as a delassement after the fatigues incident on this great work), when he
saw it, after a month's interval, declared the thing was rubbish, and
massacred Britons, Malays, Dragoons, Artillery and all.
"Hotel de la Terrasse, Rue de Rivoli,
"April 27--May 1, 183-.
"My Dear Pendennis--You said I might write you a line from Paris; and if
you find in my correspondence any valuable hints for the Pall Mall
Gazette, you are welcome to use them gratis. Now I am here, I wonder I
have never been here before, and that I have seen the Dieppe packet a
thousand times at Brighton pier without thinking of going on board her.
We had a rough little passage to Boulogne. We went into action as we
cleared Dover pier--when the first gun was fired, and a stout old lady
was carried off by a steward to the cabin; half a dozen more dropped
immediately, and the crew bustled about, bringing basins for the wounded.
The Colonel smiled as he saw them fall. 'I'm an old sailor,' says he to a
gentleman on board. 'I was coming home, sir, and we had plenty of rough
weather on the voyage, I never thought of being unwell. My boy here, who
made the voyage twelve years ago last May, may have lost his sea-legs;
but for me, sir--' Here a great wave dashed over the three of us; and
would you believe it? in five minutes after, the dear old governor was as
ill as all the rest of the passengers. When we arrived, we went through a
line of ropes to the custom-house, with a crowd of snobs jeering at us on
each side; and then were carried off by a bawling commissioner to an
hotel, where the Colonel, who speaks French beautifully, you know, told
the waiter to get us a petit dejeuner soigne; on which the fellow,
grinning, said, a 'nice fried sole, sir,--nice mutton-chop, sir,' in
regular Temple Bar English; and brought us Harvey sauce with the chops,
and the last Bell's Life to amuse us after our luncheon. I wondered if
all the Frenchmen read Bell's Life, and if all the inns smell so of
brandy-and-water!
"We walked out to see the town, which I dare say you know, and therefore
shan't describe. We saw some good studies of fishwomen with bare legs,
and remarked that the soldiers were very dumpy and small. We were glad
when the time came to set off by the diligence; and having the coupe to
ourselves, made a very comfortable journey to Paris. It was jolly to hear
the postillions crying to their horses, and the bells of the team, and to
feel ourselves really in France. We took in provender at Abbeville and
Amiens, and were comfortably landed here after about six-and-twenty hours
of coaching. Didn't I get up the next morning and have a good walk in the
Tuileries! The chestnuts were out, and the statues all shining, and all
the windows of the palace in a blaze. It looks big enough for the king of
the giants to live in. How grand it is! I like the barbarous splendour of
the architecture, and the ornaments profuse and enormous with which it is
overladen. Think of Louis XVI. with a thousand gentlemen at his back, and
a mob of yelling ruffians in front of him, giving up his crown without a
fight for it; leaving his friends to be butchered, and himself sneaking
into prison! No end of little children were skipping and playing in the
sunshiny walks, with dresses as bright and cheeks as red as the flowers
and roses in the parterres. I couldn't help thinking of Barbaroux and his
bloody pikemen swarming in the gardens, and fancied the Swiss in the
windows yonder; where they were to be slaughtered when the King had
turned his back. What a great man that Carlyle is! I have read the battle
in his History so often, that I knew it before I had seen it. Our windows
look out on the obelisk where the guillotine stood. The Colonel doesn't
admire Carlyle. He says Mrs. Graham's Letters from Paris are excellent,
and we bought Scott's Visit to Paris, and Paris Re-visited, and read them
in the diligence. They are famous good reading; but the Palais Royal is
very much altered since Scott's time: no end of handsome shops; I went
there directly,--the same night we arrived, when the Colonel went to bed.
But there is none of the fun going on which Scott describes. The laquais
de place says Charles X. put an end to it all.
"Next morning the governor had letters to deliver after breakfast, and
left me at the Louvre door. I shall come and live here, I think. I feel
as if I never want to go away. I had not been ten minutes in the place
before I fell in love with the most beautiful creature the world has ever
seen. She was standing silent and majestic in the centre of one of the
rooms of the statue-gallery; and the very first glimpse of her struck one
breathless with the sense of her beauty. I could not see the colour of
her eyes and hair exactly, but the latter is light, and the eyes I should
think are grey. Her complexion is of a beautiful warm marble tinge. She
is not a clever woman, evidently; I do not think she laughs or talks
much--she seems too lazy to do more than smile. She is only beautiful.
This divine creature has lost an arm, which has been cut off at the
shoulder, but she looks none the less lovely for the accident. She maybe
some two-and-thirty years old; and she was born about two thousand years
ago. Her name is the Venus of Milo. O Victrix! O lucky Paris! (I don't
mean this present Lutetia, but Priam's son.) How could he give the apple
to any else but this enslaver--this joy of gods and men? at whose benign
presence the flowers spring up, and the smiling ocean sparkles, and the
soft skies beam with serene light! I wish we might sacrifice. I would
bring a spotless kid, snowy-coated, and a pair of doves and a jar of
honey--yea, honey from Morel's in Piccadilly, thyme-flavoured, narbonian,
and we would acknowledge the Sovereign Loveliness, and adjure the Divine
Aphrodite. Did you ever see my pretty young cousin, Miss Newcome, Sir
Brian's daughter? She has a great look of the huntress Diana. It is
sometimes too proud and too cold for me. The blare of those horns is too
shrill and the rapid pursuit through bush and bramble too daring. O thou
generous Venus! O thou beautiful bountiful calm! At thy soft feet let me
kneel--on cushions of Tyrian purple. Don't show this to Warrington,
please: I never thought when I began that Pegasus was going to run away
with me.
"I wish I had read Greek a little more at school: it's too late at my
age; I shall be nineteen soon, and have got my own business; but when we
return I think I shall try and read it with Cribs. What have I been
doing, spending six months over a picture of sepoys and dragoons cutting
each other's throats? Art ought not to be a fever. It ought to be a calm;
not a screaming bull-fight or a battle of gladiators, but a temple for
placid contemplation, rapt worship, stately rhythmic ceremony, and music
solemn and tender. I shall take down my Snyders and Rubens when I get
home; and turn quietist. To think I have spent weeks in depicting bony
life-guardsmen delivering cut one, or Saint George, and painting black
beggars off a crossing!
"What a grand thing it is to
think of half a mile of pictures at the
Louvre! Not but that there are a score under the old pepper-boxes in
Trafalgar Square as fine as the best here. I don't care for any Raphael
here, as much as our own St. Catharine. There is nothing more grand.
Could the Pyramids of Egypt or the Colossus of Rhodes be greater than our
Sebastian? and for our Bacchus and Ariadne, you cannot beat the best you
know. But if we have fine jewels, here there are whole sets of them:
there are kings and all their splendid courts round about them. J. J. and
I must come and live here. Oh, such portraits of Titian! Oh, such swells
by Vandyke! I'm sure he must have been as fine a gentleman as any he
painted! It's a shame they haven't got a Sir Joshua or two. At a feast of
painters he has a right to a place, and at the high table too. Do you
remember Tom Rogers, of Gandish's? He used to come to my rooms--my other
rooms in the Square. Tom is here with a fine carrotty beard, and a velvet
jacket, cut open at the sleeves, to show that Tom has a shirt. I dare say
it was clean last Sunday. He has not learned French yet, but pretends to
have forgotten English; and promises to introduce me to a set of the
French artists his camarades. There seems to be a scarcity of soap among
these young fellows; and I think I shall cut off my mustachios; only
Warrington will have nothing to laugh at when I come home.
"The Colonel and I went to dine at the Cafe de Paris, and afterwards to
the opera. Ask for huitres de Marenne when you dine here. We dined with a
tremendous French swell, the Vicomte de Florac, officier d'ordonnance to
one of the princes, and son of some old friends of my father's. They are
of very high birth, but very poor. He will be a duke when his cousin, the
Duc d'Ivry, dies. His father is quite old. The vicomte was born in
England. He pointed out to us no end of famous people at the opera--a few
of the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and ever so many of the present people:--M.
Thiers, and Count Mole, and Georges Sand, and Victor Hugo, and Jules
Janin--I forget half their names. And yesterday we went to see his
Colonel's, for their meeting was uncommonly ceremonious and tender. It
was like an elderly Sir Charles Grandison saluting a middle-aged Miss
Byron. And only fancy! the Colonel has been here once before since his
return to England! It must have been last year, when he was away for ten
days, whilst I was painting that rubbishing picture of the Black Prince
waiting on King John. Madame de F. is a very grand lady, and must have
been a great beauty in her time. There are two pictures by Gerard in her
salon--of her and M. de Florac. M. de Florac, old swell, powder, thick
eyebrows, hooked nose; no end of stars, ribbons, and embroidery. Madame
also in the dress of the Empire--pensive, beautiful, black velvet, and a
look something like my cousin's. She wore a little old-fashioned brooch
yesterday, and said, 'Voila, la reconnoissez-vous? Last year when you
were here, it was in the country;' and she smiled at him: and the dear
old boy gave a sort of groan and dropped his head in his hand. I know
what it is. I've gone through it myself. I kept for six months an absurd
ribbon of that infernal little flirt Fanny Freeman. Don't you remember
how angry I was when you abused her?
"'Your father and I knew each other when we were children, my friend,'
the Countess said to me (in the sweetest French accent). He was looking
into the garden of the house where they live, in the Rue Saint Dominique.
'You must come and see me often, always. You remind me of him,' and she
added, with a very sweet kind smile, 'Do you like best to think that he
was better-looking than you, or that you excel him?' I said I should like
to be like him. But who is? There are cleverer fellows, I dare say; but
where is there such a good one? I wonder whether he was very fond of
Madame de Florac? The old Count does not show. He is quite old, and wears
a pigtail. We saw it bobbing over his garden chair. He lets the upper
part of his house; Major-General the Honourable Zeno F. Pokey, of
Cincinnati, U.S., lives in it. We saw Mrs. Pokey's carriage in the court,
and her footmen smoking cigars there; a tottering old man with feeble
legs, as old as old Count de Florac, seemed to be the only domestic who
waited on the family below.
"Madame de Florac and my father talked about my profession. The Countess
said it was a belle carriere. The Colonel said it was better than the
army. 'Ah oui, monsieur,' says she very sadly. And then he said, 'that
presently I should very likely come to study at Paris, when he knew there
would be a kind friend to watch over son garcon.'
"'But you will be here to watch over him yourself, mon ami?' says the
French lady.
"Father shook his head. 'I shall very probably have to go back to India,'
he said. 'My furlough is expired. I am now taking my extra leave. If I
can get my promotion, I need not return. Without that I cannot afford to
live in Europe. But my absence in all probability will be but very
short,' he said. 'And Clive is old enough now to go on without me.'
"Is this the reason why father has been so gloomy for some months past? I
thought it might have been some of my follies which made him
uncomfortable; and you know I have been trying my best to amend--I have
not half such a tailor's bill this year as last. I owe scarcely anything.
I have paid off Moss every halfpenny for his confounded rings and
gimcracks. I asked father about this melancholy news as we walked away
from Madame de Florac.
"He is not near so rich as we thought. Since he has been at home he says
he has spent greatly more than his income, and is quite angry at his own
extravagance. At first he thought he might have retired from the army
altogether; but after three years at home, he finds he cannot live upon
his income. When he gets his promotion as full Colonel, he will be
entitled to a thousand a year; that, and what he has invested in India,
and a little in this country, will be plenty for both of us. He never
seems to think of my making money by my profession. Why, suppose I sell
the 'Battle of Assaye' for 500 pounds? that will be enough to carry me on
ever so long, without dipping into the purse of the dear old father.
"The Viscount de Florac called to dine with us. The Colonel said he did
not care about going out: and so the Viscount and I went together. Trois
Freres Provencaux--he ordered the dinner and of course I paid. Then we
went to a little theatre, and he took me behind the scenes--such a queer
petit Tambour,' in which she sings a famous song with a drum. He asked
her and several literary fellows to supper at the Cafe Anglais. And I
came home ever so late, and lost twenty napoleons at a game called
bouillotte. It was all the change out of a twenty-pound note which dear
old Binnie gave me before we set out, with a quotation out of Horace, you
know, about Neque tu choreas sperne
puer. O me! how guilty I felt as I
walked home at ever so much o'clock to the Hotel de la Terrasse, and
sneaked into our apartment! But the Colonel was sound asleep. His dear
old boots stood sentries at his bedroom door, and I slunk into mine as
silently as I could.
"P.S.--Wednesday.--There's just one scrap of paper left. I have got J.
J.'s letter. He has been to the private view of the Academy (so that his
own picture is in), and the 'Battle of Assaye' is refused. Smee told him
it was too big. I dare say it's very bad. I'm glad I'm away, and the
fellows are not condoling with me.
"Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the
Colonel's horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg, and I'm
afraid the grey's. Please look at his legs; we can't understand John's
report of them. He, I mean Mr. B., was going to Scotland to see his
relations when the accident happened. You know he has always been going
to Scotland to see his relations. He makes light of the business, and
says the Colonel is not to think of coming to him: and I don't want to go
back just yet, to see all the fellows from Gandish's and the Life
Academy, and have them grinning at my misfortune.
"The governor would send his regards, I dare say, but he is out, and I am
always yours affectionately, Clive Newcome."
"P.S.--He tipped me himself this morning; isn't he a kind, dear old
fellow?"
Arthur Pendennis, Esq., to Clive Newcome, Esq.
"'Pall Mall Gazette,' Journal of Politics, Literature and Fashion, 225
Catherine Street, Strand,
"Dear Clive--I regret very much for Fred Bayham's sake (who has lately
taken the responsible office of Fine Arts Critic for the P. G.) that your
extensive picture of the 'Battle of Assaye' has not found a place in the
Royal Academy Exhibition. F. B. is at least fifteen shillings out of
pocket by its rejection, as he had prepared a flaming eulogium of your
work, which of course is so much waste paper in consequence of this
calamity. Never mind. Courage, my son. The Duke of Wellington you know
was best back at Seringapatam before he succeeded at Assaye. I hope you
will fight other battles, and that fortune in future years will be more
favourable to you. The town does not talk very much of your discomfiture.
You see the parliamentary debates are very interesting just now, and
somehow the 'Battle of Assaye' did not seem to excite the public mind.
"I have been to Fitzroy Square; both to the stables and the house. The
Houyhnhnm's legs are very well; the horse slipped on his side and not on
his knees, and has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie; his
ankle is much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many days,
perhaps weeks. But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher, and
endures the evils of life with much equanimity. His sister has come to
him. I don't know whether that may be considered as a consolation of his
evil or an aggravation of it. You know he uses the sarcastic method in
his talk, and it was difficult to understand from him whether he was
pleased or bored by the embraces of his relative. She was an infant when
he last beheld her, on his departure to India. She is now (to speak with
respect) a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow; having, seemingly,
recovered from her grief at the death of her husband, Captain Mackenzie
in the West Indies. Mr. Binnie was just on the point of visiting his
relatives, who reside at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, when he met with
the fatal accident which prevented his visit to his native shores. His
account of his misfortune and his lonely condition was so pathetic that
Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter put themselves into the Edinburgh
steamer, and rushed to console his sofa. They occupy your bedroom and
sitting-room, which latter Mrs. Mackenzie says no longer smells of