativity, though our bodies may be elsewhere, and it is well not to separate the mind from the body. What is true of plants and flowers and trees is also true of animals and of men. True, quite true; he must return to England because he was English; the two years and some months he had spent in Paris would remain a little island in his life. He would return to England with Lucy because he loved her; he could not be separated from her. Lucy was his line of luck. “You will help me to find a studio,” he said.
She welcomed the word “studio,” and spoke to him of the presidency of the Royal Academy as they leaned over the bulwarks of the vessel, without, however, being able to cheer him.
As the shores receded he felt he was bidding good-bye to La Belle France for ever. Something that had come into his life was going out of it for ever, and there were tears in his eyes as he wrapped a woollen shawl round his mistress’s shoulders.
CHAP. XXIII.
HOWEVER WE MAY have enjoyed our sojourn in a foreign country, it is always agreeable to return home, and the English cliffs presented a pleasant appearance even to Lewis, full as he was at that moment of French sentiment, and in spite of himself the English accent sounded pleasant on his ears as it came from the lips of the railway porters.
He did not like to fall asleep in Lucy’s presence, but sleep overcame him, and it overcame her soon afterwards, and they both slept till the ticket collector came to ask for their tickets. Even at that moment of low vitality it was pleasant to see the solemn Thames so different from the gay little Seine, and to mark the buildings and the sky that was just beginning to brighten.
“It may be a fine day after all,” Lewis ventured.
Mrs. Thorpe, whom they had forgotten, woke up and suggested they should all go to the same hotel together and sleep away their fatigue; and this plan might have been followed if it had not been discovered that they could catch a fast train and save themselves the trouble of unpacking and repacking their trunks, and undressing and dressing again. The old phrase about making two bites at a cherry came into their minds, and an hour later they were rolling out of Victoria, thinking how pleasant it would be to get to bed and sleep away the fatigue of the journey.
“Don’t call after him,” Lucy said, as she and her cousin ascended the stairs; “he has gone to look at his decorations”; and while she dressed for luncheon she began to feel anxious about him. “If his decorations failed to please,” she said to herself, “he hasn’t closed his eyes all the morning, but lain awake thinking how he might improve them. It may be that he will ask permission to begin them all over again. His face will tell me”; and when they met in the drawing-room, his face, which she could now read, told her that he approved of his work, and on questioning him she learnt that he was more sure of his drawing; that he knew more; and his eagerness to return to London and to work convinced Lucy that she had done well to take him away from Paris and its associations.
Her presence at Claremont House was needed; her gardens! But Lewis left her no peace, and at the end of the week they were going to London together to look for a studio. After all his painting was more important to her than bulbs. She would be a great deal in his studio during the winter; the studio, therefore, was almost as important to her as to him. She would like it to be within convenient distance of Carlton House Terrace. She fell to thinking of Bloomsbury; the very name exhaled a fragrance of dead romance, and Lewis said that he thought he could see himself living in one of the old houses in Bloomsbury Square. So to Bloomsbury they went, and spent a long day searching without being able to find anything that they could approve of cordially; but if the house agent’s books had proved singularly poor in artistic residences, they had, nevertheless, spent a pleasant day, and sitting on either side of the fireplace in Carlton House Terrace they talked of studios and gardens, thinking that as they had found driving to and fro, calling at different houses, running upstairs, discussing the height of ceilings, north lights and wall papers, a pastime, they must not yield to the temptation of saying “This will not do.” They had seen nothing in Bloomsbury, but in Chelsea they might find what they were seeking; and Chelsea was, after all, not further from Carlton House Terrace than Bloomsbury.
“We shall have to go to Chelsea,” Lucy said, “but there is one thing I must ask you: to have patience. It is impossible for you to paint the pictures we would all like to see you painting, in ugly surroundings. We have gotten a number of addresses and must go to every one. They won’t all suit us, but we may happen upon something that will, but we must be patient.”
And the next day the carriage stopped in front of a handsome house with portico overlooking the river, an inspiring house it seemed to them both, and the inside seemed in keeping with the outside.
“We seem to have hit upon the very house we want,” Lewis said. Lucy was not so sure: it seemed a little pompous, but it might do.
At that moment a voice from the next room cried out that he was not to be disturbed, and the caretaker told them that the gentleman had come in last night who had taken the house.
“But why did you let us come in?”
“I thought that you were friends of the gentleman’s,” the caretaker replied; and Lucy and Lewis returned dejected to the brougham.
The next address was in a slum.
“We shall have you laid up with fever,” Lucy said.
“And the noise!” Lewis answered. “Dogs and children howling together. I wonder why the agent sent us here? I told him I was a painter.”
“When we go back to the office you’d better tell him the kind of pictures you intend to paint,” Lucy replied, laughing; “and to make matters plain to him, it might be as well to bring some photographs of Boucher and Fragonard. A photograph of the ‘Rape of the Chemise’ could not fail to put him in mind of some picturesque spot.”
Lewis laughed, and after he had complimented Lucy on what he called her pretty wit, they proceeded from failure to failure up staircases and round backyards till Chelsea was fairly ransacked.
“We haven’t been down this turning,” Lewis said at the end of a week’s searching.
Lucy said she didn’t remember it, and they passed out of a rather squalid thoroughfare into a lane that led them towards what seemed to be the outskirts of a little English town, and after passing some untidy studios they stopped to admire a beautiful eighteenth-century house, with a garden in front, at the side, and behind it.
“Who couldn’t paint in that beautiful house?” And Lewis pointed to another Georgian house — pillared porch and balcony in all the best style; but what caused their hearts to stand still was a board, “RESIDENCE TO LET.”
“But how much will it cost to live there?”
“Whatever it costs you must live there,” Lucy answered; and they walked through a little gate to the house.
On the first floor was a dining-room and a back room in which Lewis said he would keep frames and pictures, and after much whispered admiration they ascended a staircase with thin balusters.
“How perfect was the taste of our ancestors!” Lewis remarked; and from the landing they walked into a long room the full length of the house, with four windows. “If it be in me to paint beautiful pictures, it will be here that I shall paint them,” Lewis murmured. “Amo
ng apple-green walls and lemon-yellow window-frames.”
“Oh, how clever of you, Lewis, to think of it so quickly!”
It would be necessary to make some inquiries about bathrooms and bedrooms, but before making any it seemed to both that it would be better to hurry to the agent’s and put in their claim for the house, “Unless,” Lucy interposed, “all the arrangements be unsanitary.” The house was to let. The agent did not think the sanitation defective, and they returned to the Vale to make further investigations, and then returned to the agent to pay something in advance, so afraid were they that another purchaser might rob them of their discovery by offering a bigger rent.
Without this house the conviction tugged at their heart-strings that their dreams would come to nought. The house was essential.... They knew it. “The house — the house,” they repeated all that evening, and next day an order was given for the preparation of a lease. It came up in due time for Lewis’s signature, and as soon as it was signed, breath came more freely. For twenty-one years the Georgian house in the Vale was Lewis’s. “Your house as much as mine, Lucy.”
Lucy protested, and they fell to talking about the furniture. “What curtains do you think will harmonise best with a pale apple green?” Lucy asked; and the colour that came first into their minds was, of course, red. “But what red? Silk damask, moire, or rep?”
“The century is just emerging from rep,” Lewis answered. “Rep is too early Victorian.” And they walked out on to the balcony, their thoughts passing from curtains into admiration of the vision of country imprisoned by some miracle in London’s midst. Lucy spoke of flowers, but Lewis thought the tall tangled grasses would be in keeping with the fig-trees.
“The lag end of an English village it seems to me to be,” he said, as he stepped aside to let her pass into the long low-ceilinged room.
“The curtains must be rose damask,” she murmured. “And now let me see what furniture is wanted.”
“In a house like this there can be but eighteenth-century furniture.”
And next day they went forth in the blue silk-lined brougham, filled with looking-glasses, scent-bottles, note-paper, pens, and many other delightful and unnecessary knick-knacks, to buy furniture. A Sheraton sofa was indispensable, and a set of Sheraton chairs to match. Lewis did not wish his house to look like a museum, and was very glad when a friend of Lucy’s, a rich man who had just bought a Jacobean house, thinking that some beautiful glass chandeliers would be out of keeping with his house, gave them to Lewis. “One day you may paint me a picture,” he said to Lewis.
“I will, indeed,” Lewis answered; and as soon as the man had gone, he said: “He is one of those men who, having no notion of what is beautiful, think they can attain the beautiful by having everything in keeping. Poor fools!” he muttered; and they drove to another dealer, and spent a long time considering French clocks, a favourite whim of Lewis’s. “No house possesses anything like a sufficient number of Louis XV. clocks. Every clock was beautiful,” he said, “till clocks began to strike the nineteenth century”; and a light came into Lucy’s face, for now everything her lover said struck her as wonderful. The brougham stopped.
“We most now give our attention to carpets.”
“There are no carpets but Aubusson.”
Aubussons were scorned in the seventies, and Lewis was able to acquire a great circle of flowers for a few pounds.
“A marvellous design,” he said, and their thoughts and their eyes were caught at that moment by some Chelsea figures. Lucy picked up a pair of Battersea candlesticks, and asked him if they were not pretty, but he said he didn’t care for Battersea unless they were green at the base. Satinwood tables played a large part in their peregrinations, and they spent a long while admiring writing-tables with little bookcases at the back to hold volumes no larger than one’s hand. Too much money was asked for these pieces, and Lucy resolved to say nothing to Lewis, but to buy them for him when his back was turned. His pleasure would be the greater.
The bedrooms were a source of great anxiety to both of them. Lewis was in favour of a four-poster, a Victorian, for he did not mind mixing the styles, so long as the posts were beautifully carved; and they saw some beautiful beds, French and English. The Italian bed and the Dutch interested neither: and they thought of themselves in a French bed.
“After all, love such as ours is worthy of a canopy and Cupids.”
“Lewis, I would not have you speak like that of our love, though I know you are only jesting. Our love does not depend upon the style of bed we live in. I hoped that your love would not be different, though we had no bed but a straw pallet.”
“My dear Lucy, bed life is—” He stopped.
Her earnestness obscured the sky of their happiness, and they walked pensively through the show-rooms, the showman’s patter sounding far away till the sight of a French bureau in dark mahogany, with rich ormolu, awoke them from their reveries; and in consideration of this beautiful object we will leave them and take up the thread of the story a few weeks later, when the Georgian house in the Vale was furnished from basement to garret, and the time had come for Lewis to paint a picture.
He had had no heart to think of painting since his return, and for many months before, painting had occupied his thoughts but seldom, and he was now without an idea in his head and unable to decide if he should paint Judith and Holofernes or a bunch of flowers. He could paint neither, for he was without an idea, and an artist without ideas is an unhappy man: ideas are his portion, inasmuch that he can accept all other forms of poverty without grumbling. If there be no wine he can drink beer; if there be no chicken he can eat mutton; if there be no mutton he can eat bread and cheese; and bread and cheese with an idea is preferable to the daintiest French dishes without one if the man be an artist. And Lewis was an artist in a sense. He did not remember that he had ever been before without an idea: good ideas or bad ideas, he did not know which, but he had had ideas even in the Waterloo Road; but in the Vale he was without an idea sufficient to carry him through a still life. “Was he an artist?” He put the question as he stood on the balcony overlooking the tangled grasses, and then returning to the low-ceilinged room, he covered sheets of paper with all kinds of scrawls, every moment thinking that an idea would emerge. He was lured for a moment, and then another design was begun, and at the end of a short October day, after passing through a shadowy garden, Lucy found Lewis seated before the fire more depressed and sad than she had ever known him. She took up one of the sheets of paper and asked him to explain the different compositions, and he said that very likely some were not worse than many of the compositions that one saw every year on the walls of the Academy, but there was no idea in him, “And one cannot paint without an idea,” he said. “The months that I spent in those Parisian studios may have scraped all my ideas out of me.”
Lucy could see he was full of despair, and she kept her eyes withdrawn from his, lest she might catch sight of tears. “He will feel ashamed of himself,” she said to herself, and determined to save him from self-humiliation, she remarked that the subject, whether of a picture or of a book, perhaps even of music, came from without. A word heard in conversation, something read in the newspapers, something seen, accident dictated it. “You mustn’t be impatient; you must wait for the inspired moment. The waiting is tedious, but it may be shortened by reading. Now, have you thought, Lewis, of the books you have read? There must be something in one of them that prompts a picture.”
He did not reply, and to win him out of his mood of despondency she began to talk to him of the books they had read together in Paris. They had read the Decameron, but the tales did not seem to them nearly as well told as they had been led to believe they were. The most that could be said in Boccaccio’s favour was that a clumsy fellow, without literary intuition or skill, took down everything that came to his ears, which was his luck and ours, for if he had tried to give shape to the folk-tales he had collected he would have spoilt them.
“A good secre
tary,” Lewis said, stretching himself out in his arm-chair; and in his new and more comfortable position be began to contend that literature had not yet begun to emerge from the darkness of the Middle Ages.
Lucy objected.
“Dante — we did not read him.”
“He belongs to the Middle Ages; and speaking out of a very shadowy knowledge of the subject, I would like to say that the Renaissance seems to me to have produced every art in perfection but literature.”
Lucy reflected a moment, and a little surprised at Lewis’s perception of a subject which he only knew from her, reminded him that Latin literature was, with the possible exception of Dante, superior to Italian. “The late Latin and Greek writers that we read in the Tudor translations struck us as being more independent than any modern literature”; and she spoke of the fragment of Petronius that has come down to us as illustrating the freedom of the ancient writer from social prejudices, and they were agreed that Gil Bias was but a pale copy of it. It may be that Le Sage never read the Latin work, but the tradition of it survived in the subconsciousness of the modern world; and they rejoiced in their recollections of the great feast, a thing in itself, an essential — like a great mountain, an elephant, it cannot be forgotten. And each was moved to speak of the boy whom the thieves quarrelled over, and of the boy, too, whose complacency was won by a present of gamecocks — neither remembered the second present; the third they were sure was a promise of a pony. But it was not because of the unfulfilment of the promise that the boy threatened to tell his father, but for quite a different reason — proving the Roman writer was possessed of a very superior sense of humour. Lewis reminded Lucy of the Golden Ass, a literary work that compares with the sculpture done in that period, and favourably. The story in itself is so alive that they took pleasure in speaking of the parlourmaid whose tongue the young man sipped as if it were nectar, between whiles entertained with stories of wizardry, “for their amorous encounters,” Lewis said, “took place in her mistress’s bedroom, among many phials containing mysterious medicines.” One of the phials contained a medicine that could change a young man into an ass, and keep him in that animal’s shape till he fortuned upon roses and ate them. It was with this medicine that the parlour-maid transformed her lover at his request; but before she could give the animal, that instantly appeared, rose-leaves to eat, robbers broke in, and the transformed was an ass henceforth, and put to the use that asses are put to. An excellent relation the story is of the assman’s adventures, and his desire to return to his own shape. An excellent relation, happily interrupted by a flash of immortal genius — the beautifullest story ever written — the celebrated story of Orpheus and Eurydice, superior to anything that Boccaccio discovered — as the Parthenon marbles are superior to Tanagra figures — much more beautiful, for the Tanagra figures are slight, but nearly always beautiful, whereas Boccaccio is very often shapeless. And the twain were agreed that, even if the divine story was left out of consideration, the Golden Ass was much superior as conscious art to anything written in Italian.
