Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Study and boudoir would like to know if Doris had any children. About two years afterwards I heard that she was “expecting.” The word came up spontaneously in my mind, perhaps because I had written it in the beginning of the story. Reader, do you remember in “Massimilla Doni” how Balzac, when he came to the last pages, declares that he dare not tell you the end of the adventure. One word, he says, will suffice for the worshippers of the ideal — Massimilla Doni was “expecting.” I have not read the story for many years, but the memory of it shines in my mind bright — well, as the morning star; and I looked up this last paragraph when I began to write this story, but had to excuse myself for not translating it, my pretext being that I was baffled by certain grammatical obscurities, or what seemed to me such. I seemed to understand and to admire it all till I came to the line that “les peuplades de cent cathédrales gothiques” (which might be rendered as the figured company of a hundred Gothic cathedrals), “tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leur forme pour venir à vous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliques filles incorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et y pleurèrent!” What puzzles me is why statues should break their forms (form I suppose should be translated by mould) — break their moulds — the expression seems very inadequate — break their moulds “in order to go to you, great imaginative artists.” How could they break their moulds or their forms to go to the imaginative artists, the mould or the form being the gift of the imaginative artists? I should have understood Balzac better if he had said that the statues escape from their niches and the madonnas and the angels from their frames to gather round the bed of Massimilla to weep. Balzac’s idea seems to have got a little tangled, or maybe I am stupid to-day. However, here is the passage:

  “Les péris, les ondines, les fées, les sylphides du vieux temps, les muses de la Grèce, les vierges de marbre de la Certosa di Pavia, le Jour et la Nuit de Michel Ange, les petits anges que Bellini le premier mit au bas des tableaux d’église, et que Raphaël a faits si divinement au bas de la vierge au donataire, et de la madone qui gèle a Dresde, les délicieuses filles d’Orcagna, dans l’église de San-Michele à Florence, les choeurs célestes du tombeau de Saint Sébald à Nuremberg, quelques vierges du Duomo de Milan, les peuplades de cent cathédrales gothiques, tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leur forme pour venir à vous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliques filles incorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et y pleurèrent.”

  CHAPTER IX

  IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

  THERE WAS A time when my dream was not literature, but painting; and I remember an American giving me a commission to make a small copy of Ingres’s “Perseus and Andromeda,” and myself sitting on a high stool in the Luxembourg, trying to catch the terror of the head thrown back, of the arms widespread, chained to the rock, and the beauty of the foot advanced to the edge of the sea. Since my copying days the picture has been transferred to the Louvre. What has become of my copy, whether I ever finished it and received the money I had been promised, matters very little. Memories of an art that one has abandoned are not pleasant memories. Maybe the poor thing is in some Western state where the people are ignorant enough to accept it as a sketch for the original picture. My hope is that it has drifted away, and become part of the world’s rubbish and dust. But why am I thinking of it at all? Only because a more interesting memory hangs upon it.

  After working at it all one morning, I left the museum feeling half satisfied with my drawing, but dreading the winged monster that awaited me after lunch. In those days I was poor, though rich for the Quarter. I moved in a society of art students, and we used to meet for breakfast in a queer little café; the meal cost us about a shilling. On my return from this café soon after twelve — I had breakfasted early that morning — I remember how, overcome by a sudden idleness, I could not go back to my work, and feeling that I must watch the birds and the sunlight (they seemed to understand each other so well), I threw myself on a bench and began to wonder if there was anything better in the world worth doing than to sit in an alley of clipped limes, smoking, thinking of Paris and of myself.

  Every one, or nearly every one, except perhaps the upper classes, whose ideas of Paris are the principal boulevards — the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue de la Paix — knows the Luxembourg Gardens; and watching April playing and listening to water trickling from a vase that a great stone Neptune held in his arms at the end of the alley, my thoughts embraced not only the garden, but all I know of Paris, of the old city that lies far away behind the Hôtel de Ville and behind the Boulevard St. Antoine. I thought of a certain palace now a museum, rarely visited, of its finely proportioned courtyard decorated with bas-reliefs by Jean Goujon. I had gone there a week ago with Mildred; but finding she had never heard of Madame de Sévigné, and did not care whether she had lived in this palace or another, I spoke to her of the Place des Vosges, saying we might go there, hoping that she would feel interested in it because it had once been the habitation of the old French nobility. As I spoke, its colour rose up before my eyes, pretty tones of yellow and brown brick, the wrought-iron railings and the high-pitched roofs and the slim chimneys. As I walked beside her I tried to remember if there were any colonnades. It is strange how one forgets; yes, and how one remembers. The Place des Vosges has always seemed to me something more than an exhibition of the most beautiful domestic architecture in France. The mind of a nation shapes itself, like rocks, by a process of slow accumulation, and it takes centuries to gather together an idea so characteristic as the Place des Vosges. One cannot view it — I cannot, at least — without thinking of the great monarchical centuries, and of the picturesque names which I have learned from Balzac’s novels and from the history of France. In his “Étude de Catherine de Médicis,” Balzac speaks of Madame de Sauve, and I am sure she must have lived in the Place des Vosges. Monsieur de Montresser might have occupied a flat on the first floor. Le Comte Bouverand de la Loyère, La Marquise d’Osmond, Le Comte de Coëtlogon, La Marquise de Villefranche, and Le Duc de Cadore, and many other names rise up in my mind, but I will not burden this story with them. I suppose the right thing to do would be to find out who had lived in the Place des Vosges; but the search, I am afraid, would prove tedious and perhaps not worth the trouble. For if none of the bearers of the names I have mentioned lived in the Place des Vosges, it is certain that others bearing equally noble names lived there.

  Its appearance is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenth century, but it is now inhabited by the small tradespeople of the Quarter; the last great person who lived there was Victor Hugo; his house has been converted into a museum, and it is there that the most interesting relics of the great poet are stored. I unburdened my mind to Mildred, and my enthusiasm enkindled in her an interest sufficient to induce her to go there with me, for I could not forgo a companion that day, though she was far from being the ideal companion for such sentimental prowling as mine. Afterwards we visited Notre Dame together, and the quays, and the old streets; but Mildred lacked the historical sense, I am afraid, for as we returned in the glow of the sunset, when the monumented Seine is most beautiful, she said that Paris wasn’t bad for an old city, and it was the memory of this somewhat crude remark that caused a smile to light up my lips as I looked down the dark green alley through which the April sunlight flickered.

  But I did not think long of her; my attention was distracted by the beauty of a line of masonry striking across the pale spring sky, tender as a faded eighteenth-century silk, only the blue was a young blue like that of a newly opened flower; and it seemed to me that I could detect in the clouds going by, great designs for groups and single figures, and I compared this aerial sculpture with the sculpture on the roofs. In every angle of the palace there are statues, and in every corner of the gardens one finds groups or single figures. Ancient Rome had sixty thousand statues — a statue for every thirty-three or thirty-four inhabitants; in Paris the proportion of statues to the people is not so great, still there are
a great many; no city has had so many since antiquity; and that is why Paris always reminds me of those great days of Greece and Rome when this world was the only world.

  When one tires of watching the sunlight there is no greater delight than to become absorbed in the beauty of the balustrades, the stately flights of steps, the long avenues of clipped limes, the shapely stone basins, every one monumented in some special way. “How shapely these gardens are,” I said, and I fell to dreaming of many rocky hills where, at the entrance of cool caves, a Neptune lies, a vase in his arms with water flowing from it. Yesterevening I walked in these gardens with a sculptor; together we pondered Carpeau’s fountain, and, after admiring Frémiet’s horses, we went to Watteau’s statue, appropriately placed in a dell, among greenswards like those he loved to paint. At this moment my meditation was broken.

  “I thought I should find you in the museum painting, but here you are, idling in this pretty alley, and in the evening you’ll tell us you’ve been working all day.”

  “Will you come for a walk?” I said, thinking that the gardens might interest her, and, if they did not, the people we should meet could not fail to amuse her. It was just the time to see the man who came every morning to feed the sparrows; he had taught them to take bread from his lips, and I thought that Mildred would like to see the funny little birds hopping about his feet, so quaint, so full of themselves, seeming to know all about it. Then if we had luck we might meet Robin Hood, for in those days a man used to wander in the gardens wearing the costume of the outlaw, and armed with a bow and quiver. The strange folk one meets in the Luxembourg Gardens are part of their charm. Had I not once met a man in armour, not plate, but the beautiful chain armour of the thirteenth century, sitting on a bench eating his lunch, his helmet beside him? — a model no doubt come from a studio for the lunch hour, or maybe he was an exalté or a fumist; a very innocent fumist if he were one, not one of the Quarter certainly, for even the youngest among us would know that it would take more than a suit of armour to astonish the frequenters of the gardens. As we came down a flight of steps we met an old man and his wife, an aged couple nearly seventy years of age, playing football, and the gambols of this ancient pair in the pretty April sunlight were pathetic to watch. I called her attention to them, telling her that in another part of the garden three old women came to dance; but seeing that Mildred was not interested, I took the first opportunity to talk of something else. She was more interested in the life of the Quarter, in le bal Bullier, in my stories of grisettes and students; and I noticed that she considered every student as he passed, his slim body buttoned tightly in a long frock-coat, with hair flowing over his shoulders from under his slouched hat, just as she had considered each man on board the boat a week ago as we crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne. We had met on the boat; I noticed her the moment I got on board; her quiet, neat clothes were unmistakably French, though not the florid French clothes Englishwomen so often buy and wear so badly. The stays she had on I thought must be one of those little ribbon stays with very few bones, and as she walked up and down she kept pressing her leather waistband still more neatly into its place, looking first over one shoulder and then over the other. She reminded me of a bird, so quick were her movements, and so alert. She was nice-looking, not exactly pretty, for her lips were thin, her mouth too tightly closed, the under lip almost disappearing, her eyes sloped up very much at the corners, and her eyebrows were black, and they nearly met.

  The next time I saw her she was beside me at dinner — we had come by chance to the same hotel, a small hotel in the Rue du Bac. Her mother was with her, an elderly, sedate Englishwoman, to whom the girl talked very affectionately, “Yes, dearest mamma”; “No, dearest mamma.” She had a gay voice, though she never seemed to laugh or joke; but her face had a sad expression, and she sighed continually. After dinner her mother went to the piano and played with a great deal of accent and noise the “Brooklyn Cake Walk.”

  “We used to dance that at Nice. Oh, dear mamma, do you remember that lovely two-step?”

  Her mother nodded and smiled, and began playing a Beethoven sonata, but she had not played many bars before her daughter said:

  “Now, mother, don’t play any more; come and talk to us.”

  I asked her if she did not like Beethoven. She shrugged her shoulders; an expression of irritation came into her face. She either did not want to talk of Beethoven then, or she was incapable of forming any opinion about him, and, judging from her interest in the “Brooklyn Cake Walk,” I said:

  “The Cake Walk is gayer, isn’t it?”

  The sarcasm seemed lost upon her; she sat looking at me with a vague expression in her eyes, and I found it impossible to say whether it was indifference or stupidity.

  “Mildred plays Beethoven beautifully. My daughter loves music. She plays the violin better than anybody you ever heard in your life.”

  “Well, she must play very well indeed, for I’ve heard Sarasate and — —”

  “If Mildred would only practise,” and she pressed her daughter to play something for me.

  “I haven’t got my keys — they’re upstairs. No, mother ... leave me alone; I’m thinking of other things.”

  Her mother went back to the piano and continued the sonata. Mildred looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and then turned over the illustrated papers, saying they were stupid. We began to talk about foreign travel, and I learned that she and her mother spent only a small part of every year in England. She liked the Continent much better; English clothes were detestable; English pictures she did not know anything about, but suspected they must be pretty bad, or else why had I come to France to paint? She admitted, however, she had met some nice Englishmen, but Yankees — oh! Yankees! There was one at Biarritz. Do you know Biarritz? No, nor Italy. Italians are nice, are they not? There was one at Cannes.

  “Don’t think I’m not interested in hearing about pictures, because I am, but I must look at your ring, it’s so like mine. This one was given to me by an Irishman, who said the curse of Moreen Dhu would be upon me if I gave it away.”

  “But who is Moreen Dhu? I never heard of her.”

  “You mustn’t ask me; I’m not a bit an intelligent woman. People always get sick of me if they see me two days running.”

  “I doubt very much if that is true. If it were you wouldn’t say it.”

  “Why not? I shouldn’t have thought of saying it if it weren’t true.”

  Next evening at dinner I noticed that she was dressed more carefully than usual; she wore a cream-coloured gown with a cerise waistband and a cerise bow at the side of her neck. I noticed, too, that she talked less; she seemed preoccupied. And after dinner she seemed anxious; I could not help thinking that she wished her mamma away, and was searching for an excuse to send her to bed.

  “Mamma, dear, won’t you play us the ‘Impassionata’?”

  “But, Milly dear, you know quite well that I can’t play it.”

  Mamma was nevertheless persuaded to play not only the “Impassionata” but her entire repertoire. She was not allowed to leave the piano, and had begun to play Sydney Smith when the door opened, and a man’s face appeared for a second. Remembering her interest in men, I said:

  “Did you see that man? What a nice, fresh-looking young man!”

  She put her finger on her lip, and wrote on a piece of paper:

  “Not a word. He’s my fiancé, and mother doesn’t know he’s here. She does not approve; he hasn’t a bean.” ... “Thank you, mother, thank you; you played that sonata very nicely.”

  “Won’t you play, my dear?”

  “No, mother dear, I’m feeling rather tired; we’ve had a long day.”

  And the two bade me good-night, leaving me alone in the sitting-room to finish a letter. But I had not quite got down to the signature when she came in looking very agitated, even a little frightened.

  “Isn’t it awful?” she said. “I was in the dining-room with my fiancé, and the waiter caught us kissing. I had to be
g of him not to tell mamma. He said ‘Foi de gentilhomme,’ so I suppose it’s all right.”

  “Why not have your fiancé in here? I’m going to bed.”

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t think of turning you out. I’ll see him in my bedroom; it’s safer, and if one’s conscience is clear it doesn’t matter what people say.”

  A few days afterwards, as I was slinging my paintbox over my shoulders, I heard some one stop in the passage, and speaking to me through the open door she said:

  “You were so awfully decent the other night when Donald looked in. I know you will think it cheek; I am the most impudent woman in the world; but do you mind my telling mamma that I am going to the Louvre with you to see the pictures? You won’t give me away, will you?”

  “I never split on any one.”

  “My poor darling ought to go back. He’s away from the office without leave, and he may get the sack; but he’s going to stay another night. Can you come now? Mamma is in the salon. Come just to say a word to her and we will go out together. Donald is waiting at the corner.”