The Person in Solferino Park

Ladies, or Gentlemen, are born. They cannot be made. To be what is called a lady, you must have a certain refinement of sensibility which compels you to do unto others rather better than you hope they may do to you. Gentility is a quality of soul. It involves compassion for your fellow men; an inborn goodness.

Now to my mind, although she is the greatest comic actress of our time, Bella Barlay is intrinsically a lady. It is not in her character to turn up an hour late for an appointment with a hypocritically nonchalant Oh dear, have you been waiting? That stuff you read about the "artistic temperament" is nothing but a record of bad manners.

So, gasping for breath, she said, "My friend, I am truly sorry. I am fifty-five minutes late. Time is life. Un-punctuality is a kind of murder. But, believe me, I have been practically done to death. It happened at the Hotel Mirage. I was trampled and beaten."

"By your admirers?" I asked.

"By nothing of the sort. It would appear that a fellow who goes by the name of Hip-Hip Thomas was having a banana split in the coffee shop--a sort of plethoric, overgrown, downy peach, of a boy, much handled and deceptively unripe, who manages even to sing like spoiled succulent fruit made half-articulate. Well, for the sake of this object I was jostled, hemmed in and--believe me or not--actually addressed as 'Little Mummy-o' by scarcely nubile girls in coarse canvas trousers. So I owe you humble apologies."

I said, "Not a bit. Girls will be girls. A crush knows no law. I dare say you have had your crushes on your girlhood heroes."

"The word 'crush' was not in use when I was young. We did, however, whisper among ourselves of G.P.s. That was short for Grande Passion, when I was a schoolgirl. We managed our passions better then. My grandmother, for example, fell insanely in love with that great musician Liszt; she carried one of his cigar butts in a locket to the end of her days, but she would never have dreamed of addressing him unless they had been formally introduced, let alone in canvas trousers. Again, I had an aunt who swore that if she could not marry the Czar of Russia, she could not have anybody. She kept her word, too; but you didn't catch her tearing buttons off his coat."

I asked, "And yourself?"

She replied, "My ardors were always of a refined and intellectual kind. At the age of thirteen I fell in love with that great French author Guy de Maupassant. Not that this would interest you. You only come to see me to get stories out of my past; and the kind of person who reads the sort of stuff you write is not likely ever to have heard of Guy de Maupassant--although I am told high school girls are compelled to read The Necklace. I ask you! To be forced to read the great Guy de Maupassant as an exercise! In my day, some mothers of adolescent girls had to lock his books up in a cupboard for fear that we might get at them."

Disregarding the insult, I said, "Dear lady, even if you had been interested in that bore Racine, your personal interest would bring him to life for the whole world. I don't say people would read him; but they would say, 'If Bella Barlay likes him, he must have something.'"

"Lie on, lie on! You soothe my nerves with your falsehoods," said she. "Let us have a glass of sherry."

"But excuse me; surely Guy de Maupassant died when you were no more than a baby," I said.

"What has that to do with it?" she asked. "My love for him was a thing of the soul."

"Well, if it comes to that," I said, "mightn't a teenager's love for a rock 'n' roller be much the same kind of thing?"

She said, stiffly, "I do not see the connection."

"A pinup boy, or girl, belongs to the imagination," I replied. "Spiritually speaking, is there any real difference between pinning up a photograph of Hip-Hip Thomas and hanging one of Liszt's cigar butts around your neck?"

"Yes, there is. But we were talking of one of the greatest storytellers of all time, Guy de Maupassant. I was taken to see his statue in Solferino Park, in Rouen, early in 1908."

"You were only about fifteen years old, then, I imagine."

"Yes. In England and America, the tales of that great man were regarded as unfit for girls to read, for he wrote of love in a keen, cold, brutal way; but he appeared in all the best ladies' magazines in Europe. I must have read all his works before I was thirteen, and I cannot remember that I was any the worse for that. Only I developed what they call a 'crush' on the man himself. I had to find out everything about him, good, bad and indifferent. Most of what I learned was either bad or indifferent. But, gazing in private at a little cabinet photograph of him which I had purchased, I sometimes said to it, 'Ah, my poor Guy! If you had known me you would have lived a less dissolute life; and through my faith in you, you would have learned the meaning of true love!' By this I meant something vernal, flowerlike, romantic, delicate--something rather like the affection that existed between my dear parents--which, as I now realize, wouldn't have suited Guy de Maupassant at all.

"Indeed, over this matter I had one of my very few disagreements with that great theatrical impresario, my secret confidant and the friend of all the world, Jean de Luxe. He laughed at me, and said, 'I knew Guy de Maupassant. He was built like a little ox--thick-necked, thick-chested and with crispy brown hair. We used to call him The Melancholy Bull. He wouldn't have liked your type. Spiritual little girls bored him stiff. Remember his stories as masterpieces, but put Guy out of your mind as a human being. He wasn't.'

"Furious, I replied, 'I will love him until I die!'

"Jean de Luxe said, 'Oh, just you wait and see. Anyway, poor Guy has been dead and buried these several years.'

" 'Not in my heart!' I cried. 'I hate you!'

" 'Oh no you don't,' he answered.

"And I knew that I did not."

Bella Barlay smiled sadly and, delicately sipping her wine, went on:

• • •

Well, that spring my father took momma and me for one of those educational holidays through Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and so forth. Our staring red guidebooks were carefully bound in blue silk to take away what they called that touristishness, which was supposed to look so vulgar in art galleries and cathedrals, and to be a terrible temptation to dishonest guides. I need scarcely tell you that the general format of a guidebook is better known than its contents by such characters, so that a silk binding merely titillates their appetite for plunder. May you never acquire the cameos and other junk we brought back! Venetian glass goblets, alabaster busts, Borgia chairs, stained-glass windows, buhl clocks--the works, as they say in America.

However, my parents could not persuade me to take a proper interest in the cultural life, as represented by the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and all that. All I wanted was to get to the ancient Norman city of Rouen. Why? Because there was a statue of my hero, Guy de Maupassant, there, and I had to put a little bunch of flowers at its foot. I need scarcely tell you that I was not such a fool as to divulge my secret motive: I simply insisted that I must go to Rouen.

My mother whispered to my father, "Joan of Arc was martyred at Rouen. Can it be that Bella wants to make a pilgrimage?"

My father, pulling at the lobe of his ear as he always did when nonplused--which, bless him, was about half the time--said, "My love, I don't know." Then, to me, as it were in joke, "Oh, Bella--concerning Rouen! This insistence. Rouen, Rouen, Rouen! Do you by any chance contemplate making some sort of pilgrimage?"

We Barlays may bend the truth, but we never lie. I looked him in the eye and replied, "Yes. A sort of pilgrimage."

That floored him. He could only ask, "You haven't, by any chance, been hearing voices, have you?"

I answered, "Yes, I have." I did not feel it necessary to explain that I had been hearing his voice, and momma's.

"Just so, just so," said he; then, with a double take, "--eh?"

My old nurse Ilonka said that the best thing for noises in the head was a poultice of boiled onions in the ears; with which, duly applied, I was sent to bed, with a close of hepatic salts for good measure. And that night poor father sent a long, explanatory telegram to good old Jean de Luxe, who was going to Paris on theatrical business, begging him to break his journey for a day at Rouen.

We had a double suite at the Hotel William the Conqueror in that historic city, and there Jean de Luxe came, with the air of a producer and director, his beard perfumed with lilac, and his hat on one side of his head. There was a whispered conversation, the gist of which I could easily guess. Then Ilonka came to me and said in her sourest voice, "You are going out to tea with M. Jean de Luxe. Dress, child!"

"Are momma and poppa coming, too?" I asked.

"Your momma has a migraine, worrying about you, and your poppa has a knot in his stomach. Get dressed."

I replied, loftily, "I am already dressed."

Ilonka said, "A young lady should at least scrape the boiled onions out of her ears." Bless her heart, she always kept some damp rag to smother pride with!

So, curiously smelling like a lamb stew with lavender water--an evil combination--I went to tea with Jean de Luxe. He was ominously silent, swinging a great snakewood walking stick. At last he said, "You're off your feed, I hear."

"I have not much appetite, Uncle Jean," I answered.

"Could I perhaps tempt you with a little pastry?"

I said, "I'm not hungry, really."

"Pity," said he. "Arminio is one of the four great pastry cooks of Europe. He has the Italian technique, but learned his finer doughs in Vienna and his sponges in Paris. An artist. He is the man who made a chocolate éclair so light that the dancer La Goulue could keep it in the air by waving a fan at it."

My mouth was watering painfully, but I still had strength of will enough to say, "A cup of weak tea, Uncle Jean. No more."

"So be it," he said. "Arminio was pastry cook to Napoleon the Third. But Arminio was a rank revolutionary. He was found guilty of conspiring against the Emperor. But the Empress Eugénie said to her husband, 'Louis, let us be sane. There is nothing more exquisite in the world than Arminio's Carbonari Tart. Arminio is international good will. You must pardon him!' The unhappy French Emperor, twirling his absurd mustaches--irresolute, as usual--said, 'Madame, Arminio may conspire against us Monday and Tuesday, on condition that he bake the Carbonari Tart for the rest of the week.'...It is a confection of apples, honey and cream, with--but what an I talking about? You are on a pilgrimage, you have no appetite."

I said, faintly, "Perhaps just one of those éclairs the lady kept in the air with a fan?"

Then Jean de Luxe turned on me, and said, "You little nuisance, by rights I should put you across my knee and wallop you red, white and black as the German flag! You are by nature a great artist, yes; but remember this--in the course of nature no one can achieve artistry, which signifies the triumph of man versus beast. You have behaved selfishly. I am going to make an artist of you. 'Selfish artist' is a contradiction in terms, because you must belong to everyone except yourself. You little beast, you shall not have tea at Arminio's!"

I had never seen Jean de Luxe so exercised. "Where, then?" I asked.

He said, "We are going to a florist's shop."

And so we did. He said, "The young lady wants a bunch of verbena."

"Why verbena?" I asked.

"It was Guy de Maupassant's favorite flower. I have diagnosed what ails you. For the past twelve months you have been mooning over his picture. Come!"

But they had no verbena, and Jean de Luxe settled for red roses--which I had to pay for--and then, carrying my nosegay, I went arm in arm with him to Solferino Park. He said to me, "About two years ago, 1906 or thereabouts, they put up a statue of poor Guy. It was observed, then, that the park keeper looked exactly like him. Some correspondent of a Paris paper wrote a piece about it. The man's name who keeps the park is Cavalier. The resemblance between him and your hero is something extraordinary."

I said, with heat, "Uncle Jean, this means nothing. In a way, everybody looks a little like everybody else. A superficial resemblance between a nobody and a somebody is enough to bring out an imitation. Hence, I have seen Theodore Roosevelt sweeping the floor of a café; I have seen the King of England selling fish; I have seen the Emperor Franz-Joseph--whiskers and all--hawking gardenias. Who wouldn't look like the Kaiser of Germany, given a sea-gull-shaped mustache? People do not create appearances; appearances create people!"

When I paused for breath, Jean de Luxe said, "Enough! It so happens that Cavalier, the caretaker of Solferino Park, was Guy de Maupassant's milk-brother. I mean, Cavalier's mother suckled Guy de Maupassant."

I cried, "If this makes a resemblance, half the world ought to have udders, and moo!"

"Less brilliance, young lady!" said he.

"--Or my kitten should have horns," I persisted, "having been brought up on cow's milk."

"You are too clever by half," said Jean de Luxe. "Bring your flowers and make your pilgrimage."

All the same, I felt that I had scored a point over Jean de Luxe, that kindest of friends; this is no way to feel, young sir! Pinching my silly face into a mean kind of composure, I walked with him to Solferino Park, looking--as I must now regretfully admit--not unlike one of those naughty young French girls who at the present time make fame writing nasty psychological novels.

He said to me, "Wipe that silly smirk off your face, you! I've seen it in and I'll see it out. Behold the memorial!"

I drew a deep breath. There was the memorial to my idol, Guy de Maupassant. My bunch of roses quivered in my hand as I stepped forward.

But then, standing by this bit of statuary in Solferino Park, upon whom did these eyes fall? As the sky above is my witness, there stood Guy de Maupassant himself--short-cut, burly, crispy-haired, military of stature, with a huge chestnut mustache shaded by a pinch of reddish hair on the lower lip, and the supercilious air of a born aristocrat! He was dressed in a species of uniform, buttoned up to the throat. His elegant hands toyed with a bit of paper and some black tobacco, of which he made a sort of sausage--a cigarette--what time he scratched about with a sulphur match, hemming and hawing while he waited for the stick to catch, and fussing with his smoke.

Jean de Luxe said, dry as an old lead, "Meet Cavalier, the caretaker."

"Enchanted!" cried the caretaker Cavalier, looking me up and down in such a manner that I felt as if I had been skinned alive.

His brown eyes were shiny and dead as chestnuts, quite soulless, and every now and again he caressed his mustache with a cautious knuckle and smiled pinkly at me. He was perhaps the most repulsive man I ever saw, and I have seen my share. It was his utterly ersatz manner that did it. He was what they call snide.

Now I saw a fresh aspect of kind Jean de Luxe--cool and weary, listening with the frenzied patience of a man who knows all the answers but is bound to let you talk yourself dry. Cavalier's cigarette disintegrated. Offering him a cigar as if he proposed to stab him with it, Uncle Jean growled, "Smoke this, man, smoke this!...No, for God's sake don't light it with a sulphur match, you fool! Here's a wax vesta...Your mother, I believe, was wet nurse to the great Guy de Maupassant?"

"She was," said the caretaker Cavalier. "Oh Yes, indeed!"

"My little girl here is a great admirer of Guy de Maupassant."

Grinning, the caretaker leaned backward, so that now his glance penetrated only to my bodice and took in part of my chemise. Jean de Luxe added, "You may address her as Miss Bella."

Cavalier, the caretaker, said, "Yes, yes; all the girls loved us." His eyes were wise to my stockings.

"Us?" asked Jean de Luxe.

"We De Maupassants," said the caretaker, with a chuckle.

Jean de Luxe said, "Come off it, Cavalier! People do not create appearances; appearances create people."

I said, "This I have heard before." I giggled, I think.

Jean de Luxe growled, "Shut up!" He was in no mood for joking. Then Cavalier said, "I am sorry. I offended you with my tobacco, my soldier's tobacco. But I can afford no better, because I am a working man. You are gentlefolk. Yet if I had my rights, perhaps I might smell sweet even to the nostrils of the likes of you!"

"What rights?" asked Jean de Luxe.

The caretaker said, with a theatrical sigh, "I am paid to look after Solferino Park, not to talk."

Jean de Luxe took out a bright gold napoleon, and balanced it on a fingertip. "Tell us about your rights, and your wrongs."

"What wrongs?" asked Cavalier, squinting at the coin.

"Where there are rights there are wrongs," said Jean de Luxe.

I piped up:"Guy de Maupassant. Tell us about Guy de Maupassant."

"As for him," said Cavalier, with a smile, "I can tell you everything. Everything!"

Spinning the gold piece with a melodious, tingling sound, Jean de Luxe said, "Tell."

Then this person said, "Well, as you may have heard, Guy's mother Laura was a Le Poittevin. Now the Le Poittevins were a good solid Norman family--merchants, you know, and millionaires--but seeded out."

"Bless my heart, here's promotion!" cried Jean de Luxe. "Here's a lucky day, when a park keeper talks in such a manner!"

"Isn't it, though?" asked Cavalier, making affectionate gestures to his mustache as if it were a pet spaniel. "I will proceed." He was, as you might say, soothing that mustache of his--as if it might get jealous of the way he was ogling the gold coin. He went on, "The De Maupassants were gentlefolk. Had a coronet on their note paper, et cetera. But they were penniless, of course."

"And why 'of course'?" I demanded.

"Because it is in the nature of things that your gentry should be wastrels--hunting, shooting, fishing, and all that--a dozen at table, and the wine running like water. Then, if you use a good horse to catch a fox, or a greyhound just to bag a rabbit, how can you have money? Well, Laura le Poittevin brought her husband a very decent fortune, indeed; and as soon as she was Madame de Maupassant, he settled down to enjoy it. She did not have a very gay time of it, I think, what with one thing and another. But when little Guy was born, she was deliriously happy. You'd think he was the first child ever to come into the world! Ah, mother love, mother love--what an interesting institution you are!"

Jean de Luxe growled, "Get on with it, man!"

"Yes sir, so I do," said this person, with a smirk. "Now my momma, the wife of the farmer Cavalier, had been Laura le Poittevin's maid and companion, so that when they were married old Monsieur le Poittevin gave her a substantial dowry in the shape of a good farm. As luck would have it, Guy de Maupassant and I were born on the same day. But whereas Madame Cavalier was a veritable Percheron horse of a girl, Madame de Maupassant was very sickly.

"And yet--so much for Darwin!--little Guy was firm and rosy as an apple, while Cavalier's brat was somewhat peaked, sickly, as the saying goes. And this pleased the good Norman farmer not at all. He would say, 'Where's the rhyme and reason of it? We've got a fine bit of land, and in twenty years' time, if we're careful, we'll get hold of Madame Pichegrue's acres, too. And who's to work the land? You can't fool me. Our kid will never make a farmer.'

"Momma would shout, 'What does the man want? Our little sweetheart will fill out. Leave him be.'

"'Oh, ah: he'll fill out forms in a post office. He'll be a tailor, a cobbler.'

"'Is the man out of his mind?' Momma would cry. 'What, are children fish--Throw that one back, it's too small?'

"Father would grumble, 'It can't be what they're eating, since you're nursing them both.'

"Cavalier, shut up; you make me tired!'

"But Poppa, having got some complicated, cunning idea into his hard Norman head, could not get it out. So one day, when Madame de Maupassant was in bed with a sore throat which she was afraid her precious little Guy might catch--for otherwise she hardly let her baby out of her sight--Poppa said, 'Look here. Just for a joke. The De Maupassant pup is decked out in a small fortune's worth of silk bibs, petticoats, tuckers, satin bows, and all that truck. Our little 'un wears a woolen shirt and knitted boots. Now just for fun, mind you -- dress little De Maupassant in our kid's stuff, and put ours into the other one's finery.'

"Momma said, 'You're drunk.' But he insisted, and he had his way. He always did, the old mule! Momma dressed Guy in my clean but simple clothes, and got me up in Guy's highly fanciful wrappings. And just as she was admiring the effect, Laura de Maupassant came tiptoe into the nursery, and snatched me up, covered me with kisses, burst into tears, and wailed, 'Oh my little Guy, my little Guy! Has it been pining for its mummy, then? How pale he is--' et cetera, et cetera.

"This put Momma Cavalier in a predicament, for she was like an elder sister to Laura de Maupassant, and this unlucky, nearsighted, hysterical lady was in a very delicate state of nerves. So, seized with a terrible indecision, she did nothing at all.

"Thus, saying no more about it. she took me home. Cavalier slapped her on the back and said, 'That's the girl! Don't cry. Your brat isn't fit for the hard world; they'll bring him up soft. But this 'un will make a farmer!' And that's the way it turned out. Only the De Maupassants lost all their money, and the boy they thought was Guy took to pen-pushing. No stamina. Died young. And how do you like that for a story, sir?"

Jean de Luxe looked at him in blank amazement, and gave him the gold napoleon. "Where the devil did you read that story?" he asked.

The park keeper said, "What with the farm, the army, and so forth. I never had time to learn to read or write."

"And Cavalier?" asked Jean de Luxe.

"Oh, he went wild over the Suez Canal, and lost his shirt."

"Have another cigar," said Jean de Luxe, laughing. "You tell a good story."

The park keeper looked surprised. He said, "And why should I not tell a good story, sir? After all, I am Guy de Maupassant!" And he twirled his silly mustache.

As we were leaving Solferino Park, Uncle Jean said, "Well, have you made your pilgrimage?"

"Yes."

"By the way, if it is not an indiscretion--whose photograph was that which you just dropped down the drain?"

I answered honestly, "To be perfectly frank, Uncle Jean, I do not know."

"Do you care?"

"No."

"The man is nothing, then; his art is the thing?"

"Yes, Uncle Jean."

"Congratulations. You have become a woman."

Then we all went to the circus, and had the time of our lives.

• • •

Bella Barlay smiled. "It is all so much like a dream, is it not?" she said. "Perhaps I was too harsh with those silly young people. It is pleasant to be young and silly...Only they should not have called me 'Mummy-o.'"