EXTRACT FROM A LETTER

“Why did you not send a letter?  We have all been writing to you for the last six months, but no answer ­none.  Had you written one word I would have saved all.  The poor concierge was in despair; she said the propriétaire would wait if you had only said when you were coming back, or if you only had let us know what you wished to be done.  Three quarters rent was due, and no news could be obtained of you, so an auction had to be called.  It nearly broke my heart to see those horrid men tramping over the delicate carpets, their coarse faces set against the sweet colour of that beautiful English cretonne....  And all the while the pastel by Manet, the great hat set like an aureole about the face ­’the eyes deep set in crimson shadow,’ ’the fan widespread across the bosom’ (you see I am quoting your own words), looking down, the mistress of that little paradise of tapestry.  She seemed to resent the intrusion.  I looked once or twice half expecting those eyes ’deep set in crimson shadow’ to fill with tears.  But nothing altered her great dignity; she seemed to see all, but as a Buddha she remained impenetrable....

“I was there the night before the sale.  I looked through the books, taking notes of those I intended to buy ­those which we used to read together when the snow lay high about the legs of the poor faun in terre cuite, that laughed amid the frosty boulingrins.  I found a large packet of letters which I instantly destroyed.  You should not be so careless; I wonder how it is that men are always careless about their letters.

“The sale was announced for one o’clock.  I wore a thick veil, for I did not wish to be recognised; the concierge of course knew me, but she can be depended upon.  The poor old woman was in tears, so sorry was she to see all your pretty things sold up.  You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived.  Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer.  And then the men, all the marchands de meubles in the quartier, came upstairs, spitting and talking coarsely ­their foul voices went through me.  They stamped, spat, pulled the things about, nothing escaped them.  One of them held up the Japanese dressing-gown and made some horrible jokes; and the auctioneer, who was a humorist, answered, ‘If there are any ladies’ men present, we shall have some spirited bidding.’  The pastel I bought, and I shall keep it and try to find some excuse to satisfy my husband, but I send you the miniature, and I hope you will not let it be sold again.  There were many other things I should have liked to buy, but I did not dare ­the organ that you used to play hymns on and I waltzes on, the Turkish lamp which we could never agree about...but when I saw the satin shoes which I gave you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them.  I don’t know why, un caprice de femme.  No one but you would have ever thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes.  I wore them at that delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation with my husband (I was a little afraid for a moment, but it came out all right), and we went and sat on the balcony in the soft warm moonlight; we watched the glitter of epaulets and gas, the satin of the bodices, the whiteness of passing shoulders:  we dreamed the massy darknesses of the park, the fairy light along the lawny spaces, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the pink of the camellias; and you quoted something:  ‘les camélias du balcon ressemblent à des désirs mourants.’  It was horrid of you:  but you always had a knack of rubbing one up the wrong way.  Then do you not remember how we danced in one room, while the servants set the other out with little tables?  That supper was fascinating!  I suppose it was these pleasant remembrances which made me wish for the shoes, but I could not summon up courage enough to buy them, and the horrid people were comparing me with the pastel; I suppose I did look a little mysterious with a double veil bound across my face.  The shoes went with a lot of other things ­and oh, to whom?

“So now that pretty little retreat in the Rue de la Tour des Dames is ended for ever for you and me.  We shall not see the faun in terre cuite again; I was thinking of going to see him the other day, but the street is so steep; my coachman advised me to spare the horse’s hind legs.  I believe it is the steepest street in Paris.  And your luncheon parties, how I did enjoy them, and how Fay did enjoy them too; and what I risked, short-sighted as I am, picking my way from the tramcar down to that out-of-the-way little street!  Men never appreciate the risks women run for them.  But to leave my letters lying about ­I cannot forgive that.  When I told Fay she said, ’What can you expect?  I warned you against flirting with boys.’  I never did before ­never.

“Paris is now just as it was when you used to sit on the balcony and I read you Browning.  You never liked his poetry, and I cannot understand why.  I have found a new poem which I am sure would convert you; you should be here.  There are lilacs in the room and the Mont Valérien is beautiful upon a great lemon sky, and the long avenue is merging into violet vapour.

“We have already begun to think of where we shall go to this year.  Last year we went to P ­, an enchanting place, quite rustic, but within easy distance of a casino.  I had vowed not to dance, for I had been out every night during the season, but the temptation proved irresistible, and I gave way.  There were two young men here, one the Count of B ­, the other the Marquis of G ­, one of the best families in France, a distant cousin of my husband.  He has written a book which every one says is one of the most amusing things that has appeared for years, c’est surtout très Parisien.  He paid me great attentions, and made my husband wildly jealous.  I used to go out and sit with him amid the rocks, and it was perhaps very lucky for me that he went away.  We may return there this year; if so, I wish you would come and spend a month; there is an excellent hotel where you would be very comfortable.  We have decided nothing as yet.  The Duchesse de ­ is giving a costume ball; they say it is going to be a most wonderful affair.  I don’t know what money is not going to be spent upon the cotillion.  I have just got home a fascinating toilette.  I am going as a Pierette; you know, a short skirt and a little cap.  The Marquise gave a ball some few days ago.  I danced the cotillion with L ­, who, as you know, dances divinely; il m’a fait la cour, but it is of course no use, you know that.

“The other night we went to see the Maître-de-Forges, a fascinating play, and I am reading the book; I don’t know which I like the best.  I think the play, but the book is very good too.  Now that is what I call a novel; and I am a judge, for I have read all novels.  But I must not talk literature, or you will say something stupid.  I wish you would not make foolish remarks about men that tout-Paris considers the cleverest.  It does not matter so much with me, I know you, but then people laugh at you behind your back, and that is not nice for me.  The marquise was here the other day, and she said she almost wished you would not come on her ‘days,’ so extraordinary were the remarks you made.  And by the way, the marquise has written a book.  I have not seen it, but I hear that it is really too décolleté.  She is une femme d’esprit, but the way she affiché’s herself is too much for any one.  She never goes anywhere now without lé petit D .  It is a great pity.

“And now, my dear friend, write me a nice letter, and tell me when you are coming back to Paris.  I am sure you cannot amuse yourself in that hateful London; the nicest thing about you was that you were really trés Parisien.  Come back and take a nice apartment on the Champs Elysées.  You might come back for the Duchesse’s ball.  I will get an invitation for you, and will keep the cotillion for you.  The idea of running away as you did, and never telling any one where you were going to.  I always said you were a little cracked.  And letting all your things be sold!  If you had only told me!  I should like so much to have had that Turkish lamp.  Yours ­”

How like her that letter is, ­egotistical, vain, foolish; no, not foolish ­narrow, limited, but not foolish; worldly, oh, how worldly! and yet not repulsively so, for there always was in her a certain intensity of feeling that saved her from the commonplace, and gave her an inexpressible charm.  Yes, she is a woman who can feel, and she has lived her life and felt it very acutely, very sincerely ­sincerely?...like a moth caught in a gauze curtain!  Well, would that preclude sincerity?  Sincerity seems to convey an idea of depth, and she was not very deep, that is quite certain.  I never could understand her; ­a little brain that span rapidly and hummed a pretty humming tune.  But no, there was something more in her than that.  She often said things that I thought clever, things that I did not forget, things that I should like to put into books.  But it was not brain power; it was only intensity of feeling ­nervous feeling.  I don’t know...perhaps....  She has lived her life...yes, within certain limits she has lived her life.  None of us do more than that.  True.  I remember the first time I saw her.  Sharp, little, and merry ­a changeable little sprite.  I thought she had ugly hands; so she has, and yet I forgot all about her hands before I had known her a month.  It is now seven years ago.  How time passes!  I was very young then.  What battles we have had, what quarrels!  Still we had good times together.  She never lost sight of me, but no intrusion; far too clever for that.  I never got the better of her but once...once I did, enfin!  She soon made up for lost ground.  I wonder what the charm was.  I did not think her pretty, I did not think her clever; that I know....  I never knew if she cared for me, never.  There were moments when....  Curious, febrile, subtle little creature, oh, infinitely subtle, subtle in everything, in her sensations subtle; I suppose that was her charm, subtleness.  I never knew if she cared for me, I never knew if she hated her husband, ­one never knew her, ­I never knew how she would receive me.  The last time I saw her...that stupid American would take her downstairs, no getting rid of him, and I was hiding behind one of the pillars in the Rue de Rivoli, my hand on the cab door.  However, she could not blame me that time ­and all the stories she used to invent of my indiscretions; I believe she used to get them up for the sake of the excitement.  She was awfully silly in some ways, once you got her into a certain line; that marriage, that title, and she used to think of it night and day.  I shall never forget when she went into mourning for the Count de Chambord.  And her tastes, oh, how bourgeois they were!  That salon; the flagrantly modern clock, brass work, eight hundred francs on the Boulevard St Germain, the cabinets, brass work, the rich brown carpet, and the furniture set all round the room geometrically, the great gilt mirror, the ancestral portrait, the arms and crest everywhere, and the stuffy bourgeois sense of comfort; a little grotesque no doubt; ­the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere; the Figaro, that is to say Albert Wolf, l’homme lé plus spirituel de Paris, c’est-à-dire, dans lé monde, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré.  But with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain ébullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain elevations and depravities, ­depravities in the legitimate sense of the word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace....

Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming!  I wish I had not been awoke from my reverie, it was pleasant.

The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant letter.  My agent’s handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in me; ­so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible even knowing how I stand at my banker’s.  Therefore the odour of honey and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the odious epistle.

That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I may not be deprived of my demi-tasse at Tortoni’s, that I may not be forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python ­monstrous.  And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they will find pity!

Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me.  The great pagan world I love knew it not.  Now the world proposes to interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the strong shall be really strong, ­that the strong shall be glorious, sublime.  A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, cry the moderns.

Hither the world has been drifting since the coming of the pale socialist of Galilee; and this is why I hate Him, and deny His divinity.  His divinity is falling, it is evanescent in sight of the goal He dreamed; again He is denied by His disciples.  Poor fallen God!  I, who hold nought else pitiful, pity Thee, Thy bleeding face and hands and feet, Thy hanging body; Thou at least art picturesque, and in a way beautiful in the midst of the sombre mediocrity, towards which Thou has drifted for two thousand years, a flag; and in which Thou shalt find Thy doom as I mine, I, who will not adore Thee and cannot curse Thee now.  For verily Thy life and Thy fate has been greater, stranger and more Divine than any man’s has been.  The chosen people, the garden, the betrayal, the crucifixion, and the beautiful story, not of Mary, but of Magdalen.  The God descending to the harlot!  Even the great pagan world of marble and pomp and lust and cruelty, that my soul goes out to and hails as the grandest, has not so sublime a contrast to show us as this.

Come to me, ye who are weak.  The Word went forth, the terrible disastrous Word, and before it fell the ancient gods, and the vices that they represent, and which I revere, are outcast now in the world of men; the Word went forth, and the world interpreted the Word, blindly, ignorantly, savagely, for two thousand years, but nevertheless nearing every day the end ­the end that Thou in Thy divine intelligence foresaw, that finds its voice to-day (enormous though the antithesis may be, I will say it) in the Pall Mall Gazette.  What fate has been like Thine?  Betrayed by Judas in the garden, denied by Peter before the cock crew, crucified between thieves, and mourned for by a harlot, and then sent bound and bare, nothing changed, nothing altered, in Thy ignominious plight, forthward in the world’s van the glory and symbol of a man’s new idea ­Pity.  Thy day is closing in, but the heavens are now wider aflame with Thy light than ever before ­Thy light, which I, a pagan, standing on the last verge of the old world, declare to be darkness, the coming night of pity and justice which is imminent, which is the twentieth century.  The bearers have relinquished Thy cross, they leave Thee in the hour of Thy universal triumph, Thy crown of thorns is falling, Thy face is buffeted with blows, and not even a reed is placed in Thy hand for sceptre; only I and mine are by Thee, we who shall perish with Thee, in the ruin Thou hast created.

Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice.  Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice.  Man would not be man but for injustice.  Hail, therefore, to the thrice glorious virtue injustice!  What care I that some millions of wretched Israelites died under Pharaoh’s lash or Egypt’s sun?  It was well that they died that I might have the pyramids to look on, or to fill a musing hour with wonderment.  Is there one amongst us who would exchange them for the lives of the ignominious slaves that died?  What care I that the virtue of some sixteen-year-old maiden was the price paid for Ingres’ La Source?  That the model died of drink and disease in the hospital, is nothing when compared with the essential that I should have La Source, that exquisite dream of innocence, to think of till my soul is sick with delight of the painter’s holy vision.  Nay more, the knowledge that a wrong was done ­that millions of Israelites died in torments, that a girl, or a thousand girls, died in the hospital for that one virginal thing, is an added pleasure which I could not afford to spare.  Oh, for the silence of marble courts, for the shadow of great pillars, for gold, for reticulated canopies of lilies; to see the great gladiators pass, to hear them cry the famous “Ave Cæsar,” to hold the thumb down, to see the blood flow, to fill the languid hours with the agonies of poisoned slaves!  Oh, for excess, for crime!  I would give many lives to save one sonnet by Baudelaire; for the hymn, “A la très-chère, à la très-belle, qui remplit man cÅ“ur de clarté" let the first-born in every house in Europe be slain; and in all sincerity I profess my readiness to decapitate all the Japanese in Japan and elsewhere, to save from destruction one drawing by Hokusai.  Again I say that all we deem sublime in the world’s history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if mankind does not relinquish at once, and for ever, its vain, mad, and fatal dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism.  England was great and glorious, because England was unjust, and England’s greatest son was the personification of injustice ­Cromwell.

But the old world of heroes is over now.  The skies above us are dark with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, creatures of the ooze and rushes about us ­we, the great ship that has floated up from the antique world.  Oh, for the antique world, its plain passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen escaping!  We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary of tears and effusion, and our refuge ­the British Museum ­is the wide sea shore and the wind of the ocean.  There, there is real joy in the flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is indecency:  a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, barbarous soul of beauty and of might!