Levels of Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dictionary of National Biography as living ‘much alone’.
    The conventional accept and are frequently charmed by a certain unconventionality; Burnaby seems to have exceeded that limit. One of his devoted friends called him ‘the most slovenly rascal that ever lived’, who sat ‘like a sack of corn on a horse’. He was held to be foreign-looking, with ‘oriental features’ and a Mephistophelean smile. The DNB called his looks ‘Jewish and Italian’, noting that his ‘unEnglish’ appearance ‘led him to resist attempts to procure portraits of him’.
     
    We live on the flat, on the level, and yet – and so – we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracturing force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both.
     
    So why do we constantly aspire to love? Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.
     
    Despite Burnaby’s reticence and Bernhardt’s waywardness with fact, we may establish that they met in Paris in the mid-1870s. It was not difficult for an intimate of the Prince of Wales to gain access to the Divine Sarah. He sent flowers beforehand, watched her in Bornier’s La Fille de Roland , prepared his words of praise, and went round afterwards. He was half expecting a cohue of effete Parisian dandies in her dressing room, but perhaps some preliminary triage had taken place. He was comfortably the tallest person there, she the tiniest. When she greeted him, he could not help mentioning how the stage enlarged her. She was used to such a reaction.
    ‘And so thin,’ she added, ‘that I can slip between raindrops without getting wet.’
    Fred looked as if he almost believed her. She laughed a little, but without any mockery. He felt at ease. In truth, he felt at ease in most places. He was an Englishman, for a start; he spoke seven languages excellently; while any officer used to giving orders from Spain to Russian Turkestan was well able to cut it among these effusive yet genial gallants who, as it appeared to him, were competing with one another only in flights of language.
    They were drinking champagne, no doubt provided by one of these admirers. Fred was always temperate with wine, and so able to observe discreet departures until, it suddenly seemed, there was only a duenna by the name of Mme Guérard to prevent him being alone with her.
    ‘So, mon capitaine –’
    ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, ma’am. Fred. Or Frederick. When I enter your dressing room I am without rank. I am …’ He hesitated. ‘I am, as you might say, a simple soldier.’
    He felt, rather than watched, her examine his walking-out dress: stable jacket, cavalry overalls, ankle boots, spurs; forage cap temporarily abandoned on a side table.
    ‘And what is your war?’ she asked smilingly.
    He didn’t know how to reply. He thought about wars, where only men were employed. He thought about sieges, and how men were supposed to besiege women until they surrendered. But for once he did not feel bravado, and he was often uneasy with metaphor. Eventually, he replied:
    ‘Not so long ago, ma’am, I was returning from Odessa. News had reached me that my father was ill. The quickest route lay through Paris. But the city was in the hands of the Commune.’ He paused, wondering what the actress’s view of that pestiferous gang of assassins might be. ‘I had only my travelling bag and regulation cavalry sword. I was warned that all weapons were forbidden. But I have long shanks, and so I hid my sword down the leg of my trousers.’
    He paused, long enough for her to think this the end of the story.
    ‘So I limped. And I was pretty soon arrested by