The Martian: A Novel

I left school also – with a mixture of hope and elation, and yet the most poignant regret.

I can hardly find words to express the gratitude and affection I felt for Mérovée Brossard when I bade him farewell.

Except his father before him, he was the best and finest Frenchman I ever knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to any country in the world.

I corresponded with him regularly for a few years, and so did Barty; and then our letters grew fewer and farther between, and finally left off altogether – as nearly always happens in such cases, I think. And I never saw him again; for when he broke up the school he went to his own province in the southeast, and lived there till twenty years ago, when he died – unmarried, I believe.

Then there was Monsieur Bonzig, and Mlle. Marceline, and others – and three or four boys with whom both Barty and I were on terms of warm and intimate friendship. None of these boys that I know of have risen to any world‐wide fame; and, oddly enough, none of them have ever given sign of life to Barty Josselin, who is just as famous in France for his French literary work as on this side of the Channel for all he has done in English. He towers just as much there as here; and this double eminence now dominates the entire globe, and we are beginning at last to realize everywhere that this bright luminary in our firmament is no planet, like Mars or Jupiter, but, like Sirius, a sun.

Yet never a line from an old comrade in that school where he lived for four years and was so strangely popular – and which he so filled with his extraordinary personality!

So much for Barty Josselin's school life and mine. I fear I may have dwelt on them at too great a length. No period of time has ever been for me so bright and happy as those seven years I spent at the Institution F. Brossard – especially the four years I spent there with Barty Josselin. The older I get, the more I love to recall the trivial little incidents that made for us both the sum of existence in those happy days.

La chasse aux souvenirs d'enfance! what better sport can there be, or more bloodless, at my time of life?

And all the lonely pathetic pains and pleasures of it, now that he is gone!

The winter twilight has just set in – "betwixt dog and wolf." I wander alone (but for Barty's old mastiff, who follows me willy‐nilly) in the woods and lanes that surround Marsfield on the Thames, the picturesque abode of the Josselins.

Darker and darker it grows. I no longer make out the familiar trees and hedges, and forget how cold it is and how dreary.

"Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit —Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées:Triste – et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."

(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)

It's really far away I am – across the sea; across the years, O Posthumus! in a sunny play‐ground that has been built over long ago, or overgrown with lawns and flower‐beds and costly shrubs.

Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgotten – a brand‐new old remembrance – a kind of will‐o'‐the‐wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs, into the big cheerful music‐room like a studio – ruddy and bright with the huge log‐fire opposite the large window. All is on an ample scale at Marsfield, people and things! and I! sixteen stone, good Lord!

How often that window has been my beacon on dark nights! I used to watch for it from the train – a landmark in a land of milk and honey – the kindliest light that ever led me yet on earth.

I sit me down in my own particular chimney‐corner, in my own cane‐bottomed chair by the fender, and stare at the blaze with my friend the mastiff. An old war‐battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and makes friends too. There goes my funny little French remembrance, trying to fly up the chimney like a burnt love‐letter…

Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe in black, brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I like it. A well‐grown little son of hers, a very Ganymede, beau comme le jour, brings me a cigarette, and insists on lighting it for me himself. I like that too.

Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we call her – though there is no such word that I know of – goes to the piano and sings little French songs of forty, fifty years ago – songs that she has learnt from her dear papa.

Heavens! what a voice! and how like his, but for the difference of sex and her long and careful training (which he never had); and the accent, how perfect!

Then suddenly:

"À Saint‐Blaize, à la Zuecca …Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise!À Saint‐Blaize, à la Zuecca …Nous étions, nous étions bien là!Mais de vous en souvenirPrendrez‐vous la peine?Mais de vous en souvenir,Et d'y revenir?À Saint‐Blaize, à la Zuecca …Vivre et mourir là!"

So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the richest, sweetest voice I know. And behold! at last I have caught my little French remembrance, just as the lamps are being lit – and I transfix it with my pen and write it down…

And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fête de St.‐Cloud – all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and doesn't concern Barty in the least; for it so happened that Barty wasn't there!

Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I bade adieu forever to our happy school life – and for a few years to our beloved Paris – and for many years to our close intimacy of every hour in the day.

I remember spending two or three afternoons with him at the great exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went on a visit to his grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire – and happy afternoons they were! and we made the most of them. We saw all there was to be seen there, I think; and found ourselves always drifting back to the "Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which Barty's admiration was boundless.

And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite deplorable by contrast – especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight‐errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget can so eloquently describe!

My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the Vougeot‐Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.

My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities, Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a great dislike to business —

and so had I; from different motives, I fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science – a passion that had been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in.

Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College, close by – in October, 1851 – and studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have pleased him even more.

At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately.

Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or the society we severally frequented.

I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi‐grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls – beautiful female faces – the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were also foils, boxing‐gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice a week, and was made much of – even by my father, who thoroughly disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.

My father was much away – in Paris and Dijon – and Barty made rain and fine weather in our dull abode, to use a French expression —il y faisait la pluie et le beau temps. That is, it rained there when he was away, and he brought the fine weather with him; and we spoke French all round.

The greatest pleasure I could have was to breakfast with Barty in St. James's Street on Sunday mornings, when he was not serving his Queen and country – either alone with him or with two or three of his friends – mostly young carpet warriors like himself; and very charming young fellows they were. I have always been fond of warriors, young or old, and of whatever rank, and wish to goodness I had been a warrior myself. I feel sure I should have made a fairly good one!

Then we would spend an hour or two in athletic exercises and smoke many pipes. And after this, in the summer, we would walk in Kensington Gardens and see the Rank and Fashion. In those days the Rank and Fashion were not above showing themselves in the Kensington Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, crossing the Serpentine Bridge again and again between Prince's Gate and Bayswater.

Then for dinner we went to some pleasant foreign pot‐house in or near Leicester Square, where they spoke French – and ate and drank it! – and then back again to his rooms. Sometimes we would be alone, which I liked best: we would read and smoke and be happy; or he would sketch, or pick out accompaniments on his guitar; often not exchanging a word, but with a delightful sense of close companionship which silence almost intensified.

Sometimes we were in very jolly company: more warriors; young Robson, the actor who became so famous; a big negro pugilist, called Snowdrop; two medical students from St. George's Hospital, who boxed well and were capital fellows; and an academy art student, who died a Royal Academician, and who did not approve of Barty's mural decorations and laughed at the colored lithographs; and many others of all sorts. There used to be much turf talk, and sometimes a little card‐playing and mild gambling – but Barty's tastes did not lie that way.

His idea of a pleasant evening was putting on the gloves with Snowdrop, or any one else who chose – or fencing – or else making music; or being funny in any way one could; and for this he had quite a special gift: he had sudden droll inspirations that made one absolutely hysterical – mere things of suggestive look or sound or gesture, reminding one of Robson himself, but quite original; absolute senseless rot and drivel, but still it made one laugh till one's sides ached. And he never failed of success in achieving this.

Among the dullest and gravest of us, and even some of the most high‐minded, there is often a latent longing for this kind of happy idiotic fooling, and a grateful fondness for those who can supply it without effort and who delight in doing so. Barty was the precursor of the Arthur Robertses and Fred Leslies and Dan Lenos of our day, although he developed in quite another direction!

Then of a sudden he would sing some little twopenny love‐ballad or sentimental nigger melody so touchingly that one had the lump in the throat; poor Snowdrop would weep by spoonfuls!

By‐the‐way, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm mixing things up – confusing Sundays and week‐days; of course our Sunday evenings were quiet and respectable, and I much preferred them when he and I were alone; he was then another person altogether – a thoughtful and intelligent young Frenchman, who loved reading poetry aloud or being read to; especially English poetry – Byron! He was faithful to his "Don Juan," his Hebrew melodies – his "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea." We knew them all by heart, or nearly so, and yet we read them still; and Victor Hugo and Lamartine, and dear Alfred de Musset…

And one day I discovered another Alfred who wrote verses – Alfred the Great, as we called him – one Alfred Tennyson, who had written a certain poem, among others, called "In Memoriam" – which I carried off to Barty's and read out aloud one wet Sunday evening, and the Sunday evening after, and other Sunday evenings; and other poems by the same hand: "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Lotos‐Eaters," "The Lady of Shalott" – and the chord of Byron passed in music out of sight.

Then Shelley dawned upon us, and John Keats, and Wordsworth – and our Sunday evenings were of a happiness to be remembered forever; at least they were so to me!

If Barty Josselin were on duty on the Sabbath, it was a blank day for Robert Maurice. For it was not very lively at home – especially when my father was there. He was the best and kindest man that ever lived, but his businesslike seriousness about this world, and his anxiety about the next, and his Scotch Sabbatarianism, were deadly depressing; combined with the aspect of London on the Lord's day – London east of Russell Square! Oh, Paris … Paris … and the yellow omnibus that took us both there together, Barty and me, at eight on a Sunday morning in May or June, and didn't bring us back to school till fourteen hours later!

I shall never forget one gloomy wintry Sunday – somewhere in 1854 or 5, if I'm not mistaken, towards the end of Barty's career as a Guardsman.

Twice after lunch I had called at Barty's, who was to have been on duty in barracks or at the Tower that morning; he had not come back; I called for him at his club, but he hadn't been there either – and I turned my face eastward and homeward with a sickening sense of desolate ennui and deep disgust of London for which I could find no terms that are fit for publication!

And this was not lessened by the bitter reproaches I made myself for being such a selfish and unworthy son and brother. It was precious dull at home for my mother and sister – and my place was there.

They were just lighting the lamps as I got to the arcade in the Quadrant – and there I ran against the cheerful Barty. Joy! what a change in the aspect of everything! It rained light! He pulled a new book out of his pocket, which he had just borrowed from some fair lady – and showed it to me. It was called Maud.

We dined at Pergolese's, in Rupert Street – and went back to Barty's – and read the lovely poem out loud, taking it by turns; and that is the most delightful recollection I have since I left the Institution F. Brossard!

Occasionally I dined with him "on guard" at St. James's Palace – and well I could understand all the attractions of his life, so different from mine, and see what a good fellow he was to come so often to Brunswick Square, and seem so happy with us.

The reader will conclude that I was a kind of over‐affectionate pestering dull dog, who made this brilliant youth's life a burden to him. It was really not so; we had very many tastes in common; and with all his various temptations, he had a singularly constant and affectionate nature – and was of a Frenchness that made French thought and talk and commune almost a daily necessity. We nearly always spoke French when together alone, or with my mother and sister. It would have seemed almost unnatural not to have done so.

I always feel a special tenderness towards young people whose lives have been such that those two languages are exactly the same to them. It means so many things to me. It doubles them in my estimation, and I seem to understand them through and through.

Nor did he seem to care much for the smart society of which he saw so much; perhaps the bar sinister may have made him feel less at his ease in general society than among his intimates and old friends. I feel sure he took this to heart more than any one would have thought possible from his careless manner.

He only once alluded directly to this when we were together. I was speaking to him of the enviable brilliancy of his lot. He looked at me pensively for a minute or two, and said, in English:

"You've got a kink in your nose, Bob – if it weren't for that you'd be a deuced good‐looking fellow – like me; but you ain't."

"Thanks – anything else?" said I.

"Well, I've got a kink in my birth, you see – and that's as big a kill‐joy as I know. I hate it!"

It was hard luck. He would have made such a splendid Marquis of Whitby! and done such honor to the proud old family motto:

"Roy ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis!"

Instead of which he got himself a signet‐ring, and on it he caused to be engraved a zero within a naught, and round them:

"Rohan ne puis, roi ne daigne. Rien ne suis!"

Soon it became pretty evident that a subtle change was being wrought in him.

He had quite lost his power of feeling the north, and missed it dreadfully; he could no longer turn his back‐somersault with ease and safety; he had overcome his loathing for meat, and also his dislike for sport – he had, indeed, become a very good shot.

But he could still hear and see and smell with all the keenness of a young animal or a savage. And that must have made his sense of being alive very much more vivid than is the case with other mortals.

He had also corrected his quick impulsive tendency to slap faces that were an inch or two higher up than his own. He didn't often come across one, for one thing – then it would not have been considered "good form" in her Majesty's Household Brigade.

When he was a boy, as the reader may recollect, he was fond of drawing lovely female profiles with black hair and an immense black eye, and gazing at them as he smoked a cigarette and listened to pretty, light music. He developed a most ardent admiration for female beauty, and mixed more and more in worldly and fashionable circles (of which I saw nothing whatever); circles where the heavenly gift of beauty is made more of, perhaps, than is quite good for its possessors, whether female or male.

He was himself of a personal beauty so exceptional that incredible temptations came his way. Aristocratic people all over the world make great allowance for beauty‐born frailties that would spell ruin and everlasting disgrace for women of the class to which it is my privilege to belong.

Barty, of course, did not confide his love‐adventures to me; in this he was no Frenchman. But I saw quite enough to know he was more pursued than pursuing; and what a pursuer, to a man built like that! no innocent, impulsive young girl, no simple maiden in her flower – no Elaine.

But a magnificent full‐blown peeress, who knew her own mind and had nothing to fear, for her husband was no better than herself. But for that, a Guinevere and Vivien rolled into one, plus Messalina!

Nor was she the only light o' love; there are many naughty "grandes dames de par le monde" whose easy virtue fits them like a silk stocking, and who live and love pretty much as they please without loss of caste, so long as they keep clear of any open scandal. It is one of the privileges of high rank.

Then there were the ladies gay, frankly of the half‐world, these – laughter‐loving hetæræ, with perilously soft hearts for such as Barty Josselin! There was even poor, listless, lazy, languid Jenny, "Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea!"

His heart was never touched – of that I feel sure; and he was not vain of these triumphs; but he was a very reckless youth, a kind of young John Churchill before Sarah Jennings took him in hand – absolutely non‐moral about such things, rather than immoral.

He grew to be a quite notorious young man about town; and, most unfortunately for him, Lord (and even Lady) Archibald Rohan were so fond of him, and so proud, and so amiably non‐moral themselves, that he was left to go as he might.

He also developed some very rowdy tastes indeed – and so did I!

It was the fashion for our golden youth in the fifties to do so. Every night in the Haymarket there was a kind of noisy saturnalia, in which golden youths joined hands with youths who were by no means golden, to give much trouble to the police, and fill the pockets of the keepers of night‐houses – "Bob Croft's," "Kate Hamilton's," "the Piccadilly Saloon," and other haunts equally well pulled down and forgotten. It was good, in these regions, to be young and big and strong like Barty and me, and well versed in the "handling of one's daddles." I suppose London was the only great city in the world where such things could be. I am afraid that many strange people of both sexes called us Bob and Barty; people the mere sight or hearing of whom would have given my poor dear father fits!

Then there was a little public‐house in St. Martin's Lane, kept by big Ben the prize‐fighter. In a room at the top of the house there used to be much sparring. We both of us took a high degree in the noble art – especially I, if it be not bragging to say so; mostly on account of my weight, which was considerable for my age. It was in fencing that he beat me hollow: he was quite the best fencer I ever met; the lessons at school of Bonnet's prévôt had borne good fruit in his case.

Then there were squalid dens frequented by touts and betting‐men and medical students, where people sang and fought and laid the odds and got very drunk – and where Barty's performances as a vocalist, comic and sentimental (especially the latter), raised enthusiasm that seems almost incredible among such a brutalized and hardened crew.

One night he and I and a medical student called Ticklets, who had a fine bass voice, disguised ourselves as paupers, and went singing for money about Camden Town and Mornington Crescent and Regent's Park. It took us about an hour to make eighteen pence. Barty played the guitar, Ticklets the tambourine, and I the bones. Then we went to the Haymarket, and Barty made five pounds in no time; most of it in silver donations from unfortunate women – English, of course – who are among the softest‐hearted and most generous creatures in the world.

"O lachrymarum fons!"

I forget what use we made of the money – a good one, I feel sure.

I am sorry to reveal all this, but Barty wished it. Forty years ago such things did not seem so horrible as they would now, and the word "bounder" had not been invented.

My sister Ida, when about fourteen (1853), became a pupil at the junior school in the Ladies' College, 48 Bedford Square. She soon made friends – nice young girls, who came to our house, and it was much the livelier. I used to hear much of them, and knew them well before I ever saw them – especially Leah Gibson, who lived in Tavistock Square, and was Ida's special friend; at last I was quite anxious to see this paragon.

One morning, as I carried Ida's books on her way to school, she pointed out to me three girls of her own age, or less, who stood talking together at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. They were all three very pretty children – quite singularly so – and became great beauties; one golden‐haired, one chestnut‐brown, one blue‐black. The black‐haired one was the youngest and the tallest – a fine, straight, bony child of twelve, with a flat back and square shoulders; she was very well dressed, and had nice brown boots with brown elastic sides on arched and straight‐heeled slender feet, and white stockings on her long legs – a fashion in hose that has long gone out. She also wore a thick plait of black hair all down her back – another departed mode, and one not to be regretted, I think; and she swung her books round her as she talked, with easy movements, like a strong boy.