Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody

XIX

This note, from one of the English damsels whom M. Guy de Maupassant dislikes so much, is written in such French as the lady could muster. It explains that recurrent mystery, why Englishwomen abroad smell of gutta-percha. The reason is not discreditable to our countrywomen, but if M. de Maupassant asks, as he often does, why Englishwomen dress like scarecrows when they are on the Continent, Miss Harriet does not provide the answer.

Monsieur, – Vous devez me connaître, quoique je ne vous connais pas le moins du monde. Il m’est défendu de lire vos romans, je ne sais trop pourquoi; mais j’ai bien lu la notice que M. Henry James a consacrée, dans le Fortnightly Review, à votre aimable talent. Vous n’aimez pas, à ce qu’il paraît, ni ‘la sale Angleterre’ ni les filles de ce pays immonde. Je figure moi-même dans vos romans (ou moâ-même, car les Anglais, il est convenu, prononcent ce pronom comme le nom d’un oiseau monstrueux et même préhistorique de New Zealand) – oui, ‘Miss Harriet’ se risque assez souvent dans vos contes assez risqués.

Vous avez posé, Monsieur, le sublime problème, ‘Comment se prennentelles les demoiselles anglaises pour sentir toujours le caoutchouc?’ (‘to smell of india-rubber’: traduction Henry James). En premier lieu, Monsieur, elles ne ‘smell of india-rubber’ quand elles se trouvent chez elles, dans les bouges infectes qu’on appelle les ‘stately homes of England.’ 19 C’est seulement à l’étranger que nous répandons l’odeur saine et réjouissante de caoutchouc. Et pourquoi? Parce que, Monsieur, Miss Harriet tient à son tub – ou tôb – la chose est anglaise; c’est permis pourtant à un galant homme d’en prononcer le nom comme il veut, ou comme il peut

Or, quand elle voyage, Miss Harriet trouve, assez souvent, que le ‘tub’ est une institution tout-à-fait inconnue à ses hôtes. Que fait-elle donc? Elle porte dans sa malle un tub de caoutchouc, ‘patent compressible india-rubber tub!’ Inutile à dire que ses vêtements se trouvent imprégnés du “smell of india-rubber.” Voici, Monsieur, la solution naturelle, et même fort louable, d’une question qui est faite pour désespérer les savants de la France!

Vous, Monsieur, qui êtes un styliste accompli, veuillez bien me pardonner les torts que je viens de faire à la belle langue française. Dame, on fait ce qu’on peut (comme on dit dans les romans policiers) pour être intelligible à un écrivain si célèbre, qui ne lit couramment, peut-être, l’idiôme barbare et malsonnant de la sale Angleterre. M. Paul Bourget lui-même ne lit plus le Grec. Non omnia possumus omnes.

Agréez, Monsieur, mes sentiments les plus distingués.

XX

It appears that Mr. Gandish, at a great age – though he was not older than several industrious Academicans – withdrew from the active exercise of his art and employed his learning and experience as Art Critic of the “Newcome Independent.” The following critique appears to show traces of declining mental vigour in the veteran Gandish.

Our great gallery has once more opened her doors, if not to the public, nor even to the fashionable élite, at least to the critics. They are a motley throng who lounge on Press Days in the sumptuous halls; ladies, small boys, clergymen are there, and among them but few, perhaps, who have received the training in High Art of your correspondent, and have had their eye, through a lifetime more than commonly prolonged, on the glorious Antique. And what shall we say of the present Academy? In some ways, things have improved a little since my “Boadishia” came back on my hands (1839) at a time when High Art and the Antique would not do in this country: they would not do. As far as the new exhibition shows, they do better now than when the century was younger and “Portrait of the Artist, by S. Gandish” – at thirty-three years of age – was offered in vain to the jealously Papist clique who then controlled the Uffizi. Foreigners are more affable now; they have taken Mr. Poynter’s of himself.

To return to the Antique, what the President’s “Captive Andromache” must have cost in models alone is difficult to reckon. When times were cheaper, fifty years since, my ancient Britons in “Boadishia” stood me in thirty pounds: the central figures, however, were members of my own family. To give every one his due, “Andromache” is high art – yes, it is high – and the Antique has not been overlooked. About the back-view of the young party at the fountain Mr. Horsley may have something to say. For my part, there seems a want of muscle in vigorous action: where are the biceps, where are the thews of Michael Angelo? The President is a touch too quiet for a taste framed in the best schools. As to his colour, where is that nutty brown tone of the flesh? But the designs on the Greek vase are carefully rendered; though I have heard it remarked by a classical scholar that these kind of vases were not in use about Homer’s time. Still, the intention is good, though the costumes are not what we should have called Ancient Roman when the President was a boy – ay, or earlier.

Then, Mr. Alma-Tadema, he has not turned his back on the glorious Antique. “The Roses of Heliogabalus” are not explained in the catalogue. As far as I understand, there has been an earthquake at a banquet of this unprincipled monarch. The King himself, and his friends, are safe enough at a kind of high table; though which is Heliogabalus (he being a consumptive-looking character in his coins in the Classical Dictionary) your critic has not made out. The earth having opened down below, the heads of some women, and of a man with a beard and his hair done up like a girl, are tossing about in a quantity of rose-leaves, which had doubtless been strown on the floor, as Martial tells us was the custom, dum regnat rosa. So I overheard a very erudite critic remarking. The composition of the piece would be thus accounted for; but I cannot pretend that Mr. Tadema reminds one of either Poussin or Annibale Carracci. However, rumour whispers that a high price has been paid for this curious performance. To my thinking the friends of Heliogabalus are a little flat and leathery in the handling of the flesh. The silver work, and the marble, will please admirers of this eccentric artist; but I can hardly call the whole effect “High.” But Mr. Armitage’s “Siren” will console people who remember the old school. This beautiful girl (somewhat careless in her attitude, though she has been sensible enough not to sit down on the damp rock without putting her drapery beneath her) would have been a true gem in one of the old Books of Beauty, such as the Honourable Percy Popjoy and my old friend, Miss Bunnion, used to contribute to in the palmy days of the English school. Mr. Armitage’s “Juno,” standing in mid-air, with the moon in the neighbourhood, is also an example to youth, and very unlike the way such things are generally done now. Mr. Burne-Jones (who does not exhibit) never did anything like this. Poor Haydon, with whom I have smoked many a pipe, would have acknowledged that Mr. Goodall’s “David’s Promise to Bathsheba” and “By the Sea of Galilee” prove that his aspirations are nearly fulfilled. These are extremely large pictures, yet well hung. The figure of Abishag is a little too much in the French taste for an old-fashioned painter. Ars longa, nuda veritas! I hope (and so will the Liberal readers of the “Newcome Independent”) that it is by an accident the catalogue reads – “The Traitor.” “Earl Spencer, K.G.” “The Moonlighters.” (Nos. 220, 221, 225.) Some Tory wag among the Hanging Committee may have taken this juxtaposition for wit: our readers will adopt a different view.

There is a fine dog in Mr. Briton Riviere’s “Requiescat,” but how did the relations of the dead knight in plate armour acquire the embroidery, at least three centuries later, on which he is laid to his last repose? This destroys the illusion, but does not diminish the pathos in the attitude of the faithful hound. Mr. Long’s large picture appears to exhibit an Oriental girl being tried by a jury of matrons – at least, not having my Diodorus Scriblerus by me, I can arrive at no other conclusion. From the number of models engaged, this picture must have been designed quite regardless of expense. It is a study of the Antique, but I doubt if Smee would have called it High Art.

Speaking of Smee reminds me of portraits. I miss “Portrait of a Lady,” “Portrait of a Gentleman;” the names of the sitters are now always given – a concession to the notoriety-hunting proclivities of the present period. Few portraits are more in the style of the palmy days of our school (just after Lawrence) than a study of a lady by Mr. Goodall (687). On the other hand, young Mr. Richmond goes back to the antiquated manner of Reynolds in one of his representations. I must admit that I hear this work much admired by many; to me it seems old-fashioned and lacking in blandness and affability. Mr Waterhouse has a study of a subject from a poem that Mr. Pendennis, the novelist (whom I knew well), was very fond of when he first came on the town: “The Lady of Shalott.” It represents a very delicate invalid, in a boat, under a counterpane. I remember the poem ran (it was by young Mr. Tennyson): —

I admit that the wonder and dismay of the “well-fed wits,” if the Lady was like Mr. Waterhouse’s picture of her, do not surprise me. But I confess I do not understand modern poetry, nor, perhaps, modern painting. Where is historical Art? Where is Alfred and the Cake – a subject which, as is well known, I discovered in my researches in history. Where is “Udolpho in the Tower”? or the “Duke of Rothsay the Fourth Day after He was Deprived of his Victuals”? or “King John Signing Magna Charta”? They are gone with the red curtain, the brown tree, the storm in the background. Art is revolutionary, like everything else in these times, when Treason itself, in the form of a hoary apostate and reviewer of contemporary fiction, glares from the walls, and is painted by Royal – mark Royal! – Academicians!.

My Dear Sir, – I am truly sorry to have to interrupt a connection with so old and respected a contributor. But I think you will acknowledge, on reading the proof of your article on the Academy, which I enclose, that the time has arrived when public criticism is no longer your province. I do not so much refer to the old-fashioned tone of your observations on modern art. I know little about it, and care not much more. But you have entirely forgotten, towards the end of the notice, that the “Newcome Independent,” as becomes its name, is a journal of Liberty and Progress. The very proper remarks on Lord Spencer’s portrait elsewhere show that you are not unacquainted with our politics; but, at the close (expressing, I fear, your true sentiments), you glide into language which makes me shudder, and which, if printed in the “Independent,” would spell ruin. Send it, by all means, to the “Sentinel,” if you like. Send your Tory views, I mean. As for your quotation from the “Lady of Shalott,” I can find it nowhere in the poem of that name by the author you strangely style “young Mr. Tennyson.” 20

I enclose a cheque for a quarter’s salary, and, while always happy to meet you as man with man, must get the notice of the Academy written up in the office from the “Daily Telegraph,” “Standard,” and “Times.” 21– Faithfully and with deep regret yours,

XXI

This correspondence appears to prove that mistakes may be made by the most astute officers of police, and that even so manifest a Briton as Mr. Pickwick might chance to find himself in the toils of international conspiracy.

(Translated.)

Sir and Dear Fellow-Brother (confrère). – The so cordial understanding between our countries ought to expand itself into a community of the political police. But the just susceptibilities of the Old England forbid at this moment the restoration to a friendly Power of political offenders. In the name of the French police of surety I venture to present to the famous officer Bucket a prayer that he will shut his eyes, for once, on the letter, and open his heart to the spirit of the laws.

No one needs to teach Monsieur Bucket that a foreign miscreant can be given up, under all reserves, to the justice! A small vial of a harmless soporific, a closed carriage, a private cabin on board a Channel steamer – with these and a little of the adroitness so remarked in the celebrated Bucket, the affair is in the bag! (dans le sac). All these things are in the cords (dans les cordes) of my esteemed English fellow-brother; will he not employ them in the interest of a devoted colleague and a friendly Administration? We seek a malefactor of the worst species (un chenapan de la pire espèce). This funny fellow (drôle) calls himself Count of Fosco, and he resides in Wood Road 5, St. John’s Forest; worth abode of a miscreant fit for the Forest of Bondy! He is a man bald, stout, fair, and paying well in countenance (il paie de mine), conceiving himself to resemble the great Napoleon. At the first sight you would say a philanthrope, a friend of man. On his right arm he bears a small red mark, round, the brand of a society of the most dangerous. Dear Sir, you will not miss him? When once he is in our hands, faith of Lecoq, you shall tell us your news as to whether France can be grateful. Of more words there is no need. – I remain, all to you, with the assurance of my most distinguished consideration,

Dear Sir, – Your polite favour to hand, and contents noted. You are a man of the world; I am a man of the world, and proud to deal with you as between man and man. The little irregularity shall be no consideration, all shall be squared, and the man wanted run in with punctuality and despatch. Expect him at Calais on the 26th current, – Faithfully yours,

Dear Sir, – When we met lately at the hospitable board of our common friend, Benjamin Allen, Esq., lately elected Professor of Chemistry in the University of London, our conversation turned (if you can pass me the intoxicating favour of remembering it) on the glorious science of chemistry. For me this knowledge has ever possessed irresistible attractions, from the enormous power which it confers of heaping benefits on the suffering race of mankind. Others may rejoice in the advantages which a knowledge of it bestows – the power which can reduce a Hannibal to the level of a drummer boy, or an all-pervading Shakspeare to the intellectual estate of a vestryman, though it cannot at present reverse those processes. The consideration of the destructive as compared with the constructive forces of chemistry was present, as I recollect, to your powerful intellect on the festive occasion to which I refer. “Yes!” you said (permit me to repeat your very words) – “Yes, Count Fosco, Alexander’s morning draught shall make Alexander run for his life at the first sound of the enemy’s trumpet. So much chemistry can achieve; but can she help as well as harm? Nay, can she answer for it that the lemon which Professor Allen, from the best and purest of motives, has blended with this milk-punch, shall not disagree with me to-morrow morning? Can chemistry, Count Fosco, thus thwart malign constitutional tendency?”

These were your words, sir, and I am now ready to answer your deep-searching question in the affirmative. Prolonged assiduous application to my Art has shown me how to preserve the lemon in Milk Punch, and yet destroy, or disengage, the deleterious elements. Will you so greatly honour science, and Fosco her servant, as to sup with me on the night of the twenty-fifth, at nine o’clock, and prove (you need not dread the test) whether a true follower of knowledge or a vain babbler signs – in exile – the name of

My Dear Sir, – Many thanks for your very kind invitation. Apart from the interests of science, the pleasure of your company alone would be more than enough to make me gladly accept it. I shall have the enjoyment of testing your milk-punch to-morrow night at nine, with the confident expectation that your admirable studies will have overcome a tendency which for many years has prevented me from relishing, as I could wish, one of the best things in this good world. Lemon, in fact, has always disagreed with me, as Professor Allen or Sir Robert Sawyer will be able to assure you; so your valuable experiment can be put, in my case, to a crucial test. – Very faithfully yours,

My Dear Sir, – We have taken your man without difficulty. Bald, benevolent-looking, stout, perhaps fancies himself like Napoleon; if so, is deceived. We nabbed him asleep over his liquor and alone, at the address you meant to give, 5 Forest Road, St. John’s Wood. The house was empty, servants out, not a soul but him at home. He speaks English well for a foreigner, and tries to make out he is a British subject. Was rather confused when took, and kept ejaculating “Cold Punch,” apparently with the hope of persuading us that such was his name or alias. He also called for one Sam – probably an accomplice. He travels to Calais to-day as a lunatic patient in a strait-waistcoat, under charge of four “keepers” belonging to the force; and I trust that you have made preparations for receiving your prisoner, and that our management of the case has given satisfaction. What I like is doing business with a man like you. We may not be so smart nor so clever at disguises as the French profession, but we flatter ourselves we are punctual and cautious. – Faithfully yours,

Dear Perker, – For heaven’s sake come over here at once, bringing some one who can speak French, and bail me out, or whatever the process of their law may be. I have been arrested, illegally and without warrant, at the house of a scientific friend, Count Fosco, where I had been supping. As far as I can understand, I am accused of a plot against the life of the Emperor of the French; but the whole proceedings have been unintelligible and arbitrary to a degree. I cannot think that an English citizen will be allowed to perish by the guillotine – innocent and practically unheard! Please bring linen and brushes, &c., but not Sam, who would be certain to embroil himself with the French police. I am writing to the Times and Lord Palmerston. – Sincerely yours,

Sir, – There has arrived a frightful misunderstanding. The man you have sent us is not Fosco. Of Fosco he has only the baldness, the air benevolent, and the girth. The brand on his right arm is no more than the mark of vaccination. Brought before the Commissary of Police, the prisoner, who has not one word of French, was heard through an interpreter. He gives himself the name of Piquouique, rentier, English; and he appeals to his Ambassador. Of papers he had letters bearing the name Samuel Pickwick, and, on his buttons, the letters P.C., which we suspect are the badge of a secret society. But this is not to the point; for it is certain that, whatever the crimes of this brigand, he is not Fosco, but an Englishman. That he should be found in the domicile of Fosco when that droll had evaded is suspicious (louche), and his explanation does not permit itself to be understood. I have fear that we enjoy bad luck, and that M. Palmerston will make himself to be heard on this matter.

Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of my high consideration.

P.S. – Our comrade, the Count Smorltork, of the Police of Manners (police des moeurs), has come to present himself. Confronted with the bandit, he gives him reason, and offers his faith that the man is Piquouique, with whom he encountered himself when on a mission of secrecy to England it is now some years. What to do? (Que faire?)

XXII

Mr. Quatermain offers the correct account of two celebrated right and left shots, also an adventure of the stranger in the Story of an African Farm.

Dear Curtis, – You ask me to give you the true account, in writing, of those right and left shots of mine at the two lions, the crocodile, and the eagle. The brutes are stuffed now, in the hall at home – the lions each on a pedestal, and the alligator on the floor with the eagle in his jaws – much as they were when I settled them and saved the Stranger. All sorts of stories have got into the papers about the business, which was simple enough; so, though no hand with a pen, I may as well write it all out.

I was up on the Knobkerry River, prospecting for diamonds, in Omomborombunga’s country. I had nobody with me but poor Jim-jim, who afterwards met with an awful death, otherwise he would have been glad to corroborate my tale, if it needed it. One night I had come back tired to camp, when I found a stranger sitting by the fire. He was a dark, fat, Frenchified little chap, and you won’t believe me, but it is a fact that he wore gloves. I asked him to stay the night, of course, and inspanned the waggons in laager, for Omomborombunga’s impis were out, swearing to wash their spears in the blood of The Great White Liar – a Portuguese traveller probably; if not, I don’t know who he can have been; perhaps this stranger: he gave no name. Well, we had our biltong together, and the Stranger put himself outside a good deal of the very little brandy I had left. We got yarning, so to speak, and I told him a few of the curious adventures that naturally fall to the lot of a man in those wild countries. The Stranger did not say much, but kept playing with a huge carved walking-stick that he had. Presently he said, “Look at this stick; I bought it from a boy on a South African Farm. Do you understand what the carvings mean?”

“Hanged if I do!” I said, after turning it about.

“Well, do you see that figure?” and he touched a thing like a Noah out of a child’s ark. “That was a hunter like you, my friend, but not in all respects. That hunter pursued a vast white bird with silver wings, sailing in the everlasting blue.”

“Everlasting bosh!” said I; “there is no bird of the kind on the veldt.”

“That bird was Truth,” says the Stranger, “and, judging from the anecdote you tell me about the Babyan woman and the Zulu medicine-man, it is a bird you don’t trouble yourself with much, my friend.”

This was a pretty cool thing to say to a man whose veracity is known like a proverb from Sheba’s Breasts to the Zambesi.

Foide Macumazahn, the Zulus say, meaning as true as a yarn of Allan Quatermain’s. Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan Quatermain a liar. The fellow was going on with a prodigious palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the Land of Absolute Negation, and I don’t know what, but I signified to him that if he did not believe my yarns I did not want his company. “I’m sorry to turn you out,” I said, “for there are lions around” – indeed they were roaring to each other – “and you will have a parroty time. But you apologise, or you go!”

He laughed his short thick laugh. “I am a man who hopes nothing, feels nothing, fears nothing, and believes nothing that you tell me!”

I got up and went for him with my fists, and whether he feared nothing or not I don’t know; but he scooted, dropping a yellow French novel, by one Catulle Mendes, that I could make neither head nor tail of. I afterwards heard that there was something about this stranger in a book called “The Story of an African Farm,” which I once began, but never finished, not being able to understand most of it, and being vexed by the gross improbability of the girl not marrying the baby’s father, he being ready and willing to make her an honest woman. However, I am no critic, but a plain man who tells a plain tale, and I believe persons of soul admire the book very much. Any way, it does not say who the Stranger was – an allegorical kind of bagman I fancy; but I am not done with him yet.