The Bed-Book of Happiness Part 34

TWO TRIALS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

Whilst the Commission was sitting he went once or twice with Sir George Lewis to the Law Courts and closely listened and watched, sitting where he could see the face of Mr. Parnell clearly. "Charles Stewart Parnell,"

he once said, "G.o.d only knows what he really was, but I saw him in court and watched him the day long: he was like Christ."

Of the miserable Pigott, the perjured witness against Parnell, he wrote: "And I have grown philosophical--it came of seeing Pigott in the witness-box, who looked like half the dreary men one meets, and I don't see why the rest of the Pigotts shouldn't be found out too. So it made me reflect on crime and its connection with being found out and made me philosophical and depressed."

But on another day his mind turned to a more cheerful exercise: "Legal testimony doesn't affect me at all, and I want people tried for their faces--so I spent the time in court settling things all my own way, and I tried the Judges first and acquitted one, so that he sits in court without a blemish on his character; and one I admitted to mercy, and of the other have postponed the trial for further evidence: and then I tried the counsel on both sides, and one of them I am sorry to say will have to be hanged for his face."

THE FOUR HISTORIANS [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

On hearing some one quote Carlyle's contempt for invented stories and his saying that facts were better worth writing of, Edward exclaimed: "'Frederick the Great's' a romance; 'Monte Cristo' is real history, and so is 'The Three Musketeers.'" And another time he said: "Ah, the historians are so few. There's Dumas, there's Scott, there's Thackeray, and there's d.i.c.kens, and no more--after you have said them, there's an end."

SWINBURNE AND PADEREWSKI [Sidenote: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_]

"There's a beautiful fellow in London named Paderewski--and I want to have a face like him and look like him, and I can't--there's trouble. He looks so like Swinburne looked at twenty that I could cry over past things, and has his ways too--the pretty ways of him--courteous little tricks and low bows and a hand that clings in shaking hands, and a face very like Swinburne's, only in better drawing, but the expression the same, and little turns and looks and jerks so like the thing I remember that it makes me fairly jump. I asked to draw from him, and Henschel brought him and played on the organ and sang while I drew--which was good for the emotions but bad for the drawing. And knowing people say he is a great master in his art, which might well be, for he looks glorious. I praised Allah for making him and felt myself a poor thing for several hours. Have got over it now."

THE VIVACIOUS VIVIER [Sidenote: _H. Sutherland-Edwards_]

I "breakfasted" again and again with Adolphe Sax, and had always the same fare--"un bifteck et des oeufs sur le plat." ...

On one occasion Vivier turned up. He was the natural enemy of Sax, for Sax, by his system of keys, brought effective horn-playing within the reach of ordinary performers, which lessened the immense superiority of Vivier over horn-players in general. Vivier, however, was troubled by no considerations of that kind. The Saxhorn, moreover, did not possess the timbre of the horn.

I had already met this remarkable engineer, musician, diplomatist and professor of mystification, in London, when he was complaining with facetious bitterness that Mr. Frederic Gye had not sent him a box for one of Angiolina Bosio's touching performances of "La Traviata."

He had written to the manager explaining that he was ready to shed tears, and that he possessed a pocket handkerchief, but wanted something more. "J'ai un mouchoir, mais pas de loge," he said. Yet his letter was left without a reply. After waiting a day or two, and still receiving no answer, Vivier engaged the dirtiest crossing-sweeper he could find, made him put on a little extra mud, and sent him with a letter to Mr. Gye demanding "the return of his correspondence." The courteous manager of the Royal Italian Opera could scarcely have known that, besides being one of the finest musicians and quite the finest horn player of his day, Eugene Vivier was the most charming of men, and the spoiled child of nearly every Court in Europe. Speaking to me once of the Emperor Napoleon, he said, in answer to a question I had put to him as to Napoleon III's characteristics: "He is the most gentlemanly Emperor I know."

"What can I do for you?" said this gentlemanly Emperor one day, when Vivier had gone to see him at the Tuileries.

"Come out on the balcony with me, sire," replied the genial cynic. "Some of my creditors are sure to be pa.s.sing, and it will do me good to be seen in conversation with your Majesty."

Besides speaking to him familiarly within view of his creditors, the Emperor Napoleon III conferred on Vivier several well-paid sinecures. He appointed him "Inspector of Mines," which, from conscientious motives, knowing very little of mining, Vivier never inspected; and he was once accused by a facetious journal of having received the post of "Librarian to the Forest of Fontainebleau," with its mult.i.tudinous leaves.

There were only two other Emperors at that time in Europe, and to one of them, the Emperor of Austria, Vivier was sent on a certain occasion with despatches--not, I fancy, in the character of Vely Pacha's secretary, the only quasi-diplomatic post he held, but partly to facilitate his travelling, and partly, it may be, for some private political reason.

Instead of being delayed, questioned, and searched at the frontier, as generally happened in those days--the days before 1859--Vivier was treated by the Custom House officials, and by the police, with all possible respect; and journeying as an honoured personage--an emissary from the Emperor of the French--he in due time reached Vienna, where, hastening to the palace, he made known the object of his visit. It seems quite possible that the despatches carried by Vivier may have possessed particular importance, and that Napoleon III had motives of his own for not forwarding them through the ordinary diplomatic channels. Vivier had, in any case, been instructed to deliver them to the Emperor in person--one of those Emperors whom he numbered among his private acquaintances.

A Court Chamberlain had hurried out to receive the distinguished messenger, ready after a due interchange of compliments to usher him into the Imperial presence.

"Your Excellency!" began the Chamberlain, in the most obsequious manner.

"I am not an Excellency!" replied Vivier.

"General, then--Monsieur le General?"

"I am not a General!"

"Colonel, perhaps, and aide-de-camp to his Imperial Majesty?"

"I am not in the army. I have no official rank--no rank of any kind whatever."

"Good heavens! then what are you?" exclaimed the Chamberlain, indignant with himself for having treated as high-born and high-placed one who was apparently a mere n.o.body.

"I am a musician," said Vivier.

Bounding with rage, the Court functionary made an unbecoming gesture, such as Mephistopheles, according to the stage directions, should make in one of the pa.s.sages of Goethe's _Faust_.

"Very well, my friend," said Vivier to himself, "I will tell the Emperor of your rude behaviour; I will get you rapped on the knuckles" ("Je t'en ferai donner sur les doigts"); and the uncourtly courtier was, in fact, severely reprimanded.

At St. Petersburg Vivier took such liberties with the Emperor Nicholas that, if half the stories of that monarch were true, the imprudent Frenchman would have been arrested, knouted, and sent to Siberia.

He had just brought to perfection the art of blowing soap bubbles. The whole secret of his process consisted, as he once informed me, in mixing with the soap-suds a little gum. Using a solution of soap and gum, he was able to produce bubbles of such size and solidity that they floated in the air for an almost indefinite time, like so many small balloons.

In order to entertain the St. Petersburg public, Vivier would, in the most benevolent manner, take his seat at an open window, and blow his gigantic and many-coloured bubbles, until these prodigies of aerostation had attracted a mult.i.tude of lookers-on. The delighted crowd applauded with enthusiasm. Vivier rose from his seat and bowed. Then the applause was renewed, and Vivier blew larger and brighter bubbles than before.

One evening, or rather afternoon, the rays of the setting sun were illuminating a number of iridescent balloons floating high above the point where the Nevsky Prospect runs into the Admiralty Square, when the Emperor Nicholas drove past, or tried to do so--for his progress was interrupted at every step by the density of the crowd.

"What is the meaning of all this?" asked the Emperor Nicholas.

"It is M. Vivier blowing his soap bubbles," replied the aide-de-camp in attendance.

"What! Vivier, the French musician, who played the horn so wonderfully the other night at the Winter Palace, and afterwards entertained us so much with his conversation?"

"The same, sire."

"Go to him, then, and tell him that I should be glad if he would choose some other time for his soap-bubble performances. How wonderful they are!"

The aide-de-camp forced his way through the crowd, went upstairs to Vivier's apartments, and told him that the Emperor desired him not to give his exhibition of soap bubbles at half-past three in the afternoon, that being the time when his Majesty usually went for a drive.

Vivier took out a pocket-book, consulted it carefully, and, turning to the aide-de-camp, said with the utmost gravity, "That is the only hour I have disengaged."

Vivier, meanwhile, had had his joke; and his exhibition of soap bubbles, or rather of gum-and-soap balloons, was now discontinued.

The horn-playing performance to which the Emperor Nicholas had made reference was marked by one strange, marvellous, almost inexplicable peculiarity. The player sounded on his instrument, simultaneously, a chord of four notes. To produce at the same time four different notes from one and the same tube seems, and must be, an impossibility. But Vivier did it, and the fact was certified to by Meyerbeer, Auber, Halevy, Adolphe Adam, and other musicians of eminence.

The only possible explanation of the matter is that Vivier executed a very rapid arpeggio, so that the four notes which apparently were heard together were, in fact, heard one after the other. The effect, however, was not that of an arpeggio, but of a chord of four different notes played simultaneously on four different instruments.

Both for home and for out-of-doors use the mystifications practised by Vivier were as numerous as they were varied. In an omnibus, when some grave old lady had just risen from her seat, Vivier would a.s.sume an expression of the utmost astonishment, and suddenly take from the place where she had been sitting an egg, which meanwhile he had been concealing up his sleeve.

Or, asked to pa.s.s a coin to the conductor, he would gravely put it into his pocket. A well-dressed, well-bred gentleman, of charming manners, could scarcely be suspected of any intention to misappropriate a two-sous piece. But it interested Vivier to see what, in the circ.u.mstances, the lawful owner of the coin would do. On one occasion Vivier, in an omnibus, alarmed his fellow pa.s.sengers by pretending to be mad. He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!

Vivier could not bear to see people in a hurry. According to him, there was nothing in life worth hurrying for; and living on the Boulevard just opposite the Rue Vivienne, he was much annoyed at seeing so many persons hastening, towards six o'clock, to the post office on the Place de la Bourse. He determined to pay them out, and for that purpose bought a calf, which he took up to his apartments at night and exhibited the next afternoon at a few minutes before six o'clock, in the balcony of his second floor. In spite of their eagerness to catch the post, many persons could not help stopping to look at the calf. Soon a crowd collected, and messengers stayed their steps in order to gaze at the unwonted apparition. Six o'clock struck, and soon after a number of men who had missed the post returned in an irritated condition, and, stopping before Vivier's house, shook their fists at him. Vivier went down to them, and asked the meaning of this insolence.

"We were not shaking our fists at you," replied the angered ones, "but at that calf."

"Ah! you know him then?" returned Vivier. "I was not aware of it."

In time Vivier's calf became the subject of a legend, according to which the animal (still in Vivier's apartments) grew to be an ox, and so annoyed the neighbours by his lowing that; the proprietor of the house insisted on its being sent away. Vivier told him to come; and take it, when it was found that the calf of other days had grown to such a size that it was impossible to get it downstairs.