The Puppet Show of Memory. Baring Maurice

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СКАЧАТЬ and when you are in church, I will turn you into a frog.” This was said in the schoolroom in London. The schoolroom was on the floor over the nursery. No sooner had Elizabeth made this ominous remark when I ran to the door and howled in a manner which penetrated the whole house from the housemaids’ rooms upstairs to the housekeeper’s room in the basement. Screams and yells startled the whole house. Hilly came rushing from the nursery; Chérie came from her bedroom, where she had been doing some sewing; Dimmock, my mother’s maid, whom we called D., came downstairs, saying: “Well, I never”; Sheppy, the housekeeper, peered upwards from the subterranean housekeeper’s room; and, lastly, my mother came from the drawing-room. The cause of the crisis was explained by me through sobs. “She says” … sob, sob, yell … “that she’s a fairy” … sob, sob … “and that she’ll turn me into a frog” … sob, sob … “when I marry Chérie …” All attempts to calm me were in vain. Elizabeth was then appealed to, and the whole house in chorus said to her, “Say you’re not a fairy.” But Elizabeth became marble-constant. She said, “How can I say I’m not a fairy when I am one?” A statement which I felt to be all too true and well founded. More sobs and yells. Universal indignation against Elizabeth. My paroxysm was merely increased by all the efforts everyone made to soothe me. Elizabeth was cajoled, persuaded, argued with, bribed, threatened, exhorted, blamed, anathematised, entreated, appealed to, implored, but all in vain. She would not budge from her position, which was that she was a fairy.

      The drama proceeded. Nothing stopped the stream of convulsive sobs, the flood of anguish—not all Chérie’s own assurances that the wedding would be allowed to take place.

      Elizabeth was taken downstairs to be reasoned with, and after an hour and a half’s argument, and not before she had been first heavily bribed with promises and then sent to bed, she finally consented to compromise. She said, as a final concession, “I’ll say I’m not a fairy, but I am.” When this concession was wrung from her the whole relieved household rushed up to tell me the good news that Elizabeth had said she was not a fairy. The moment I heard the news my tears ceased, and perfect serenity was restored. But although Elizabeth capitulated, Margaret was firmer, and she continued to mutter (like Galileo) for the rest of the afternoon, “But I am a fairy all the same.”

      Margaret was the exciting element in the schoolroom. She was often naughty, and I remember her looking through the schoolroom window at Coombe, while I was doing lessons with Chérie, and making faces. Chérie said to her one day: “Vous feriez rougir un régiment.” Elizabeth was pleasantly frivolous, and Susan was motherly and sensible, and supposed to be the image of her father, but Margaret was dramatic and imaginative, and invincibly obstinate.

      She knew that for Chérie’s sake I didn’t like admitting that the English had ever defeated the French in battle, so every now and then she would roll out lists of battles fought by the English against the French and won, beginning with Creçy, Poitiers, getting to Agincourt with a crescendo, and ending up in a tremendous climax with Waterloo. To which I used to retort with a battle called Bouvines, won by Philippe Auguste, in some most obscure period over one of the Plantagenet kings, and with Fontenoy. I felt them both to be poor retorts.

      Another invention of Margaret’s was a mysterious Princess called Louiseaunt, who often came to see her, but as it happened always when we were out. If we suddenly came into the room, Margaret would say, “What a pity! Louiseaunt has just been here. She’ll be so sorry to have missed you.” And try as we would, we always just missed Louiseaunt.

      If we went out without Margaret, Louiseaunt was sure to come that day. We constantly just arrived as Louiseaunt had left, and the inability ever to hit off Louiseaunt’s precise visiting hours was a lasting exasperation.

      Another powerful weapon of Margaret’s was recitation. She used to recite in English and in French, and in both languages the effect on me was a purge of pity and terror. I minded most “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” declaimed with melodramatic gesture, and nearly as much a passage from Hernani, beginning—

      “Monts d’Aragon! Galice! Estramadoure!

      Oh! Je porte malheur à tout ce qui m’entoure!”

      which she recited, rolling her eyes in a menacing attitude.

      “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” said with the help of Susan, whose rendering had something reassuringly comfortable and homely about it—Susan couldn’t say her “r’s,” and pronounced them like “w’s”—in contradistinction to Margaret’s sombre and vehement violence, did a little to mitigate the effect, but none the less it frightened me so much that it had to be stopped. Hugo was not yet in the schoolroom then.

      Lessons in London began soon after breakfast. They were conducted by Chérie and by an English governess, Mrs. Christie, who used to arrive in a four-wheeler, always the same one, from Kentish Town, and teach us English, Arithmetic, and Latin. Mrs. Christie was like the pictures of Thackeray, with spectacles, white bandeaux, and a black gown. During lessons she used to knit. She was in permanent mourning, and we knew we must never ask to learn “Casabianca,” as her little boy who had died had learnt it. She used to arrive with a parcel of books from the London Library, done up in a leather strap. She was the first of a long line of teachers who failed to teach me Arithmetic. She used to stay the whole morning, or sometimes only part of it. During lessons she used to have a small collation, a glass of claret, and a water biscuit. She also taught other families.

      At Coombe the schoolroom looked out on the lawn, a long, flat lawn which went down by steps on a lower lawn, at the bottom of which we had our own gardens and where there was a summer-house. I remember sitting in the schoolroom next to Chérie while, with a large knitting needle, she pointed out the words pain and vin written large in a copy-book, with a picture of a bottle of red wine and a picture of a piece of bread, to show what the words meant, while Margaret was copying out Clarence’s dream in a copy-book and murmuring something about skulls, and all the time through the window framed with clematis came the sound, the magic sound of the mowing-machine, the noise of bees, and a smell of summer, tea-roses and of hayfields.

      On certain days of the week Mademoiselle Ida Henry used to come and give us music lessons. Our house was saturated with an atmosphere of music. My mother played the violin and was a fine concertina player, and almost before I could walk I had violin lessons from no less a person than Mr. Ries. Until I was three I was called Strad, and I think my mother cherished the dream that I would be a violinist, but I showed no aptitude.

      My first music lesson I received from Mademoiselle Ida over Stanley Lucas’ music shop in Bond Street. I was alone in London with my mother and father, one November, and I suppose about six. Mademoiselle Ida was very encouraging, and—unduly, as it turned out—optimistic, and said: “Il a des mains faites pour jouer le piano,” and soon my morceau was Diabelli’s duets. While I was learning Diabelli’s duets, Susan was learning a Fantasia by Mozart, which I envied without malice. It had one particular little run in it which I learnt to play with one finger. One day I played this downstairs in the drawing-room. A few days later Mademoiselle Ida came to luncheon, and my mother said: “Play that little bar out of the Mozart to Mademoiselle Ida.” I was aghast, feeling certain, and quite rightly, that Mademoiselle Ida would resent my having encroached on a more advanced morceau, and indeed, as it became clear to her what the bar in question was, she at once said: “Je ne veux pas que tu te mêles des morceaux des autres.” That was what I had feared. My mother was quite unconscious of the solecism that she was committing, and pressed me to play it. Finally I hummed the tune, which satisfied both parties.

      I never liked music lessons then or ever afterwards, but I enjoyed Mademoiselle Ida’s conversation and company almost more than anything. Every word she ever said was treasured. One day she said to Mrs. Christie: “Bonjour, Madame Christé. J’ai bien mal à la tête.” “Je suis très fachée de le СКАЧАТЬ