Confessions of a Young Man | Page 6

had taken the Globe Theatre for the purpose of producing
Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings, delighted me. I was not
dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to spend as much on scent
and toilette knick-knacks as would keep a poor man's family in
affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the fashionable sunlight in the
Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to shock my friends by bowing
to those whom I should not bow to; above all, the life of the theatres,
that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls, of light, doggerel verse,
slangy polkas and waltzes, interested me beyond legitimate measure, so

curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at home, but dined daily at a
fashionable restaurant; at half-past eight I was at the theatre. Nodding
familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up the long passage to the stage.
Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the Argyle Rooms were my favourite
haunts. My mother suffered, and expected ruin, for I took no trouble to
conceal anything; I boasted of dissipations. But there was no need for
fear; I was naturally endowed with a very clear sense indeed of
self-preservation; I neither betted nor drank, nor contracted debts, nor a
secret marriage; from a worldly point of view, I was a model young
man indeed; and when I returned home about four in the morning, I
watched the pale moon setting, and repeating some verses of Shelley, I
thought how I should go to Paris when I was of age, and study painting.
CHAPTER II
At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes,
books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for
Paris and Art.
We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord, at half-past
six in the morning; and the miserable carriages, and the tall, haggard
city. Pale, sloppy, yellow houses; an oppressive absence of colour; a
peculiar bleakness in the streets. The ménagère hurries down the
asphalte to market; a dreadful garçon de café, with a napkin tied round
his throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it
seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the
Boulevards? where are the Champs Élysées? I asked myself; and
feeling bound to apologise for the appearance of the city, I explained to
my valet that we were passing through some by-streets, and returned to
the study of a French vocabulary. Nevertheless, when the time came to
formulate a demand for rooms, hot water, and a fire, I broke down, and
the proprietress of the hotel, who spoke English, had to be sent for.
My plans, so far as I had any, were to enter the beaux arts--Cabanel's
studio for preference; for I had then an intense and profound admiration
for that painter's work. I did not think much of the application I was
told I should have to make at the Embassy; my thoughts were fixed on

the master, and my one desire was to see him. To see him was easy, to
speak to him was another matter, and I had to wait three weeks, until I
could hold a conversation in French. How I achieved this feat I cannot
say. I never opened a book, I know, nor is it agreeable to think what my
language must have been like--like nothing ever heard under God's sky
before, probably. It was, however, sufficient to waste a good hour of
the painter's time. I told him of my artistic sympathies, what pictures I
had seen of his in London, and how much pleased I was with those then
in his studio. He went through the ordeal without flinching. He said he
would be glad to have me as a pupil....
But life in the beaux arts is rough, coarse, and rowdy. The model sits
only three times a week: the other days we worked from the plaster cast;
and to be there by seven o'clock in the morning required so painful an
effort of will, that I glanced in terror down the dim and grey
perspective of early risings that awaited me; then, demoralised by the
lassitude of Sunday, I told my valet on Monday morning to leave the
room, that I would return to the beaux arts no more. I felt humiliated at
my own weakness, for much hope had been centred in that academy;
and I knew no other. Day after day I walked up and down the
Boulevards, studying the photographs of the salon pictures, and was
stricken by the art of Jules Lefevre. True it is that I saw it was wanting
in that tender grace which I am forced to admit even now, saturated
though I now am with the aesthetics of different schools, is