The Puppet Show of Memory. Baring Maurice
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Je vais partout où le vent me pousse,
Nord ou midi cela m’est égale.
Car d’une mère et d’un père
Je n’ai jamais connu l’amour.”
Another one, less pathetic but more sentimental, was:
“Pourquoi tous les jours, Madeleine,
Vas-tu au bord du ruisseau?
Ce n’est pas, car je l’espère,
Pour te regarder dans l’eau,
‘Mais si,’ répond Madeleine,
Baissant ses beaux yeux d’ébêne.
Je n’y vais pour autre raison.”
I forget the rest, but it said that she looked into the stream to see whether it was true, as people said, that she was beautiful—“pour voir si gent ne ment pas”—and came back satisfied that it was true.
But best of all I liked the ballad:
“En revenant des noces j’étais si fatiguée
Au bord d’un ruisseau je me suis reposée,
L’eau était si claire que je me suis baignée,
Avec une feuille de chêne je me suis essuyée,
Sur la plus haute branche un rossignol chantait,
Chante, beau rossignol, si tu as le cœur gai,
Pour un bouton de rose mon ami s’est fâché,
Je voudrais que la rose fût encore au rosier,”
or words to that effect.
Besides these she taught us all the French singing games: “Savez-vous planter les choux?” “Sur le pont d’Avignon,” and “Qu’est qui passe ici si tard, Compagnons de la Marjolaine?” We used to sing and dance these up and down the passage outside the schoolroom after tea.
Round about Membland were several nests of relations. Six miles off was my mother’s old home Flete, where the Mildmays lived. Uncle Bingham Mildmay married my mother’s sister, Aunt Georgie, and bought Flete; the house, which was old, was said to be falling to pieces, so it was rebuilt, more or less on the old lines, with some of the old structure left intact.
At Pamflete, three miles off, lived my mother’s brother, Uncle Johnny Bulteel, with his wife, Aunt Effie, and thirteen children.
And in the village of Yealmpton, three miles off, also lived my great-aunt Jane who had a sister called Aunt Sister, who, whenever she heard carriage wheels in the drive, used to get under the bed, such was her disinclination to receive guests. I cannot remember Aunt Sister, but I remember Aunt Jane and Uncle Willie Harris, who was either her brother or her husband. He had been present at the battle of Waterloo as a drummer-boy at the age of fifteen. But Aunt Sister’s characteristics had descended to other members of the family, and my mother used to say that when she and her sister were girls my Aunt Georgie had offered her a pound if she would receive some guests instead of herself.
On Sundays we used to go to church at a little church in Noss Mayo until my father built a new church, which is there now.
The service was long, beginning at eleven and lasting till almost one. There was morning prayer, the Litany, the Ante-Communion service, and a long sermon preached by the rector, a charming old man called Mr. Roe, who was not, I fear, a compelling preacher.
When we went to church I was given a picture-book when I was small to read during the sermon, a book with sacred pictures in colours. I was terribly ashamed of this. I would sooner have died than be seen in the pew with this book. It was a large picture-book. So I used every Sunday to lose or hide it just before the service, and find it again afterwards. On Sunday evenings we used sometimes to sing hymns in the schoolroom. The words of the hymns were a great puzzle. For instance, in the hymn, “Thy will be done,” the following verse occurs—I punctuate it as I understood it, reading it, that is to say, according to the tune—
“Renew my will from day to day,
Blend it with Thine, and take away.
All that now makes it hard to say
Thy will be done.”
I thought the blending and the subsequent taking away of what was blent was a kind of trial of faith.
After tea, instead of being read to, we used sometimes to play a delightful round game with counters, called Le Nain Jaune.
Any number of people could play at it, and I especially remember Susan triumphantly playing the winning card and saying:
“Le bon Valet, la bonne Dame, le bon Woi. Je wecommence.”
In September or October, Chérie would go for her holidays. I cannot remember if she went every year, but we had no one instead of her, and she left behind her a series of holiday tasks.
During one of her absences my Aunt M’aimée, another sister of my mother’s, came to stay with us. Aunt M’aimée was married to Uncle Henry Ponsonby, the Queen’s Private Secretary. He came, too, and with them their daughter Betty. Betty had a craze at that time for Sarah Bernhardt, and gave a fine imitation of her as Doña Sol in the last act of Hernani. It was decided we should act this whole scene, with Margaret as Hernani and Aunt M’aimée reading the part of Ruy Gomez, who appears in a domino and mask.
Never had I experienced anything more thrilling. I used to lie on the floor during the rehearsals, and soon I knew the whole act by heart. I thought Betty the greatest genius that ever lived.
When Chérie came back she was rather surprised and not altogether pleased to find I knew the whole of the last act of Hernani by heart. She thought this a little too exciting and grown-up for me, and even for Margaret, but none the less she let me perform the part of Doña Sol one evening after tea in my mother’s bedroom, dressed in a white frock, with Susan in a riding-habit playing the sinister figure of Ruy Gomez. I can see Chérie now, sitting behind a screen, book in hand to prompt me, and shaking with laughter as I piped out in a tremulous and lisping treble the passionate words:
“Il vaudrait mieuxzaller (which I made all one word) au tigre même
Arracher ses petits qu’à moi celui que j’aime.”
Chérie’s return from her holidays was one of the most exciting of events, for she would bring back with her a mass of toys from Giroux and the Paradis des Enfants, and a flood of stories about the people and places and plays she had seen, and the food she had eaten.
One year she brought me back a theatre of puppets. It was called Théâtre français. It had a white proscenium, three scenes and an interior, a Moorish garden by moonlight, and a forest, and a quantity of small puppets suspended by stiff wires and dressed in silk and satin. There was a harlequin, a columbine, a king, a queen, many princesses, a villain scowling beneath black eyebrows, an executioner with a mask, peasants, pastry-cooks, and soldiers with halberds, who would have done honour to the Papal Guard at the Vatican, and some heavily moustached gendarmes. This theatre was a source of ecstasy, and innumerable dramas used to be performed in it. Chérie used also to bring back some delicious cakes called nonnettes, a kind of gingerbread with icing on the top, rolled up in a long paper cylinder.
She also brought baskets of bonbons from Boissier, the kind of basket which had several floors of different kinds of bonbons, fondants on the top in their white frills, then caramels, then chocolates, then fruits confits. All these things confirmed one’s idea that there could be no place like Paris.
In 1878, when I was four years old, another brother was born, Rupert, in August, but he died in October of the same year. He was buried in Revelstoke Church, a church not used any more, and then in ruins except for one aisle, which was roofed in, and provided