work which at once raised him to his well- had a room appropriated to him, in conjuncdeserved eminence, viz. "Vanity Fair." tion with the late Mr. Hogarth, in the house He himself has related how this masterpiece where Household Words, and some chronicle of modern novel-writing was refused in the or record connected with that periodical, first instance, both by magazines, and as a were published. There we read newspasubstantive work; but it was reserved for pers, wrote private notes, gossiped about Mr. Kent's Footprints on the Road" to Corelli and Sebastian Bach, and de omnibus make it more recently known that he had rebus, &c., and should have done special also offered himself as an artist, to furnish work, but somehow, excepting the correcsketches as illustrations for a popular au- tion of proofs, this generally happened to thor's stories, which.had been very promptly be done elsewhere. At that early date of declined. Bell used to take the utmost de- the periodical, the only regular staff-contriblight in seeing him make these fanciful utors of original articles, were Mr. Dickens, sketches. The drawing-room was very the acting editor, and myself; and, now and large, and in winter there was a great log- then, an article was jointly written. One fire. It chanced on a certain evening that day Mr. Dickens proposed to me a paper the lamp suddenly went out, so that the back on "Chatham Dockyard." Being much part of the room was thrown into shadow; taken with the subject, a day was at once and there stood those huge figures-one fixed upon, and we went down early to have upwards of six feet two, and bulky in pro- the day before us dinner being ordered portion, - the other (Bell) being at least for the hour by which it was considered that six feet four, stalwart and gaunt with the our observations and notes could be coinlarge log-fire at steady red heat in front of pleted. "Now," said Mr. Dickens, "this them, and their great shoulders and backs article will naturally divide itself into two in dark shade. It suggested to the imagi- parts, which we can afterwards dovetail tonation a scene of giants in a forest, holding gether, viz. the works of the dockyard, and high conference, or of the meeting between the fortifications and country scenery round the Chancellor, " tower-heavy Turketull," about. Which will you take?" I at once and "Gorm" the Scandinavian sea-king, in replied, that the works of the dockyard the fine chronicle play of Athelstan." seemed to me the most promising. He What a pity that Bell's amiable, and not un- smiled, and said, "Then we'll meet here frequently inspired " visitor, Mendelssohn, again at a quarter to five. I'm glad you did not chance to be at the pianoforte that make that choice, for this is a sort of native evening! He would certainly have impro- place of mine. I was a schoolboy here, and vised some wonderful symphony on the oc- have juvenile memories and associations all round the country outskirts." The kindness and good nature, even more than the readiness for any kind of work, need no comment. How few literary men-how very few-would have suppressed a strong personal feeling on such an occasion, before the choice was made. But while the long life of continuous literary work shall show so very few objectionable things, there will remain a large store of kindly acts, to be, from time to time, recorded. To the joint article in question, Mr. Dickens gave the title of Öne man in a Dockyard," — thus again sinking his own personality in the matter. casion. 66 66 The last touch has just been given to the foregoing picture, when the sudden news of the departure of an early friend on his final journey, confuses the eye-sight with a doubt as to whether it reads the words aright. No portrait shall, at present, be attempted, and all memoirs must be postponed to a time when one can more steadily approach the subject, and more clearly recail the many genial and admirable characteristics of the private life of Charles Dickens. One brief anecdote is all that shall now be offered. When Household Words first started, and for a long time afterwards, the present writer 66 -- From Temple Bar. THE WIDOW MERAND. A STORY IN TWELVE PICTURES. I. Ir is evening in St. Roque. Broad August moonshine silvers the grey gables of the quaint old Norman houses silvers the exquisite flèche of St. Pierre and the empty booths of the fruit-sellers in the market-place beneath, and brings into dark distinctness, at the far end of the long picturesque street, the twin spires of severe, frowning St. Etienne. "I must take yet another turn," says M. Alphonse Rendu to himself. He lights a fresh cigar, and walks back towards St. Etienne. Moonlight and the reflection from a cigar are neither of them flattering to the complexion. So it is better to follow Monsieur Rendu until he passes the old cathedral of St. Etienne and turns into the great square beyond; the square is full of lamps, and here he is so obliging as to sit down on one of the benches under the lime-trees, and take off his hat, and we get quite a good look at his face. Pas si mal! And yet he is not what can be called handsome. He has honest blue eyes and a benevolent forehead, and a good mouth a little severe, perhaps, but his moustache and beard curl over it so playfully that you can't find much fault, as your eyes go wandering up and you note how well the crisp auburn waves of his hair match with the beard. If his face were not so flat and his nose so broad, Monsieur Rendu would, after all, come under the objectionable denomination, handsome." He does not think the word objectionable. Listen to his thoughts as he sits smoking, in the broad moonlight of the Place St. Etienne : 66 "Yes, she is handsome! Her eyes are as bright as diamonds, and as dark as velvet; but they have the hardness of diamonds. But why am I a fool? can it signify whether a woman's eyes be hard or soft, so long as they are full of love for me? and Madame Mérand gives more than love to her husband, she gives him a home -an état. Well, what do I want with these? have I not enough to pay for lodging and clothes, and food enough and to spare, out of my own earnings?" He rises and paces up and down till he has finished his cigar, and then he still paces up and down, whistling softly. "If I could think - but no, no, no! She is as cold as a little stone, and as proud as ah! it is hard that, in this life, we cannot have things as we choose." Having given birth to this surprising discovery of hardships, Monsieur Alphonse takes his way back into the Rue Notre Dame, and then goes on past the Hotel St. Barbe, to his lodging over the the shop of Madame Bobineau, that well-known perfumer and glover at the corner of the Place St. Pierre. To his lodging and to bed, but not to dreams of handsome-eyed widow Mérand, the wealthy proprietor of the Hotel St. Barbe. The dreams of Monsieur Alphonse are of a young face with a pale clear skin and large woudering eyes, eyes that have no fixed beauty in them, though they haunt the memory, -eves that take fresh meanings as fresh emotions lighten in them. "Mimi!" this young clerk murmurs in his sleep, and Mimi" is not the name of Madame Mérand. II. 66 NEXT morning is a festival, and Madame Mérand's dark oval face looks very handsome as she hurries home from early mass. She likes to be at home again, settled in her little parlour opposite the salle-á-manger by the time her regular visitors come in and breakfast. This parlour is a little room for so queen-like a woman, but it commands the whole of the arched entrance, and she can overlook from it the courtyard of the inn. She looks very handsome, as she sits near the open door; her plain black stuff gown fits her perfect shape so easily, and the tiny cambric collar and cuffs are snowy in their fineness. She wears coral earrings and a brooch to match, of the simplest form; a rich plait of dark glossy hair circling her well-shaped head; and yet Madame Mérand cannot look simple all this plainness, she is like a queen. with The guests pass in and out: she bows to some, to one or two she rises and curtsies; but, generally, she gets up and retreats into her little room. A young man is coming out of the salle; he bows to madame, and smiles. He She curtsies and then her lips move. cannot hear, and has to go into the little parlour before he can understand what she says. My neighbour, Monsieur Le Petit, is going to Cabourg-les-bains on Sunday," says madame; "he has room in his charà-bane, if you, monsieur, will accept a place; it is very pleasant at Cabourg." And then the bright dark eyes look at Monsieur Rendu with an intensity of expression that troubles him. Only for a moment, Monsieur Rendu of illustration, .. Ma foi!-yes, it must be pleasant. Madame, I return many thanks to Monsieur Le Petit, and I am enchanted to accept his offer." Monsieur Rendu bows and smiles devotedly and then sallies forth to the banking-house. The widow looks after him, and she sighs. Madame Mérand can quit her parlour now and go up to her own room. There she paces up and down, a different woman altogether from the calm, self-possessed owner of the little parlour of the Hotel St. Barbe. "Does he love me or has he no feeling, or does he love some one else? He likes me he never shuns an opportunity of talking to me - - but there it ends. Oh, mon Dieu! how much longer is this torture to go on?" 66 "and from the point of thinks of the fresh sea-breezes in contrast the finger and the thumb tip, so. I will with the furnace-like heat that comes in have it done, I say!" Madame Bobineau through the arched entrance. stamps her foot, and her voice rises into that exasperating pitch of shrillness which, to some feminine minds, represents power. Bien, madame-I hear you," Mimi says. Her heart swells proudly; she would like to put on her bonnet, and seek another employment; but she is an orphan. Her father, Christophe Lalonge, an unsuccessful musician in Rouen, married one of his pupils, for love, against the wish of her parents, and reaped the bitter fruit. When he and his young wife died of the same fever, their one child was left destitute. Through the intervention of the priest who had ministered to them, little Mimi was brought up carefully and kindly by some of the good religieuses of Rouen; and, later on, Madame Bobineau, a far-off cousin of the dead musician's, agreed to take the orphan as shop-woman in her business, at St. Roque, provided Mimi established no expectations on this offer, and found her own lodgings; for Madame Bobineau's house was close to the beautiful church of St. Pierre and the market-place, and her lodgings were sought after and well-paid for. She had now, au premier, an invalid lady staying at St. Roque for the sake of its famous library; au second, Monsieur le Capitaine Loigereau; au troisième, Monsieur le Vicomte de Foulanges, sous-lieutenant both attached to the 75th of la ligne, now quartered in the town; and, au quatrième, in the front room, Monsieur Alphonse Rendu, clerk at the bank of Carmier, frères, in the rue St. Jean: all good customers, who took their meals at the table of Madame Bobineau's gossip and friend, widow Mérand, of the Hotel St. Barbe. In Madame Bobineau's orderly and well-regulated household, a young girl could not be located among so many men, two of them soldiers, so Mimi had a lodging in a by-street. There was a private door to the house of Madame Bobineau; if the locataires came into the shop, it must be from the street, and as customers; and it is about one of these very locataires that she is now so angry as to raise a storm of controlled rebellion in Mimi Lalonge. She stops before the looking-glass; a proud smile curves her lips, usually too firm in their chiselling. He must love me!" the beautiful woman murmurs; "but he dares not show his love because he is poor." And yet her heart aches still, - aches with that incessant hunger so hard to appease -the hunger of a love which has given itself unsought. Looking at Madame Mérand, it is difficult to think this can be her case, more difficult to realize that she will fail in attaining anything on which she has determined. There is power as well as passion in those dark, flashing, resolute eyes. III. OLD Madame Bobineau makes a good contrast to Madame Mérand. She is Norman born, and has long ago lost every tooth in her head. Her face, in colour and wrinkles, puts one in mind of a peachstone; while the face of the young girl she talks to, on this sunny August morning, may serve as counterpart to the bloom on the peach. The girl is very fair; as she lifts her large wondering eyes to the old woman's face, a tinge of soft rose steals through the transparent skin. There is a mutinous movement in the red full lips. "I tell thee, Mimi, it is neglectful and intolerable- an orphan, with her own living to earn, to consider herself above her duties: it is thy positive duty to fit each glove across the knuckles, so," the old lady doubles up her skinny claws by way Madame Bobineau gives another stamp with her carpet-shod foot, and retreats to her den, whence, spider-like, she can watch through the semi-curtained glass-door. Mimi sits down behind the counter, and leans her head back against the rows of compartmented shelves, so as to get beyond the range of the glass-door. There is a faroff seeking look in her grey eyes a look MADAME BOBINEAU went to mass at St. Etienne, on her way home she called in on Madame Mérand. In her calm, quiet way, madame related to her sympathizing gossip her domestic grievances: how the new femme de chambre would spend her time in chattering with the garçon de salle; how the up-stairs garçon Ferdinand, had been lost for three hours yesterday, and was then discovered sound asleep in the bed he was supposed to be making; how a plum-pudding had been served in honour of some English travellers, and how the English had grimaced, and refused it, because of the rum-the "rhom," Madame Mérand affirmed, being the only good point about it. Having related these grievances in her calm, assured voice, Madame Mérand inquired after Madame Bobineau's lodgers. "Ma foi!" the two little black beads in the peach-stone face of Madame Bobineau twinkle into slyness; "it seems to me you see as much of them as I do: as I went to la messe, Monsieur Rendu was coming out of your parlour. He is favoured; but he is a well-mannered, discreet youth. Tenez! only this morning I had a discussion about him with Mimi-I have told you of Mimi, the orphan of poor Christophe? The pupils of Madame Mérand's eyes contract, and then they blaze on the withered old crone with fierce intelligence. "Mimi, your shop-girl? what should she know of Monsieur Rendu? Madame Bobineau, your good sense should teach you to keep her out of the way of your lodgers." Madame Bobineau has outgrown passion, except when she is disobeyed. Moreovor, she is unwilling to offend a friend who can give away sometimes a ris de veau, sometimes the remains of a vol-auvent aux truffes and Bobineau's old mouth waters at the thought of such dainties, she answers meekly: SO "Yes—yes, I am careful! but the girl must serve customers. I have seen Monsieur Rendu come into the shop often lately for gloves, and Mimi stands there useless; she lets him choose and try for himself. It is not respectful; it may give him offence, and he may seek another lodging." Madame Mérand listens, and then she falls off into a reverie. She does not hear what Madame Bobineau is saying about the uncertain habits of the literary lady — au premier, who forgets her dinner, and spends the whole day in the dusty old library of the Musée. 66 "Madame Bobineau," says the calm voice on a sudden, Mimi is too pretty to serve in a shop. Why don't you marry her?" "Bon!" the old, brown face is more puckered than before; "who will marry a girl without a dot? And I have none to give her; I am a poor old woman, Madame Mérand, and shall scarcely leave enough behind me to pay for masses for my soul." 66 The old woman, so hard and callous to her fellows, grows sentimental over her friend's canary bird: it is a 'jewel" "a pet; "but the endearing names which Madame Bobineau has at command are not many. She stands peering between the gay gilded wires, and Madame Mérand sits thinking. She is bending forward; her handsome face rests in the long slender hand; the eyes are so veiled by the sweeping dark lashes, that only an occasional glitter betrays their light. "I will find a husband for Mimi," she says, after awhile; and there is a hurry in the calm voice a voice that has a way of snubbing excitement in others by its ordinary repose. "I take charge of it. Tenez, I know of one already - your lodger, the Captain Loigereau.' "Monsieur Loigereau! "Bobineau shrieks in her shrillest falsetto: "a full captaina gentleman! he marry Mimi? My friend, you are laughing!" "I tell you No! Monsieur Loigereau is a good man; he is humble; he tells me everything; he has risen by his own merits; he can read, but his writing is that of an ignorant person. Well, Monsieur Loigereau is more than forty; he will have completed his full term of military service in October; he has been prudent, and he will then buy a little property in the Auvergnat. He wishes to take a wife, and he has asked me to choose him one: she must be young, and pretty, and amiable. Are you convinced now ?" "He must be a fool!" but Madame Bobineau looked round her cautiously as she said it. "He might find a woman with Nothing like money!" she murmurs, while her dark eyes follow Madame Bobineau. "Old imbecile! nothing like happiness she means. At seventeen Madame Mérand had married her first husband, aged seventy, for money, and nothing else, so she was qualified to give her opinion. V. MIMI goes into the den and says, evening" to her employer. if she did not care for my company. She only wanted to do me a kindness." She reached her little room, au cinquième in a back street, close to the Place St. Etienne. She sate down wearily, and threw her bonnet on the bed. "I am like the child in the story-book: I can't get cake, so I won't eat galette. What would the good sœurs think if they saw me so ungrateful for kindness. I have grown wicked since I left Rouen; he may not be at Madame Mérand's, and if he is there he will bow to me, and then it will be over." Afternoon comes next day, and Madame Bobineau mounts up to her own bedroom to lay out her cap of real valenciennes lace, with its blue bows, and her black silk gown, and old-fashioned shawl. She is only upstairs half an hour; but much may happen in that time. Mimi sits in the shop as usual - not "Good-quite; she is sewing some lace on to a band to make a frill for her throat to-night, and Monsieur Rendu comes in before she sees him. Madame Bobineau looks at her sharply with those unfringed eyes of hers, and nods her head, then she calls Mimi back again in her shrin rasping voice. The girl turns, but she does not come back. "Hein," the old wrinkled face falls on one shoulder; this whim of Mimi's is incomprehensible. "Chut!" madame cries, shrilly; "thou art only a child, or I should be angry. Such an honour may not come again in thy life. Besides, simpleton, thou art not asked alone-thou wilt go with me. I will not listen to refusal; to-morrow at eight we visit Madame Mérand." Mimi turned away; her high spirits rose against this tyranny, and then the natural feelings of youth pleaded its cause. There was something exhilarating in the idea of this her first soirée at St. Roque. Why should she refuse? "I know why it is; Madame Mérand is a person I dislike. Why need she fix her great black eyes on me as if she thought I had done something wrong; it seemed as 66 Oh I hope he will not come to-night," she thinks; but he comes up to the counter and asks for a pair of lavender gloves, and Mimi feels there is no hope of his absence. It is strange that this want of hope should make her feel so happy. She does not fit his gloves, but she hands him those he has chosen neatly wrapped in paper. "Mademoiselle," says Rendu, his quick eyes have detected Madame's absence through the open door, “I—." Here he stops, as embarrassed as the blushing girl behind the counter. "Mademoiselle, I will have, if you please, another pair." He looks so confused, so embarrassed, that Mimi smiles. She cannot help it; it is so wonderful to see Monsieur Rendu nervous and blushing like herself. He sees the smile and grows yet redder - takes the gloves, pays for them hastily, and leaves the shop with a formal bow to Mimi. "Cold!" the young man says to himself; "she is a thousand times worse: she is sarcastic, she laughs at me- - she is heartless! I will buy my gloves somewhere else. I will not be laughed at." Mimi is puzzled at herself. |