Marcel and Others

== MARCEL AND OTHERS ==
A Sketch of a French Comedy House, 
=== by Charles Olivier ===
Originally published in The Gentleman's Magazine 1903
 Marcel meets me at the station with a
wheelbarrow — for the transport of my luggage, not myself. I always say to
myself as the train draws up, "Coach, carriage, wheel barrow?" For my
friend Monsieur de Fay el is a little variable in these matters. 
We load up the barrow with my belongings,
and start for the château. The tall
iron gates of the park open almost on to the booking-office of the diminutive
station, which is also a post office — of such an unpretentious nature that we
buy stamps out of one of the station-master's pockets and post our letters in
another. When we reach the bridge over the little river I invite Marcel to stop
and try some English tobacco. He makes himself a cigarette, and sits down on my
portmanteau, blowing his smoke into the face of a Diana who guards the spot. 
Things wore a gloomy aspect for him just
now. He has asked Madame, it appears, for leave to go into more often than she likes. At last she
has struck. “ Figure to yourself, Monsieur," says Marcel, "that which
Madame has come from saying to me: *Your uncle that you wish to go to see all
the days at Paris, Marcel, is it that he wears petticoats?* Oh, Monsieur, it is
frightful; it is the devil!" 
We smoke on in silence. The tall grasses
rustle about the marble feet of Diana and the trout grab lazily at the struggling
flies. All is peace, except in the soul of Marcel. "Is it not
ravishing," I suggest, "under these waving trees, by this running
stream? Who would be in ?
Think of the noise and glare and dust! Live the country!” 
“Oh, no, Monsieur; live Paris! There one
finds the music, of the gaiety, of the conversation, of the distractions; here one
works, works; always of the labor; nothing of theatres, of friends, of " 
“ Uncles?” I suggest. 
Marcel slowly declines one eyelid, and the
comers of his mouth elevate themselves into rather a sour smile. We understand
one another. “And again. Monsieur, regard here. I was going all the Tuesdays
and Fridays of the evening into the village, where one gives lessons of the
dance and of the deportment. But now Monsieur has bought himself a dog, large
and black and savage, which has eaten already two Messieurs who trespass. What
wish you? If I go to the course as before, Porthos devours me the legs. Therefore
I rest at the house.” 
I can say nothing comforting. If Porthos
does not leave Marcel a leg to stand on, it will be no good his learning to waltz.
Deportment without legs is a farce. Perhaps we can tame Porthos, or ensure his
being chained up a little longer in the evenings. 
“Oh. Monsieur," breaks out Marcel,
“the country, how I detest it! Yes, Monsieur, I repeat — detest it! The songs of
the little birds, they pierce me the ears and make me weep of ennui, and the
smell of the hay makes me to vomit. Yes, Monsieur, I sit alone in my room, and
I write, always I write “ 
“To your uncle?" 
With the same gentle wink and bitter smile
Marcel wheels my luggage away. I have no doubt that within a mile of the ugly
Eiffel Tower, which he can see as he writes, always writes, there dwells,
unconscious of the strange effect of hay upon his liver, an Eve who could make
this a paradise for poor Marcel. 
Monsieur de Fayel hails me from the embarcadère by the lake, where he is
fixing up some Venetian lamps, his latest and best-loved treasure. He appears
from amid the bulrushes like a middle-aged infant Moses with a great many wisps
of dank weed about his figure. He invites me to make with him a safe and
inglorious voyage of some hundred yards in a little tub, painted, it would
seem, to represent a blancmange. 
“It is necessary that the boat looks very
beautiful from the windows of the chateau," he observes, as he perspires at
the oars with the sort of stroke which condenses into three inches the work
that should be spread out over three feet, with much displacement of water and
little of otir raft. We are, owing to imperfect balancing, very much down by
the stem and our bows point hopefully to heaven. I am sure we cannot look
beautiful from the château or any
other point of view, more especially as we are both of a figure more solid than
elegant. 
The coachman, the second coachman, the
stable-boy, the gardener, the under-gardener, the gamekeeper, the bailiff, and
the “ second man'' are all engaged on the hay. Hence the barrow at the station.
The butler and the peacock grace the terrace. The coachman steps respectfully
to the edge of the lake. “ Pardon, Monsieur. Is it that Monsieur knows that the
tails of his coat float on the waves there behind?" That is the finishing
stroke to any idea of beauty about us. 
Madame de Fayel is waiting to welcome our
errant bark. We sit down in a shrine of Flora at the end of a long avenue of
poplars. It is a charming spot, and I always feel that we ought to be highly
romantic in it. We should be Roman or Greek philosophers, shepherds and
shepherdesses, or lords and ladies of the Grand Monarque's days, with costume
and conversation to match. ' But we wear, alas! modem clothes, and we talk
about bedspreads. 
Madame de Fayel's friend from joins us. She is
frank of manner, and in her speech always sans
peur, and often sans reproche.
"You must do somethin ' to that stupid old Gaston," she says to our
host; “he looks as if he had been dug up. He gives me a pain in the
stomach." Monsieur de Fayel promises to dig Gaston in again, if that will
allay the internal pangs of the friend. 
The bell clangs for dejeuner, and we make
our way up to the house. My host pours his troubles into my sympathetic ear. He
is, it appears, the victim of two invasions: one of electricians, the other of
ants. His wrath is such that he forgets to discriminate. “I assure you, my
friend, that they are in all the places. I go to repose myself in my study in
the after-mid-days, and there see these frightful beasts! I raise myself in the
mornings and behold me covered of them I" The poor Monsieur! 
Marcel waits at table, splendid but gloomy.
Nothing cheers him. The cork of a bottle on the sideboard bursts its moorings
and lights gracefully on his head. The children shriek with joy, but Marcel is
as solemn and unmoved as if it always rained corks in his part of the world. A
(purely accidental) reference on my part to dancing-lessons causes him to turn
a beautiful crimson and to fix his eye sternly on a particular comer of the
ceiling. He takes his revenge by neglecting me in the ministration of wine and
disregarding my signal for bread. 
We have coffee and strawberries in a garden
that is the private domain of our hostess and can only be got at through her
boudoir. Here is a splashing fountain, a baigneuse
disdainful of a bathing costume, a sheltering trellis clambered over by
beautiful creepers, circular benches and recesses, and, behind all, roses and
ever roses, in terrace above terrace. A place to dream in. A place to be
intellectual and refined in. The drawl of the Yankee lady rises on the fragrant
air. "No; no strawberries for me, dear. They make me itch so." 
Monsieur the Curé comes to dinner in the
evening. He is very small and shiny and black. Except for his red face, indeed,
and his tonsure he is nearly all black: black hair, black soutane, black bands
outlined in violet, and black gloves. Madame de Fayel, who is large, tucks him
under her arm and sweeps him off across the hall to the dining room. I often
wish we could have dinner in the cold, severe hall, with its vaulted roof and
quaintly carved beasts, its great picture of some ancestor in lace and satin,
and its echoes. But perhaps it would not do. It is, on the whole, better to dream
that you feed in marble halls than actually do so. Monsieur the Curé speaks
English for my benefit. "Madame will pardon me that I tell Monsieur of my
voyage to .
I am arrived; there are two hours in your grand metropolis, when figure my
horror of finding that my — Madame will pardon me? — that my pantaloons is
tore. What to do? I demand to a gendarme, and he has indicated to me a magazine
of the garments. I am entered; an amiable Monsieur demands that which I seek.
'Pardon, Monsieur,' I say, *my pantaloons is broke; give me another.'" 
The American friend, apropos of the flies
that Paris has in all her quarters these hot days, tells us how she waved her
parasol at what appeared to be a raspberry tart, and it became a custard. She
then proceeds to a little disquisition on appendicitis, and its utility as a
means of introduction into high society. 
Marcel visits are the last thing at night
and brings me some iced water. This is a vain compliment, as it makes my tooth ache
— the tooth on which, literally, everything depends. The nightingales and
crickets bring the tears to the eyes of Marcel. And yet he hails from , and loves to tell
me of his country — its rocks and torrents and snows. I suppose they have
nightingales there too; I hope not crickets. 
I ask him if I can have breakfast with the
children. ''Is it that it is defended from having the little breakfast there below
with the infants?" “My God, Monsieur! why should it then be defended from
having the little breakfast where one wishes?" I like breakfasting with
the children, because they are nicer then than any other time. Later on in the day,
when lessons have taken off the edge of the pleasure of life, they get a little
cross. But in the early morning chocolates in the form of dominoes appeal to
them very strongly, and often prove the keys which unlock a good many valuable
secrets, such as the name and age of the chicken that died last night, the
exact stage of education of the coachman's second boy, and so on. 
Marcel tells me of his past experience and
his ambitions for the future. They are both entirely laudable and
circumscribed. If he can learn English he will go to — as a temporary measure I suppose,
for I am sure he can never be happy far from the .
* * Ah , quel bonheur ! if he should be able to apprehend the English!" I
make a suggestion to him that I shall give him lessons. The idea is hailed with
joy, and he listens now with greater equanimity to the varied notes that rise
to our ears as we lean at the open window. Every morning, therefore, he comes
to my room, trh matinal, with an offering of a cup of tea in one hand and a
grammar in the other. We plod with heavy breathings and wriggles from “the cat
is not Pat, but Pat is fat," and such tongue-tying contraptions, to “I
love," “thou lovest," &c., and so soar to empjrrean heights. 
The "second man" is an Italian,
an enthusiast for his own language, "Ah, Monsieur," he says to me in
the intervals of polishing the gallery floors with one foot in an tingainly
shuffle, “ours is the language by excellence. French is the language of Courts;
Castilian of compliments. Russian is bow-wow. But Italian, it is the language
of science, of poetry, of music; it is the language of the angels; it is the language
of heaven." I sincerely hope it is not the last, for, if it is, about
thirty-nine fortieths of the blessed will be reduced to silence. 
Marcel is, it appears, by way of being an
artist, and in a moment of confidence he brings me some of his work to criticize.
I am sorry, for criticism is, honestly, all I have to offer. I could point out
to him that châteaux, farms and churches are not built of yellow mud and
furnished with tightly closed blue shutters ; that though swallows in flight are
easy to picture, they are not, therefore, the only living things in this world;
that roses do not grow on cactuses, and, if they did, would not, I take it, be
pink with white trimmings and as large as cartwheels ; and that the best way of
getting to the other side of a cedar forest is by walking through it, and not
by means of a bridge. But I do not wish to hurt his feelings too much, so I
merely show him a little thing of my own. From that moment he abjures art. 
One morning he comes to my room with
mingled joy and regret on his honest face. Madame has given him vacances of a month, and to-morrow he
will go to Chambéry, Thanks, a thousand thanks, to Monsieur of all his
amiability, “Pas de quoi, mon ami."
Marcel will make himself the honor of writing to Monsieur in English well
understood. Monsieur is enchanted. He supposes that Marcel will visit his uncle
en route; will he convey Monsieur's -respectful salutations to her? 
And so I am relegated to the care of a
"locum,” who is very deaf and quite dumb. At the end of three weeks Madame
de Fay el receives his respectful resignation from Marcel; and by the same post
I get his first, and probably last, letter in English: — 
"Mister,
— Behold me arriven to home, and see me surrounded of my dogs, my cats, my
pigons, and my father. I have made a voyage very excellent. There is comed here
an forign mister, which have see nof the snow not before. He ran at it, kick up
any, eat any, and put any in his poche. Alas! what damage I He is fallen of the
mountain and is slayed. ''
I
have writed to Madame, and I have made to her my demission. For there has much
of the work in Chambéry, and I can to gain fourty francs by week. Wherefore
then go to ,
and wherefore to come again to the house of Madame? Mister, I thank you very
well of all your pains. You see how I have did very grand progress. Agree my
respectuous sentiments. ''
MARCEL."
''
I think from the look of it that Marcel has
found another uncle at Chambdry.
Category:Gentleman's Magazine
Category:Olivier