Without Prejudice
Page 33
As I write there is an appalling, long-drawn crash, which brings the whole Quarter to its doors and windows. "Bombs" are in everybody's mouth, and I find myself automatically repeating a sentence out of the Latin exercise-book of my boyhood: "How comes it that thunder is sometimes heard when the sky is clear?" I irrelevantly remember that "sometimes" must be translated "not never." In the streets little groups are gathered, gesticulating and surmising. Some say "The Pantheon," others "The Luxembourg"; others trust it is only a gas explosion. I shock my group by hoping it is a bomb, so that I may say I have heard it go off. But I know nothing till I read "Paris Day by Day" next evening in "The Daily Telegraph," and find that my ambition has been gratified, and that the chief victim of the explosion is a Decadent Poet. Has any one been taking seriously Nordau's cry for the extinction of the Degenerates?
The dead have their day in France, but it was not le jour des morts when I bethought myself of visiting the grave of Maupassant. I do not care for these crowded "at homes,"-I prefer to pay my respects in solitude. You will not think this remark flippant if you are familiar with French cemeteries, if you know those great family sepulchres, fitted up as little chapels, through whose doors, crowned with the black cross, you may see the great wax tapers in the candelabra at the altar, the stained-glass windows with the figure of the Madonna and Child, the eikons of Christ, the praying-stools, the vases, the busts or photographs of the deceased-worthy people who not only thought life worth living but death worth dying, and did the one and the other respectably and becomingly. Maupassant lies in one art-quarter of Paris, just as Heinrich Heine lies in the other. The cemetery is off the Boulevard Raspail, within bow-shot of the ateliers of Whistler and Bouguereau, overlooked by an imposing statue of M. Raspail which sets forth that scientific citizen's many virtues and services. He proclaimed Universal Franchise in 1830, he proclaimed the Republic in 1848, and his pedestal now proclaims with equal cocksureness that science is the only religion of the future. "Give me a cell and I will build you up all organised life," cries the statue, and its stony hand seems to wave theatrically as in emulation of the bas-reliefs on its base representing Raspail animating his camarades to victory. But alas! tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse, and not all the residents of the Boulevard are aware of the origin of their address. Chateaubriand survives as a steak and Raspail as a Boulevard.
The cemetery Montparnasse is densely populated, and I wandered long without finding the author of "Boule de Suif." It was a wilderness of artificial flowers, great wreaths made of beads. Beads, beads, beads, black or lavender, and even white and yellow, blooming garishly in all sizes on every grave and stone, in strange theatrical sentimentality; complex products of civilisation, making death as unnatural as the feverish life of the Boulevards. Sometimes the beaded flowers were protected by glass shades, sometimes they were supplemented by leaden or marble images. Over one grave I found a little porcelain angel, his wings blue as with the cold; and under him last year's angel in melancholy supersession. Elsewhere, most terrible sight of all in this ghastly place, was a white porcelain urn on which were painted a woman's and a man's hand clasped, the graceful feminine fingers in artistic contrast with the scrupulously-cuffed male wrist with the motto, "A mon mari, Regrets eternels." Wondering how soon she remarried, I roved gloomily among these arcades of bourgeois beads, these fadeless flowers, these monstrous ever-blacks, relieved to find a touch of humour, as in a colossal wreath ostentatiously inscribed "A ma belle-mere." I peeped into the great family tombs, irresistibly reminded of "Lo, the poor Indian," and the tribes who provision their dead; I wondered if the old ghosts ever turn in their graves (as there is plenty of room for them to do) when some daughter of their house makes an imprudent alliance. Do they hold family councils in the chapel, I thought, and lament the growing scepticism of their grandchildren? Do they sigh to see themselves so changed from the photographs in the family album that confronts their hollow orbits? Do they take themselves as seriously in death as they did in life? But they were all scornfully incommunicative. And at last, despairing of discovering the goal of my journeyings, I inquired of a guardian in a peaked blue cap and a blue cloak, who informed me that it was in the twenty-sixth section of the other cemetery. Wonderfully precise, red-tape, bureaucratic, symmetrical people, the French, for all their superficial curvetings! I repaired to the other portion of the cemetery, to lose myself again among boundless black beads and endless chapels and funereal urns; and at last I besought another blue-cloaked guardian to show me the grave of Maupassant. "Par ici, " he said nonchalantly: and eschewing the gravel walks he took a short cut through a lane of dead maidens-
What's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms?-
and, descending an avenue of estimable peres de famille, turned the corner of an elegant sepulchre, to which only the most fashionable ghosts could possibly have the entry. Dear, dear, what heart-burnings there must be among the more snobbish shadows of Montparnasse! My guide made me pause and admire, and he likewise insisted on the tribute of my tear before an obelisk to slaughtered soldiers and a handsome memorial to burnt firemen.
But perceiving my impatience to arrive at the grave of Maupassant, "Mais, monsieur," he protested, "il n'y a rien d'extraordinaire." "Vraiment!" said I, "c'est la Vextraordinaire." "Rien du tout d'extraordinaire," he repeated doggedly. "Sauf le cadavre," I retorted. He shook his head, "Tres pauvre la tombe," he muttered: "pas du tout riche." Another guardian, walleyed, here joined him, and catching the subject of conversation, "Tres pauvre," he corroborated compassionately. But he went with us, accompanied by a very lean young Frenchman with a soft felt hat, an over-long frock-coat, tweed trowsers, and a black alpaca umbrella. He looked like a French translation of some character of Dickens. At last we arrived at the grave. "C'est la!" and both guardians shook their heads dolefully. "Tres pauvre!" sighed one. "Rien du tout-rien ," sighed the other. And, thank Heaven, they were right. Nothing but green turf and real flowers, and a name and a date on a black cross-the first real grave I had come across. No beads, no tawdry images, nothing but the dignity of death, nothing but "Guy de Maupassant, 6 Juillet, '93," on the cross, and "Guy de Maupassant, 1850-93," at the foot. The shrubs were few, and the flowers were common and frost-bitten; but in that desert of bourgeois beads, the simple green grave stood out in touching sublimity. The great novelist seemed to be as close to the reality of death as he had been to that of life. Those other dead seemed so falsely romanticist. It was a beautiful sunny winter afternoon. There was a feel of spring in the air, of the Resurrection and the Life. Beyond the bare slim branches of the trees of the other cemetery, gracefully etched against the sky, the sun was setting in a beautiful bank of dusky clouds. Life was so alive that day, and death so dead. Outside the tomb the poem of light and air, and inside the tomb-what? I thought of the last words of "Une Vie," that fine novel, which even Tolstoi considers great, of the old servant's summing up: "La vie, voyez-vous, ca n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit. "Perhaps," thought I, "'t is the same with death." "The Societe des Gens de Lettres had to buy the ground for him," interrupted the wall-eyed guardian compassionately. The Dickensy Frenchman heaved a great sigh. "Vous croyez!" he said. "Yes," asseverated the other guardian-"he has it in perpetuity." Ignorant of the customs of death, I wondered if one's corpse were liable to eviction, and whether the statute of limitations ought not to apply. "Je pensais qu'il avait une certaine position," observed the Frenchman dubiously. "Non ," replied the wall-eyed guardian, shaking his head, "Non, il est mort sans le sou." At the mention of coin I distributed pourboire. The first guardian went away. I lingered at the tomb, alive now to its more sordid side. Only one row of bourgeois graves, some occupied, some still ss louer, separated it from an unlovely waste piece of ground, bounded by the gaunt brick wall of the fast-filling cemetery. As I began to muse thereon, I heard a cry, and perceived my guardian peeping from round the corner of a distant tomb, and beckoning me with imperative forefinger. I wanted to sta
y; I wanted to have "Meditations at the grave of Maupassant," to ponder on the irony of death, to think of the brilliant novelist, the lover of life, cut off in his pride, to lie amid perspectives of black and lavender beads. But my guardian would not let me. "Il n'y a rien ss voir," he cried almost angrily, and haled me off to see the real treasures of his cemetery. In vain I persisted that I must not give him trouble, that I could discover the beauties for myself." "O monsieur!" he said reproachfully. Fearing he might return my pourboire, I followed him helplessly to inspect the pompous bead-covered tombs of the well-to-do, shocking him by stopping to muse at the rude mound of an anonymous corpse, remembered only by a little bunch of immortelles. One of the fashionable sepulchres stood open, and was being dusted by a man and a woman (on a dust from dust principle, apparently). Most of the dust seemed to be little beads. My keeper exchanged a word with the cleaners, and I profited by the occasion to escape. I sneaked back to the grave of Maupassant, but I had barely achieved a single Reflection, when "Hola, hola!" resounded in loud tones from afar. I started guiltily, but in a moment I realised that it was the cry of expulsion. The sunset was fading, and the gates were to be locked. I hastened across the cemetery, evading my guardian's face of reproach, and in another few moments the paths were deserted, the twilight had fallen, and the dead were left alone with their beads.
SLAPTON SANDS
After all the world is a large place. At the moment of writing I have never heard of Home Rule, nor do I care two straws whether the House of Lords is to be blown up on the fifth of November. What moves my interest, what stirs my soul, what arouses the politician that lurks in the best of us, is this question of the crab-pots. Shall the trawlers of Brixham be allowed to slash at our cords and to send our wicker baskets adrift, spoiling our marine harvests and making our larders barren against the winter? They hover about our beautiful bay-these fiends in human shape, with brown wings outspread-and wantonly lay waste our fishing-pots in their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is talk of a Government cutter to protect us, towed by red tape, and the trawlers are to cast their nets farther asea. But beware of believing what you read in the Brixham papers,-we have no voice to represent us in the press, and so these Brixham organs spread falsehoods about us in every corner of the globe. A pretty pretence, forsooth, that it is the steamers who plough up our crab-pots. Why, from Michaelmas to Christmas, when the trawlers are away, not a single pot is disturbed from its station, though the funnels smoke as usual in the eye of heaven. No, no, ye hirelings of the press. Turn your mercenary quills elsewhere, beslaver Mr. Gladstone or belabour him, arbitrate on the affairs of nations, and throw your weighty influence into the scale of European politics. But do not confuse the mind of the country on the question of crab-pots.
We do not get the Brixham papers here, but friends in London tell us that is what they say. It is the same with the crabs-we have to order them from London. All local products come via London nowadays: London is like a central ganglion, through which all sensations must travel before being felt at the outside points where they were really incurred. This is the case even with Irish patriots: they are made in Ireland, but if you want them you have to go to London clubs for them. We have only had one funeral here since I came, and then we got our material from London. He had gone up to a London hospital-poor fellow!-and that was the end of him. The village butcher it was, who thus went the way of all flesh, and all of us went to his funeral and wept, for want of something else to do. One cannot always be flippant, even on a holiday. Fortunately the butcher left an aged father, who announced his intention of carrying on the business, so we dried our eyes and dined, sure of the future. We thought of the many creatures the deceased had killed-the Juno-eyed oxen, the tender lambs, the peaceful pigs-and we did not see why we should be so sentimental over the human species. We are all murderers, and yet we are ready to gush over the first corpse that comes along. How I envy the death-bed of a vegetarian!
We are not vegetarians here, but at least we eschew the six-course dinner which so few travellers ever succeed in shaking off, even in Ultima Thule. The most of modern travelling is a sort of Cook's Tour. Everywhere the menu is before you, everywhere waves the napkin, like the flag of civilisation. Nowhere do we eat ourselves into the real life of the people; everywhere the same monotonous variety of fare in kitchen-French. In the remotest Orkneys, in the caves of Iona, in the fjords of Norway, amid the crevasses of the Alps,-'tis the same tale of entrees and entremets. When Dr. Johnson made his tour in the Highlands, he was allowed to forget he was not taking a walk down Fleet Street. He interviewed the chiefs in their fastnesses, the cottagers in their crofts. He broke rye-bread with the shepherd, ate haggis and porridge with the peasant, and drank a gill of whisky to see "what makes a Scotchman happy." Behind him he left his dish of tea, and the pet pork that made the veins of his forehead swell with ecstasy. But to-day the dinner-gong resounds where Rob Boy's bugle blared, and you may sit behind your serviette
Where the sun his beacon red
Kindles on Ben Voirlich's head,
or where the monument of a Gaelic poet broods above the heather. The tyranny of the table-d'hote ceases not even at sea. Every ship bears these monster meals in its belly-from salami to pineapple-whether it walk the Boreal waters, or touch the Happy Isles of Mid-Pacific, or swelter in the Red Sea. Not all the majesties and terrors of naked nature can dock one hors d'oeuvre from the menu. Our stomachs we have always with us-the traveller's only real vade mecum. We change our sky but not our stomach. When Nansen reaches the North Pole, he will, I am sure, be able to put up at the local hotel, and have every luxury of the cosmopolitan cuisine except the ices, which will probably have been all sent up to the London market. It is this sort of thing that makes foreign travel merely an expensive delusion. Your common traveller never gets away from England, fare he never so far. His church, his kitchen and his company are those he left behind him. To get away from England one must go to Devonshire or Cornwall. But even here, amid the combes and the leys, the crags and the quarries, the modern hotel, with its perfect sanitation and imperfect French, is springing up with the rapidity of Badraoulbadour's palace. It spoils the primitiveness of the people, and gives them ideas below their station. They lose their simple manliness and take tips. They corrupt their autochthonic customs, and drink champagne cider. The modern hotel is a upas-tree, under whose boughs poetry withers. One looks to see the ancient ballads lose their blood and brawn. In time we may expect to find Cornwall producing vers de societe. As thus:-
And shall Trelawney dine?
And shall Trelawney dine?
Then thrice ten thousand Cornish men
Will order in the wine.
In the absence of six-course dinners and newspapers about Home Rule, we have had to fall back upon literature. We borrowed Zola's latest-from the rector,-and read it simultaneously, stealing it from one another. Even the dogs have devoured bits of it. The poodle has taken in most, being French. She is an elegant, tricksy creature, Miss Plachecki by name, but called-for short-"Wopsy." Wopsy's back is arranged in beds like a Dutch garden; she has rosettes of black hair symmetrically disposed about her hind quarters, and her tail is exactly like a mutton cutlet in its frill. She belongs to the Woman of the party. Chum belongs to the Girl. He is a bull-pup, with a frightfully ferocious face, but he never bites unless he wants to hurt you. Girl says she took him to a fashionable photographer's, but the artist refused to pose him. In vain she pointed out that Chum was more paralysed than he; that Chum was trembling all over (I opine 't was at the sight of the actresses' portraits-the young dog!). The photographer steadfastly kept the apparatus between him and the animal, telling Girl a story about a man who owned a bull-dog with a bad memory. The man, coming home late, and entering his sitting-room, was met by an ominous growl in the darkness. Bull-dogs have little smell, and so t
he man was not recognized. He made a movement towards the mantelpiece, where the matches were, to strike a light and convince the dog of its mistake. But unfortunately the dog guarded the mantelpiece, and every move was answered by a ghastly growl. More unfortunately still, the man's bedroom was only approached through the sitting-room, and its door was only approached through the dog. So, for want of a match, the man passed the night like a Peri at the gates of Paradise. At last Girl posed Chum, herself, her draperies constituting a nebulous background; and the artist, walking warily, adjusted his instrument, and the sun which shines alike on saints and bull-pups, painted the squatter's portrait. But, alas! a woeful disappointment was in store. When the proofs arrived, it was found that all that delightful uncouthness of visage which is Chum's chief charm, all that fascinating ferocity which makes him a thing of ugliness and a joy for ever, had vanished-refined away, idealised into a demureness as of domestic tabby, a platitudinarian peacefulness-nay, a sort of beauty! The camera had been so accustomed to actresses that it could no longer work naturally.