Read Ebook: In Bohemia with Du Maurier: The First of a Series of Reminiscences by Moscheles Felix

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Now if Van Ostade or Teniers had risen to prosecute him for forging their signatures, and he had been found guilty and condemned to severe punishment, it would have served him right. He was a perfect gem of a forger. He picked up a stock of those dirty old pictures painted on worm-eaten panels that used to abound in the sale-rooms of Antwerp. On these he would paint what might be called replicas with variations, cribbing left and right from old mildewed prints that were scattered all about the floor. He would scrape and scumble, brighten and deaden with oils and varnishes; he would dodge and manipulate till his picture, after a given time spent in a damp cellar, would emerge as a genuine old master. I once asked a dealer whom I knew to be a regular customer of his, at what price he sold one of those productions. "I really can't say," he answered; "I only do wholesale business. I buy for exportation to England and America." If any of my friends here or over there possess some work of Van-der-something's, I sincerely congratulate them, for the little man was a genius in his way.

Of my friend the German I have only to say that, poor fellow, he spent but a short life of pleasure and of pain. What became of his Circe I never sought to know. It was a clear case of "Ne cherchez pas la femme!"

The first friend I made on my arrival in Antwerp was Jean Heyermans , and a very useful one he proved himself, for he at once took me in hand, helped me to find home and hearth, and generally gave me the correct tip, so valuable to the stranger. He lost no time in teaching me some of those full-flavoured Flemish idioms which from the first enabled me to emphasise my meaning when I wished to express it in unmistakable language.

He himself was a remarkable linguist, speaking English, French, and German fluently, in addition to his native language, Dutch; so he soon chummed with du Maurier and me in several languages, and became one of our set. He was always ready to follow us in our digressions from the conventional course, and we felt that many of our best international jokes would have been lost had it not been for his comprehension and appreciation. His father, too, was a kind friend to us, inviting us to his house to hear Music and talk Art, to ply knives and forks, and to empty glasses of various dimensions. That gentleman's corpulence had reached a degree which clearly showed that he must have "lost sight of his knees" some years back, but he was none the less strong and active. There were two daughters, one pathetically blind, the other sympathetically musical.

How our friend came by the name of Peggy none of us know, but he figures as such in many of du Maurier's drawings.

"If Peggy," he says, in a letter from Malines, "doesn't come on Sunday, may the vengeance of the gods overtake him! Tell him so. I'll meet him at the train." And then he sketches the meeting and greeting of the two, and the railway guard starting his train with the old-fashioned horn-signal on the G.E.C. then in use.

My friend Jean soon started on his career as a regular exhibitor in Belgium and Holland, besides which he developed a remarkable taste and talent for teaching.

"What would you advise about Pen's studies?" said Robert Browning one afternoon as we sat in my little studio, talking about his son's talents and prospects. "Send him to Antwerp," I said, "to Heyermans; he is the best man I know of to start him."

Pen went, and soon made surprising progress, painting a picture after little more than a twelve-month that at once found an eager purchaser. The poet took great pride in his son's success, and lost no opportunity of speaking in the most grateful and appreciative terms of the teacher. Millais and Tadema endorsed his praise, and Heyermans' reputation was established. A few years ago he migrated to London, where he continues his work, pluckily upholding the traditions of the Past, whilst readily encouraging the wholesome aspirations of a rising generation.

Another man destined to find a permanent home in England was Alma Tadema. He was not much in the Painting Class in my time, but had previously been hard at work there. I mostly saw him in the room adjoining it, and he always seemed to me exclusively interested in the study of costume and history. The incident that led to his leaving the academy rather abruptly is characteristic. An uncle of his having given him a commission for a picture, Tadema applied to de Keyser for authorisation to make the necessary break in his studies. The Director accorded him three weeks, but, as Tadema put it when lately recalling the circumstance, "I couldn't paint a picture in three weeks then, and I cannot now."

I little thought that from his studies of costume and history, the comrade of my Antwerp days would evolve a long and uninterrupted series of masterpieces, resuscitating the Past and presenting it with the erudition of the Student and the genius of the Artist. Nor did anything foreshadow that my genial Dutch friend, to whom the English language was a dead letter, was destined in a not too distant Future to become a shining light of England's Royal Academy.

Du Maurier was soon installed in the Painting Class, and made a vigorous start. Of the things he painted, I particularly recollect a life-size, three-quarter group of an old woman and a boy--a pen-and-ink drawing of which is in my father's album--that showed talent enough and to spare, but his artistic aspirations were soon to meet with a serious check. His eyesight suddenly gave him trouble, and before long put a stop to his studies at atelier or academy. He was not to become a painter, as he had fondly hoped, but as we now know, he was to work out his destiny in another direction. With the simplest of means he was to delineate character, and everyday drops of ink, when filtered through his pen, were to emerge in quaint or graceful shapes, wit, satire, and sentiment taking their turns to prompt and guide that pen.

In those days we called all that caricaturing, and caricature he certainly did; mainly me and himself. From the first he imagined he saw a marked contrast between us. His nose was supposed to be turned up, and mine down, whereas really neither his nor mine much deviated from the ordinary run of noses; my lower lip certainly does project, but his does not particularly recede, and so on. But the imaginary contrast inspired him in the earliest days of our acquaintance, and started him on the warpath of pen-and-inking. He drew us in all conceivable and in some inconceivable situations. "Moscheles and I," he says on one page, "had we not been artists, or had we been artistically beautiful; then again, if we were of the fair sex, or soldiers, or, by way of showing our versatility, if we were horses." In that page he seems to have focussed the essence of our characteristics, whilst appearing only to delineate our human and equine possibilities. Poor F., one of our German friends, fares badly, a donkey's head portraying him "s'il ?tait cheval."

In consequence of the growing trouble with his eyes, du Maurier left Antwerp for Malines, to place himself under the care of an eminent oculist who resided within easy reach of that city. That blessed blister--"ce sacr? v?sicatoire," as he calls it, is one of the doctor's remedies.

The sketch shows how it is being applied by a devoted Sister of Mercy.

In those days railway travelling was not as rapid as it is now, but one could get from Antwerp to Malines in about an hour, a circumstance which I frequently turned to account. Du Maurier's mother had come to live with him, his sister joining them for a short time, and the home in quiet old Malines soon became a sort of haven of rest. I spent many a happy day and night there, on which occasions I am bound to say that the piano, requisitioned by me for some special purposes of musical caricature, detracted somewhat from the restfulness of the haven. However that may have been, such intrusion was never resented; my Swedish prima donna, or my qualifications as a basso profondo, or a brass-bandsman, were always treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause.

Then du Maurier would sing the French "romance" or the English song, or he would "dire la chansonnette," and what with his sympathetic tenor and his intuitive knowledge of music, he seemed to be able to express more than many who had had the advantage of a musical training. A few old letters of his remind me that we were audacious enough to write verses and music, he doing the former, I the latter.

CHANSON.

Les sources vont ? la rivi?re Et la rivi?re ? l'oc?an; Les monts embrassent la lumi?re, Le vent du ciel se m?le au vent; Contre le flot, le flot se presse; Rien ne vit seul--tout semble, ici, Se fondre en la commune ivresse.... Et pourquoi pas nous deux aussi? Vois le soleil ?treint la terre, Qui rougit d'aise ? son coucher-- La lune ?treint les flots, qu'?claire Son rayon doux comme un baiser; Les moindres fleurs ont des tendresses Pour leurs pareilles d'ici-bas Que valent toutes ces caresses Si tu ne me caresses pas?

Two slight sketches of "L'auteur de profil" and "Le compositeur de face" head the page.

Soon afterwards he sends me another poetical effusion and writes:

"DEAR BOBTAIL,--I send you the Serenade composed 'tant bien que mal' last night, not 'entre la poire et le fromage,' but between the tea and the pears. I am afraid you will not find it as dramatic as you wished; but I don't feel it otherwise, and as Mahomet can't write words to the mountain's music, the mountain must try and adapt its music to the verses of Mahomet.

S?R?NADE APR?S LA SIESTE.

"Berthe aux grands yeux d'azur, ouvre done ta paupi?re, Chasse les r?ves d'or de ton l?ger sommeil-- Ils sont l?, nos amis; c?de a notre pri?re Le tr?ne pr?par? n'attend que ton r?veil; Le soleil a cess? de r?gner sur la terre, Viens r?gner sur la f?te et sois notre soleil. R?ponds ? nos accords par tes accents plus doux Au jardin des amours, viens ? viens avec nous.

Au jardin des amours ta place est r?serv?e, Parmi des feux de joie et des lilas en fleurs. Viens r?veiller en nous de nouvelles ardeurs-- Descends avec la nuit, ainsi que la ros?e-- Tant que l'astre d'argent sourit ? la vall?e, Toi, bel astre d'amour, viens sourire ? nos coeurs! R?ponds ? nos accords par tes accents plus doux, Au jardin des amours, Berthe, viens avec nous.

Viens avec ta couronne, et viens avec ta lyre, Tes chants pour nos amis, tes doux regards pour moi! D?j? j'entends les jeux de la foule en ?moi Sur des gazons fleuris ... oh le joyeux d?lire! Si tu ne descends pas, helas! on pourra dire: 'Berthe aux grands yeux d'azur, on a chant? sans toi!' R?ponds ? nos accords par tes accents plus doux, Berthe aux grands yeux d'azur, viens ? viens avec nous!

"You see I have indulged in poetic license; for instance, the first tenor says he hears the folks doing the light fantastic toe. One might suppose they danced in sabots--mere poetic license, and besides, a first tenor ought to have very good ears.... So now, my lad, inspire yourself."

What the result of his appeal to my inspiration may have been, I do not remember, but I find this is what he writes on the subject--

"CARISSIMO,--In vain have I taxed Rag's inventive powers to alter the last stanza; we must e'en stick to 'Ce baiser-la.' The lines I have underlined mean that I don't quite approve the part of the music that comes just there, as in the musical phrase you have set to it I fancy there is a want of tenderness. All the rest is stunning; the more I hums it the more I likes it, but I can't exactly come your accompaniment."

No wonder, for my accompaniments were usually rather indefinite quantities, subject to the mood of the moment. "Moscheles or Mephistopheles, which?" he asks, as he depicts me at the piano, perhaps evolving some such accompaniment from the depths of "untrained inner consciousness." "Eureka" he might have put under that other sketch, where his own hands have at last found some long-sought harmony or chord on the piano. Another drawing there is of a somewhat later period which he calls "Inspiration papillotique." Again I am at the piano, my eyes raised to the "She" in papillottes, who floats as a vision in the clouds, issuing from my ever-puffing cigar, whilst at my feet is stretched the meditative form of my friend, and under them is crushed some work of our immortal colleague Beethoven.

The truth of the matter is that we shared fraternally in the enjoyment of her good graces, he having the pull of me the greater part of the week, and only suspending operations in my favour when I came to Malines on a Saturday to Monday visit. These occasions were productive of a great number of drawings and sketches, illustrating our little adventures, and all plainly showing that the incidents recorded occurred to us at that pleasant time of life, when bright illusions and buoyant spirits lead the way, and when sorrow itself has more of the rose colour than many a rose of a later day.

Malines was, and perhaps is still, a dull, deserted city, at best up to the date of last century, beating the record for dry-as-dustiness and growing dear little blades of grass between its cobble stones. It boasts of a great many churches and of a very great many more priests. In addition to these attractions, there was, however, a factor of paramount interest to us. Then and there, just as now and elsewhere, there were pretty girls about, and I need not say that, as both of us were studying art and devoting our best energies to the cult of the beautiful, we considered it our duty to take special notice of these pretty girls wherever we came across them. It is probably the conscientious performance of his duty in that direction which enabled du Maurier to evolve those ever-attractive and sympathetic types of female beauty we are all so familiar with. Nor would it have been becoming in me, who had everything to learn, to lag behind, or to show less ardour in the pursuit of my studies.

Thus, whilst du Maurier's facile pen was throwing off black and white sketches of Miss Carry, it was reserved for me to paint her portrait in oils. Her real name was Octavie, not Carry; that appellation we had most unceremoniously and unpoetically derived from "Cigar." All else about her we invested, if not with ceremony with a full amount of poetry. And certainly there was a subtle quality in Carry, well worthy of appreciation, a faculty of charming and being charmed, of giving and taking, of free and easiness, coupled with ladylike reserve. She seemed to be born with the intuitive knowledge that there was only one life worth living, that of the Bohemian, and to be at the same time well protected by a pretty reluctance to admit as much. In fact, to give a correct idea of her I need but say her soul was steeped in the very essence of Trilbyism. Having got to Carry's soul, it may not be inappropriate to say something also about her looks; but to describe good looks is, as we all know, deliberately to court failure; far better request every man to conjure up his own type of beauty and he will be sure to be interested in the picture he evolves. That man will be nearest the truth whose young lady has a rich crop of brown curly hair, very blue inquisitive eyes, and a figure of peculiar elasticity.

Octavie L., dite Carry, was the daughter of an organist who had held a good position at one of the principal churches of Malines. When he died he left but a small inheritance to his widow; with what she could realise, she purchased the goodwill of a small tobacconist's store and set up in business. Neither the mother nor the daughter had much previous knowledge of the concern they had started, and they were consequently not very discriminating in the selection of their brands; but what was lacking in connoisseurship was fully made up for by Mrs. L.'s obliging manners and by Octavie's blue eyes. These had been steadily gaining in expression since she first opened them about seventeen years back. Customers soon came in, and for a time the little business was as flourishing as anything could well be in Malines. The average citizen of so ecclesiastically conservative, and hereditarily stationary a city could hardly be expected to encourage a new venture of the kind. Still even there there were some young men about town, a sort of "jeunesse dor?", not of 18-carat gold perhaps, but a "jeunesse" quite equal to the pleasant task of buzzing around the fair tobacconist. Mrs. L. did her share of chaperoning; du Maurier and I supplied the rest, and watched over her with chivalrous, if not quite disinterested devotion. We differed in every respect from the type of the young man of the period above mentioned; so naturally we were bright stars in Carry's firmament; she looked upon us as superior beings, and, granting her points of comparison, not without cause; du Maurier could draw and I could paint; he could sing and I could mesmerise, and couldn't we just both talk beautifully! We neither of us encourage hero-worship now, but then we were "bons princes," and graciously accepted Carry's homage as due to our superior merits.

There are two drawings illustrative of that chivalrous devotion of ours. We are galloping along on our noble steeds, richly attired, as true knights and good should be when they go to pay homage to beauty.

"Beshrew thee, noble Sir Ragge! let us to the fair tobacconiste!"

The second drawing shows our "Salut ? la Gente et accorte pucelle!" and the winning smile with which Carry would receive us.

Mesmerism, or, as the fashion of to-day calls it, Hypnotism, formed so frequent a topic of conversation and speculation between du Maurier and myself, that it takes a very prominent place in my recollections.

In Paris I had had opportunities of attending some most interesting s?ances, in consequence of which I soon proceeded to investigate the mesmeric phenomena on my own account. Now I have not touched the fluid for some thirty years; I swore off because it was taking too much out of me; but I look back with pleasure on my earlier experiments, successes I may say, for I was fortunate enough to come across several exceptional subjects. Du Maurier was particularly interested in one of these, Virginie Marsaudon, and had a way of putting puzzling questions concerning her faculties and my mesmeric influence. Virginie was a "femme de m?nage" of the true Parisian type, a devoted elderly creature, a sort of cross between a charwoman and a housekeeper. I was not yet eighteen when I first went to Paris, to study under my cousin, the eminent painter, Henri Lehmann. At his studio I found Virginie installed as the presiding genius of the establishment, using in turn broom or tub, needle, grill or frying-pan as the occasion might require; the wide range of her powers I further extended by making a truly remarkable mesmeric subject of her. My d?but in Paris was that of the somewhat bewildered foreigner, speaking but very indifferent French, and she had from the first done what she could to make me feel at home in the strange city, treating me with truly motherly care and devotion. How completely she took possession of me, is shown by a passage in a letter she wrote when I was ill in Leipsic, where I had gone on a visit to my parents. After expressing her anxiety and her regret at not being there to nurse me, she emphatically says:--"Je rends Madame, votre m?re, responsable de votre sant?" . It needed but little to lead her on from a state of docile and genial dependence to one of unconscious mesmeric subjection, and so, a few passes shaping her course, I willed her across the boundary line that separates us from the unknown, a line which, thanks to science, is daily being extended. Madame veuve Marsaudon was herself an incorrigible disbeliever in the phenomena of mesmerism, but as a subject her faculties were such as to surprise and convert many a scoffer.

At the s?ances, to which I invited my friends and a few scientific outsiders, I always courted the fullest investigation, taking it as the first duty of the mesmerist to show cause why he should not be put down as a charlatan. So we had tests and counter-tests, evidence and counter-evidence; there were doctors to feel the pulse and to scrutinise the rigidity of the muscles, experts to propound scientific ifs and buts, and wiseacres generally to put spokes in the wheel of progress, as is their playful way, wherever they find that wheel in motion. It was doubly satisfactory, then, that the good faith of subject and mesmerist could be conclusively proved.

I would say more of my s?ances and all the recollections they evoke, were I not impatient to get back to du Maurier and to Malines. Once on the experiences of those days, I have much to relate--pros and cons, if you please, for that subtle magnetic fluid, which, without physical contact, one human being can transmit to another, is a ticklish one to handle. I cannot pack my pen, though, and take train of thought to the Belgian city without mentioning my friend Allong?, the well-known French artist, then a fellow-student of mine at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. A chance contact of our knees as we sat closely packed with some sixty other students put me on the track of a new subject, perhaps the most interesting one it was ever my good fortune to come across. But of him another time.

Using the privilege of a mesmerist, I elect to will the reader--that is, if natural slumber has not ere this put him beyond my control--across the frontier, into the back parlour of Mrs. L.'s tobacco store. There I am operating on a boy--such a stupid little Flemish boy that no amount of fluid could ever make him clever. How I came to treat him to passes I don't remember; probably I used him as an object-lesson to amuse Carry. All I recollect is that I gave him a key to hold, and made him believe that it was red-hot and burnt his fingers, or that it was a piece of pudding to be eaten presently, thereby making him howl and grin alternately.

In the middle of our s?ance Carry is called away by a customer, one of the swells of Malines much addicted to a poetical expression of his admiration for the fair sex in general and for Carry in particular. Greatly to our edification, she was pleased to improve the occasion by leading him on, within our hearing, to make what is commonly called a fool of himself. The pleasant incident is recorded in the accompanying sketch.

But mesmerism meant more than incidental amusement or even scientific experiment to us in those Antwerp and Malines days. When one stands on the threshold of a world of mysteries one cannot but long to bridge over the chasm that separates one from the gods, the fairies, or the fiends. To be sure, we should have been glad if we could have got "light, more light" thrown on our steps, but, failing that, we tried to find our way as best we could in the mist. We loved that never-attainable Will-o'-the-Wisp, "Truth," for its own dear Bohemian sake; so, guided by Fancy and Fantasy, we made frequent inroads into the boundless land where unknown forces pick up our poor dear little conception of the Impossible, and use it as the starting-point of never-to-be-exhausted possibilities.

Such a land was particularly well suited to the state of our outward-bound minds and our excelsior appetites. It was on one or the other of these excursions, I feel confident, that du Maurier was inoculated with the germs that were eventually to develop into Trilbyism and Svengalism. No wonder, then, if in more than one of his letters and sketches the future delineator of those characters embodies bold dreams and fancies, or if on one occasion he depicts himself, with fixed gaze and hair erect, sitting bolt upright on my hospitable sofa, thrilled and overawed by the midnight presence of the uncanny, which I had evoked for his benefit.

"Yes, governor, it's all very well to ask a nervous fellow to Antwerp and amuse him and make him ever so jolly and comfortable--But why, when the bleak November wind sobs against the lattice and disturbs the dead ashes in the grate, when everything is damned queer and dark, and that sort of thing, you know--why should you make nervous fellows' flesh creep by talk about mesmerism, and dead fellows coming to see live fellows before dying, and the Lord knows what else? Why, Gad! it's horrid!"

My rooms in Antwerp were the scene of many a festive gathering. We always spoke of them in the plural; it sounded better, but in reality there was only one room with two small alcoves. Studies and sketches covered the walls or littered the floor, and the genial figure of a skeleton, in very perfect condition, stood in the corner by the piano. At first it came with a view to instructing me in the Science of Anatomy, but soon, putting aside any didactic pretensions, my bony professor became quite a companion and friend; it was thus natural that on those occasions when guests had been convened to my rooms, he would take a leading part, generally appearing gracefully draped and appropriately illuminated, and thus forming a fitting background to the gay proceedings of the evening. We had music, recitation, and acting, mostly of an improvised, homemade character. The sounds thereof were not confined, however, to the narrow limits of home, but spread far beyond it, a fact which the neighbours, I am sure, would have been at any time ready most emphatically to attest.

In justice to myself I may say that I was primarily answerable for the magnitude of the sound waves, but I am bound to add that my example was followed and even improved upon by the more lung-gifted of my companions. Amongst the milder forms of entertainment was my impersonation of Rachel. That grand actress I had often seen in Paris, and had, more than once, shivered in my shoes as she annihilated the Tyrant, pouring forth the vials of her wrath and indignation in the classical language of Racine and Corneille. With those accents still ringing in my ears I came to Antwerp, and there, when surrounded by sympathetic friends, the spirit would sometimes move me, and I would feel--excuse the conceit of youth--as if I too could have been a great female Tragedian, had Fate not otherwise disposed of me. In such moments I would seize the blade of the paper-knife, and use the blood of the beet-root, drape myself in the classical folds of the bed-sheet, and go for the Tyrant, hissing fearful hexameters of scorn and vituperation into his ears, and usually winding up with a pose so magnificently triumphant that it would bring down any house which was not of the most solid construction.

Another time the cushion yonder would be my child--the orthodox long-lost one--"It is!--It is not!--It is!--Let me clasp it to my other cushion!" "Toi mon fils ch?ri. Ange de mon enfer, douleur de mes loisirs!"

The celebration of one of my birthdays was an event rescued from oblivion by du Maurier's pencil. He illustrates our lively doings on that day and my appearance the next morning. "Felix's mamma," he says, "had worked a very pretty cap for Felix, and Felix had it on the morning after his birthday, and Felix found that though the cap was very pretty, it made him look very seedy."

In the other drawing he gives striking likenesses of the friends assembled to celebrate the festive occasion. They had come together in the evening, much in the same spirit that had led them under my windows in the morning, with a brass band and an enormous bouquet of cabbages, carrots, and cauliflowers. There, on the left, is Van Lerius with his hands in his pockets, next to him du Maurier; then Heyermans, Bource, and all the other chums, and, though last not least, the proud bearer of the steaming punch-bowl. What a set of jolly good fellows! It is quite a pleasure to pore over the sketch and contemplate du Maurier's phiz, expressing his unbounded capacity of enjoyment. I can see him taking points that fell flat with the other fellows. Quite a pleasure, too, to think of Huysmans' big nose and Van Lerius' bald head, of the tall and the short, of spindle shanks and chubby face.

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