The Puppet Show of Memory. Baring Maurice
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poetry we read, not understanding how by any stretch of the imagination it could be called poetry, as Shakespeare blank verse seemed to be a complicated form of prose full of uncouth words; what we learnt being Clarence’s dream, King Henry IV.’s battle speeches, which made me most uncomfortable for Chérie’s sake by their anti-French tone, and passages from Childe Harold, which I also found difficult to understand. The only poems I remember liking, which were revealed by Mrs. Christie, were Milton’s L’Allegro and Penseroso, which I copied out in a book as soon as I could write. One day she read me out Gray’s Elegy and I was greatly impressed. “That is,” she said, “the most beautiful Elegy in the language.” “Is it the most beautiful poem in the language?” I asked, rather disappointed at the qualification, and hankering for an absolute judgment. “It’s the most beautiful Elegy in the language,” she said, and I had to be content with that.
I don’t want to give the impression that we, any of us, disliked Mrs. Christie’s lessons in English literature. On the contrary, we enjoyed them, and I am grateful for them till this day. She taught us nothing soppy nor second-rate. The piece of her repertoire I most enjoyed, almost best, was a fable by Gay called “The Fox at the Point of Death.” She was always willing to explain things, and took for granted that when we didn’t ask we knew. This was not always the case. One of the pieces I learnt by heart was Shelley’s “Arethusa,” the sound of which fascinated me. But I had not the remotest idea that it was about a river. The poem begins, as it will be remembered:
“Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains.”
For years I thought “Acroceraunian” was a kind of pin-cushion.
Mrs. Christie had a passion for Sir Walter Scott and for the Waverley Novels. “You can’t help,” she said, “liking any King of England that Sir Walter Scott has written about.” She instilled into us a longing to read Sir Walter Scott by promising that we should read them when we were older. One of the most interesting discussions to me was that between Chérie and Mrs. Christie as to what English books the girls should be allowed to read in the country. Mrs. Christie told, to illustrate a point, the following story. A French lady had once come across a French translation of an English novel, and seeing it was an English novel had at once given it to her daughter to read, as she said, of course, any English novel was fit for the jeune personne. The novel was called Les Papillons de Nuit. “And what do you think that was?” said Mrs. Christie. “Moths, by Ouida!”
The first poem that really moved me was not shown me by Mrs. Christie, but by Mantle, the maid who looked after the girls. It was Mrs. Hemans’: “Oh, call my Brother back to me, I cannot play alone.” This poem made me sob. I still think it is a beautiful and profoundly moving poem. Besides English, Mrs. Christie used to teach us Latin. I had my first Latin lesson the day after my eighth birthday. This is how it began: “Supposing,” said Mrs. Christie, “you knocked at the door and the person inside said, ‘Who’s there?’ What would you say?” I thought a little, and then half-unconsciously said, “I.” “Then,” said Mrs. Christie, “that shows you have a natural gift for grammar.” She explained that I ought reasonably to have said “Me.” Why I said “I,” I cannot think. I had no notion what her question was aiming at, and I feel certain I should have said “Me” in real life. The good grammar was quite unintentional.
As for arithmetic, it was an unmixed pain, and there was an arithmetic book called Ibbister which represented to me the final expression of what was loathsome. One day in a passion with Chérie I searched my mind for the most scathing insult I could think of, and then cried out, “Vieille Ibbister.”
I learnt to read very quickly, in French first. In the nursery Grace and Annie read me Grimm’s Fairy Tales till they were hoarse, and as soon as I could read myself I devoured any book of fairy-tales within reach, and a great many other books; but I was not precocious in reading, and found grown-up books impossible to understand. One of my favourite books later was The Crofton Boys, which Mrs. Christie gave me on 6th November 1883, as a “prize for successful card-playing.” It is very difficult for me to understand now how a child could have enjoyed the intensely sermonising tone of this book, but I certainly did enjoy it.
I remember another book called Romance, or Chivalry and Romance. In it there was a story of a damsel who was really a fairy, and a bad fairy at that, who went into a cathedral in the guise of a beautiful princess, and when the bell rang at the Elevation of the Host, changed into her true shape and vanished. I consulted Mrs. Christie as to what the Elevation of the Host meant, and she gave me a clear account of what Transubstantiation meant, and she told me about Henry VIII., the Defender of the Faith, and the Reformation, and made no comment on the truth or untruth of the dogma. Transubstantiation seemed to me the most natural thing in the world, as it always does to children, and I privately made up my mind that on that point the Reformers must have been mistaken. One day Chérie said for every devoir I did, and for every time I wasn’t naughty, I should be given a counter, and if I got twenty counters in three days I should get a prize. I got the twenty counters and sallied off to Hatchard’s to get the prize. I chose a book called The Prince of the Hundred Soups because of its cover. It was by Vernon Lee, an Italian puppet-show in narrative, about a Doge who had to eat a particular kind of soup every day for a hundred days. It is a delightful story, and I revelled in it. On the title-page it was said that the book was by the author of Belcaro. I resolved to get Belcaro some day; Belcaro sounded a most promising name, rich in possible romance and adventure, and I saved up my money for the purpose. When, after weeks, I had amassed the necessary six shillings, I went back to Hatchard’s and bought Belcaro. Alas, it was an æsthetic treatise of the stiffest and driest and most grown-up kind. Years afterwards I told Vernon Lee this story, and she promised to write me another story instead of Belcaro, like The Prince of the Hundred Soups. The first book I read to myself was Alice in Wonderland, which John gave to me. Another book I remember enjoying very much was The King of the Golden River, by Ruskin.
I enjoyed my French lessons infinitely more than my English ones. French poetry seemed to be the real thing, quite different from the prosaic English blank verse, except La Fontaine’s Fables, which, although sometimes amusing, seemed to be almost as prosy as Shakespeare. They had to be learnt by heart, nevertheless. They seemed to be in the same relation to other poems, Victor Hugo’s “Napoléon II.” and “Dans L’Alcove sombre,” which I thought quite enchanting, as meat was to pudding at luncheon, and I was not allowed to indulge in poetry until I had done my fable, but not without much argument. I sometimes overbore Chérie’s will, but she more often got her way by saying: “Tu as toujours voulu écrire avec un stylo avant de savoir écrire avec une plume.” I learnt a great many French poems by heart, and made sometimes startling use of the vocabulary. One day at luncheon I said to Chérie before the assembled company: “Chérie, comme ton front est nubile!” the word nubile having been applied by the poet, Casimir de la Vigne, to Joan of Arc.
The first French poem which really fired my imagination was a passage from Les Enfants d’Édouard, a play by the same poet, in which one of the little princes tells a dream, which Margaret used to recite in bloodcurdling tones, and his brother, the Duke of York, answers lyrically something about the sunset on the Thames.[1] Those lines fired my imagination as nothing else did. We once acted a scene from this play, Margaret and I playing the two brothers, and Susan the tearful and widowed queen and mother, and Hugo as a beefeater, who had to bawl at the top of his voice: “Reine, retirez-vous!” when the queen’s sobs became excessive, and indeed in Susan’s rendering there was nothing wanting in the way of sobs, as she was a facile weeper, and Margaret used to call her “Madame la Pluie.” Indeed there was a legend in the schoolroom that the decline of Louis XIV., King of France, moved her to tears, and being asked why she was crying, she sobbed out the words: “la vieillesse du grand Woi.”
As far back as I remember we used to act plays in French. The first one performed in the back drawing-room in Charles Street was called Comme on fait son