The Martian: A Novel

Part Ninth

"Cara deûm soboles, magnum Jovis incrementum."

The immense fame and success that Barty Josselin achieved were to him a source of constant disquiet. He could take neither pride nor pleasure in what seemed to him not his; he thought himself a fraud.

Yet only the mere skeleton of his work was built up for him by his demon; all the beauty of form and color, all the grace of movement and outer garb, are absolutely his own.

It has been noticed how few eminent men of letters were intimate with the Josselins, though the best among them – except, of course, Thomas Carlyle – have been so enthusiastic and outspoken in their love and admiration of his work.

He was never at his ease in their society, and felt himself a kind of charlatan.

The fact is, the general talk of such men was often apt to be over his head, as it would have been over mine, and often made him painfully diffident and shy. He needn't have been; he little knew the kind of feeling he inspired among the highest and best.

Why, one day at the Marathonæum, the first and foremost of them all, the champion smiter of the Philistines, the apostle of culture and sweetness and light, told me that, putting Barty's books out of the question, he always got more profit and pleasure out of Barty's society than that of any man he knew.

"It does me good to be in the same room with him; the freshness of the man, his voice, his aspect, his splendid vitality and mother‐wit, his boyish spirit, and the towering genius behind it all. I only wish to goodness I was an intimate friend of his as you are; it would be a liberal education to me!"

But Barty's reverence and admiration for true scholarship and great literary culture in others amounted to absolute awe, and filled him with self‐distrust.

There is no doubt that until he was universally accepted, the crudeness of his literary method was duly criticised with great severity by those professional literary critics who sometimes carp with such a big mouth at their betters, and occasionally kill the Keatses of this world!

In writing, as in everything else, he was an amateur, and more or less remained one for life; but the greatest of his time accepted him at once, and laughed and wept, and loved him for his obvious faults as well as for his qualities. Tous les genres sont bons, hormis le genre ennuyeux! And Barty was so delightfully the reverse of a bore!

Dear me! what matters it how faultlessly we paint or write or sing if no one will care to look or read or listen? He is all fault that hath no fault at all, and we poor outsiders all but yawn in his face for his pains.

They should only paint and write and sing for each other, these impeccables, who so despise success and revile the successful. How do they live, I wonder? Do they take in each other's washing, or review each other's books?

It edifies one to see what a lot of trouble these deriders of other people's popularity will often take to advertise themselves, and how they yearn for that popular acclaim they so scornfully denounce.

Barty was not a well‐read man by any means; his scholarship was that of an idle French boy who leaves school at seventeen, after having been plucked for a cheap French degree, and goes straightway into her Majesty's Household Brigade.

At the beginning of his literary career it would cut him to the quick to find himself alluded to as that inspired Anglo‐Gallic buffoon, the ex‐Guardsman, whose real vocation, when he wasn't twaddling about the music of the spheres, or writing moral French books, was to be Mr. Toole's understudy.

He was even impressed by the smartness of those second‐rate decadents, French and English, who so gloried in their own degeneracy – as though one were to glory in scrofula or rickets; those unpleasant little anthropoids with the sexless little muse and the dirty little Eros, who would ride their angry, jealous little tilt at him in the vain hope of provoking some retort which would have lifted them up to glory! Where are they now? He has improved them all away! Who ever hears of decadents nowadays?

Then there were the grubs of Grub Street, who sometimes manage to squirt a drop from their slime‐bags on to the swiftly passing boot that scorns to squash them. He had no notion of what manner of creatures they really were, these gentles! He did not meet them at any club he belonged to – it was not likely. Clubs have a way of blackballing grubs – especially grubs that are out of the common grubby; nor did he sit down to dinner with them at any dinner‐table, or come across them at any house he was by way of frequenting; but he imagined they were quite important persons because they did not sign their articles! and he quite mistook their place in the economy of creation. C'était un naïf, le beau Josselin!

Big fleas have little fleas, and they've got to put up with them! There is no "poudre insecticide" for literary vermin – and more's the pity! (Good heavens! what would the generous and delicate‐minded Barty say, if he were alive, at my delivering myself in this unworthy fashion about these long‐forgotten assailants of his, and at my age too – he who never penned a line in retaliation! He would say I was the most unseemly grub of them all, and he would be quite right; so I am just now, and ought to know better – but it amuses me.)

Then there were the melodious bardlets who imitate those who imitate those who imitate the forgotten minor poets of the olden time and log‐roll each other in quaint old English. They did not log‐roll Barty, whom they thought coarse and vulgar, and wrote to that effect in very plain English that was not old, but quite up to date.

"How splendidly they write verse!" he would say, and actually once or twice he would pick up one or two of their cheap little archaic mannerisms and proudly use them as his own, and be quite angry to find that Leah had carefully expunged them in her copy.

"A fair and gracious garden indeed!" says Leah. "I won't have you use such ridiculous words, Barty – you mean a pretty garden, and you shall say so; or even a beautiful garden if you like! – and no more 'manifolds,' and 'there‐anents,' and 'in veriest sooths,' and 'waters wan,' and 'wan waters,' and all that. I won't stand it; they don't suit your style at all!"

She and Scatcherd and I between us soon laughed him out of these innocent little literary vagaries, and he remained content with the homely words he had inherited from his barbarian ancestors in England (they speak good English, our barbarians), and the simple phrasing he had learnt from M. Durosier's classe de littérature at the Institution Brossard.

One language helps another; even the smattering of a dead language is better than no extra language at all, and that's why, at such cost of time and labor and paternal cash, we learn to smatter Greek and Latin, I suppose. "Arma virumque cano" – "Tityre tu patulæ?" – "Mæcenas atavis" – "[Greek: Mênin aeide]" – and there you are! It sticks in the memory, and it's as simple as "How d'ye do?"

Anyhow, it is pretty generally admitted, both here and in France, that for grace and ease and elegance and absolute clearness combined, Barty Josselin's literary style has never been surpassed and very seldom equalled; and whatever his other faults, when he was at his ease he had the same graceful gift in his talk, both French and English.

It might be worth while my translating here the record of an impression made by Barty and his surroundings on a very accomplished Frenchman, M. Paroly, of the Débats, who paid him a visit in the summer of 1869, at Campden Hill.

I may mention that Barty hated to be interviewed and questioned about his literary work – he declared he was afraid of being found out.

But if once the interviewer managed to evade the lynx‐eyed Leah, who had a horror of him, and get inside the studio, and make good his footing there, and were a decently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty would soon get over his aversion – utterly forget he was being interviewed – and talk as to an old friend; especially if the reviewer were a Frenchman or an American.

The interviewer is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft‐hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached at a single bound! And he is supposed to be a "gentleman," and has no other means of keeping body and soul together! Then he is so prostrate in admiration before your Immensity…

So you give way, and out comes the little note‐book, and out comes the little cross‐examination.

As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none the better; we know all about you already – all, at least, that we want to know; we have heard it all before, over and over again. But a poor fellow‐creature has earned his crust, and goes home the happier for having talked to you about yourself and been treated like a man and a brother.

But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you say; and on what free and easy terms he is with you, of all people in the world!

But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman from America, who has yearned to know you for so many years, and comes perhaps with a letter of introduction – or even without! – not to interview you or write about you (good heavens! he hates and scorns that modern pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and worship at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have done him and his, all the happiness you have given them all – "the debt of a lifetime!"

And you let yourself go before him, and so do your family, and so do your old friends; is he not also a friend, though not an old one? You part with him almost in sorrow, he's so nice! And in three weeks some kind person sends you from the other side such a printed account of you and yours – so abominably true, so abominably false – that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in the dead of night, and most unjustly loathe an entire continent for breeding and harboring such a shameless type of press reptile!

I feel hard‐hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I wish him, and those who employ him, a better trade; and a better taste to whoever reads what he writes. But Barty could be hard‐hearted to nobody, and always regretted having granted the interview when he saw the published outcome of it.

Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet.

"I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon – a tremendous swell," said Barty, at lunch.

Leah. "Who is he?"

Barty. "M. Paroly, of the Débats."

Leah. "What is he when he's at home?"

Barty. "A famous journalist; as you'd know if you'd read the French newspapers sometimes, which you never do."

Leah. "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you."

Barty. "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my acquaintance?"

Leah. "And mine – I'll be there and talk to him, too!"

Barty. "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and your French, you know! You never would learn French properly, although you've had me to practise on for so many years – not to mention Bob and Ida."

Leah. "How unkind of you, Barty! When have I had time to trouble about French? Besides, you always laugh at my French accent and mimic it – and that's not encouraging!"

Barty. "My dear, I adore your French accent; it's so unaffected! I only wish I heard it a little oftener."

Leah. "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what o'clock is he coming, your Monsieur Paroly?"

Barty. "At four‐thirty."

Leah. "Oh, Barty, don't give yourself away – don't talk to him about your writings, or about yourself, or about your family. He'll vulgarize you all over France. Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman' from America who came to see you, and who told you that he was no interviewer, not he! but came merely as a friend and admirer – a distant but constant worshipper for many years! and how you talked to him like a long‐lost brother, in consequence! 'There's nobody in the world like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them all, and wanted to be an American yourself – till a month after, when he published every word you said, and more, and what sort of cravat you had on, and how silent and cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English wife was – you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin, who should have mated with a countrywoman of his own! and how your bosom friend was a huge, overgrown everyday Briton with a broken nose! I saw what he was at, from the low cunning in his face as he listened; and felt that every single unguarded word you dropped was a dollar in his pocket! How we've all had to live down that dreadfully facetious and grotesque and familiar article he printed about us all in those twenty American newspapers that have got the largest circulation in the world! and how you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that never another American 'gentleman' should enter your house! What names you called him: 'cad!' 'sweep!' 'low‐bred, little Yankee penny‐a‐liner!' Don't you remember? Why, he described you as a quite nice‐looking man somewhat over the middle height!"

"Oh yes; damn him, I remember!" said Barty, who was three or four inches over six feet, and quite openly vain of his good looks.

Leah. "Well, then, pray be cautious with this Monsieur Paroly you think so much of because he's French. Let him talk – interview him– ask him all about his family, if he's got one – his children, and all that; play a game of billiards with him – talk French politics – dance 'La Paladine' – make him laugh – make him smoke one of those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the tops of omnibuses – make him feel your biceps – teach him how to play cup and ball – give him a sketch – then bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys will be there, and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by the yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Minerva, and I'll give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon roses, and shake him warmly by the hand, so that he won't feel ill‐natured towards us; and we'll get him out of the house as quick as possible."

Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is a free rendering of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote about him:

"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and define, I bade adieu to the sage and philosopher of Cheyne Row, and had myself transported in my hansom to the abode of the other great sommité littéraire in London, the light one – M. Josselin, to whom we in France also are so deeply in debt.

"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached a bright historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my invisible Jehu guided me at the great trot by verdant country lanes. We turned through lodge gates into a narrow drive in a well‐kept garden where there was a lawn of English greenness, on which were children and nurses and many dogs, and young people who played at the lawn‐tennis.

"The door of the house was opened by a charming young woman in black with a white apron and cap, like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval, who guided me through a bright corridor full of pictures and panoplies, and then through a handsome studio to a billiard‐room, where M. Josselin was playing at the billiard to himself all alone.

"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he is enormously tall, enormously handsome, like a drum‐major of the Imperial Guard, except that his lip and chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers; very well dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and a singularly sympathetic voice: he is about thirty‐five.

"I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a cigar, a very formidable cigar, very black and very thick and very long. I don't smoke, and am no hand at a cue. Besides, I want to talk about Étoiles Mortes, about Les Trépassées de François Villon, about Déjanire et Dalila!

"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection; his mother, he tells me, was from

Normandy – the daughter of fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there as an art student.

"He does not care to talk about Les Trépassées or Les Étoiles, or any of his immortal works.

"He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do la coupe properly; and leaning over his billiard‐table he shows me how it ought to be done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible nostalgia – a consuming desire to do la coupe in the swimming‐baths of Passy against the current; to take a header à la hussarde with his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and the Île des Cygnes – as he used to do when he was a school‐boy – and pick up mussels with his teeth.

"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit – just as he prefers metres and centimetres to inches and feet – and ten to twelve!

"After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard‐balls; juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye shut.

"I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with honest satisfaction – and this is the man who wrote La quatrième Dimension!

"Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had heard them all before – when I was at school.

"'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'à propos of that last story you've just told me; in the Trépassées de François Villon you have omitted "la très‐sage Héloïse" altogether.'

"'Oh, have I? How stupid of me! – Abélard and all that! Ah well – there's plenty of time – nous allons arranger tout ça! All that sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half asleep in bed – a – a – I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I take my siesta.'

"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression – things that haunt the memory.

"'Show me a study for Déjanire,' I say.

"'Oh! I'll draw Déjanire for you,' and he takes a soft pencil and a piece of smooth card‐board, and in five minutes draws me an outline of a naked woman on a centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty no other hand in the world could produce – so aristocratically delicately English and of to‐day – so severely, so nobly and classically Greek. C'est la chasteté même – mais ce n'est pas Déjanire!