Frank Harris - My life and loves Vol. 2

"The night came, the theatre was filled, and Aimee appeared with worse than stage fright. I never saw such a fiasco. One could hardly hear a word she said and in five minutes, amid the jeers of the audience, she fled from the stage and the curtain came down on an audience half-laughing, half-angry, only to be appeased by getting back their entrance money. It took all my savings!

"Naturally my colleagues on the press made fun of what they called my infatuation. Some assured me that a pretty face did not make a great actress; others hinted that the girl must have hidden charms: in fine, I was ridiculed on all sides.

"I saw nothing more of Aimee, but a year or so later I heard that she had run away to Italy with a comic actor with whom she was madly in love; then we heard that he had left her in Venice without a sou; and some months afterwards I got a short note from her, asking me to come to see her. There was a curious fascination about her, so I went. When she came into the room I was struck dumb! She had lost all her beauty and grown ten years older. 'What has happened?' I could not but ask.

"'Like Dante,' she replied, 'I have been in Hell.' "'You had a bad time?' I went on stupidly.

"She nodded, and then, 'Do you guess why I've sent for you?' I shook my head.

'I want you to give me another such chance as you gave me before.'

"'Impossible,' I replied. 'Everyone laughed at me, and now they all know you. I could not if I would.' "'Now they won't laugh,' she replied. 'I know the kindness in you for me, know that you will help me, and I assure you of my eternal gratitude. You and I must always be friends,' and she held out both hands to me. Her voice had extraordinary quality and her personality charmed me as ever. I found myself saying, 'I will do my best,' and when she thanked me, smiling with her eyes full of unshed tears, I knew I'd do all I could, and more.

"Strange to say, about a month later a theatrical agent came to me, just as the first had come a couple of years earlier: he had a theatre and a company but the star actress he wanted to boom had gone off to America and left him in the lurch. Did I know of any actress who could play a great part? Without hesitation I took him to Aimee Desclee.

"He knew the whole story of her previous fiasco, but on the way I assured him she had changed, begged him to trust his own judgment, and what I expected happened. He was swept off his balance by her personal magnetism and he staged Phedre for her, only stipulating that no one should know her real name until afterwards.

"Well, we beat the big drum and did all we knew, but the house was almost empty. When Aimee Desclee came on the stage, before she opened her mouth, I thrilled with expectation, and her first words carried us all off our feet. At the end of the first act I went out and sent notes to half a dozen colleagues to come and hear her, but when I returned to the theatre it was full. Paris had already in some magical way got news of the event and in an hour everyone knew that a great actress had been discovered. 'I think,' added Claretie, 'that she was the greatest actress I have ever seen.' "

Claretie told the little story superbly and with strange reticence; yet, to my astonishment, Jeanne heightened the effect. "I heard her a little later in Froufrou," she said, "and agree with you. Not only was she a great actress but a great woman. There were tones in her voice that wrung the heart. It was her own soul's suffering that gave her the power: Dumas fils was wise to choose her for his heroine."

This lunch taught me that Jeanne in her way was a surprising woman: she was extremely well read, had all the lighter French literature at her fingers' ends, and could find new words to say of Flaubert, and Zola, Daudet and Maupassant even, words that were illuminating. She knew Paris, too, all its heights and depths, was a wonderful companion for a man of letters, and an incomparable mistress.

After a day or two I began to doubt her magic. She never tried to excite me, but whenever I sought her I found the same diabolical power. The French have the word for her: "Casse Noisettes" they call it, or "nutcrackers," a woman's sex with the contractile strength of a hand, and Jeanne knew the exact moment to use it.

I grew more and more infatuated and yet out of fear tried time and again to give her money and tear myself loose, but she would not accept money, though always eager to lunch or dine with me and meet actors, actresses, and men of letters.

One day we had been for a long outing at Fontainebleau, had dined there, and returned. I wanted to kiss her but she turned away. At length I said in pure despite, "I'll have to be getting back to London to my work."

Jeanne looked at me. "I was going to propose something else," she said. "I have a place near Algiers, sunbathed, between the mountains and the sea, wonderful. You could have ponies to ride and could give yourself to writing books and leave that silly journalism once for all."

"I mightn't succeed," I said, "and I have too little money to make the trial."

"I have more money than you think," she remarked quietly. "I have three hundred thousand francs saved and that house and farm and-"

"I can't live on your money," I broke in rudely.

"Why not?" she rejoined. "We could be married and have an almost perfect life."

I started. What a prospect! The intercourse of the past month came back to me. Once I had caught Jeanne by chance when she had just washed her face: she had no eyebrows, she painted them in, and gave her light eyelashes, too, a dark tone with some pigment. Marry her? I laughed to myself and could not help shaking my head.

"I am a fairly good mistress, am I not?" she asked.

"The best possible," I replied. "No one could deny that, and an excellent companion to boot, but I want to see more of life and the world before settling down; and I've always resolved to go round the world every twenty years or so; and I want to learn a couple of new languages and-"

"You could do all that," she insisted. "I should not hinder you. I want to make my house a house beautiful: I want you as husband and companion, but you could always take a whiter off or a summer and go round the world, so long as you came back to me; and you would come back, I know you. You want to make a great reputation as a writer and I'm sure you will, but that means years of hard work, carefree years. Think it over." I smiled, but shook my head.

A day or two afterwards she said, "I shall have to send Lisette to school unless we go south together; she's getting to be a big girl and is exquisitely pretty.

You should see her in her bath!"

"I'd love to," I said without thinking. The next evening when we came in, Jeanne took me to the next floor and opened the door. There was Lisette in the bath, a model of girlish beauty, astonishingly lithe and lovely. She turned her back on us and snatched a towel hanging near, but Jeanne held it back saying, "Don't be silly, child. Frank won't eat you, and I've told him how pretty and well formed you are."

At this the girl lifted big inscrutable eyes to her and stood at gaze, a most exquisite picture: the breasts just beginning to be marked, the hips a little fuller than a boy's, the feet and hands smaller-a perfect Tanagra statuette in whitest flesh with a roseate glow on the inside of arms and thighs, while the Mount of Venus was just shadowed with down. She stood there waiting, an entrancing maiden figure. I felt my mouth parching, the pulses in my temples beating. What did it mean? Did Jeanne intend-?

The next moment Jeanne lifted the child out of the bath, and covering her with the towel said, "Dry yourself and come down, dear. We're all going to dine soon."

When we were downstairs she asked, "Well, are you going with us to Algiers?"

"Suppose I wanted Lisette?" I asked boldly.