Max O'Rell
John Bull, Junior; or, French as She is Traduced
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066159733
Table of Contents
John Bull, Jr.
I.
I am Born. — I am Deeply in Love. — I wish to be an Artiste, but my Father uses Strong Argument against it. — I Produce a Dramatic Chef-d'œuvre. — Parisian Managers Fail to Appreciate it. — I put on a Beautiful Uniform. — The Consequence of it. — Two Episodes of the Franco-Prussian War. — The Commune Explained by a Communist. — A "Glorious" Career Cut Short. — I take a Resolution, and a Ticket to London.
I was born on the——
But this is scarcely a "recollection" of mine.
At twelve I was deeply in love with a little girl of my own age. Our servants were friends, and it was in occasional meetings of these girls in the public gardens of my little native town that my chief chance of making love to Marie lay. Looking back on this little episode in my life, I am inclined to think that it afforded much amusement to our attendants. My love was too deep for words; I never declared my flame aloud. But, oh, what a fluttering went on under my small waistcoat every time I had the ineffable pleasure of a nod from her, and what volumes of love I put into my bow as I lifted my cap and returned her salute! We made our first communion on the same day. I was a pupil of the organist, and it was arranged that I should play a short piece during the Offertory on that occasion. I had readily acquiesced in the proposal. Here was my chance of declaring myself; through the medium of the music I could tell her all my lips refused to utter. She must be moved, she surely would understand.
Whether she did or not, I never had the bliss of knowing. Shortly after that memorable day, my parents removed from the country to Paris. The thought of seeing her no more nearly broke my heart, and when the stage-coach reached the top of the last hill from which the town could be seen, my pent-up feelings gave way and a flood of tears came to my relief.
The last time I visited those haunts of my childhood, I heard that "little Marie" was the mamma of eight children. God bless that mamma and her dear little brood!
At fifteen I was passionately fond of music, and declared to my father that I had made up my mind to be an artiste.
My father was a man of great common sense and few words: he administered to me a sound thrashing, which had the desired effect of restoring my attentions to Cicero and Thucydides.
It did not, however, altogether cure me of a certain yearning after literary glory.
For many months I devoted the leisure, left me by Greek version and Latin verse, to the production of a drama in five acts and twelve tableaux.
For that matter I was no exception to the rule. Every French school-boy has written, is writing, or will write a play.
My drama was a highly moral one of the sensational class. Blood-curdling, horrible, terrible, savage, weird, human, fiendish, fascinating, irresistible—it was all that. I showed how, even in this world, crime, treachery, and falsehood, though triumphant for a time, must in the long run have their day of reckoning. Never did a modern Drury Lane audience see virtue more triumphant and vice more utterly confounded than the Parisians would have in my play, if only the theatrical directors had not been so stupid as to refuse my chef-d'œuvre.
For it was refused, inconceivable as it seemed to me at the time.
The directors of French theatres are accustomed to send criticisms of the plays which "they regret to be unable to accept."
The criticism I received from the director of the Ambigu Theatre was, I thought, highly encouraging.
"My play," it appeared, "showed no experience of the stage; but it was full of well-conceived scenes and happy mots, and was written in excellent French. Horrors, however, were too piled up, and I seemed to have forgotten that spectators should be allowed time to take breath and wipe away their tears."
I was finally advised not to kill all my dramatis personæ in my next dramatic production, as it was customary for one of them to come forward and announce the name of the author at the end of the first performance.
Although this little bit of advice appeared to me not altogether free from satire, there was in the letter more praise than I had expected, and I felt proud and happy. The letter was passed round in the class-room, commented upon in the playground, and I was so excited that I can perfectly well remember how I forgot to learn my repetition that day, and how I got forty lines of the Ars Poetica to write out five times.
What a take-down, this imposition upon a budding dramatic author!