Eustace Grenville Murray's 'French Pictures by English Chalk' 1878

 

Smith, Elder, & Co. first edition - 1878

I always look forward to receiving the Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers catalogues - they are worth keeping in their own right and I have a considerable archive of them. Their Summer 2024 Catalogue CCLXXI landed in my postbox in August, and amongst many other mouth-watering novels and non-fiction for sale were six works by Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (c.1824-1881). I already had his most well-known three-decker novel The Member for Paris (1871), which was published under the pseudonym Trois-Etoiles, and reading it with some enjoyment (see my Blog of 29 April 2023) inspired me to purchase two of the six on offer. They were Men of the Second Empire (1872) and French Pictures in English Chalk (Second Series) (1878).  This is a Blog on the latter. Only Round About France (1878) is still available - I am tempted. I had hovered over Young Brown (1874), as the critic John Sutherland regarded it as his most interesting work...a savage satire on his own aristocratic background (he was the bastard son of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham & Chandos). However, it was an American first edition - I will wait for the Smith, Elder & Co. first edition. 

Although, after Oxford, Murray joined the Diplomatic Service, he was anything but diplomatic. In 1869, he had been horsewhipped by Lord Carrington for a slander on his father. To avoid a charge of perjury, he left for France, hence the essays and sketches of the next few years - regarded as caustic in manner and incisive in style. In fact the usual words one finds attached to Murray's character and works are scurrilous, scathing, satirical and candour. Whilst in Paris, Murray served as correspondent for the Daily News; contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, the Cornhill, the Illustrated London News, and other English periodicals, as well as to French and American publications. He also wrote for Charles Dickens' Household Words in the early 1850s. The sketches soon appeared under the collective title "The Roving Englishman", which became one of Murray's pseudonyms. Murray stated that his connection with Household Words opened to me a new life and launched him on his journalistic career. He much admired Dickens, referring to him as one of the greatest and kindest public teachers England has ever known.

This collection consists of nine short stories, the longest of which covers fifty-four pages. They are:

• L'Empire c'est la Paix, subtitled The Reminiscences of a Zouave (a class of light infantry linked to French North Africa). Here a young man, having being told that L'Empire c'est la paix, supports Imperialism, only to find it actually means almost permanent conflict. He is drafted unwillingly into the Zouaves and spends the time, when not fighting, thinking of his girlfriend Blanchette and marriage one day. The story is packed with the author's cynicism - one of the beauties of war is that it prepares men for a good many of the civic virtues, by making them splendidly indifferent to the sight of slaughter. Months, years go by. Peace remains elusive. He is regularly promoted - in the Crimea he is made sub-lieutenant  at Alma; lieutenant at Inkerman; then captain. He returns to France to seek out Blanchette, but the shy, rural maiden is no longer; still unmarried she might have been, but she is now an actress in Paris. He goes to the theatre/club where she is the main attraction: that flaunting, dazzling, spangled girl who had not ten ounces of clothing upon her...whose lips were smiling brazenly at the public...  Bah! I have never pronounced the name since.
• Fleur de Lys - this story, set during the Franco-Prussian War in October 1870,  concerns an old Duke (the Duc de Bressac) - a slight, thin-visaged man of about sixty, who walked with a stiff knee and leaned for support on a stick, a French nobleman of that school who have sent the present age to Coventry - and his divinely beautiful daughter. The Prussian army marches in and a detachment is quartered at the duke's chateau. Mdlle Fleur de Lys de Bressac falls heavily for a young Prussian officer, Count Friedrich Leoneizen, of strikingly handsome features, and eyes remarkably intelligent and mild. Then a young cousin of Fleur, the Marquis de Criquetot rolls up. He, too, is in love with her. The latter is chivalric enough to realise his cousin's real love is for the Prussian. So far, it is a fairly anodyne tale of love; however, the war's ebb and flow turns decisively against the ill-clad, ill-organised, ill-armed mobs of recruits on the French side, pitted against science, generalship, and discipline.  The denouement comes with an attack on the chateau itself, led by none other than Leoneizen.. The Duke is hit; his daughter picks up his dropped revolver and...shoots Leoneizen dead. She seizes a tricolour-flag and waves it crying Vive la France! They are falling back! The Prussian bugles were sounding the retreat. The French girl heard them as she dropped, and she breathed her last amid the triumphant cheers of her countrymen, shouting "Victory!". A tragic ending.
• Mademoiselle Viviane  commences with a gathering at the house of Monsieur le Président de Barre, Chief Judge of the Imperial Court of M---.  His only child and heiress, 18 year-old Viviane, was to be formally introduced to her future husband, M. Charles de Niel. Attached would be 500,000 francs. It was Charles de Neil's own father, M. le Président de Niel, Chief Judge in a neighbouring town who had proposed the match. The only two interested persons who had not been consulted were M. Charles and Mdlle. Viviane themselves. The two are introduced to each other; Charles could not takes his eyes off her: she was, in truth, a splendid creature, of a beauty lustrous and warm as the sunny climate of Provence, where she was born, and with eyes so teeming with expression that they seemed to shed light like precious stones...with a voice singularly musical, yet not shy. Alas, it's bad news for Charles. After a dance, she ushers him into the Library where she tells him she can never be his wife. She has to marry one whom she loves - and she has already found him. In just over two years, she will be free to marry whomsoever she wishes - it won't be Charles, who after years of dullness now feels what passionate love can do to a man. He leaves, desperate to discover who this unknown man is. Amazingly he bumps into an old school acquaintance, a dissolute character named Sixte Marjolain. An arrogant revolutionary. And it is he! The following day, Charles revisits Viviane, to warn her that Sixte is altogether unworthy of you. Viviane responded with a laugh full of hatred. disdain and defiance. Too bad. Ten months later, after a failed uprising by radicals in the city, Charles is at home when a haggard, scared trembling wretch gains admittance. It is Sixte, pursued by the government's soldiers. He swears to Charles that in future he will be an honest man and faithful to Viviane. Charles allows Sixte to escape and takes his place. Charles is arrested and shot. Sixte returns to France, under a new name, and marries Viviane. Shades of Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities?  
• The Sceptic is one of the best of the tales. It concerns Madame Aimée d'Arlay, the wife of a famous novelist and playwright, Paul d'Arlay, whose reputation was considerably more than a sceptic: he had been called the successor of Voltaire. He was an atheist of the aggressive sort...The problem? his wife was devoutly religious. He has forbidden her to read his works, which had all been banned by the Papal Index; she summons up enough courage to purchase a set of the Complete Works of Paul d'Arlay from a local bookshop. She reads them all. When Paul returns home from Paris, he finds a transformed woman; from an ardent believer, she has turned into an acolyte of his beliefs. From their rural backwater, the couple take a house in the Champs Elysées. Aimée flew to Paris like a bird uncaged. She togs herself up in the latest fashions and adorns herself with jewelry; she goes to see one of her husband's plays. She visits her young child back in the country just once.  Meanwhile, Paul is at work on a new book, Le Mariage d'Amour. In that book he had poured out his whole heart in pictures of the felicity of tranquil love in wedded life. He hears that his little son has whooping cough; however, his wife decides to attend a Ball instead of going home. The tables have been completely turned: the atheist radical has become a homely husband, the shy religious girl a Parisian airhead. Then, a miracle. Aimée burst in on him while he is composing a letter to her to part from her - she stood on the threshold, hugging her husband's new book to her breast, and looking at him with eyes brimming. "I have read it to the last line...Oh, my darling, let us go back to our home...God is good, and you believe in Him as I do"... 
• The Courtier of Misfortune is a very good example of the author taking direct shots at the corruption that is rife in government and civil service (plus ça change, anyone?). An upright soldier, Captain Jean Coeurpreux, of the 5th Algerian Spahis, is sent to Paris with despatches from Marshal M'Mahon to Marshal Leboeuf. Whilst there, he is invited to the last Ball given at the Tuileries by Napoleon III. He looks around for a girl he had fallen in love with twelve years earlier, when he was a quick-hearted boy of eighteen and she as beautiful as sunlight.  She is now married - as Violette de Cri; he dances (awkwardly) with her, but trips and falls to the ground. He is raised by none other than the Emperor, who recalled him fighting for him at Magenta.  He is also to be given a  prestigious post in Napoleon's regiment of Guides. This sparks an uproar amongst the de Cri Family who, related to the great house of Jobus, were all lined up for placements. The Emperor reigns, but does not rule - never a truer word. Coeurpreux's rivals/enemies manage to sow malicious rumours about him being a Radical and, instead of getting the Guides position, he is sent off to another garrison. Then the Franco-Prussian War explodes. Coeurpreux is the one who brings the news of the defeat at Sedan to the Empress. Three years later, not only has M. de Cri  being killed by the Communists with an accidental bullet but Coeurpreux, now a General, is engaged to be married to his old love, the now widowed Violette. As a loyal Imperialist, he attends Napoleon III's funeral at Chislehurst and pays homage to the Prince Imperial. The story ends with Ceoerpreux being summoned to the new President of the Republic's lodging - none other than his old commander, Marshal M'Mahon. There. he suggests plotting for Napoleon IV!     
• Prince Moleskine's Conspiracy. A slight tale of a spendthrift Russian, Prince Moleskine, having seen all that there was to see in the Capital of capitals (Paris), was about to return to his own country to accept a high post under Government. In fact, he is broke, but there is no such post awaiting him - that is, unless he can get his uncle, Prince Shepskine, to give him one. He butters him up by sending him a few Mayence hams, a Strasburg pie or two, and a case of Château Lafitte. On a farewell walkabout, he runs almost into the arms of a small, dapper man, who was scurrying along at a racing speed with a glass in his left eye, and a large bundle of papers under his arm. He is M. Jean-Jacques Roquet, a radical Republican journalist who is always in trouble with the authorities. Limpet like, he attaches himself to Moleskine and goes with him to Russia. Roquet has his papers confiscated, Moleskine is offered a post in the Cacasus, which he rejects - it's as bad as sending me to Siberia. So they both leave St Petersburg and, five weeks later, they arrive at Moleskine Hall, a dilapidated pile. Three months pass in an uneventful manner; but, Roquet is stirring up the local peasants with his firebrand socialism. They were arrested, taken to St Petersburg, found guilty of conspiring to undermine society, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Prince Moleskine, as being a Minister's nephew, was secretly pardoned and ordered out of Russia. Roquet, imprisoned, cries that Moleskine sold himself to the police. Amongst the general public, however, it is Moleskine who gets the credit for the intended uprising. The plot was to be for evermore known as "Prince Moleskine's Conspiracy".
• Jacques Girard's Newspaper is subtitled The Trials of a French Journalist and revolves around a young man, Jacques Girard, who was sub-editor of a local newspaper, Reveil du Coq. There are two other newspapers in the town of some 100,000 souls - the Ordre, the establishment organ, and the Progrès, which represented the opinions of the advanced Republicans and freethinkers. The founder, proprietor and editor of the Reveil du Coq dies, and Girard manages to borrow enough money to purchase the paper. He then brings it out daily, instead of the previous three days a week.  He has married Pauline Madray, the daughter of the manufacturer who has set up a new factory on the quay. - Madray is a coarse, burly, and gruff-spoken personage who had begin life as a common weaver, and adhered to the language, manners, and dress of mechanics, to prove that riches had not spoiled him. Girard also gets the money necessary to buy his paper from his new father-in-law. Through hard work and skill, he makes the Reveil the paper the city most loved to read at absinthe hour. Then, there's news that one of the Deputies has died. Girard decides to stand for the post. Once again, jiggery pokery ensures he fails and he not only loses the election but also his paper, which was suppressed.     
• Justin Vitali's Client - at the age of 30, Vitali had already achieved a reputation as a learned lawyer and an eloquent pleader...he had the gift of listening...he would plead no causes which he did not sincerely believe to be just...but he had also made himself numerous enemies. One day, he is approached in his chambers by a young lady, Madame Clotilde Displane, who wishes  him to appear for her as she has been accused of causing the death of her elderly friend, Captain Lacroix, who had left him half his fortune, a million francs. Matters look bad when it is discovered that the dead man had laudanum in his body and that Madame Desplans had purchased laudanum from a pharmacy. The "Desplans Poisoning Case" was destined to convulse not only the city of M---, but the whole of France. Vitali, who has fallen deeply in love with her,  was not allowed to see Clotilde until the Juge d'Instruction had finished questioning her.  French procedure isolates a prisoner - cuts them off from all human succour, and leaves them alone with the official inquisitor as a fly with the spider. Due to this ordeal, the young lady 'confessed' to the crime of poisoning. Another blow is to fall on Vitali; Clotilde tells him she is in love with a young engineer, Henri de Barre. At the trial, all remarked the aged look of the brilliant advocate: his shoulders were bent, his face wan and pinched. Thanks to his brilliant defence, culminating in two hours without notes, Clotilde is found not guilty; de Barre congratulates Vitali. The story ends when the beadle of the Church of St Gudule is about to lock up and when he notices a stranger in one of the lateral chapels, who was kneeling and sobbing like a child. It was Justin Vitali.
• A romance by Rum-Light is the shortest of the stories and is about an Englishman, John Brokenshire, who comes down to stay with French friends at Toulon whilst dealing with a contract for supplying a transport ship with tinned meat. He was a dry man, with a cold blue eye that repelled people of the begging sort. He never gushed with sentiment, as we Frenchmen do; and he seldom made promises, but when he did he kept them...imagine  the lankiest of men, with cheek-bones the hue of red-currant jelly, a hay-coloured beard flowing over his waistcoat, a grey tweed suit delved about with deep pockets fore and aft...This Christmas, he brings presents for the French family but tells the mother Noémie Leblanc that she cannot open her small square parcel whilst the others are opening theirs. Finally, she is allowed to. It is the official pardon for her husband who, having got mixed up in the doings of the Commune, had been exiled to New Caledonia. Well done, Mr. Brokenshire, who has used his contacts to procure the pardon!