Collected Works (Vol. II)

196 THE SWORD OF SONG OO night, often working forty hours at a time, work which he destined to entrance the world. All England should ring with his praises; by- and-by the whole world should know his name. Of these works none of the longer and more ambitious remains, How they were lost, and how those fragments we possess were saved, is best told vy relating the romantic and almost incredible story of his life. The known facts of this life are few, vague, and unsatisfactory; the more definite state- ments lack corroboration, and almost the only source at the disposal of the biographer is the letters of Mathilde Doriac to Mdme. J. S., who has kindly placed her portfolio at my service. A letter dated October 15, 1866, indicates that our author was born on the 23rd of that month. The father and mother of George were, at least on the surface, of an extraordinary re- ligious turn of mind. Mathilde’s version of the story, which has its source in our friend himself, agrees almost word for word with a letter of the Rev. Edw. Turle to Mrs. Cope, recommending the child to her care. ‘The substance of the story is as follows. The parents of George carried their religious ideas to the point of never consummating their marriage!* This arrangement does not seem to have been greatly appreciated by the wife; at least one fine morning she was found to be enceinte. The foolish father never thought of the hypothesis which commends itself most readily to a man of the world, not to say a man of science, and adopted that of a second Messiah! He took the utmost pains to con- ceal the birth of the child, treated everybody who came to the house as an emissary of Herod, and finally made up his mind to flee into Egypt! Like most religious maniacs, he never had an idea of his own, but distorted the beautiful and edifying events of the Bible into insane and ridiculous ones, which he proceeded to plagiarise. On the voyage out the virgin mother became enamoured, as was her wont, of the nearest male, in this case a fellow-traveller. He, being well able to support her in the luxury which She desired, easily persuaded her to leave the boat with him by stealth. A small sailing vessel conveyed them to Malta, where they disappeared. The only trace left in the books of earth records that this fascinating character was accused, four years later, in Vienna, of poisoning her paramour, but thanks to the wealth and influence of her newer lover, she escaped. The legal father, left by himself with a squall- ing child to amuse, to appease in his tantrums, * Will it be believed that a clergyman (turned Plymouth Brother and schoolmaster) actually made an identical confession to a boy of ten years old? and to bring up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, was not a little perplexed by the sudden disappearance of his wife. At first he supposed that she had been translated, but, finding that she had not left the traditional mantle behind her, he abandoned this suppo- sition in favour of quite a different, and indeed a more plausible one. He now believed her to be the scarlet woman in the Apocalypse, with variations. On arrival in Egypt he hired an old native nurse, and sailed for Odessa. Once in Russia he could find Gog and Magog, and present to them the child as Antichrist. For he was now persuaded that he himself was the First Beast, and would’ ask the sceptic to count his seven heads and ten horns. The heads, however, rarely totted up accurately ! At this point the accounts of Mr. Turle and Mathilde diverge slightly. The cleric affirms that he was induced by a Tartar lady, of an. honourable and ancient profession, to accom- pany her to Tibet ‘‘to be initiated into the mysteries.’’ He was, of course, robbed and murdered with due punctuality, in the town of ‘Kiev. Mathilde’s story is that he travelled to Kiev on the original quest, and died of typhoid or cholera. In any case, he died at Kiev in 1839. This fixes the date of the child’s birth at 1837. His faithful nurse conveyed him safely to England, where his relatives provided for his maintenance and education. With the close of this romantic chapter in his early history we lose all reliable traces for some years. One flash alone illumines the darkness of his boyhood; in 1853, after being prepared for confirmation, he cried out in full assembly, instead of kneeling to receive .the blessing of the officiating bishop, ‘‘I renounce for ever this idolatrous church;”’ and was quietly re- moved. He told Mathilde Doriac that he had been to Eton and Cambridge—neither institution, how- ever, preserves any record of such admission. The imagination of George, indeed, is tremend- ously fertile with regard to events in his own life. His own story is that he entered ‘Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1856, and was sent down two years later for an article which he had contributed to some University or College Magazine. No confirmation of any sort is to be found anywhere with regard to these or any other statements of our author. There is, however, no doubt that in 1861 he quarrelled with his family; went over to Paris, where he settled down, at first, like every tufthead, somewhere in the Quartier Latin; later, with Mathilde Doriac, the noble woman who became his mistress and held to him through all the. terrible tragedy of his moral, mental, and physical life, in the Rue du Faubourg-Poisson- niére. At his house there the frightful scene