I went to bed that night in a kind of daze, slept as if I had been drugged and in the morning awoke to a new world—a world of excitement—a world in which everything was fierce and piercing, everything charged with strange emotions, clothed with extraordinary mysteries, and in which I myself seemed to exist only as an inner core of palpitating fire.
The walk that morning, the beauty of the forest, the sky, the deliciousness of the air, the delight of running—for the first time I enjoyed these things consciously.
“I understand,” I cried to myself, “I understand at last. Life, life, life, this is life, full to overflowing with every ecstasy and every agony. It is mine, mine to hug, to exhaust, to drain.”
And lessons! I went to them with a renovated ardour. Oh yes, I had been a fairly intelligent pupil; I had enjoyed learning and working in a kind of humdrum way. This was something quite different—something I had never known. Every page of the Latin grammar seemed to hold some passionate secret which must be mine or I should die. Words! How astonishing they were! The simplest bore with it such an aura of music and romance as wafted me into fairy-land. Geography! Oh, to sit poring and wondering over an atlas. Here were pagodas! There the Nile! Jungles! Deserts! Coral islands in the Pacific ringed round with lagoons! The eternal snows of the Himalayas! Aurora Borealis flaming at the pole! Worlds upon worlds of magic revealed! Why had I never known of them before? History! Those men! Those heroes! How they looked, how they smiled as they were going to the block or the stake! And what had they died for? Faith, liberty, truth, humanity! What did those words really represent? I musn’t rest till I found out. And the peoples! The poor sheep-like peoples! Those too must be thought of. Not yet. I dare not yet. There will be time enough for that later. I am not strong enough yet to look really at all those dreadful meaningless pains. I must put that at the back of my mind. Now, now, I must grow strong. I must feed on beauty and rapture in order to grow strong. And first of all that face. There was that to look at. A long way off, at the end of a table. Passing one on the stairs, coming suddenly out of a door. Talking to other people. Listening to other people. And sometimes, rarely, reading aloud. Had I then never looked at a face before? Why should the mere sight of it make my heart stand still? What was there so extraordinarily fascinating in watching it? Was it more satisfying when it was motionless, when one could imprint the line of the profile on one’s memory, so fine and grave and austere, the delicate curl of the lip, the almost imperceptible and indescribably touching, faint hollow of the cheek, the fall of the lashes on the pale skin, the curve of the dark hair on the brow? Or was it when expressions flowed over it so swiftly that one’s eyes and one’s heart were never quick enough to register them? Laughter was never long absent from it, spreading from the slight quiver of a smile to a ripple, to a tempest of gaiety, passing like a flash of lightning, a flood of colour, transforming, vivifying every feature. So I watched from afar. At meals especially, where I sat some way off but on the opposite side of the table.
There were three tables in the big dining-room; the two heads, at the centre one, sat opposite to each other, as the foreign fashion is, in the middle of each long side. When there were guests or visiting professors, they sat on each side of the ladies. Special dishes were generally served for these honoured ones, and if any remained over, the servant was told to hand it round to the young ladies. Once when this occurred, Mlle Julie cross-examined the girls who had been served in this way:
“Did you like that dish? Honestly now. As much as your English roast beef? No——? Yes——? You don’t know? Ah, these English! They have no taste. And you, Olivia, what did you think of it?”
My answer, “Delicious!” was so fervent that she laughed:
“Ha! Have we got a gourmet at last? But appreciation isn’t all. There must be discrimination too. Was there anything in the dish that you think might be criticized? Anything that might have improved it?”
“I think——” I murmured——
“Yes, out with it!”
“There was perhaps a thought too much lemon in it.”
“Bravo!” she cried. “You deserve encouragement. You shall be promoted.”
And at the next meal, after an anxious search, I found my napkin ring had been placed next to Mlle Julie’s own. And it was there, at her right hand, that I sat till the end of my time at Les Avons, unless a visitor or a professor sometimes separated us. And now she almost always helped me herself to one or other of the special dishes, calling me “Mlle Gourmet,” asking me my opinion, laughing at my enjoyment, teasing me for being still too “English,” because I wouldn’t drink wine. “But, perhaps,” she said, “our vin ordinaire isn’t good enough for you?” And perhaps, indeed, that was it.
But there was no need of wine to intoxicate me. Everything in her proximity was intoxicating. And I was now, for the first time, within range of her talk. Mlle Julie’s talk, I discovered later, was celebrated, and not only amongst us schoolgirls, but amongst famous men, whose names we whispered.
I had no doubt been accustomed, or ought to have been accustomed, to good talk at home. But at home one was inattentive. There were all the other children who somehow interfered. It was on their level, in their turmoil, that one lived. They were too distracting to allow of one’s taking any interest in one’s elders and their conversation. When one did listen to it, it was mostly political, or else took the form of argument. My mother and my aunt, who was often in the house, had interminable and heated discussions, in which my mother was invariably in the right and my aunt beyond belief inconsequent and passionate. We found them tedious and sometimes nerve-racking. My father, a man, in our eyes, of infinite wisdom and humour, did not talk much; he was fond of explaining scientific or mathematical problems to us, or occasionally, of inventing and making us take a share in some fantastic piece of tomfoolery. He would let fall from time to time a grim and gnomic apophthegm, which we treasured as a household word, and would often calm a heated discussion by an apparently irrelevant absurdity. As for the people who came to the house, many of whom were highly distinguished, we admired them without listening to them. Their world seemed hardly to impinge upon ours.
How different it was here! Mlle Julie was witty. Her brilliant speech darted here and there with the agility and grace of a humming-bird. Sharp and pointed, it would sometimes transfix a victim cruelly. No one was safe, and if one laughed with her, one was liable the next minute to be pierced oneself with a shaft of irony. But she tossed her epigrams about with such evident enjoyment, that if one had the smallest sense of fun, one enjoyed them too, and it was from her that I, for one, learnt to realize the exquisite adaptation of the French tongue to the French wit. But her talk was not all epigrams. One felt it informed by that infectious ardour, that enlivening zest, which were the secret of her success as a schoolmistress. There was nothing into which she could not infuse them. Every subject, however dull it had seemed in the hands of others, became animated in hers. With the traditional culture of a French Protestant family, having contacts with eminent men and women in many countries, she had too a spontaneous and open mind, capable of points of view, fond of the stimulus of paradox. The dullest of her girls was stirred into some sort of life in her presence; to the intelligent, she communicated a Promethean fire which warmed and coloured their whole lives. To sit at table at her right hand was an education in itself.
IV
But it must not be supposed that more orthodox studies were neglected or that companionship was wanting. There were four or five of the elder girls who were congenial and friendly. We made a set apart, we were “the clever ones,” those who spoke up at the classes, those who attended Mlle Julie’s literature lessons and readings, those who were chosen to send in essays to the Paris professors. These essays, or “devoirs” as they were called, were the chief torment and excitement of our lives. After the professor’s lecture, we had to write out a résumé of his discourse, or expand one particular
portion of it. We were expected to fill some fifteen or sixteen copy-book pages, had access to a fairly large library, and were supposed to devote the greater part of Thursday and Sunday afternoons to the task in a small study specially reserved for “les grandes.” When the devoir was finished it was handed on Friday and Monday mornings to Mlle Julie, who looked it over and, if she thought it worthy, passed it on to the professor. It was her comments we cared about; the professor was generally, I suppose, a young man fresh from his examinations, cast in a university mould, and very much at sea in talking to this strange collection of “jeunes filles” from barbarous lands. At any rate, we usually had a supreme contempt for him, and, in truth, he was at an overwhelming disadvantage, obliged in spite of himself to endure the ordeal of comparison with an intellect so alive, so widely experienced as Mlle Julie’s, with a personality so exceptional, a beauty so striking.
I remember my first devoir. It was on Corneille and the “quarrel of the Cid.” Do what I would, I could not pad it out to more than six pages. Dry facts, jejune statements were all that I could wring from my subject. I had no notion how to work, how to think, how to co-ordinate. I was desperate.
I remember the night she gave it back to me. Not good enough! It was after dinner. A bevy of us were collected in the long, wide passage, paved with a chequer of black and white marble, which led to the front door, and which we were allowed to use as a kind of promenade deck. It was an evening on which Mlle Julie was going out—to dinner in the town or to an evening party in Paris, somewhere which necessitated evening dress. This was always an occasion, and her devotees would cluster to see her go by in her magnificence and say good-night as she passed. She came sweeping down stairs, Signorina running after her with her fan, her gloves, her handbag. Her evening cloak was thrown back and we could see the shimmer of bare neck and lace and satin.
“Tiens!” she said as she caught sight of me. “I was looking for you. Here’s your devoir. Un peu pauvre!” She tossed it to me and swept on.
“Un peu pauvre!” Yes, that was it! That was I! Poor! Poor! It was my first incentive to work, to till my soil, to extract from it all the riches I could, to show—to show her—that, after all, I had some.
Part of the school’s programme was that the girls should be taken from time to time to Paris to be shown the sights, the churches, the picture-galleries and so on, and on special occasions to a concert or a play. When Mlle Julie led the party, there were never more than two or three of us and I was always one. Sometimes, greatest treat of all, it would be to a matinée at the Français—yes always to the Théâtre Français. In those days it had not been shorn of all its glory. The great tradition was still respected, still intact. Want of faith in its virtues, distrust of its powers, a belief in new standards, new values, new methods, were no doubt already growing outside. They were no doubt already rife on the other bank of the Seine, and Antoine was beginning perhaps to raise his head, but it was only when these dissolvents entered the sacred doors themselves that they proved fatal. In the days of my youth, the prestige of the Comédie Française was still unblown upon. The Sociétaires carried their heads high and there were famous names among them. The consummate art of acting was theirs by divine, by imprescriptible right, and no touch of doubt, or fear of failure, or lack of enthusiasm, or envy of others’ success, had insinuated its poison into the great institution.
And so the first time I sat in a baignoire with Mlle Julie beside me, and heard the three fateful knocks, and saw the great curtain roll apart, was one of unforgettable, of purest pleasure. It rolled open upon a scene of lovely fancy and romantic cynicism and exquisite elegance. Delaunay was acting one of Musset’s heroes, Reichemberg was the ingénue, Got the abbé, Madeleine Brohan (the survivor of a still more famous past) the old Marquise. Ravishing, ravishing, creatures, whose every word and every movement were wit and grace, and who distilled into one’s heart, drop by drop, the delicious satisfaction of perfect finish!
Then there was the entr’ acte. We walked up and down the long, broad foyer amidst the buzz of animated Parisians; we gazed, at one end, on Voltaire, sitting impish in his armchair, at the other on Molière’s weary melancholy; on one long side, the row of big windows looked down on the busy Place below; on the other, were ranged more busts of the Maison’s deities—a woman too among them. Then back to the baig-noire, in a more elevated mood. This time the curtain rolled open on the court of the Caesars; Britannicus was the play and Mounet Sully the budding Nero. We watched the growth of evil passions in his face, we heard his voice, more and more raucous, more and more rapid, swell fuller and fuller of lust, hatred and cruelty; when the tempter crept up behind him and dropped the insidious poison in his ear, we saw the conflict working in his features, in his almost motionless attitude; we saw the gradual breaking down of virtue’s barriers, the increasing rush of oncoming wickedness; we saw the monster still held in respect by Agrippina’s lash, we saw him furtive and distraught after his crime,
. . . ses yeux mal assurés
N’osant lever aux cieux leurs regards égarés
as he swept hounded from his mother’s presence to brood upon her awful prophecy.
On golden days Mlle Julie took me to Paris alone. Golden but exhausting. She would take me by the hand and race me through the galleries at the Louvre, talking torrentially all the time—for pictures seemed to excite her—until we reached the room of her choice. Here she would select a masterpiece for special contemplation and remain silent before it, gazing with fixed intentness. I remember some of those she would so contemplate: Giorgione’s Concert, Watteau’s Indifférent, the Pilgrims of Emmaus, a Chardin, a Corot. I stood beside her trying to understand. Sometimes she would say, “Now, go and look at your favourites.” I took this for a dismissal and went off, but my favourite would always be one I could look at without letting her out of the compass of my eye. She would join me after a little, cast a cursory glance at it and say, rather contemptuously, “Pas si mal!” (but she didn’t guess the limitations set to my choice).
Then she would begin again to talk, to herself rather than to me: what was the common factor that made each of these pictures a work of art? Could I tell her that? And how with such material substances as canvas, oil, pigments, were such immaterial effects produced? The plastic arts! Had I ever thought how different they were from the other arts, from literature, the art of words? From music, the purest—or was it the impurest—of them all? Had I noticed that Watteau’s painting was the painting of a sick man, of a man who had to fly to dreams as a relief from bodily suffering? That his gay celestial visions were the refuge of a man who spat blood? That in the Voyage to Cythera there were no bodies but the evanescence of lights and colours? And yet that same art of painting had created The Pilgrims of Emmaus. Little atheist that I was, let me learn some divinity, some portion of the meaning of Christianity from the gloom and the radiance of that picture. And so on. Seeds flung at random into the air, some to take root, some, alas, to be lost for ever.
And then she would whirl me off to a fashionable pastry-cook and stuff me with cakes and chocolates, and enjoy her own share too. Afterwards, perhaps, there would be a visit to some of her friends: to an ex-président du conseil, whose wife had been one of her pupils (and I was awed to hear him still called Monsieur le Président) or to the widow of a poor professor painfully bringing up three or four children in the Quartier Latin; or to the studio of a famous painter; or to the at-home day of a French Academician. Wherever she flashed, she was welcomed, honoured, spoilt; it was she who became the centre of the talk and the laughter and the cordiality. I sat silent in my corner and wondered at these French, at the readiness of their wits, at their unfailing interest in things of the mind, at the profound seriousness that underlay all this surface brilliance.
When we left the house, Mlle Julie would give me a sketch of the inmates, of some of the tragedies and struggles and successes and failures she had known. She told me
of the girl who refused to eat and who was at death’s door from starvation, “but I managed to cure her by holding her hand and letting her talk two hours a day . . . it needed a deal of patience.” Of the boy who had shot himself, for love, he thought, but really because his poor mother had overworked him. “Ah! that was a dreadful business! There was no curing that grief.” Of the despair of a young wife who had lost three children and her husband of diphtheria in one week, and had become the wife of her husband’s best friend a few months later. Of the young and beautiful and gifted Margaret X——, recently married to a great savant, who was also a hunchback dwarf. “Poor child! But one has only to look at her eyes to see she’s not unhappy. The bride of mysticism!”
On every side of me, strange new worlds were opening. Veil after veil was slowly lifting from life, to leave still further veils and mysteries beyond.
And the background, the setting of such days, was the adorable beauty of Paris. I, who had not yet awakened to the beauty of London, felt that of Paris sink into my very being. Little as I knew of it, little as an English girl could know of it, it seemed to me the quintessence and the symbol of everything I cared for most. The incomparable light in which it was bathed, the river gliding so intimately through its very heart, the noble palaces, the quays, the bridges where one looked alternately west and east, wondering which vista was the more enchanting, the more moving, whether the groves of the Champs Elysées or the towers of Notre Dame—all of this filled me with rapture. And sometimes we drove through the great spaces of the Place de la Concorde, with its giddy stream of life, its fountains and its obelisk, and in one corner the crêpe-shrouded figure of Strasbourg. Oh! how those veils smote my heart; there in the midst of all that life and gaiety, stood a monument of grief, a reminder of death and defeat; but one looked away from it, looked further westward and watched the sky turn golden in the distance behind the Arc de Triomphe. The sun was setting indeed, but triumphantly, gloriously, and shedding on the world an ineffable tenderness in its farewell. Then Paris lighted up; one by one, sparkling like fireflies, I thought, the lamps came out in the trees. A minute more and the boulevards were ablaze. A tornado of excitement was whirling round me. Theatres, cafés, music halls! What fever, what intoxication possessed those crowds? I should have liked to know, I should have liked to rush with them to their pleasures, to drink their draughts of life and exhilaration. But no; not yet. I was only a girl, and besides, it was time to go home. There was more than an hour’s train journey and we shouldn’t be back till late.
Olivia Page 4
