Part 34 (1/2)
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.”