and me too; for the dear old lady always presented me with a stick of barley-sugar in return. As I never possessed a sou (Miss Agläé kept account of all my expenses and disbursements) I was strongly in favour of buying plants for ‘Maman.’
I loved the garden. It was such a beautiful garden; so beautifully kept by Monsieur Benoît, and withered old Mère Michèle, who did the weeding and helped Rose once a week in the laundry. There were such pretty trellises, covered with roses and clematis; such masses of bright flowers and sweet mignonette; such tidy gravel walks and clipped box edges; such floods of sunshine; so many butterflies and lizards basking in it; the birds singing with excess of joy. I used to fancy they sang in gratitude to the dear old Marquise, who never forgot them in the winter snows.
What a quaint but charming picture she was amidst this quietude—she who had lived through the Reign of Terror: her mob cap, garden apron, and big gloves; a trowel in one hand, a watering-pot in the other; potting and unpotting; so busy, seemingly so happy. She loved to have me with her, and let me do the watering. What a pleasure that was! The scores of little jets from the perforated rose, the gushing sound, the freshness and the sparkle, the gratitude of the plants, to say nothing of one’s own wet legs. ‘Maman’ did not approve of my watering my own legs. But if the watering-pot was too big for me how could I help it? By and by a small one painted red within and green outside was discovered in Bourg-la-Reine, and I was happy ever afterwards.
Much of my time was spent with the children and nurses of the family which occupied the château. The costume of the head nurse with her high Normandy cap (would that I had a female pen for details) invariably suggested to me that she would make any English showman’s fortune, if he could only exhibit her stuffed. At the cottage they called her ‘La Grosse Normande.’ Not knowing her by any other name, I always so addressed her. She was not very quick-witted, but I think she a little resented my familiarity, and retaliated by comparisons between her compatriots and mine, always in a tone derogatory to the latter. She informed me as a matter of history, patent to all nurses, that the English race were notoriously bow-legged; and that this was due to the vicious practice of allowing children to use their legs before the gristle had become bone. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I listened with awe to this physiological revelation, and with chastened and depressed spirits made a mental note of our national calamity. Privately I fancied that the mottled and spasmodic legs of Achille—whom she carried in her arms—or at least so much of the infant Pelides’ legs as were not enveloped in a napkin, gave every promise of refuting her generalisation.
One of my amusements was to set brick traps for small birds. At Holkham in the winter time, by baiting with a few grains of corn, I and my brothers used, in this way, to capture robins, hedge-sparrows, and tits. Not far from the château was a large osier bed, resorted to by flocks of the common sparrow. Here I set my traps. But it being summer time, and (as I complained when twitted with want of success) French birds being too stupid to know what the traps were for, I never caught a feather. Now this osier bed was a favourite game covert for the sportsmen of the château; and what was my delight and astonishment when one morning I found a dead hare with its head under the fallen brick of my trap. How triumphantly I dragged it home, and showed it to Rose and Auguste—who more than the rest had ‘mocked themselves’ of my traps, and then carried it in my arms, all bloody as it was (I could not make out how both its hind legs were broken) into the salon to show it to the old Marquise. Mademoiselle Henriette, who was there, gave a little scream (for effect) at sight of the blood. Everybody was pleased. But when I overheard Rose’s sotto voce to the Marquise: ‘Comme ils sont gentils!’ I indignantly retorted that ‘it wasn’t kind of the hare at all: it was entirely due to my skill in setting the traps. They would catch anything that put its head into them. Just you try.’
How severe are the shocks of early disillusionment! It was not until long after the hare was skinned, roasted, served as civet and as purée that I discovered the truth. I was not at all grateful to the gentlemen of the château whose dupe I had been; was even wrath with my dear old ‘Maman’ for treating them with extra courtesy for their kindness to her petit chéri.
That was a happy summer. After it was ended, and it was time for me to return to England and begin my education for the Navy I never again set eyes on Larue, or that charming nest of old ladies who had done their utmost to spoil me. Many and many a time have I been to Paris, but nothing could tempt me to visit Larue. So it is with me. Often have I questioned the truth of the nessun maggior dolore than the memory of happy times in the midst of sorry ones. The thought of happiness, it would seem, should surely make us happier, and yet—not of happiness for ever lost. And are not the deepening shades of our declining sun deepened by youth’s contrast? Whatever our sweetest songs may tell us of, we are the sadder for our sweetest memories. The grass can never be as green again to eyes grown watery. The lambs that skipped when we did were long since served as mutton. And if
Die Füsse tragen mich so muthig nicht empor
Die hohen Stufen die ich kindisch übersprang,
why, I will take the fact for granted. My youth is fled, my friends are dead. The daisies and the snows whiten by turns the grave of him or her—the dearest I have loved. Shall I make a pilgrimage to that sepulchre? Drop futile tears upon it? Will they warm what is no more? I for one have not the heart for that. Happily life has something else for us to do. Happily ’tis best to do it.
CHAPTER IV
The passage from the romantic to the realistic, from the chimerical to the actual, from the child’s poetic interpretation of life to life’s practical version of itself, is too gradual to be noticed while the process is going on. It is only in the retrospect we see the change. There is still, for yet another stage, the same and even greater receptivity—delight in new experiences, in gratified curiosity, in sensuous enjoyment, in the exercise of growing faculties. But the belief in the impossible and the bliss of ignorance are seen, when looking back, to have assumed almost abruptly a cruder state of maturer dulness. Between the public schoolboy and the child there is an essential difference; and this in a boy’s case is largely due, I fancy, to the diminished influence of woman, and the increased influence of men.
With me, certainly, the rough usage I was ere long to undergo materially modified my view of things in general. In 1838, when I was eleven years old, my uncle, Henry Keppel, the future Admiral of the Fleet, but then a dashing young commander, took me (as he mentions in his Autobiography) to the Naval Academy at Gosport. The very afternoon of my admittance—as an illustration of the above remarks—I had three fights with three different boys. After that the ‘new boy’ was left to his own devices—qua ‘new boy,’ that is; as an ordinary small boy, I had my share. I have spoken of the starvation at Dr. Pinkney’s; here it was the terrible bullying that left its impress on me—literally its mark, for I still bear the scar upon my hand.
Most boys, I presume, know the toy called a whirligig, made by stringing a button on a loop of thread, the twisting and untwisting of which by approaching and separating the hands causes the button to revolve. Upon this design, and by substituting a jagged disk of slate for the button, the senior ‘Bull-dogs’ (we were all called ‘Burney’s bull-dogs’) constructed a very simple instrument of torture. One big boy spun the whirligig, while another held the small boy’s palm till the sharp slate-edge gashed it. The wound was severe. For many years a long white cicatrice recorded the fact in my right hand. The ordeal was, I fancy, unique—a prerogative of the naval ‘bull-dogs.’ The other torture was, in those days, not unknown to public schools. It was to hold a boy’s back and breech as near to a hot fire as his clothes would bear without burning. I have an indistinct recollection of a boy at one of our largest public schools being thus exposed, and left tied to chairs while his companions were at church. When church was over the boy was found—roasted.
By the advice of a chum I submitted to the scorching without a howl, and thus obtained immunity, and admission to the roasting guild for the future. What, however, served me best, in all matters of this kind, was that as soon as I was