by George Moore
“Oh, no!”
“You will be just in time to see the Academy.”
The conversation turned on art, and we æstheticised for an hour. At last Marshall said, “I am really sorry, old chap, but I must send you away; there’s that model.”
The girl sat waiting, her pale hair hanging down her back, a very picture of discontent.
“Send her away.”
“I asked her to come out to dinner.”
“D — n her.... Well, never mind, I must spend this last evening with you; you shall both dine with me. Je quitte Paris demain matin, peut-etre pour longtemps; je voudrais passer ma dernière soirèe avec mon ami; alors si vous voulez bien me permettre, mademoiselle, je vous invite tous les deux à diner; nous passerons la soirèe ensemble si cela vous est agrèable?”
“Je veux bien, monsieur.”
Poor Marie! Marshall and I were absorbed in each other and art. It was always so. We dined in a gargote, and afterwards we went to a students’ ball; and it seems like yesterday. I can see the moon sailing through a clear sky, and on the pavement’s edge Marshall’s beautiful, slim, manly figure, and Marie’s exquisite gracefulness. She was Lefèbvre’s Chloe; so every one sees her now. Her end was a tragic one. She invited her friends to dinner, and with the few pence that remained she bought some boxes of matches, boiled them, and drank the water. No one knew why; some said it was love.
I went to London in an exuberant necktie, a tiny hat; I wore large trousers and a Capoul beard; looking, I believe, as unlike an Englishman as a drawing by Grévin. In the smoking-room of Morley’s Hotel I met my agent, an immense nose, and a wisp of hair drawn over a bald skull. He explained, after some hesitation, that I owed him a few thousands, and that the accounts were in his portmanteau. I suggested taking them to a solicitor to have them examined. The solicitor advised me strongly to contest them. I did not take the advice, but raised some money instead, and so the matter ended so far as the immediate future was concerned. The years that are most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but among that which is the quintessence of the nation, not an indifferent spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought, and I had succeeded strangely well, and when I returned home England was a new country to me; I had, as it were, forgotten everything. Every aspect of street and suburban garden was new to me; of the manner of life of Londoners I knew nothing. This sounds incredible, but it is so; I saw, but I could realise nothing. I went into a drawing-room, but everything seemed far away — a dream, a presentment, nothing more; I was in touch with nothing; of the thoughts and feelings of those I met I could understand nothing, nor could I sympathise with them: an Englishman was at that time as much out of my mental reach as an Esquimaux would be now. Women were nearer to me than men, and I will take this opportunity to note my observation, for I am not aware that any one else has observed that the difference between the two races is found in the men, not in the women. French and English women are psychologically very similar; the standpoint from which they see life is the same, the same thoughts interest and amuse them; but the attitude of a Frenchman’s mind is absolutely opposed to that of an Englishman; they stand on either side of a vast abyss, two animals different in colour, form, and temperament; — two ideas destined to remain irrevocably separate and distinct.
I have heard of writing and speaking two languages equally well: this was impossible to me, and I am convinced that if I had remained two more years in France I should never have been able to identify my thoughts with the language I am now writing in, and I should have written it as an alien. As it was I only just escaped this detestable fate. And it was in the last two years, when I began to write French verse and occasional chroniques in the papers, that the great damage was done. I remember very well indeed one day, while arranging an act of a play I was writing with a friend, finding suddenly to my surprise that I could think more easily and rapidly in French that in English; but with all this I did not learn French. I chattered, and I felt intensely at home in it; yes, I could write a sonnet or a ballade almost without a slip, but my prose required a good deal of alteration, for a greater command of language is required to write in prose than in verse. I found this in French and also in English. When I returned from Paris, my English terribly corrupt with French ideas and forms of thought, I could write acceptable English verse, but even ordinary newspaper prose was beyond my reach, and an attempt I made to write a novel drifted into a miserable failure.
Here is a poem that Cabaner admired; he liked it in the French prose translation which I made for him one night in the Nouvelle Athènes: —
We are alone! Listen, a little while,
And hear the reason why your weary smile
And lute-toned speaking is so very sweet,
And how my love of you is more complete
Than any love of any lover. They
Have only been attracted by the gray
Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim
And delicate form, or some such other whim,
The simple pretexts of all lovers; — I
For other reason. Listen whilst I try
To say. I joy to see the sunset slope
Beyond the weak hours’ hopeless horoscope,
Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm
Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm,
In mildly modulated phrases; thus
Your life shall fade like a voluptuous
Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die
Like some soft evening’s sad serenity...
I would possess your dying hours; indeed
My love is worthy of the gift, I plead
For them. Although I never loved as yet,
Methinks that I might love you; I would get
From out the knowledge that the time was brief,
That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief,
And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm
Beyond all other loves, for now the arm
Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims
You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames
Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet
To see you fading like a violet,
Or some sweet thought away, would be a strange
And costly pleasure, far beyond the range
Of formal man’s emotion. Listen, I
Will choose a country spot where fields of rye
And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains,
Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes,
To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where,
The porch and windows are festooned with fair
Green wreaths of eglantine, and look upon
A shady garden where we’ll walk alone
In the autumn sunny evenings; each will see
Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree,
The garden’s length, is far, and you will rest
From time to time, leaning upon my breast
Your languid lily face. Then later still
Unto the sofa by the window-sill
Your wasted body I shall carry, so
That you may drink the last left lingering glow
Of evening, when the air is filled with scent
Of blossoms; and my spirit shall be rent
The while with many griefs. Like some blue day
That grows more lovely as it fades away,
Gaining that calm serenity and height
Of colour wanted, as the solemn night
Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep
For ever and for ever; I shall weep
A day and night large tears upon your face,
Laying you then ben
eath a rose-red place
Where I may muse and dedicate and dream
Volumes of poesy of you; and deem
It happiness to know that you are far
From any base desires as that fair star
Set in the evening magnitude of heaven.
Death takes but little, yea, your death has given
Me that deep peace, and that secure possession
Which man may never find in earthly passion.
And here are two specimens of my French verse. I like to print them, for they tell me how I have held together, and they are not worse than my English verse, and is my English verse worse than the verse of our minor poets?
NUIT DE SEPTEMBRE
La nuit est pleine de silence,
Et dans une étrange lueur,
Et dans une douce indolence
La lune dort comme une fleur.
Parmi rochers, dans le sable
Sous les grands pins d’un calme amer
Surgit mon amour périssable,
Faim de tes yeux, soif de ta chair.
Je suis ton amant, et la blonde
Gorge tremble sous mon baiser,
Et le feu de l’amour inonde
Nos deux cœurs sans les apaiser.
Rien ne peut durer, mais ta bouche
Est telle qu’un fruit fait de sang;
Tout passe, mais ta main me touche
Et je me donne en frémissant,
Tes yeux verts me regardent: j’aime
Le clair de lune de tes yeux,
Et je ne vois dans le ciel même
Que ton corps rare et radieux.
POUR UN TABLEAU DE LORD LEIGHTON
De quoi rêvent-elles? de fleurs,
D’ombres, d’étoiles ou de pleurs?
De quoi rêvent ces douces femmes
De leurs amours ou de leurs âmes?
Parcilles aux lis abattus
Elles dorment les rêves tus
Dans la grande fenêtre ovale
Ou s’ouvre la nuit estivale.
But I realised before I was thirty that minor poetry is not sufficient occupation for a life-time — I realised that fact suddenly — I remember the very place at the corner of Wellington Street in the Strand; and these poems were the last efforts of my muse.
THE SWEETNESS OF THE PAST
As sailors watch from their prison
For the faint grey line of the coasts,
I look to the past re-arisen,
And joys come over in hosts
Like the white sea birds from their roosts.
I love not the indelicate present,
The future’s unknown to our quest,
To-day is the life of the peasant,
But the past is a haven of rest —
The things of the past are the best.
The rose of the past is better
Than the rose we ravish to-day,
’Tis holier, purer, and fitter
To place on the shrine where we pray
For the secret thoughts we obey.
In the past nothing dies, nothing changes,
In the past all is lovely and still;
No grief nor fate that estranges,
Nor hope that no life can fulfil,
But ethereal shelter from ill.
The coarser delights of the hour
Tempt, and debauch, and deprave,
And we joy in a flitting flower,
Knowing that nothing can save
Our flesh from the fate of the grave.
But sooner or later returning
In grief to the well-loved nest,
Our souls filled with infinite yearning,
We cry, there is rest, there is rest
In the past, its joys are the best.
NOSTALGIA
Fair were the dreamful days of old,
When in the summer’s sleepy shade,
Beneath the beeches on the wold,
The shepherds lay and gently played
Music to maidens, who, afraid,
Drew all together rapturously,
Their white soft hands like white leaves laid,
In the old dear days of Arcady.
Men were not then as they are now
Haunted and terrified by creeds,
They sought not then, nor cared to know
The end that as a magnet leads,
Nor told with austere fingers beads,
Nor reasoned with their grief and glee,
But rioted in pleasant meads
In the old dear days of Arcady.
The future may be wrong or right,
The present is a hopeless wrong,
For life and love have lost delight,
And bitter even is our song;
And year by year grey doubt grows strong,
And death is all that seems to dree.
Wherefore with weary hearts we long
For the old dear days of Arcady.
ENVOI.
Glories and triumphs ne’er shall cease,
But men may sound the heavens and sea,
One thing is lost for aye — the peace
Of the old dear days of Arcady.
And so it was that I came to settle down in a Strand lodging-house, determined to devote myself to literature, and to accept the hardships of a literary life. I had been playing long enough, and was now anxious for proof, peremptory proof, of my capacity or incapacity. A book! No. An immediate answer was required, and journalism alone could give that. So did I reason in the Strand lodging-house. And what led me to that house? Chance, or a friend’s recommendation? I forget. It was uncomfortable, ugly, and not very clean; but curious, as all things are curious when examined closely. Let me tell you about my rooms. The sitting-room was a good deal longer than it was wide; it was panelled with deal, and the deal was painted a light brown; behind it there was a large bedroom: the floor was covered with a ragged carpet, and a big bed stood in the middle of the floor. But next to the sitting-room was a small bedroom which was let for ten shillings a week; and the partition wall was so thin that I could hear every movement the occupant made. This proximity was intolerable, and eventually I decided on adding ten shillings to my rent, and I became the possessor of the entire flat. In the room above me lived a pretty young woman, an actress at the Savoy Theatre. She had a piano, and she used to play and sing in the mornings, and in the afternoon, friends — girls from the theatre — used to come and see her; and Emma, the maid-of-all-work, used to take them up their tea; and, oh! the chattering and the laughter. Poor Miss L —— ; she had only two pounds a week to live on, but she was always in high spirits except when she could not pay the hire of her piano; and I am sure that she now looks back with pleasure and thinks of those days as very happy ones.
She was a tall girl, a thin figure, and she had large brown eyes; she liked young men, and she hoped that Mr Gilbert would give her a line or two in his next opera. Often have I come out on the landing to meet her; we used to sit on those stairs talking, long after midnight, of what? — of our landlady, of the theatre, of the most suitable ways of enjoying ourselves in life. One night she told me she was married; it was a solemn moment. I asked in a sympathetic voice why she was not living with her husband. She told me, but the reason of the separation I have forgotten in the many similar reasons for separations and partings which have since been confided to me. The landlady resented our intimacy, and I believe Miss L —— was charged indirectly for her conversations with me in the bill. On the first floor there was a large sitting-room and bedroom, solitary rooms that were nearly always unlet. The landlady’s parlour was on the ground floor, her bedroom was next to it, and further on was the entrance to the kitchen stairs, whence ascended Mrs S — — ‘s brood of children, and Emma, the awful servant, with tea things, many various smells, that of ham and eggs predominating.
Emma, I remember you — you are not to be forgotten — up at five o’clock every morning, scouring, washing, cooking, dressing those infamous children; sevente
en hours at least out of the twenty-four at the beck and call of landlady, lodgers, and quarrelling children; seventeen hours at least out of the twenty-four drudging in that horrible kitchen, running up stairs with coals and breakfasts and cans of hot water; down on your knees before a grate, pulling out the cinders with those hands — can I call them hands? The lodgers sometimes threw you a kind word, but never one that recognised that you were akin to us, only the pity that might be extended to a dog. And I used to ask you all sorts of cruel questions, I was curious to know the depth of animalism you had sunk to, or rather out of which you had never been raised. And generally you answered innocently and naïvely enough. But sometimes my words were too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked — well, to be candid, — you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated the delicate markings of the years, and left you in round numbers something over thirty. Your hair was reddish brown, and your face wore that plain honest look that is so essentially English. The rest of you was a mass of stuffy clothes, and when you rushed up stairs I saw something that did not look like legs; a horrible rush that was of yours, a sort of cart-horselike bound. I have spoken angrily to you; I have heard others speak angrily to you, but never did that sweet face of yours, for it was a sweet face — that sweet, natural goodness that is so sublime — lose its expression of perfect and unfailing kindness. Words convey little sense of the real horrors of the reality. Life in your case meant this: to be born in a slum, and to leave it to work seventeen hours a day in a lodging-house; to be a Londoner, but to know only the slum in which you were born and the few shops in the Strand at which the landlady dealt. To know nothing of London meant in your case not to know that it was not England; England and London! you could not distinguish between them. Was England an island or a mountain? you had no notion. I remember when you heard that Miss L —— was going to America, you asked me, and the question was sublime: “Is she going to travel all night?” You had heard people speak of travelling all night, and that was all you knew of travel or any place that was not the Strand. I asked you if you went to church, and you said, “No, it makes my eyes bad.” I said, “But you don’t read; you can’t read.” “No, but I have to look at the book.” I asked you if you had heard of God — you hadn’t, but when I pressed you on the point you suspected I was laughing at you, and you would not answer, and when I tried you again on the subject I could see that the landlady had been telling you what to say. But you had not understood, and your conscious ignorance, grown conscious within the last couple of days, was even more pitiful than your unconscious ignorance when you answered that you couldn’t go to church because it made your eyes bad. It is a strange thing to know nothing; for instance, to live in London and to have no notion of the House of Commons, nor indeed of the Queen, except perhaps that she is a rich lady; the police — yes, you knew what a policeman was because you used to be sent to fetch one to make an organ-man or a Christy minstrel move on. To know of nothing but a dark kitchen, grates, eggs and bacon, dirty children; to work seventeen hours a day and to get cheated out of your wages; to answer, when asked, why you did not get your wages or leave if you weren’t paid, that you “didn’t know how Mrs S —— would get on without me.”
