by George Moore
We had a friend at that time who painted little naked women very badly and sold them very well, and it occurred to Lewis that if Faléro could sell his pictures there was no reason why he should not, so he borrowed a hundred francs from me to hire a model, and painted a nymph; but though better drawn than Faléro’s nymphs, she went the round, from picture-dealer to picture-dealer, never finding a purchaser, which did not matter much, for Lewis began at this time to please a rich widow who lived in Rue Jean Goujon. She was not, however, very generous, refusing always de le mettre dans ses meubles, and he continued to live with me, wearing my hats and neckties, borrowing small sums of money, and what was still more annoying, beginning to cultivate a taste for literature, daring even to seek literary advice and help from Bernard de Lopez, a Parisian despite his name — Parisian in this much, that he had written a hundred French plays, all in collaboration with the great men of letters of his time, including Dumas, Banville, and Gautier.
I had picked him up in the Hôtel de Russie very soon after my arrival in Paris. He dined there every Monday, an old habit (the origin of this habit he never told me, or I have forgotten) — a strange habit, it seemed, for anything less literary than the Hôtel de Russie ... for the matter of that anything less literary than Bernard de Lopez’s appearance it is impossible to imagine: two piggy little eyes set on either side of a large, well-shaped nose; two little stunted legs that toddled quickly forward to meet me, and two little warm, fat hands that often held mine too long for comfort. So small a man never had before so large a head, a great bald head with a ring of hair round it, and his chin was difficult to discover under his moustaches; roll after roll of flesh descended into his bosom, and, by God! I can still see in my thoughts his little brown eyes watching me just like a pig, suspiciously, though why he should have been suspicious of me I cannot say, unless, indeed, he suspected that I doubted the existence of the plays he said he had written in collaboration, a thing which I frequently did, unjustly, for he was telling the truth. He had collaborated with Gautier, Dumas, and Banville, and having assured myself of this by the brochures, I began to think that he could not have been always so trite and commonplace.
Men decline like the day, and he was in the evening of his life when I met him, garrulous about the days gone by, and in the Café Madrid, whither I invited him to come with me after dinner at the Hôtel de Russie, he told me that Scribe had always said he would like to rewrite La Dame Blanche. Rewrite a piece that has been acted a thousand times, Lopez would gurgle, and then he told me about la scène à faire. The morning he had brought Dumas the manuscript of Le Fils de la Nuit he had said to him: Nous aurons des larmes. He used to speak about a writer called Saint-George, whose rooms were always heavily scented, and scent gave the little man des maux de tête. There was another man whose name I cannot recall, with whom he had written many plays, and who had an engagement book like a doctor or a dentist, qui ne l’empêche pas d’avoir beaucoup d’esprit. It pleases me to recall Lopez’s very words: they bring back the ‘seventies to me, and my own thoughts of the ‘seventies and the intellectual atmosphere in which these men lived, going about their business with comedies and plays in their heads — an appointment at ten to consider the first act of a vaudeville; after breakfast another appointment, perhaps at the other end of Paris, to discover a plot for a drama; a talk about an opera in the café at five, and perhaps somebody would call in the evening — no — not in the evening, for they wrote on into the night, tumbling into bed at three or four in the morning.
Of the wonderful ‘seventies Lopez was le dernier rejeton; and talking about Le Fils de la Nuit, the first play that had ever run two hundred nights, we strolled back to his lodging in the Place Pigalle — a large room on the second floor overlooking the Place with a cabinet de toilette. And as time went on I learnt some facts about him. He had been married, and received from his wife the few thousand francs a year on which he lived, and the Empire bed with chairs and a toilet-table to match must have come from her; he would not have thought of buying them, and still less the two portraits by Angelica Kauffmann on either side of the fireplace. A man who had outlived his day! a superficial phrase, for none can say when a man has outlived his day. He had not outlived his when the managers ceased to produce his plays, for he drew my attention to literature, and it is pleasant to me to remember the day that I hurried down to Galignani’s to buy a play, for one evening while we talked in the Café Madrid it had occurred to me that with a little arrangement Lewis and Alice would supply me with the subject of a comedy. But never having read a play I did not know how one looked upon paper. Congreve, Wycherley, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh (Leigh Hunt’s edition) were my first dramatic authors, and my first comedy, in imitation of these writers, was composed and written and copied out and read to Bernard de Lopez within six weeks of its inception. His criticism of it was, I thought at first we were going to have a very strong play, a man that marries his mistress to his friend, and I understood at once that the subject had been frittered away in endless dialogue after the manner of my exemplars, and it was as likely as not in the hope of getting all this dialogue acted that I returned to England, remaining there some time, writing a long comedy which Lopez did not like. Drama was abandoned for poetry, and Lopez encouraged me to tell him of my poems, advising me as we ascended the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette or the Rue des Martyrs to choose subjects that would astonish the British public by their originality — for instance, if instead of inditing a sonnet to my mistress’s eyebrows I were to tell the passion of a toad for a rose.
Not that, of course not that, but poems on violent subjects.
A young man’s love for a beautiful corpse, I interjected.
He introduced French poetry to me, and through him I read a great deal that I might not have heard of, and wrote a great deal that I might never have written; and it was to him that I brought my first copy of my first book, Flowers of Passion, together with an article that had appeared in The World, entitled, A Bestial Bard. The article began: The author of these poems should be whipped at the cart’s tail, while the book is being burnt in the market-place by the common hangman. It filled the greater part of a column, and the note struck by Edmund Yates was taken up by other critics, and, much impressed by the violence of their language, Lopez said: They seem to have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon you, and he began to sound me regarding the possibility of an English and a French author writing a play together for the English stage. Martin Luther seemed to us a character that would suit Irving, then at the height of his fame.
But shall we present both sides of the question impartially like Goethe? Or shall we write as ardent Protestants?
As ardent Protestants, I answered. Lopez acquiesced, and one day when I called to discuss a certain scene between Catherine Bora and Luther with my collaborator, I came upon Lewis reading a sonnet to him. Always thrusting himself into my life! are words that will let the reader into the secret of my annoyance. He rose abashed, and the sight of Lewis abashed was a novel one. Lopez continued to explain:
Mon cher monsieur, ce n’est pas pour vous contrarier, mais ‘d’où suintent d’étranges pleurs’ est un vers de sept; suintent n’a que deux syllabes.
C’est ma mauvaise prononciation flamande, Lewis said, and he bundled up his papers, adding: You have come to talk Martin Luther, so I’ll leave you.
But what right does he come interrupting you?
He only came to show me a sonnet.
But what the devil does he want to write sonnets for? Isn’t it enough that he should paint bad pictures?
He merely came to inquire out the prosody of a certain line, Lopez answered, and he tried to calm me.
No, there’s no use, Lopez. I can’t fix my thoughts. Perhaps after dinner. What do you say to the Rat Mort?
He raised no objection to the Rat Mort, but the moment we entered the café he rushed up to a dishevelled and wild-eyed fellow. I thought I had lost him. Let me introduce you, he said, to Villiers de l’Isle Ada
m. Lewis was forgotten in the excitement of dining with a real man of letters, in the pleasure of confiding to Villiers the scene that I had come to talk to Lopez about.
It is to Martin Luther himself, I said, whom she has never seen, that she confesses in a wood her love of Martin Luther.
I must introduce you to Mallarmé, said Villiers, and he wrote a note on the edge of the table. You’ll find him at home on Tuesday evenings.
Mallarmé spoke to me of Manet, and he must have spoken to Manet about me, for one night in the Nouvelle Athènes Manet asked me if the conversation distracted my attention from my proofs. Come and see me in my studio in the Rue d’Amsterdam. And not very many evenings later Mendès was introduced to me between one and two in the morning. He asked me to the Rue Mansard, where he lived with Mademoiselle Holmès, whereupon, before I had time to realise the fact, I was launched on Parisian literary and artistic society, and six months afterwards Manet said to me, There is no Frenchman in England who occupies the position you do in Paris. Perhaps there isn’t, I answered mechanically, my thoughts turning to Lewis, who was certainly going down in the world. I should have done better to have left him in the Mont Rouge to get his living as a workman, for he’ll never be able to scrape together any sort of living as a painter, and my spirits rose mountains high against him. An old man from the sea, I said, whom I cannot shake off.
But the courage to fling him into the street was lacking, and I continued to bear with him day after day, hoping that he would leave me of his own accord. He was well enough in Julian’s studio or in the Beaux-Arts or in English and American society, but he would seem shallow and superficial in the Nouvelle Athènes, and I always avoided taking him there; but one night he asked me to tell him where I was dining, and I had to tell him at the Nouvelle Athènes. He pleaded to be allowed to accompany me, and I will admit to some vanity on my part; or was it curiosity that prompted me to introduce him to Degas, who very graciously invited us to sit at his table and talked to us of his art, addressing himself as often to Lewis as he did to me. He opened his whole mind to us, beguiled by Lewis’s excellent listening, until the waiter brought him a dish of almonds and raisins. Then a lull came, and Lewis said, leaning across the table:
I think, Monsieur Degas, you will agree with me that, more than any other artist among us, Jules Lefebre sums up all the qualities that an artist should possess.
My heart misgave me, and Degas’s laughter did not console me, nor his words whispered in my ear as he left:
Votre ami est très fort.... Il m’a fait monter l’échelle comme personne. And a few days afterwards in the Rue Pigalle he said:
Comment va votre ami? Ah! celui-là est d’une force.
Mais, cher ami, le pauvre garçon n’a jamais su se dégager —
Pas du tout; il est très fort.
Son esprit n’a jamais su dépasser certaines bornes ... la Rue Bonaparte.
But no explanation pleased Degas as much as his own: Il m’a tiré les vers du nez ... et comme personne. I resisted this explanation till, feeling that I was beginning to show myself in a stupid light, I accepted it outwardly, though convinced inly that Lewis had been guilty of the unpardonable sin — lack of comprehension. He must go and at once, and as soon as I returned home I begged him to leave me. At the end of the month, when my mother sends me my money, he answered, and my heart sank at the thought of having him with me so long. I think I must have answered, For God’s sake go! and a few days afterwards the concierge mentioned to my great surprise that Monsieur Hawkins had left, and had paid her the few francs he owed her. A good trait on his part, I thought, and my heart softened toward him suddenly, and continued soft until a lady told me that Monsieur Hawkins had been to see her and had borrowed a hundred francs from her.
I didn’t dare refuse, she said, but I thought it rather mean of him to come to ask me for the money.
We sat looking at each other, the lady thinking no doubt that I should not have told Lewis I was her lover, and myself thinking that I had at length caught Lewis in deliberate blackmail; and, going round to the studio in which he had settled himself, I said, before looking round the walls to admire the sketches:
I have just come from Miss —— , and she tells me you borrowed a hundred francs from her.
If I did, you borrowed from Alice Howard, my mistress, he answered.
I had forgotten, and sat dumbfounded. But why had I borrowed this money? I never wanted for money. Perhaps to put Alice to the test, or to get back some of my own, for she had borrowed often from me, and finding her in affluent circumstances.... She asked me some days after to repay her, and I gave her the money that was in my pockets — a hundred francs; the other hundred I forgot all about till one evening at Alphonsine’s I saw her rise up from her place and walk toward me, a vindictive look round her mouth and eyes.
Have you come, she said, to pay me the money that you owe me?
To admit that I had borrowed money from Alice at Alphonsine’s was impossible; lies happen very seldom in my life, but they have happened, and this was an occasion when a lie was necessary. But I lied badly from lack of habit, and Lewis had heard from the women there that I had not stood up to Alice; and now to pass off the matter on which I had come to speak to him, I asked him how I should have answered Alice.
You should have answered her ironically: Toi, tu m’as prêté de l’argent? Où ça? Quand tu venais me trouver à l’hôtel de toutes les Russies et que tu pleurais pour un déjeuner? Quand tu n’avais pas deux mètres d’indienne à te coller sur les fesses? Non, mais vrai: y avait-il une maquerelle rue de Provence qui voulait de ta peau? Tu dis que tu m’as prêté de l’argent? C’est-il quand ton tôlier te reprenait ta clé tous les matins, ou quand tu demandais aux michés cinquante centimes pour aller aux chiottes?
Splendid! I cried.
Faut pas se laisser marcher sur le pied, dis. Je ne lui aurais par parlé autrement.
You have l’esprit prime-sautier, but any wit I have is l’esprit de l’escalier ... et de la dernière marche.
Je ne lui aurais pas parlé autrement.
Patter always excites my admiration; we get back to origins — to the monkey. And looking round the studio the number of sketches that I saw everywhere in oil and water-colour put the thought into my mind that Lewis must have discovered a patron and was living as comfortably as he had ever done with me. So all my sacrifices were in vain, I said to myself, and aloud to him: You are doing a great deal of work. I have discovered a patron, he answered, and he told me of an old man living in a barred house in a distant suburb who never opened his door except to a certain ring — an old man in gold-rimmed spectacles who would buy any drawing that Lewis brought him at a price: thirty francs for a flower in a vase, for an apple, a pear, for a street corner, for a head sketched in ten minutes. He is your banker? I said. Yes; it’s just like cashing a cheque. And I left the studio hoping that the old man who looked at Lewis’s drawings through gold-rimmed spectacles would live for many a year. His death would certainly bring back Lewis to me asking for fifty, for a hundred francs; and if I could not lend him so much he would ask for twenty, and if I could not manage twenty he would ask for ten, and if I could not manage ten he would ask for five, perhaps coming down to the price of his omnibus home. But the old man continued in the flesh, and weeks and months passed away without my seeing or hearing from Lewis. Years must have gone by before we met at Barbizon, whither he had gone intent upon investing all his savings on a Salon picture.
An old graveyard full of the lush of June had taken his fancy, and after many sketches he was still certain that he had hit on a good subject for a picture. A critic pointed out that two children looking at a gravestone would balance the composition; another said that a yellow cat coming from the cottages along the wall would complete it. Both were right; all that now remained for Lewis to do was to paint the picture. But he lacked touch, and his picture would have remained very tinny if Stott of Oldham had not arrived at Barbizon suddenly.
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sp; You mustn’t rub the paint like that. See here; and taking the brush from Lewis’s hand he mixed a tone and drew the brush slowly from right to left. Almost at once the paint began to look less like tin, and Lewis said, I think I understand, and he was able to imitate Scott sufficiently well to produce a picture which Bouguereau said would attract attention in the Salon if the title were changed to Les Deux Orphelins.
L’Amour renaît de ses Cendres is not a title that will appeal to the general public.
Lewis tried to explain that what he meant was that the love of the parents is born again in their children; but he allowed Bouguereau’s good sense to prevail, and the picture drew from Albert Wolf an enthusiastic notice of nearly half a column in the Figaro, after which it became the fashion to go to the Salon to see Les Deux Orphelins and Monsieur Hawkins, un jeune peintre anglais de beaucoup de talent, for Lewis could not separate himself from his picture, and every day he grew bolder, receiving his friends in front of it and explaining to them, and to all and sundry, the second title, L’Amour renaît de ses Cendres. His conduct was not very dignified, but he had been waiting so long for recognition of his talent that he could not restrain himself. He sold Les Orphelins for ten thousand francs, and next year the Salon was filled with imitations of it, and there was a moment when it seemed that Julian’s prophesy was about to come true. The hotel in the Champs Élysées was being sought for when Lewis’s first patron, the old man to whom he had sold his sketches for twenty-five or thirty francs apiece, died suddenly; and for nearly two years Welden Hawkinses were being knocked down at the Hôtel de Vente for fifty and a hundred francs apiece.
Fifteen hundred or two thousand pictures thrown upon the market was no doubt a misfortune, I said as I stirred the fire, but if Lewis had been a man of healthy talent he would have painted other pictures. But his talent was the talent of un détraqué, and a recollection of a naked man looking at a naked woman through a mask was remembered. The hereditary taint was always there, I said, and I began to turn over in my mind all that Lewis had told me about his father. My father left mamma some three or four years after their marriage. I think I was twenty before I ever saw him. I was given an address of a lodging-house in St James’s, and found my father in a small back room, sitting on a bed playing the flute. Oh, is that you, Lewis? Just a moment. Lewis had heard from his mother many stories of his father’s eccentricities, and he had an opportunity of verifying these in St James’s Street, for when the elder Hawkins laid aside his flute and engaged in perfunctory conversation with his son he allowed a fly to crawl over his face. Every moment Lewis expected his father to brush the insect away. It had been round one eye several times, and had descended the nose, and was about to go up the eye once again when Lewis, who could contain himself no longer, cried out:
