The Puppet Show of Memory. Baring Maurice
Читать онлайн книгу.
saw it, and when I described the great beauty and the wonderful goodness of Mademoiselle Tusini, she was not as enthusiastically sympathetic as I could have wished.
There were a great many French children at Contrexéville, and I was allowed to join in their games. There was a charming old curé who I made friends with in the village, and his church was the first Catholic church I ever entered.
My mother and father used to go to the Casino play every night. I was allowed to go once or twice, as Mademoiselle Tusini had threatened to strike if I left Contrexéville without seeing her act, so I was taken to Monsieur Choufleury restera chez lui, a harmless farce, which is, I believe, often acted by amateurs.
We stayed there three weeks, and I left in sorrow and tears. We went on for a Nachkur to a place in the Vosges called Géradmer, which is near a lake. One day we drove to a place called the Schlucht, and saw the stone marking the frontier into Alsace, which was, of course, Germany. It was suggested that we should cross over, but I, mindful of Chérie, refused to set foot on the stolen and violated territory.
On the way back we stayed a day and night in Paris, and bought presents for all those at home. In the evening we went to the Théâtre français and saw no less an actor than Delaunay in Musset’s play, On ne badine pas avec l’Amour. Delaunay had a voice like silver, and his diction on the stage was incomparable. I remember Count Benckendorff once saying about him that whereas one often bewailed the failure of an actor to look the part of a grand seigneur, when one saw Delaunay one wished anyone off the stage could be half as distinguished as he was on the stage.
My father took me to the Louvre and showed me the Mona Lisa and Watteau’s large picture of a Pierrot: “Gilles” and the Galérie d’Apollon, and late in the afternoon we drove to the Bois de Boulogne.
Chérie had always told us of the Magasin du Louvre, where as children went out they were given, as George, in the poem, when he had been as good as gold, an immense balloon. This balloon had always been one of my dreams, and we went there, and the reality was fully up to all expectations.
We bought some nonnettes in the Rue St. Honoré and a great many toys at the Paradis des Enfants.
The next time I went to Contrexéville I was at school. I wore an Eton jacket and a top hat in Paris; this created a sensation. A man said to me in the Rue de Rivoli, “Monsieur a son Gibus.” I also remember receiving a wonderful welcome in the Galeries.
With the end of the first visit to Contrexéville I will end this chapter, for it was the end of a chapter of life, the happiest and most wonderful chapter of all. New gates were opened; but the gate on the fairyland of childhood was shut, and for ever afterwards one could only look through the bars, but never more be a free and lawful citizen of that enchanted country, where life was like a fairy-tale that seemed almost too good to be true, and yet so endlessly long and so infinitely happy that it seemed as if it must last for ever.
CHAPTER V
SCHOOL
I went to school in September 1884. On the 7th of September John came of age, and we had a large party in the house and a banquet for the tenants in the tennis court, at which I had to stand up on a chair and make a speech returning thanks for the younger members of the family. I travelled up to London with my mother and Mr. Walter Durnford, and was given Frank Fairleigh to read in the train, but it was too grown-up for me, and I only pretended to read it. We stayed a night in Charles Street. I was given a brown leather dispatch case with my name stamped on it and a framed photograph of my father and mother and of Membland, and a good stock of writing-paper, and the next afternoon we started for my school, which was near Ascot. I didn’t cry either on leaving Membland or at any moment on the day I was taken to school.
We arrived about tea-time. The school was a red brick building on the top of the hill, north of Ascot Station, and looking towards the station, situated among pine trees. The building is there now and is a girls’ school. We were shown into a drawing-room where the Headmaster and his wife received us with a dreadful geniality. There was a small aquarium in the room with some goldfish in it. The furniture was covered with black-and-yellow cretonne, and there were some low ebony bookcases and a great many knick-knacks. Another parent was there with a small and pale-looking little boy called Arbuthnot, who was the picture of misery, and well he might look miserable, as I saw at a glance that he was wearing a made-up sailor’s tie. Two days later the machinery inside this tie was a valuable asset in another boy’s collection. Conversation was kept up hectically until tea was over. They talked of a common friend, Lady Sarah Spencer. “What a charming woman she is!” said the Headmaster. How sensible he seemed to charm! How impervious to all amenities he revealed himself to be later! Then my mother said good-bye to him, and we were taken upstairs by the matron to see my cubicle, a little room with pitch-pine walls, partitioned off from the next cubicle by a thin wooden partition that did not reach the ceiling, so that you could talk to the boy in the next cubicle. Boys were not allowed to go into each other’s cubicles. We hung my solitary picture up, and my mother interviewed the matron, Mrs. Otway, in her room and gave her a pound as she went away; then we went out into the garden for a moment. My mother said good-bye to me and left me alone. I wandered about the garden, which was not a garden but grass hill leading down to a cricket-field. Half-way down the hill was a gymnasium, and a high wooden erection with steps. I wondered what it was for. The boys had not yet arrived. Two boys presently appeared on the scene; they looked at me, but took no great notice. Then after a little time one of them approached me, holding in his hand a small pebble surrounded with cotton-wool, and asked me if I would like a cuckoo’s egg. I did not know whether I was supposed to pretend that I thought it was a real egg or not. It was so unmistakably a stone. I smiled and said nothing. Presently a Chinese gong sounded somewhere out of doors. The two boys ran into the house. I followed them. On the ground floor of the house there was a large hall with a table running down it, a fireplace at one end, and at the other end an arch opening on to the staircase draped with red curtains with black fleur-de-lys stamped on them. There were windows on one side of the room and a cupboard with books in on the other. This hall was now full of boys talking and laughing. Nobody took the slightest notice of me. They then trooped through a passage into the dining-room, a large room with tables round three sides of it and a small square table in the middle where the Headmaster, his wife, and one of the other masters sat. We sat down. I was placed nearly at the end of the last table. More boys—those of the first division, who were a race apart—came in from another door. Then the Headmaster entered, rapped on his table with a knife, and said grace. We had tea; large thick slabs of bread and butter, with the butter spread very thinly over them.
Soon after tea we went to bed, and I dreamt I was at Membland, and woke up to find I was in a strange place. The boy in the cubicle next to mine was called Hope. He was in the second division. In another cubicle opposite to mine there was a boy in the first division called Worthington. One could talk to them, and they were both of them friendly.
The next morning after breakfast I was placed in the fourth division for Latin and English, and the fourth set for Mathematics and French, and had my first lesson in Mathematics. The first thing the master did was to take a high three-legged stool from a corner and exhibit it to us. It had a very narrow seat. It was a rickety stool. “This,” he said, “is the stool of penitence. I hope none of you will have to stand on it.” Then some figures were written down on the blackboard, and a sum in short division was set, which I at once got wrong. In fact, I couldn’t do it at all. The master came and sat down by my side, and said: “You’re trembling.” So I was. He corrected the mistakes and went on to something else. He was terrifying to look at, I thought, but perhaps not as frightening as he appeared to be. I was a little bit reassured. Later in the day we had a French lesson. To my surprise I saw he knew but little French, and read out the first page of the elementary accidence, pronouncing the French words as though they were English ones.
After luncheon, we played prisoner’s