Du Maurier George
The Martian: A Novel
Sometimes we were in very jolly company: more warriors; young Robson, the actor who became so famous; a big negro pugilist, called Snowdrop; two medical students from St. George's Hospital, who boxed well and were capital fellows; and an academy art student, who died a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of Barty's mural decorations and laughed at the colored lithographs; and many others of all sorts. There used to be much turf talk, and sometimes a little card‐playing and mild gambling – but Barty's tastes did not lie that way.
His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the gloves with Snowdrop, or any one else who chose – or fencing – or else making music; or being funny in any way one could; and for this he had quite a special gift: he had sudden droll inspirations that made one absolutely hysterical – mere things of suggestive look or sound or gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite original; absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it made one laugh till one's sides ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this.
Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of the most high‐minded, there is often a latent longing for this kind of happy idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for those who can supply it without effort and who delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor of the Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our day, although he developed in quite another direction!
Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love‐ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep by spoonfuls!
By‐the‐way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing things up – confusing Sundays and week‐days; of course our Sunday evenings were quiet and respectable, and I much preferred them when he and I were alone; he was then another person altogether – a thoughtful and intelligent young Frenchman, who loved reading poetry aloud or being read to; especially English poetry – Byron! He was faithful to his "Don Juan," his Hebrew melodies – his "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea." We knew them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we read them still; and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred de Musset…
And one day I discovered another Alfred who wrote verses – Alfred the Great, as we called him – one Alfred Tennyson, who had written a certain poem, among others, called "In Memoriam" – which I carried off to Barty's and read out aloud one wet Sunday evening, and the Sunday evening after, and other Sunday evenings; and other poems by the same hand: "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Lotos‐Eaters," "The Lady of Shalott" – and the chord of Byron passed in music out of sight.
Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and Wordsworth – and our Sunday evenings were of a happiness to be remembered forever; at least they were so to me!
If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was a blank day for Robert Maurice. For it was not very lively at home – especially when my father was there. He was the best and kindest man that ever lived, but his businesslike seriousness about this world, and his anxiety about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were deadly depressing; combined with the aspect of London on the Lord's day – London east of Russell Square! Oh, Paris … Paris … and the yellow omnibus that took us both there together, Barty and me, at eight on a Sunday morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back to school till fourteen hours later!
I shall never forget one gloomy wintry Sunday – somewhere in 1854 or 5, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end of Barty's career as a Guardsman.
Twice after lunch I had called at Barty's, who was to have been on duty in barracks or at the Tower that morning; he had not come back; I called for him at his club, but he hadn't been there either – and I turned my face eastward and homeward with a sickening sense of desolate ennui and deep disgust of London for which I could find no terms that are fit for publication!
And this was not lessened by the bitter reproaches I made myself for being such a selfish and unworthy son and brother. It was precious dull at home for my mother and sister – and my place was there.
They were just lighting the lamps as I got to the arcade in the Quadrant – and there I ran against the cheerful Barty. Joy! what a change in the aspect of everything! It rained light! He pulled a new book out of his pocket, which he had just borrowed from some fair lady – and showed it to me. It was called Maud.
We dined at Pergolese's, in Rupert Street – and went back to Barty's – and read the lovely poem out loud, taking it by turns; and that is the most delightful recollection I have since I left the Institution F. Brossard!
Occasionally I dined with him "on guard" at St. James's Palace – and well I could understand all the attractions of his life, so different from mine, and see what a good fellow he was to come so often to Brunswick Square, and seem so happy with us.
The reader will conclude that I was a kind of over‐affectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and affectionate nature – and was of a Frenchness that made French thought and talk and commune almost a daily necessity. We nearly always spoke French when together alone, or with my mother and sister. It would have seemed almost unnatural not to have done so.
I always feel a special tenderness towards young people whose lives have been such that those two languages are exactly the same to them. It means so many things to me. It doubles them in my estimation, and I seem to understand them through and through.
Nor did he seem to care much for the smart society of which he saw so much; perhaps the bar sinister may have made him feel less at his ease in general society than among his intimates and old friends. I feel sure he took this to heart more than any one would have thought possible from his careless manner.
He only once alluded directly to this when we were together. I was speaking to him of the enviable brilliancy of his lot. He looked at me pensively for a minute or two, and said, in English:
"You've got a kink in your nose, Bob – if it weren't for that you'd be a deuced good‐looking fellow – like me; but you ain't."
"Thanks – anything else?" said I.
"Well, I've got a kink in my birth, you see – and that's as big a kill‐joy as I know. I hate it!"
It was hard luck. He would have made such a splendid Marquis of Whitby! and done such honor to the proud old family motto:
"Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis!"
Instead of which he got himself a signet‐ring, and on it he caused to be engraved a zero within a naught, and round them:
"Rohan ne puis, roi ne daigne. Rien ne suis!"
Soon it became pretty evident that a subtle change was being wrought in him.
He had quite lost his power of feeling the north, and missed it dreadfully; he could no longer turn his back‐somersault with ease and safety; he had overcome his loathing for meat, and also his dislike for sport – he had, indeed, become a very good shot.
But he could still hear and see and smell with all the keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid than is the case with other mortals.
He had also corrected his quick impulsive tendency to slap faces that were an inch or two higher up than his own. He didn't often come across one, for one thing – then it would not have been considered "good form" in her Majesty's Household Brigade.
When he was a boy, as the reader may recollect, he was fond of drawing lovely female profiles with black hair and an immense black eye, and gazing at them as he smoked a cigarette and listened to pretty, light music. He developed a most ardent admiration for female beauty, and mixed more and more in worldly and fashionable circles (of which I saw nothing whatever); circles where the heavenly gift of beauty is made more of, perhaps, than is quite good for its possessors, whether female or male.
He was himself of a personal beauty so exceptional that incredible temptations came his way. Aristocratic people all over the world make great allowance for beauty‐born frailties that would spell ruin and everlasting disgrace for women of the class to which it is my privilege to belong.
Barty, of course, did not confide his love‐adventures to me; in this he was no Frenchman. But I saw quite enough to know he was more pursued than pursuing; and what a pursuer, to a man built like that! no innocent, impulsive young girl, no simple maiden in her flower – no Elaine.
But a magnificent full‐blown peeress, who knew her own mind and had nothing to fear, for her husband was no better than herself. But for that, a Guinevere and Vivien rolled into one, plus Messalina!
Nor was she the only light o' love; there are many naughty "grandes dames de par le monde" whose easy virtue fits them like a silk stocking, and who live and love pretty much as they please without loss of caste, so long as they keep clear of any open scandal. It is one of the privileges of high rank.
Then there were the ladies gay, frankly of the half‐world, these – laughter‐loving hetæræ, with perilously soft hearts for such as Barty Josselin! There was even poor, listless, lazy, languid Jenny, "Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea!"
His heart was never touched – of that I feel sure; and he was not vain of these triumphs; but he was a very reckless youth, a kind of young John Churchill before Sarah Jennings took him in hand – absolutely non‐moral about such things, rather than immoral.
He grew to be a quite notorious young man about town; and, most unfortunately for him, Lord (and even Lady) Archibald Rohan were so fond of him, and so proud, and so amiably non‐moral themselves, that he was left to go as he might.
He also developed some very rowdy tastes indeed – and so did I!
It was the fashion for our golden youth in the fifties to do so. Every night in the Haymarket there was a kind of noisy saturnalia, in which golden youths joined hands with youths who were by no means golden, to give much trouble to the police, and fill the pockets of the keepers of night‐houses – "Bob Croft's," "Kate Hamilton's," "the Piccadilly Saloon," and other haunts equally well pulled down and forgotten. It was good, in these regions, to be young and big and strong like Barty and me, and well versed in the "handling of one's daddles." I suppose London was the only great city in the world where such things could be. I am afraid that many strange people of both sexes called us Bob and Barty; people the mere sight or hearing of whom would have given my poor dear father fits!
Then there was a little public‐house in St. Martin's Lane, kept by big Ben the prize‐fighter. In a room at the top of the house there used to be much sparring. We both of us took a high degree in the noble art – especially I, if it be not bragging to say so; mostly on account of my weight, which was considerable for my age. It was in fencing that he beat me hollow: he was quite the best fencer I ever met; the lessons at school of Bonnet's prévôt had borne good fruit in his case.
Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and betting‐men and medical students, where people sang and fought and laid the odds and got very drunk – and where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic and sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm that seems almost incredible among such a brutalized and hardened crew.
One night he and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the bones. Then we went to the Haymarket, and Barty made five pounds in no time; most of it in silver donations from unfortunate women – English, of course – who are among the softest‐hearted and most generous creatures in the world.
"O lachrymarum fons!"
I forget what use we made of the money – a good one, I feel sure.
I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it. Forty years ago such things did not seem so horrible as they would now, and the word "bounder" had not been invented.
My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a pupil at the junior school in the Ladies' College, 48 Bedford Square. She soon made friends – nice young girls, who came to our house, and it was much the livelier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them well before I ever saw them – especially Leah Gibson, who lived in Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special friend; at last I was quite anxious to see this paragon.
One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to school, she pointed out to me three girls of her own age, or less, who stood talking together at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. They were all three very pretty children – quite singularly so – and became great beauties; one golden‐haired, one chestnut‐brown, one blue‐black. The black‐haired one was the youngest and the tallest – a fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat back and square shoulders; she was very well dressed, and had nice brown boots with brown elastic sides on arched and straight‐heeled slender feet, and white stockings on her long legs – a fashion in hose that has long gone out. She also wore a thick plait of black hair all down her back – another departed mode, and one not to be regretted, I think; and she swung her books round her as she talked, with easy movements, like a strong boy.
"That's Leah Gibson," says my sister; "the tall one, with the long black plait."
Leah Gibson turned round and nodded to my sister and smiled – showing a delicate narrow face, a clear pale complexion, very beautiful white pearly teeth between very red lips, and an extraordinary pair of large black eyes – rather close together – the blackest I ever saw, but with an expression so quick and penetrating and keen, and yet so good and frank and friendly, that they positively sent a little warm thrill through me – though she was only twelve years old, and not a bit older than her age, and I a fast youth nearly twenty!
And finding her very much to my taste, I said to my sister, just for fun, "Oh —that's Leah Gibson, is it? then some day Leah Gibson shall be Mrs. Robert Maurice!"
From which it may be inferred that I looked on Leah Gibson, at the first sight of her, as likely to become some day an extremely desirable person.
She did.
The Gibsons lived in a very good house in Tavistock Square. They seemed very well off. Mrs. Gibson had a nice carriage, which she kept entirely with her own money. Her father, who was dead, had been a wealthy solicitor. He had left a large family, and to each of them property worth £300 a year, and a very liberal allowance of good looks.
Mr. Gibson was in business in the City.
Leah, their only child, was the darling of their hearts and the apple of their eyes. To dress her beautifully, to give her all the best masters money could procure, and treat her to every amusement in London – theatres, the opera, all the concerts and shows there were, and give endless young parties for her pleasure – all this seemed the principal interest of their lives.
Soon after my first introduction to Leah, Ida and I received an invitation to a kind of juvenile festivity at the Gibsons', and went, and spent a delightful evening. We were received by Mrs. Gibson most cordially. She was such an extremely pretty person, and so charmingly dressed, and had such winning, natural, genial manners, that I fell in love with her at first sight; she was also very playful and fond of romping; for she was young still, having married at seventeen.
Her mother, Mrs. Bletchley (who was present), was a Spanish Jewess – a most magnificent and beautiful old person in splendid attire, tall and straight, with white hair and thick black eyebrows, and large eyes as black as night.
In Leah the high Sephardic Jewish type was more marked than in Mrs. Gibson (who was not Jewish at all in aspect, and took after her father, the late Mr. Bletchley).
It is a type that sometimes, just now and again, can be so pathetically noble and beautiful in a woman, so suggestive of chastity and the most passionate love combined – love conjugal and filial and maternal – love that implies all the big practical obligations and responsibilities of human life, that the mere term "Jewess" (and especially its French equivalent) brings to my mind some vague, mysterious, exotically poetic image of all I love best in woman. I find myself dreaming of Rebecca of York, as I used to dream of her in the English class at Brossard's, where I so pitied poor Ivanhoe for his misplaced constancy.
If Rebecca at fifty‐five, was at all like Mrs. Bletchley, poor old Sir Wilfred's regrets must have been all that Thackeray made them out to be in his immortal story of Rebecca and Rowena.
Mr. Gibson was a good‐looking man, some twelve or fifteen years older than his wife; his real vocation was to be a low comedian; this showed itself on my first introduction to him. He informally winked at me and said:
"Esker voo ker jer dwaw lah vee? Ah! kel Bonnure!"
This idiotic speech (all the French he knew) was delivered in so droll and natural a manner that I took to him at once. Barty himself couldn't have been funnier!
Well, we had games of forfeits and danced, and Ida played charming things by Mendelssohn on the piano, and Leah sang very nicely in a fine, bold, frank, deep voice, like a choir‐boy's, and Mrs. Gibson danced a Spanish fandango, and displayed feet and ankles of which she was very proud, and had every right to be; and then Mr. Gibson played a solo on the flute, and sang "My Pretty Jane" – both badly enough to be very funny without any conscious effort or straining on his part. Then we supped, and the food was good, and we were all very jolly indeed; and after supper Mr. Gibson said to me:
"Now, Mister Parleyvoo – can't you do something to amuse the company? You're big enough!"
I professed my willingness to do anything– and wished I was as Barty more than ever!
"Well, then," says he – "kneel to the wittiest, bow to the prettiest – and kiss the one you love best."
This was rather a large order – but I did as well as I could. I went down on my knees to Mr. Gibson and craved his paternal blessing; and made my best French bow with my heels together to old Mrs. Bletchley; and kissed my sister, warmly thanking her in public for having introduced me to Mrs. Gibson: and as far as mere social success is worth anything, I was the Barty of that party!
Anyhow, Mr. Gibson conceived for me an admiration he never failed to express when we met afterwards, and though this was fun, of course, I had really won his heart.
It is but a humble sort of triumph to crow over – and where does Barty Josselin come in?
Pazienza!
"Well – what do you think of Leah Gibson?" said my sister, as we walked home together through Torrington Square.
"I think she's a regular stunner," said I – "like her mother and her grandmother before her, and probably her great‐grandmother too."
And being a poetical youth, and well up in my Byron, I declaimed:
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes."…
Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quotations, I never made a more felicitous quotation than that. I little guessed then to what splendor that bony black‐eyed damsel would reach in time.
All through this period of high life and low dissipation Barty kept his unalterable good‐humor and high spirits – and especially the kindly grace of manner and tact and good‐breeding that kept him from ever offending the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits, and made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and darling.
I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in very distinguished company; I don't remember how I came to be invited – through Barty, no doubt. He got me many invitations that I often thought it better not to accept. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam!"
It was a fish dinner, and Barty ate and drank a surprising amount – and so did I, and liked it very much.
We were all late and hurried for the last train, some twenty of us – and Barty, Lord Archibald, and I, and a Colonel Walker Lindsay, who has since become a peer and a Field‐Marshal (and is now dead), were all pushed together into a carriage, already occupied by a distinguished clergyman and a charming young lady – probably his daughter; from his dress, he was either a dean or a bishop, and I sat opposite to him – in the corner.
Barty was very noisy and excited as the train moved off; he was rather tipsy, in fact – and I was alarmed, on account of the clerical gentleman and his female companion. As we journeyed on, Barty began to romp and play the fool and perform fantastic tricks – to the immense delight of the future Field‐Marshal. He twisted two pocket‐handkerchiefs into human figures, one on each hand, and made them sing to each other – like Grisi and Mario in the Huguenots– and clever drivel of that kind. Lord Archibald and Colonel Lindsay were beside themselves with glee at all this; they also had dined well.
Then he imitated a poor man fishing in St. James's Park and not catching any fish. And this really was uncommonly good and true to life – with wonderful artistic details, that showed keen observation.
I saw that the bishop and his daughter (if such they were) grew deeply interested, and laughed and chuckled discreetly; the young lady had a charming expression on her face as she watched the idiotic Barty, who got more idiotic with every mile – and this was to be the man who wrote Sardonyx!
As the train slowed into the London station, the bishop leant forward towards me and inquired, in a whisper,
"May I ask the name of your singularly delightful young friend?"
"His name is Barty Josselin," I answered.
"Not of the Grenadier Guards?"
"Yes."
"Oh, indeed! a – yes – I've heard of him – "
And his lordship's face became hard and stern – and soon we all got out.
