CHAPTER XLIII
PORTRAIT OF A FRENCH MOTHER
Madame Proquet lived in a little town in Brittany, which she had never quitted in her life. She had been born there, she had married there, and there it was that she had brought up her only son, Henri. When friends said to her, 'Why not travel a little? You should at least go and see Paris!' she would reply: 'Thank you, I am happy enough at home.' She cared little for the outer world. Early left a widow, she had resolved to live for her son. She had made herself his dearest friend without effeminating him, his constant guide without monopolizing him, and his preceptor without ceasing to be his comrade.
Before sending the boy to any school, she set to work herself and learned enough Latin and Greek to enable her to hear his lessons; and by the time he reached the upper forms, Madame Proquet would have been able to cut a very fair figure beside him.
Thanks to the care and order with which she managed her small fortune, she was well off – rich even – with her 5,000 or 6,000 francs a year, for at the end of each year the budget showed an excess of receipts over expenditure. Her house, her books and her garden occupied all the time which was not devoted to Henri. She was fond of receiving visits, but rarely paid calls herself; and in the winter evenings she loved to sit with a book by the fireside in the room, half kitchen, half dining-room, which, with its great open fireplace, is very often the most attractive-looking apartment in a small Breton house. Sometimes it was her needlework that she would bring out and busy her fingers upon, while the faithful Fanchette, who had held Henri on her knee, and who still 'thee'd' and 'thou'd' him, took her knitting, and to the steady click of the needles would go over again the merry tricks that he was wont to play when he was a little boy.
By-and-by Henri finished his studies and took his B.A. with honours. Then it became necessary to choose a profession. For some time past he had been longing to say to his mother: 'Mother, let me go to Paris and study painting. Something tells me that I should be successful.' But he knew that Madame Proquet had long been putting by 1,000 francs a year to send him to Paris to study law or medicine, whichever he should choose. She had made up her mind to make a lawyer or a doctor of him. Is it not the ambition of every French provincial mother? Henri allowed himself to be persuaded, although he felt not the least inclination for the one profession or the other. However, when it came to the point he chose the law.
What he did in Paris during six years we may see from the fact that, in the month of May, 1877, he pleaded at the assizes in a case which resulted in two years' imprisonment for his client; and that he exhibited at the Salon a portrait which earned for the artist the praise of all critical Paris. A very talented painter had arisen. Madame Proquet learned the news without making a very wry face, swallowed the pill without grimacing, and, Fanchette having declared that she had always predicted that Henri's genius would soon manifest itself, she wisely decided under the circumstances to be proud of her boy.
'But who is going to keep the dear fellow while he is painting in Paris? I cannot, that is certain,' said the good mother to herself.
'But, madam,' said Fanchette, 'do you not know that there are rich folks who pay one hundred and even as much as two hundred francs to have their portrait painted, and that Paris is full of people like that?'
Madame Proquet remained incredulous and full of anxiety. She certainly was not going to discourage her son, but she could not find it in her to encourage him. She would let events follow their course, while she remained calm at her post of observation. She had every confidence in her son after all. Was he not an advocate, and could he not always return to his profession if painting should fail him?
The following year Henri exhibited another portrait, which excited not merely the admiration but the enthusiasm of the critics. People talked of a future Bonnat, and the name of Henri Proquet was on everyone's tongue. The young painter was striding into fame.
Orders began to flow in. This news reassured Madame Proquet, and made her mother's heart swell with pride.
'Did I not tell you so?' repeated Fanchette.
But something that dropped like a bomb into the quiet household in the little Breton town was the news that a rich financier of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré had just paid 10,000 francs for his portrait, which Henri had taken hardly a month to paint.
'But the dear fellow will be making a fortune and losing his head,' exclaimed Madame Proquet.
Fanchette herself was dumfounded. It seemed to them that their boy was going to slip from them – that fame and fortune must needs raise an inseparable barrier between the luxurious studio which Henri talked of, and was embellishing day by day, and the humble maternal home which never changed at all. They were both believers in the quiet and unobtruding happiness that hides itself and goes unenvied, and they could neither of them understand how happiness was possible in that feverish Paris, where artists and men of letters are drawn body and soul into the whirl of a great vortex; and the good souls bewailed themselves, foreseeing terrible things and getting into their heads a thousand ideas, which all had but one conclusion – 'Our Henri is lost to us!'
How mistaken they were!
The years followed one another, and Henri came regularly twice a year to the dear little house where the ivy and jasmine, the clematis and the honeysuckle protected our successful man against intruders: the jealous, the gossips, the bores and all the jostling crowd that hovers around celebrities, and often makes them its prey.
Better than that, he soon did something that should still strengthen his position in the good books of Madame Proquet and Fanchette. He married a girl as good as she was beautiful, an artist's ideal, whom he had the greatest difficulty to get Fanchette to tutoyer.
'But, my dear, I cannot say "thee" and "thou" to that beautiful lady,' pleaded poor Fanchette.
'Nonsense, Fanchette! and why not? She is your daughter as much as I am your boy.'
And the good Fanchette, with her eyes full of tears of joy, kissed everybody and exclaimed:
'He has not changed a bit, you see. I told you so; I knew it.'
Then the young couple came twice a year to Brittany to live and love with more freedom. Soon, instead of two, it was a trio that came, and Fanchette declared that the loveliest baby in the world was the one that she called hers.
'And,' she added, 'no one can accuse me of partiality, for everyone knows how I laugh at the people who think their babies the finest in the world.'
And the others would reply in chorus:
'Certainly not, Fanchette.'
Madame Proquet was overwhelmed with joy, the proudest and happiest of mothers.
She went so far as to say to her neighbours, as well as to herself: 'Did I not do well after all to encourage Henri to be an artist!' I say advisedly 'as well as to herself,' for by dint of innocently and honestly deceiving others, one ends by innocently and honestly deceiving one's self.
Madame Proquet had no more fear for her son's future. His fame was well established, and he remained to her the same devoted son, perfectly unaffected, his head turned neither by celebrity nor riches.
The good lady unhappily reckoned without that very absorbing mistress called Art, who was to supplant her a little, if not in Henri's affection, yet in his rule of conduct. The name of Henri Proquet was not celebrated in Paris alone, but in all the capitals of the civilized world. He one day wrote to his mother that he had just received from England a most flattering invitation to go and paint the portrait of the Queen and the principal members of the Royal Family, and that he had resolved to settle in London with his family for several years; for no doubt, after the Royal Family, his brush would be in demand by lords and ladies, and he would return from the land of fogs laden with guineas and glory.
'And,' he added, 'I embrace the opportunity with all the more alacrity, having just lost 100,000 francs in a gold mine in the United States, a loss which makes an ugly hole in my savings. Thank Heaven I am young, full of life and energy, and in less than two years I shall have forgotten the thing altogether and replaced the money.'
Madame Proquet was aghast at the news.
'So, then,' she ejaculated, 'Henri speculates! He has lost everything, and that in a gold mine, a hole in the earth, which, instead of yielding money, swallows up what fools fling into it. After that, how is it possible to feel any security about him? With all his talent, his genius, he will end in the poor-house. He talks of expatriating himself now. He is out of his mind.'
She believed in none but sure investments, and saw no difference between speculation and gambling. Land, house-property and Government securities, no other stock had any value in her eyes. She would not for the world have had anything to do with shares in even the great railways of her own country. However, in the end she calmed herself.
'He will be prudent in the future,' she said to herself, 'and the lesson will be a wholesome one. After all, England is not far from Brittany. I shall see the dear children almost as often as before.'
And seeing Fanchette looking at her, she smiled, but the smile did not deceive the good woman, who saw clearly that something was being hidden from her, and that that something concerned Henri. Her eyes filled.
'It is nothing, my dear Fanchette!' said Madame Proquet, making her faithful servant sit down by her side while she read to her Henri's letter, and discussed with her its contents.
The painter remained three years in England, and returned to Paris after having made the conquest of the English public and the Royal Academy, just as he had made the conquest of the French public and the Salon.
Mayfair and Belgravia had been painted by Henri Proquet; Fifth Avenue, New York, now claimed him, and offered him fabulous prices. He set out for America, and passed two years there. Madame Proquet and Fanchette both begged him earnestly, in all their letters, to give up these voyages, and to return to Paris and settle there definitely. 'Have a little patience, mother dear,' he wrote; 'I shall soon have 1,000,000 francs put by, and then I shall think of nothing but your wishes.' A few months later he wrote: 'I shall soon have finished my work in America, and we shall set out from New York to make our longest and last voyage. We shall cross America to the Californian side: from there we shall visit Japan, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. On the way home we shall stop at the Cape of Good Hope to sketch a few Zulus, who are said to be such fine people. We count on being back in Paris by the end of the year, and we will be with you on New Year's Day. What souvenirs of our travels you will have to listen to! What endless chats we will have, won't we?'
'Decidedly he is mad,' said Madame Proquet to herself. 'As if our French women were not far prettier than all those horrid black African creatures, or those hideous little dods of Japan!' Even Fanchette began to ask herself seriously whether, after all, her boy was the same, and not a changed person. Henri had no longer any one to take his part under his mother's roof.
Madame Proquet fell ill meanwhile. The heart had been attacked for some time past; a herpetic affection threatened to complicate the state of affairs.
No sooner arrived in Paris than Henri and his wife sped into Brittany. They found their mother very changed. The doctor did not attempt to conceal from them the danger of the disease, which, at Madame Proquet's age, must needs be incurable.
This illness, which was likely to be a long and painful one, necessitated the most constant and delicate attentions, continual doctor's visits, and expensive medicines. Fanchette and the femme de chambre, two brave devoted women such as provincial France alone still possesses, but such as the future scarcely holds in store for us, lavished their care upon their dear mistress. They were taxed to the utmost of their strength, Fanchette especially, who had just passed her sixtieth year. To ease them, Madame Proquet engaged two nursing sisters from the convent, who came alternately to watch by her at night.
Henri, fearing that his mother's income might not be equal to the strain put upon it by these extra expenses, begged her to accept from him a little annuity of 2,000 francs. 'Every New Year's Day, dear mother,' he said to her, 'I shall send you that for my New Year's gift; you must be good and accept it. For too long a time you were my banker; now I am going to be yours.' Madame Proquet had such strong ideas of independence that he expected a refusal. Great was his joy to find his mother accept with alacrity. The disease followed its course for more than four years. Each New Year's Day Henri sent the sum he had promised. A few days before her death, in the month of December, 1890, Madame Proquet even wrote to Henri to remind him that New Year's Day was approaching, and that she would be looking out for her 2,000 francs by the next post. This made her son smile. 'Poor mother! She is perhaps hard up. What a good thing I induced her to accept help! Without it she would not have had enough for her nursing expenses. Thanks to me, we shall be able to keep her alive for years. And there are fools who say that money will not buy happiness!' Then, on the spot, he wrote out a cheque for the sum he sent every year. At the very moment that he was about to ring for a servant a telegram was handed to him.
The telegram announced the sudden death of Madame Proquet.
Henri's good mother had passed away peacefully and without pain; she had fallen asleep thinking of her children and had never wakened again.
Henri and his family took the first train to Brittany. Fanchette was at the door watching for the arrival of the carriage that should convey them from the station. In dumb grief the good creature led Henri and his wife and children to their dear dead one. They knelt and silently all kissed one another with tender effusion beside the mortal remains of that beloved and devoted mother, to whom they thus said a supreme adieu while showing her the depth of their mutual love.
Deprived of the mournful privilege of closing the eyes of his mother, Henri had at least the consolation of being present to piously render her the last sad duty. The day after the funeral, he opened the drawers which contained Madame Proquet's family documents and the property which now belonged to him. In a corner of one of the drawers he found a little packet, carefully tied, sealed, and addressed:
'To my son, only to be opened after my death.'
This packet contained eight rolls of 1,000 francs, each placed in a red morocco sheath. By the side of this money lay a letter without any date, but evidently written quite recently. It ran as follows:
'My beloved Henri,
'The life that you lead makes me very anxious. You speak of returning once more to America, to Australia, even going round the world again. Really, I ask myself sometimes whether you are in your right senses, and whether those English people have not completely demoralized you. You buy shares, you run after large dividends, instead of placing your money in State securities at three per cent. It is pure madness, my dear son. I hate speculations! If an individual attempted to come and offer me ten per cent. for my money I would order my faithful Fanchette to show him the door. There will come a time, perhaps, when the law, grown wiser, will condemn to six months' imprisonment, not only every man who takes more than five per cent., but also him who offers it. You have a million, you tell me. Well, then, my son, keep it carefully, and do not try to get others with it. You may possess a million, but if you get more the millions will possess you. There is no real happiness except in security and in obscurity. The kind that has to be sought far afield is ephemeral. Long voyages may make life interesting, but happy, no. Happiness is only to be found at home with our dear ones. Life is so short that each time you leave your good home to seek adventures you are robbing yourself. That is Fanchette's opinion, too, mind you. Of course, all this does not prevent us from loving you and following you with our thoughts wherever you are, nor from praying the great God to bring you safely to port, but at the same time to rid your head of these ideas of adventure which torment me so. In a corner of the drawer where you will find this letter you will find also, carefully rolled and wrapped, and all in good gold coin (you may say what you please, but I do not like paper), the 8,000 francs that you have sent me on New Year's Day for the past four years. You will find them intact. God be praised! I have not needed to use them. I have taken care of them for you, and – who knows? – you may be very glad one day to have them. My regret is that you did not offer years back to send me twenty thousand instead of two. I should have accepted every franc of it, and it would have been as much money saved from that miserable American gold mine or some other speculations, which, believe me, are bound to be just as mad.
'Thank you, my darling son, for the kind impulse that prompted you to send the money. In the future buy three per cents., give up your travels, and stay at home with your dear ones who adore you. My dear, generous son, when you read these lines I shall be no more of this world. Do not forget your old mother, who has lived only for you, who has been proud of her son, and now thanks him for all the happiness that his love and devotion have brought her.'
Fanchette is installed in the fine house that Henri occupies in the Champs Elysées. He pretends to follow her advice in everything.
CHAPTER XLIV
FAILINGS AND FOIBLES OF GOOD WOMEN
Women of strong character – Obstinacy and prejudice – Tastes and temperaments – The diplomatic woman – The strong-minded woman – The superiority of woman – Monopolizers – Little women – The woman who is wrong – 'I told you so' – Why women were not given beards – Women who marry for money and for titles – The only chance of success in matrimony
When you say that a man has a strong character, it means that when he has made up his mind to attain an object in view, nothing will divert him from the road that leads to the goal. He will take advice and profit by all the circumstances that may help him to succeed. That man, as a rule, is successful in the world.
When you say that a woman has a strong character, it often means that she is obstinate and prejudiced, and that whatever advice and arguments may be placed at her disposal, she will follow her own mind and have her own way. That woman, as a rule, is a failure in life.
Obstinacy and prejudice, which are the characteristics of even the best women, are not proofs of a strong character, but weaknesses.
Which is better for a man and a woman to possess in matrimony – similarity of tastes or similarity of temperaments?
I would reply at once: The former, by all means. If a husband and a wife have different temperaments – and, of course, love each other (this must always be granted in any discussion on 'How to be happy though married') – their lives may be all the more interesting for it, because they will have to constantly study each other, make concessions, and be diplomatists ever on their guard. People of different temperaments can get along very well, but unless their tastes are similar they cannot enjoy life together.
George Eliot says that a difference of tastes in jokes is a strain on the affections.
Fancy a humourist married to a woman who cannot see a joke!
Fancy a Wagnerian having a wife who prefers the 'Casino Girl' to 'Lohengrin'!
Fancy a poetic, romantic woman, a lover of Nature, taking her husband to see Vesuvius in eruption and hearing him remark that he has seen smoke before at Pittsburg and Newcastle-on-Tyne; or visiting with him the banqueting-hall of Heidelberg Castle and hearing that Philistine remark that it is about the same size as the dining-room of the Auditorium Hotel in Chicago!
Of course, this difference of tastes sometimes helps to smooth out difficulties. If the chicken is small, and one partner likes white meat while the other prefers black, it comes in handy.
All psychologists, ancient and modern, agree on one point on the subject of woman, and that is that vanity is her typical failing. You never need fear referring to her beauty. She is always open to a bit of flattery. You may go straight to the heart of the best woman by praising her bonnet or her baby.
Give me a tactful woman (she is a delight), but spare me the diplomatic one. 'A diplomatic woman' sounds to my ears very much like 'a woman too clever by half.' I almost prefer the dear little goose who puts her foot in it every time she opens her mouth.
No doubt the diplomatic woman is a very useful mate to the man who occupies a high official position; but in everyday life, in married life especially, the only diplomacy that a woman should concern herself about is the politics of matrimony. Under all other circumstances the diplomatic woman is only an insincere woman with a high-sounding name.
The more I think of it, the more I feel deeply convinced that, in the ordinary pursuits of life, whether a man or a woman be in question, good diplomacy does not consist in cleverly deceiving people, but in finding out who your real friends are, and, when that is ascertained, in sticking to them and for them through thick and thin.
When a husband allows himself to be ruled by his wife, the latter generally profits by it to become assertive and offensively overpowering. Woman was not meant to rule, and when she is permitted to enjoy that privilege, she too often enjoys it en parvenue, loudly and indiscreetly. Like Queen Victoria, woman should reign, but not rule.
With the tact and common-sense which are the salient and most characteristic features of French women, I regret that France is not under a constitutional monarchy, and that the French throne is not occupied by a Frenchwoman. The two most successful reigns recorded in English history are the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria, which makes me wonder how it is that Salic law is not repealed in all those countries where man alone is allowed either to rule or only reign.
The best illustration of the superiority of woman over man in France is to be seen in the Duval restaurants. It is a woman who, in the twinkling of the eye, multiplies the number of dishes you have eaten by their respective prices and hands you the total always right. She is responsible for the amount charged. If she makes a mistake, she has to pay for it. And how I pity the clerk at the door, always a man, who is satisfied with giving you a bill and seeing that you return it duly paid before you go out! That is all he has to do besides yawning and constantly pushing the door which the customers often leave open or not carefully closed. In business, all the responsible posts are held by women, certainly nine times out of ten. In most shops, fashionable or humble, through the little square hole over which is written 'Pay Here,' you see madame smiling, receiving the money, booking it and keeping it. Monsieur walks about the place and sees to, or, rather, looks at, everything. If that man dies, his wife may regret him, but she can do without him. She has the whole business at her fingers' ends. Instead of being the partner of the firm, she now becomes the sole mistress of the establishment.
The foible of most women, good wives and good mothers, is to be monopolizers, in France especially, where woman is queen in her home, and her empire over her children is complete and unquestioned. France will never succeed in founding a Colonial Empire until boys cease to be brought up and remain under the influence of their mothers. The Roman Empire and the British Empire were made by men who had been brought up and lived under the influence of women, but who never allowed them to rule either as mothers or as wives.
The great qualities of a woman make her admirable, but I am not quite sure that it is not on account of her many little failings and foibles that she is loveable.
A boy is a boy – a genus article. When a man, he will very often develop qualities and defects which he never possessed as a child. With the gentler sex things are different. A little girl is a little woman, and, when a woman, she will possess, only more accentuated, all the qualities and defects that she possessed as a child of ten or twelve. I have known very good boys become very bad men, and very bad boys become splendid men. I have known young cowards become very brave soldiers. An affectionate little girl will be an affectionate woman; a little girl passionately fond of her dolls will be a beautiful mother; and a little flirt of ten will become a terrible flirt at twenty, and a terrible coquette at thirty.
The most painful feeling for a woman to have is to know that she is wrong, because she will not acknowledge it. While she is consuming her own smoke, pity her, and never aggravate her by saying, 'I told you so!' There is such a damnable look of self-satisfaction on the face of a man who says to a woman, 'I told you so!' If I were a woman, I could not resist the temptation of slapping the face of a man who told me so.
Poor thing! It is quite bad enough for her to be wrong, without having to suffer a sneering reminder.
The man who tries to prove, or, worse still, who succeeds in proving, to a woman that she is wrong has not a particle of gentlemanly feeling in him. He is an idiot, a bore, and a brute.
If your wife is wrong, cast down your eyes modestly, smile, and say nothing. If she does not know she is wrong, she will admire your courtesy; if she does, she will admire your self-control. A woman always admires these two qualities in a man.
And when she is right – mind you, perhaps she may be: the most extraordinary things will happen – don't be mean. Be sure you allow her the fullest enjoyment of the victory.
So, whether your wife be right or wrong, always treat her as if she were right. You will thus pay the lady either her due or a compliment, and you are sure to win.
Alexandre Dumas said that women were not given beards because they would never have been able to keep still and silent while being shaved.
Women's tongues have been the eternal theme for men's sarcasms. Yet, for the gift of the gab, for gossip and scandal, give me a few old men together in the smoke-rooms of their clubs. Women are not in it!
I see no difference between women who marry for money and women who sell their favours, except one to the advantage of the latter, who may have been prompted by love, temptation, or poverty to commit actions which the former have the impudence to ask the Law to sanction and the Church to sanctify.
A man who marries for money is still much more despicable, because he has not the excuse of many women, who may not have been able to discover any other way of getting a living.
A woman cannot love or respect a man who allows himself to be purchased for a title of nobility, and a man cannot love or respect a woman who buys him, and thus degrades him in his own eyes. There is no possible element of happiness in such marriages. If there is something in nobility, it should be nobleness of character in those who belong to it. What has become of the old motto Noblesse oblige?
The only chance of success in matrimony is that there should not be one single reproach which, in the inevitable moments of friction, may ever be hurled by one at the face of the other.
A marriage is called a match. The parties who contract it should be matched, and should therefore choose and accept partners of their own rank. Handsome people should not marry ugly ones. They should be equal, with perhaps a touch of superiority in age, size, fortune, and intellectual attainments to the man's credit – to atone for all his shortcomings.
Mésalliances always turn out badly.
Little tiffs, sulkings, fits of temper, and even of jealousy – have as many as you like, they will act as shovels of fuel to keep love and interest alive; but reproaches about origin, antecedents, former poverty, early associations, claims to gratitude especially, will only lead to the inevitable and somewhat logical answer, 'If you married me, I imagine it was because you thought I was as good as you.'
There is no remedy known for the harm done by such reproaches and claims to gratitude.