Chapter II: Part 2

Masson swore by all his gods that the execution should be unrivalled, the one thing needful being a good conductor, since neither he nor I was used to handling such _vast masses of sound_. However, Lesueur most kindly induced Valentino, conductor of the opera, to take the post, dubious though he was of our vocal and instrumental legions.

The day of the general rehearsal came, and with it our _vast masses_--twenty choristers (fifteen tenors and five basses), twelve children, nine violins, one viola, one oboe, one horn, one bassoon.

My rage and despair at this treatment of Valentino--one of the first conductors in the world--may be imagined.

“It’s all right,” quoth Master Masson, “they will all turn up on the day.”

Valentino shrugged his shoulders resignedly, raised his baton, and they started.

In two seconds all was confusion; the parts were one mass of mistakes, sharps and flats left out, ten-bar pauses omitted, a little further on thirty bars clean gone.

It was the most appalling muddle ever heard, and I simply writhed in torment. There was nothing for it but to give up utterly my fond dream of a grand orchestral performance.

Still, it was not lost time as far as I was concerned, for, in spite of the shocking execution, I saw where my worst faults lay, and, by Valentino’s advice, I rewrote the whole mass--he generously promising to help me when I should be ready for my revenge.

But alas! while I worked my parents heard of the fiasco, and made another determined onslaught by ridiculing my chosen vocation, and laughing my hopes to scorn. Those were the bitter dregs of my cup of shame; I swallowed them and silently persevered.

Unable, for lack of money, to employ professional copyists, and being justly afraid of amateurs, when my score was finished I wrote out every part myself. It took me three months. Then, like Robinson Crusoe with the boat he could not launch, I was at a stand-still. How should I get it performed? Trust to M. Masson’s musical phalanx? That would be too idiotic. Appeal to musicians myself? I knew none. Ask the help of the Chapel Royal? My master had distinctly told me that was impossible, no doubt because, had he allowed me such a privilege, he would have been bombarded with similar requests from my fellow-students.

My friend, Humbert Ferrand, came to the rescue with a bold proposal. Why not ask M. de Châteaubriand to lend me twelve thousand francs? I believe that, on the principle of it being as well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, I also asked for his influence with the Ministry. Here is his reply:

“PARIS, _31st Dec. 1824_.

“MONSIEUR,--If I had twelve thousand francs you should
have them. Neither have I any influence with the ministers. I am
indeed sorry for your difficulties, for I love art and artists.
However, it is through trial that success comes, and the day of
triumph is a thorough compensation for past sufferings. With most
sincere regret,

“CHÂTEAUBRIAND.”

Thus I was completely disheartened, and had no plausible answer to make when my parents wrote threatening to stop the modest sum that alone made life in Paris possible.

Fortunately I met, at the opera, a young and clever music-lover, Augustin de Pons, belonging to a Faubourg St Germain family, who, stamping with impotent rage, had witnessed my disaster at St Roch. He was fairly well off then, but, in defiance of his mother, he later on married a second-rate singer, who left him after long wanderings through France and Italy.

Entirely ruined he returned to Paris to vegetate by giving singing lessons. I was able to be of some use to him when I was on the staff of the _Journal des Débats_, and I greatly wish I could have done more, for his generous and unasked help was the turning-point of my career, and I shall never forget it.

Even last year he found life very hard; I tremble to think what may have become of him since the February revolution took away his pupils.

Seeing me one day in the foyer, he shouted:

“I say, what about your mass? When shall we have another go at it?”

“It is done,” I answered, “but what chance have I of getting it performed?”

“Chance? Why, confound it all, you have only got to pay the performers. How much do you want? Twelve or fifteen hundred francs? Two thousand?”

“Hu-s-s-sh, don’t roar so, for heaven’s sake! If you really mean it I shall be most grateful for twelve hundred francs.”

“All right. Hunt me up to-morrow and we’ll engage the opera chorus and a real good orchestra. We must give Valentino a good innings this time.”

And we did. The mass was grandly performed at St Roch, and was well spoken of by the papers. Thus, thanks to that blessed de Pons, I got my first hearing and my foot in the stirrup--as it were--of all things most difficult and most important in Paris.

I boldly undertook to conduct the rehearsals of chorus and orchestra myself, and, with the exception of a slip or two, due to excitement, I did not do so badly. But alas! how far I was from being an accomplished conductor, and how much labour and pains it has cost me to become even what I am.

After the performance, seeing exactly how little my mass was worth, I took out the Resurrexit--which seemed fairly good--and held an _auto-da-fé_ of the rest, together with the _Gamester_, _Estelle_, and the _Passage of the Red Sea_. A calm inquisitorial survey convinced me of the justice of their fate.

* * * * *

Mournful coincidence! After writing these lines I met a friend at the Opéra Comique, who asked:

“When did you come back?”

“Some weeks ago.”

“Then you know about de Pons? No? He poisoned himself last week. He said he was tired of living, but I am afraid that, really, he was unable to live since the Revolution scattered his pupils.”

Horrible! horrible! most horrible!

I must rush out and work off this horror in the fresh air.

* * * * *

Lesueur, seeing how well I got on, thought it best for me to become a regular Conservatoire student and, with the consent of Cherubini, the director, I was enrolled.

It was a mercy I had not to appear before the formidable author of _Medea_, for the year before I had put him into one of his white rages by thwarting him.

Now the Conservatoire had not been run on precisely Puritanic lines, so, when Cherubini succeeded Perne as director, he thought proper to begin by making all sorts of vexatious rules. For instance, men must use only the door into the Faubourg Poissonière and women that into the Rue Bergère--which were at opposite ends of the building.

One day, knowing nothing of the new rule, I went in by the feminine door, but was stopped by a porter in the middle of the courtyard and told to go back and all round the streets to the masculine door. I told the man I would be hanged if I did, and calmly marched on.

I had been buried in _Alcestis_ for a quarter of an hour, when in burst Cherubini, looking more wicked and cadaverous and dishevelled even than usual. With my enemy, the porter, at his heels, he jerked round the tables, narrowly eyeing each student, and coming at last to a dead stop in front of me.

“That’s him,” said the porter.

Cherubini was so furious that, for a time, he could not speak, and, when he did, his Italian accent made the whole thing more comical than ever--if possible.

“Eh! Eh! Eh!” he stuttered, “so it is you vill come by ze door I vill not ’ave you?”

“Monsieur, I did not know of the new rule; next time----”

“Next time? Vhat of zis next time? Vhat is it zat you come to do ’ere?”

“To study Gluck, Monsieur, as you see.”

“Gluck! and vhat is it to you ze scores of Gluck? Vhere get you permission for enter ze library?”

“Monsieur” (I was beginning to lose my temper too), “the scores of Gluck are the most magnificent dramatic works I know, and I need no permission to use the library since, from ten to three, it is open to all.”

“Zen I forbid zat you return.”

“Excuse me, I shall return whenever I choose.”

That made him worse.

“Vha-Vha-Vhat is your name?” he stammered.

“My name, Monsieur, you shall hear some day, but not now.”

“Hotin,” to the porter, “catch ’im and make ’im put in ze prison.”

So off we went, the two--master and servant--hot foot after me round the tables. We knocked over desks and stools in our headlong flight, to the amazement of the quiet onlookers, but I dodged them successfully, crying mockingly as I reached the door:

“You shan’t have either me or my name, and I shall soon be back here studying Gluck.”

That was my first meeting with Cherubini, and I rather wondered whether he would remember it when I met him next in a less irregular manner. It is odd that, twelve years later, in spite of him, I should have been appointed first curator, then librarian of that very library. As for Hotin, he is now my devoted slave and a rabid admirer of my music. I have many other Cherubini stories to tell. Any way, if he chastised me with whips, I certainly returned the compliment with scorpions.

VI

MY FATHER’S DECISION

The hostility of my people had somewhat died down, thanks to the success of my mass, but, naturally another reverse started it with renewed fury.

In the 1826 preliminary examination of candidates for admission to the Institute I was hopelessly plucked. Of course my father heard of it, and promptly wrote that, if I persisted in staying on in Paris, my allowance would stop.

My dear master kindly wrote asking him to reconsider his letter, saying that my eventual success was certain, since I _oozed music at every pore_. But, by ill luck, he brought in religious arguments--about the worst thing he could have done with my free-thinking father, whose blunt--almost rude--answer could not but wound Lesueur on his most susceptible side. From the beginning:

“Monsieur, I am an atheist,” the rest may be guessed. The forlorn hope of gaining my end by personal pleading sent me back to La Côte, where I was received frostily and left to my own reflections for some days, during which I wrote to Ferrand:

“No sooner away from the capital than I want to talk to you. My journey was tiresome as far as Tarare, where I began a conversation with two young men, whom I had, so far, avoided, thinking they looked _dilettanti_. They told me they were artists, pupils of Guérin and Gros, so I told them I was a pupil of Lesueur. They said all sorts of nice things of him, and one of them began humming a chorus from the _Danaïdes_.

“The _Danaïdes_!” I cried, “then you are not a mere trifler?”

“Not I,” he answered; “have I not heard Dérivis and Madame Branchu thirty-four times as Danaüs and Hypermnestra?”

“O-o-oh!” and we fell upon each other’s neck.

“I know Dérivis,” said the other man.

“And I Madame Branchu.”

“Lucky fellows!” I said. “But how is it that, since you are not professional musicians, you have not caught Rossini fever and turned your backs on nature and common sense?”

“Well, I suppose it is because, being used to seeking all that is grandest and best in nature for our pictures, we recognise the same spirit in Gluck and Salieri, and so turn our backs on fashionable music.”

“Blessed people! Such as they are alone worthy of being allowed to listen to _Iphigenia_!”

* * * * *

Again my parents returned to the charge, telling me to choose my profession, since I refused to be a doctor. Again I replied that I could and would only be a musician and must return to Paris to study.

“Never,” said my father, “you may give up that idea at once.”

I was crushed; with paralysed brain I sank into a torpor from which nothing roused me. I neither ate nor spoke nor answered when spoken to, but spent part of the day wandering in the woods and fields and the rest shut up in my own room. I was mentally and morally dying for want of air. Early one morning my father came to my bedside:

“Get up and come to my study,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” He was grave and sad, not angry.

“I have decided, after many sleepless nights, that you shall go back to Paris, but only for a time. If you should fail on further trial, I think you will do me the justice to own that I have done all that can be expected, and will consent to try some other career. You know my opinion of second-rate poets--every sort of mediocrity is contemptible--and it would be a deadly humiliation to feel that you were numbered among the failures of the world.”

Without waiting to hear more, I promised all he wished. “But,” he continued, “since your mother’s point of view is diametrically opposed to mine, I desire, in order to avoid trouble, that you do not mention this, and that you start for Paris secretly.”

But it was impossible to hide this sudden bound from utter despair to delirious joy and Nanci, my sister, with many promises not to tell, wormed my secret out of me. Of course she kept it as well as I did, and by nightfall, everyone, including my mother, knew my plans.

Now it will hardly be believed that there are still people in France who look upon anyone connected with theatres or theatrical art as doomed to everlasting perdition, and since, according to French ideas, music hardly exists outside a theatre, it, too, shares the same fate.

Apropos of this I nearly made Lesueur die of laughing over a reply of one of my aunts.

We were arguing on this very point, and I said at last:

“Come, Auntie, I believe you would object to have even Racine a member of your family!”

“Well, Hector,” she said seriously, “we _must_ be respectable before everything.”

Lesueur insisted that such sentiments could only emanate from an elderly maiden aunt, in spite of my asseverations that she was young and as pretty as a flower.

Needless to say, my mother believed I was setting my feet in the broad road that led not only to destruction in the next world, but to social ruin in this. I quickly saw by her wrathful face that she knew all, and did my best to slink out of her way, but it was useless. Trembling with rage and using “you” instead of the old familiar “thou,” she said:

“Hector, since your father countenances your folly I must speak and save you from this mortal sin. You shall not go; I forbid it. See, here I--your mother--kneel at your feet to beg you humbly to give up this mad design and----”

“Mother! mother!” I interrupted, “I cannot bear it! For pity’s sake don’t kneel to me.”

But she knelt on, looking up at me as I stood in miserable silence, and finally she said:

“You refuse, wretched boy? Then go! Drag our honoured name through the fetid mud of Paris; kill your parents with shame and disgrace. Curses on you! You are no more my son, and never again will I look upon your face.”

Could narrow-mindedness towards Art and provincial prejudice go farther? I truly believe that my hatred of these mediæval doctrines dates from that horrible day.

But that was not the end of the trial.

My mother hurried off to our little country house, Le Chuzeau, and when the time of my departure came my father begged me to make one final effort at reconciliation. We all went to Le Chuzeau, where we found her reading in the orchard. As we drew near she fled. We waited, we hunted, my father called her, my sisters and I cried bitterly, but all in vain. Without a kind word or look from my mother, with her curse upon my head, I started on my life’s career.

VII

PRIVATION

Once back in Paris, and fairly started in Lesueur’s class, I began to worry about my debt to de Pons.

It would certainly never be paid off out of my monthly allowance of a hundred and twenty francs. I therefore got some pupils for singing, flute and guitar, and, by dint of strict economy, in a few months I scraped together six hundred francs, with which I hurried off to my kind creditor.

How could I save out of such a sum? Well, I had a tiny fifth-floor room at the corner of the Rue de Harley and the Quai des Orfèvres, I gave up restaurant dinners and contented myself with a meal of dry bread with prunes, raisins or dates, which cost about fourpence.

As it was summer time I took my dainties, bought at the nearest grocer’s, and ate them on that little terrace on the Pont Neuf at the foot of Henry IV.’s statue; watching the while the sun set behind Mont Valerien, with its exquisite reflections in the murmuring river below, and pondering over Thomas Moore’s poems, of which I had lately found a translation.

But de Pons, troubled at my privations--which, since we often met, I could not hide from him--brought fresh disaster upon me by a piece of well-meant but fatal interference. He wrote to my father, telling him everything, and asking for the balance of his debt. Now my father already repented bitterly his leniency towards me; here had I been five months in Paris without in the least bettering my position. No doubt he thought that I had nothing to do but present myself at the Institute to carry all before me: win the Prix de Rome, write a successful opera, get the Legion of Honour, and a Government pension, etc., etc.

Instead of this came news of an unpaid debt. It was a blow and naturally reacted on me.

He sent de Pons his six hundred francs, and told me that, if I refused to give up my musical wild-goose chase, I must depend on myself alone, for he would help me no more.

As de Pons was paid, and I had my pupils, I decided to stay in Paris--my life would be no more frugal than heretofore. I was really working very steadily at music. Cherubini, of the orderly mind, knowing I had not gone through the regular Conservatoire mill to get into Lesueur’s class, said I must go into Reicha’s counterpoint class, since that should have preceded the former. This, of course, meant double work.

I had also, most happily, made friends some time before with a young man named Humbert Ferrand--still one of my closest friends--who had written the _Francs-Juges_ libretto for me, and in hot haste I was writing the music.

Both poem and music were refused by the Opera committee and were shelved, with the exception of the overture; I, however, used up the best _motifs_ in other ways. Ferrand also wrote a poem on the Greek Revolution, which at that time fired all our enthusiasm; this too I arranged. It was influenced entirely by Spontini, and was the means of giving my innocence its first shock at contact with the world, and of awakening me rudely to the egotism of even great artists.

Rudolph Kreutzer was then director of the Opera House, where, during Holy Week, some sacred concerts were to be given. Armed with a letter of introduction from Monsieur de Larochefoucauld, Minister of Fine Arts, and with Lesueur’s warm commendations, I hoped to induce Kreutzer to give my scena.

Alas for youthful illusions!

This great artist--author of the _Death of Abel_, on which I had written him heaven only knows what nonsense some months before--received me most rudely.

“My good friend” (he did not know me in the least), he said shortly, turning his back on me, “we can’t try new things at sacred concerts--no time to work at them. Lesueur knows that perfectly well.”

With a swelling heart I went away.

The following Sunday Lesueur had it out with him in the Chapel Royal, where he was first violin. Turning on my master in a temper, he said:

“Confound it all! If we let in all these young folks, what is to become of us?”

He was at least plain spoken!

Winter came on apace. In working at my opera I had rather neglected my pupils, and my Pont Neuf dining-room, growing cold and damp, was no longer suitable for my feasts of Lucullus.

How should I get warm clothes and firewood? Hardly from my lessons at a franc a piece, since they might stop any day.

Should I write to my father and acknowledge myself beaten, or die of hunger in Paris? Go back to La Côte to vegetate? Never. The mere idea filled me with maddening energy, and I resolved to go abroad to join some orchestra in New York or Mexico, to turn sailor, buccaneer, savage, anything, rather than give in.

I can’t help my nature. It is about as wise to sit on a gunpowder barrel to prevent it exploding as it is to cross my will.

I was nearly at my wits’ end when I heard that the Théâtre des Nouveautés was being opened for vaudeville and comic opera. I tore off to the manager to ask for a flautist’s place in the orchestra. All filled! A chorus singer’s? None left, confound it all! However the manager took my address and promised to let me know if, by any possibility there should be a vacancy. Some days later came a letter saying that I might go and be examined at the Freemason’s Hall, Rue de Grenelle. There I found five or six poor wights in like case with myself, waiting in sickening anxiety--a weaver, a blacksmith, an out-of-work actor and a chorister. The management wanted basses, my voice was nothing but a second-rate baritone; how I prayed that the examiner might have a deaf ear.

The manager appeared with a musician named Michel, who still belongs to the Vaudeville orchestra. His fiddle was to be our only accompaniment.

We began. My rivals sang, in grand style, carefully prepared songs, then came my turn. Our huge manager (appropriately blessed with the name of St Leger) asked what I had brought.

“I? Why nothing.”

“Then what do you mean to sing?”

“Whatever you like. Haven’t you a score, some singing exercise, anything?”

“No. And besides”--with resigned contempt--“I don’t suppose you could sing at sight if we had.”

“Excuse me, I will sing at sight anything you give me.”

“Well, since we have no music, do you know anything by heart?”

“Yes. I know the _Danaïdes_, _Stratonice_, the _Vestal_, _Œdipus_, the two _Iphigenias_, _Orpheus_, _Armida_----”

“There, that will do! That will do! what a devil of a memory you must have! Since you are such a prodigy, give us “_Elle m’a prodigué_” from Sacchini’s _Œdipus_. Can you accompany him, Michel?”

“Certainly. In what key?”

“E flat. Do you want the recitative too?”

“Yes. Let’s have it all.”

And the glorious melody:

“Antigone alone is left me,”

rolled forth, while the poor listeners, with pitifully down-cast faces, glanced at each other recognising that, though I might be bad, they were infinitely worse.

The following day I was engaged at a salary of fifty francs a month.

And this was the result of my parents’ efforts to save me from the bottomless pit! Instead of a cursed dramatic composer I had become a damned theatre chorus-singer, excommunicated with bell, book and candle. Surely my last state was worse than my first!

One success brought others. The smiling skies rained down two new pupils and a fellow-provincial, Antoine Charbonnel, whom I met when he came up to study as an apothecary. Neither of us having any money, we--like Walter in the _Gambler_--cried out together:

“What! no money either? My dear fellow, let’s go into partnership.”

We rented two small rooms in the Rue de la Harpe and, since Antoine was used to the management of retorts and crucibles, we made him cook. Every morning we went marketing and I, to his intense disgust, would insist on bringing back our purchases under my arm without trying to hide them. Oh, pharmaceutical gentility! it nearly landed us in a quarrel.

We lived like princes--exiled ones--on thirty francs a month each. Never before in Paris had I been so comfortable. I began to develop extravagant ideas, bought a piano--_such_ a thing! it cost a hundred and ten francs. I knew I could not play it, but I like trying chords now and then. Besides, I love to be surrounded by musical instruments and, were I only rich enough, would work in company with a grand piano, two or three Erard harps, some wind instruments and a whole crowd of Stradivarius violins and ’cellos.

I decorated my room with framed portraits of my musical gods, and Antoine, who was as clever as a monkey with his fingers (not a very good simile, by-the-way, since monkeys only destroy) made endless little useful things--amongst others a net with which, in spring-time, he caught quails at Montrouge, to vary our Spartan fare.

But the humour of the whole situation lay in the fact that, although I was out every evening at the theatre, Antoine never guessed--during the whole time we lived together--that I had the ill-luck to _tread the boards_ and, not being exactly proud of my position, I did not see the force of enlightening him. He supposed I was giving lessons at the other end of Paris.

It seems as if his silly pride and mine were about on a par. Yet no; mine was not all foolish vanity. In spite of my parents’ harshness, for nothing in the world would I have given them the intense pain of knowing how I gained my living. So I held my tongue and they only heard of my theatrical career--as did Antoine Charbonnel--some seven or eight years after it ended, through biographical notices in some of the papers.

VIII

FAILURE

It was at this time that I wrote the _Francs-Juges_ and, after it, _Waverley_. Even then, I was so ignorant of the scope of certain instruments that, having written a solo in D flat for the trombones in the introduction to the _Francs-Juges_, I got into a sudden panic lest it should be unplayable.

However one of the trombone players at the opera, to whom I showed it, set my mind at rest.

“On the contrary,” said he, “D flat is a capital key for the trombone; that passage ought to be most effective.”

Overjoyed, I went home with my head so high in the air that I could not look after my feet, whereby I sprained my ankle. I never hear that thing now without feeling my foot ache; probably other people get the ache in their heads.

Neither of my masters could help me in the least in orchestration--it was not in their line. Reicha did certainly know the capacity of most wind instruments, but I do not think he knew anything of the effect of grouping them in different ways; besides it had nothing to do with his department, which was counterpoint and fugue. Even now it is not taught at the Conservatoire.

However, before being engaged at the Nouveautés I had made the acquaintance of a friend of Gardel, the well-known ballet-master, and he often gave me pit tickets for the opera, so that I could go regularly.

I always took the score and read it carefully during the performance, so that, in time, I got to know the sound--the voice, as it were--of each instrument and the part it filled; although, of course, I learnt nothing of either its mechanism or compass.

Listening so closely, I also found out for myself the intangible bond between each instrument and true musical expression.

The study of Beethoven, Weber and Spontini and their systems; searching enquiry into the gifts of each instrument; careful investigation of rare or unused combinations; the society of _virtuosi_ who kindly explained to me the powers of their several instruments, and a certain amount of instinct have done the rest for me.

Reicha’s lectures were wonderfully helpful, his demonstrations being absolutely clear because he invariably gave the reason for each rule. A thoroughly open-minded man, he believed in progress, thereby coming into frequent collision with Cherubini, whose respect for the masters of harmony was simply slavish.

Still, in composition Reicha kept strictly to rule. Once I asked his candid opinion on those figures, written entirely on _Amen_ or _Kyrie eleison_, with which the Requiems of the old masters bristle.

“They are utterly barbarous!” he cried hotly.

“Then, Monsieur, why do you write them?”

“Oh, confound it all! because everyone else does.”

Miseria!

Now Lesueur was more consistent. He considered these monstrosities more like the vociferations of a horde of drunkards than a sacred chorus, and he took good care to avoid them. The few found in his works have not the slightest resemblance to them, and indeed his

“Quis enarrabit cœlorum gloriam”

is a masterpiece of form, style and dignity.

Those composers who, by writing such abominations, have truckled to custom, have prostituted their intelligence and unpardonably insulted their divine muse.

Before coming to France Reicha had been in Bonn with Beethoven, but I do not think they had much in common. He set great value on his mathematical studies.

“Thanks to them,” he used to say, “I am master of my mind. To them I owe it that my vivid imagination has been tamed and brought within bounds, thereby doubling its power.”

I am not at all sure that his theory was correct. It is quite possible that his love for intricate and thorny musical problems made him lose sight of the real aim of music, and that what the eye gained by his curious and ingenious solution of difficulties the ear did not lose in melody and true musical expression.

For praise or blame he cared nothing; he lived only to forward his pupils, on whom he lavished his utmost care and attention.

At first I could see that he found my everlasting questions a perfect nuisance, but in time he got to like me. His wind instrumental quintettes were fashionable for a time in Paris; they are interesting but cold. On the other hand, I remember hearing a magnificent duet, from his opera _Sappho_, full of fire and passion.

* * * * *

When the Conservatoire examinations of 1827 came on I went up again, and fortunately passed the preliminary, thereby becoming eligible for the general competition.

The subject set was Orpheus torn by the Bacchantes. I think my version was fair, but the incompetent pianist who was supposed to do duty for an orchestra (such is the incredible arrangement at these contests) not being able to make head or tail of my score, the powers that were--to wit, Cherubini, Päer, Lesueur, Berton, Boïeldieu and Catel, the musical section of the Institute--decided that my music was impracticable, and I was put out of court.

So, after my Kreutzer experience of selfish jealousy, I now had a sample of wooden-headed sticking to the letter of the law. In thus taking away my modest chance of distinction did none of them think of the consequences of driving me to despair like this?

I had got a fortnight’s leave from the Nouveautés for the competition; when it was over I should have again to take up my burden. But just as the time expired I fell ill with a quinsy that nearly made an end of me.

Antoine was always trotting after grisettes and left me almost entirely alone. I believe I should have died without help had I not one night, in a fit of desperation, stuck a pen-knife into the abscess that choked me. This somewhat unscientific operation saved me, and I was beginning to mend when my father--no doubt touched by my steady patience and perhaps anxious as to my means of livelihood--wrote and restored me my allowance.

Thanks to this unhoped-for kindness, I gave up chorus-singing--no small relief, since, apart from the actual bodily fatigue, the idiotic music I had to suffer from would soon have either given me cholera or turned me into a drivelling lunatic.

Free from my dreary trade I gave myself up, with redoubled zest, to my Opera evenings and to the study of dramatic music. I never thought of instrumental, since the only concerts I had heard were the cold and mean Opera performances, of which I was not greatly enamoured. Haydn and Mozart, played by an insufficient orchestra in too large a building, made about as much effect as if they had been given on the _plaine de Grenelle_. Beethoven, two of whose symphonies I had read, seemed a sun indeed, but a sun obscured by heavy clouds. Weber’s name was unknown to me, while as for Rossini----

The very mention of him and of the fanaticism of fashionable Paris for him put me in a rage that is not lessened by the obvious fact that he is the antithesis of Gluck and Spontini. Believing these great masters perfect, how could I tolerate his puerilities, his unmerciful big drum, his constant repetition of one form of cadence, his contempt for great traditions? My prejudice blinded me even to this exquisite instrumentation of the _Barbiere_ (without the big drum too!) and I longed to blow up the _Théâtre Italien_ with all its Rossinian audience and so put an end to it at one fell swoop. When I met one of the tribe I eyed him with a Shylockian scowl.

“Miscreant!” I growled between my teeth, “would that I might impale thee on a red-hot iron.”

Time has not changed my opinion, and though I think I can refrain from blowing up a theatre and impaling people on hot irons, I quite agree with our great painter, Ingres, who, speaking of some of Rossini’s work, said:

“It is the music of a vulgar-minded man.”

IX

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Here is a picture of one of my opera evenings.

It was a serious business for which I prepared by reading over and studying whatever was to be given.

My faithful pit friends and I had but one religion, with one god, Gluck, and I was his high priest. Our fanaticism for our favourites was only equalled by our frantic hatred of all composers whom we judged to be without the pale.

Did one of my fellow-worshippers tremble or waver in his faith, promptly would I drag him off to the opera to retract--even going so far sometimes as to pay for his ticket. On one special seat would I place my victim, saying, “Now for pity’s sake don’t move. Nowhere else can you hear so well--I know because I have tried the right place for every opera.”

Then I would begin to expound, reading and explaining obscure passages as I went along; we were always in very good time, first to get the places we wanted; next, so as not to miss the opening notes of the overture; lastly, in order to taste to the uttermost the exciting, thrilling expectation of a great pleasure of which one knows the realisation will exceed one’s hopes. The gradual filling of the orchestra--at first as dreary as a stringless harp; the distribution of the parts--an anxious moment this, for the opera might have been changed; the joy of reading the hoped-for title on the desks of the double-basses, which were nearest to us; or the horror of seeing it was replaced by some wretched little drivel like Rousseau’s _Devin du Village_--when we would rush out in a body, swearing at all and sundry.

Poor Rousseau! What would he have said if he could have heard our curses? He, who thought more of his feeble little opera than of all the masterpieces through which his name lives. How could he foresee that it would some day be extinguished for ever by a huge powdered periwig, thrown at the heroine’s feet by some irreverent scoffer. As it happened, I was present that very night and, naturally, kind friends credited me with this little unrehearsed effect. I am really quite innocent, I even remember being quite as angry about it as I was amused--so I do not think I should or could have done such a thing. Since that night of joyous memory the poor _Devin_ has appeared no more.

But to go back to my story.

Reassured on the subject of the performance, I continued my preachment, singing the leading motifs, explaining the orchestration and doing my best to work my little gang up to a pitch of enthusiasm, to the great wonderment of our neighbours who--mostly simple country folks--were so wrought upon by my speeches that they quite expected to be carried away by their emotions, wherein they were usually grievously disappointed.

I also named each member of the orchestra as he came in and gave a dissertation on his playing until I was stopped short by the three knocks behind the scenes. Then we sat with beating hearts awaiting the signal from Kreutzer or Valentino’s raised baton. After that, no humming, no beating time on the part of our neighbours. Our rule was Draconian.

Knowing every note of the score, I would have let myself be chopped in pieces rather than let the conductor take liberties with it. Wait quietly and write my expostulations? Not exactly! No half-measures for me!

There and then I would publicly denounce the sinners and my remarks went straight home.

For instance, I noticed one day that in _Iphigenia in Tauris_ cymbals had been added to the Scythian dance, whereas Gluck had only employed strings, and in the Orestes recitative, the trombones, that come in so perfectly appropriately, were left out altogether.

I decided that if these barbarisms were repeated I would let them know it and I lay in wait for my cymbals.

They appeared.

I waited, although boiling over with rage, until the end of the movement, then, in the moment’s silence that followed, I yelled:

“Who dares play tricks with Gluck and put cymbals where there are none?”

The murmuring around may be imagined. The public, not being particularly critical, could not conceive why that young idiot in the pit should get so excited over so little. But it was worse when the absence of the trombones made itself evident in the recitative.

Again that fatal voice was heard:

“Where are those trombones? This is simply outrageous!”

The astonishment of audience and orchestra were fairly matched by Valentino’s very natural anger. I heard afterwards that the unlucky trombones were only obeying orders; their parts were quite correctly written.

After that night the proper readings were restored, the cymbals were silent, the trombones spoke; I was serene.

De Pons, who was just as crazy as I on this point, helped me to put several other points straight but once we went too far and dragged in the public at our heels.

A violin solo advertised for Baillot was left out. We clamoured for it furiously, the pit fired up, then the whole house rose and howled for Baillot. The curtain fell on the confusion, the musicians fled precipitately, the audience dashed into the orchestra smashing everything they could lay hands on and only stopping when there was nothing left to smash.

In vain did I cry:

“Messieurs, messieurs! what are you doing? To break the instruments is too barbarous. That’s Father Chénié’s glorious double-bass with its diabolic tone.”

But they were too far gone to listen, and the havoc was complete.

This was the bad side of our unofficial criticism; the good side was our wild enthusiasm when all went well. How we applauded anything superlative that no one noticed, such as a fine bass, a happy modulation, a telling note of the oboe! The public took us for embryo _claqueurs_, the _claque_ leader, who knew better and whose little plans were upset, tried to wither us with thunderbolt glances, but we were bomb-proof.

There is no such enthusiasm in France nowadays, not even in the Conservatoire, its last remaining stronghold.

Here is the funniest scene I ever remember at the opera. I had swept off Leon de Boissieux, an unwilling proselyte, to hear _Œdipus_; however, nothing but billiards appealed to him, and, finding him utterly impervious to the woes of Antigone and her father, I stepped over into a seat in front, giving him up in despair.

But he had a music-loving neighbour and this is what I heard, while my young man was peeling an orange and casting apprehensive glances at the other man, who was evidently in a state of wild excitement.

“Sir, for pity’s sake, do try to be calm.”

“Impossible! It’s killing me! It is so terrible, so overwhelming!”

“My good man, you will be ill if you go on like this. You really shouldn’t.”

“Oh! oh! Leave me alone! Oh!”

“Come! come! Do cheer up a bit. Remember it is nothing but a play. Here, take a piece of my orange.”

“It’s sublime----”

“Yes, it’s Maltese----”

“What glorious art!”

“Don’t say ‘No.’”

“Oh, sir! what music!”

“Yes, it’s not bad.”

By this time the opera had got to the lovely trio, “Sweet Moments,” and the exquisite delicacy of the simple air overcame me too. I hid my face in my hands, and tears trickled between my fingers. I might have been plunged in the depths of woe.

As the trio ended two strong arms lifted me off my seat, nearly crushing my breast-bone in; the enthusiast, recognising one fellow-worshipper amongst the cold-blooded lot around, hugged me furiously, crying:

“B-b-b-by Jove, sir! isn’t it beautiful?”

“Are you a musician?”

“No, but I am as fond of it as if I were.”

Then, regardless of surrounding giggles and of my orange-devouring neophyte, we exchanged names and addresses in a whisper.

He was an engineer, a mathematician! Where, the devil, will true musical perception next find a lodging, I wonder? His name was Le Tessier, but we never met again.

X

WEBER

Into the midst of this stormy student life of mine came the revelation of Weber, by means of a miserable, distorted version of _Der Freyschütz_, called _Robin des Bois_, which was performed at the Odéon. The orchestra was good, the chorus fair, the soloists simply appalling.

One wretched woman alone, Madame Pouilley, by the imperturbably wooden way in which she went through her part--even that glorious air in the second act--would have been enough to wreck the whole opera. Small wonder that it took me a long while to unearth all the beauty of its hidden treasures.

The first night it was received with hisses and laughter, the next the audience began to see something in the Huntsmen’s Chorus, and they let the rest pass. Then they rather fancied the Bridesmaid’s Chorus and Agatha’s Prayer, half of which was cut out. A glimmering notion that Max’s great aria was fairly dramatic followed; finally it burst upon them that the Wolf’s Glen scene was really quite comic; so all Paris rushed to see this misshapen horror, the Odéon got rich, and Castilblaze netted a hundred thousand francs for destroying a masterpiece.

Now I must own frankly that I was getting rather tired of high tragedy, in spite of my conservatism, and, chopped about as it was, the sweet wild savour of this woodland pastoral, its dainty grace and tender melancholy opened to me a new world of music.

I deserted the opera in favour of the Odéon, where I had the _entrée_ to the orchestra, and soon knew _Der Freyschütz_ (according to Castilblaze) by heart.

More than twenty years have passed since Weber himself passed through Paris for the first and last time. He was on his way to his London death-bed, and breathlessly I followed in his track, hoping and longing to meet him face to face.

One morning Lesueur said:

“Why were you not here five minutes sooner? Weber has been playing our French scores by heart to me.”

A few hours later in a music shop--

“Whom do you think we had here just now? Why, Weber!”

At the Odéon people were saying:

“Weber has just gone by. He is up in one of the boxes.”

It was maddening--I, alone, never saw him. Unlike Shakespeare’s apparitions, he was visible to all but one.

Too obscure to dare to write, without a friend who could introduce me, he passed out of my world.

Ah, why do not the thrice-gifted ones of this world know of the passionate love and devotion their works inspire! If they could but divine the suppressed admiration of a few faithful hearts! Would they not gladly gather these chosen disciples about them to become a bulwark against the shafts of envy, hatred, malice, and luke-warm tolerance of which a thoughtless world makes them the target!

Weber was justly angry when he found out how Castilblaze--veterinary surgeon of music--had butchered his beautiful work, and he published a complaint before leaving Paris. Castilblaze actually had the audacity to play the injured innocent, and to say that it was entirely owing to his adaptation that _Freyschütz_ had succeeded at all!

The wretch!----yet a poor sailor gets fifty lashes for the slightest insubordination.

Exactly the same thing had been done a few years earlier with Mozart’s _Magic Flute_. It had been botched into a ghastly _pot-pourri_ by Lachnith--whom I hereby pillory with Castilblaze--and given as the _Mysteries of Isis_.

Thus mocked, travestied, deprived of a limb here, an eye there--twisted and maimed--these two men of genius were introduced to the French public.

How is it that they put up with these atrocities?

Mozart assassinated by Lachnith.

Weber by Castilblaze--who did the same for Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, and Beethoven.

Beethoven’s symphonies “corrected” by Fétis, by Kreutzer, and by Habeneck (of this I have more to say).

Molière and Corneille chopped up by Théâtre Français demons.

Shakespeare “arranged” for performance in England by Colley Cibber! The list is endless.

No, a thousand times no! No man living has a right to try and destroy the individuality of another, to force him to adopt a style not his own, and to give up his natural point of view. If a man be commonplace, let him remain so; if he be great--a choice spirit set above his fellows--then, in the name of all the gods, bow humbly before him, and let him stand erect and alone in his glory.

I know that Garrick improved _Romeo and Juliet_ by putting his exquisite, pathetic ending in the place of Shakespeare’s; but who are the miscreants who doctored _King Lear_, _Hamlet_, _The Tempest_, _Richard the Third_?

That all comes from Garrick’s example. Every mean scribbler thinks he can give points to Shakespeare.

But to go back to music. At the last sacred concerts, after Kreutzer had experimentalised by making cuts in one Beethoven symphony, did not Habeneck follow suit by dropping out several instruments in another, and M. Costa, in London, try all sorts of weird conclusions with big drums, ophicleides, and trombones in _Don Giovanni_ and _Figaro_? Well! if conductors lead the way, who can blame the small fry for following after?

But is not this the ruin of Art? Ought not we, who love and honour her, who are jealous for the prescriptive rights of human intellect, to hound down and annihilate the transgressor; to cry aloud:

“Thy crime is ridiculous. Thy stupidity beneath contempt. Despair and die! Be thou contemned, be thou derided, be thou accursed! Despair and die!!!”

* * * * *

My devotion to Gluck and Spontini at first somewhat blinded me to the glories of Mozart. Not only had I a prejudice against Italian, both language and singers, but in _Don Giovanni_ the composer has written a passage that I call simply criminal. Doña Anna bewails her fate in a passage of heart-rending beauty and sorrow, then, right in the middle, after _Forse un giorno_ comes an impossible piece of buffoonery that I would give my blood to wipe out.

This and other similar passages that I found in his compositions sent my admiration for Mozart down below zero. I felt I could not trust his dramatic instinct, and it was not until years later, when I found the original score of the _Magic Flute_ instead of its travesty, the _Mysteries of Isis_, and made acquaintance with the marvellous beauty of his quartettes and quintettes, and some of his sonatas, that this Angelic Doctor took his due place in my mind.

XI

HENRIETTE

I cannot go minutely into all the sorrowful details of the great drama of my life, upon which the curtain rose about this time (1827).

An English company had come over to Paris to play Shakespeare, and at their first performance--_Hamlet_--I saw in Ophelia the Henriette Smithson who, five years later, became my wife. The impression made upon my heart and mind by her marvellous genius was only equalled by the agitation into which I was plunged by the poetry she so nobly interpreted.

Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares, struck me down as with a thunderbolt. His lightning spirit, descending upon me with transcendent power from the starry heights, opened to me the highest heaven of Art, lit up its deepest depths, and revealed the best and grandest and truest that earth can shew.

I realised the paltry meanness of our French view of that mighty brain. The scales fell from my eyes, I saw, felt, understood, lived; I arose and walked!

But the shock was overwhelming, and it was long ere I recovered. Intense, profound melancholy, combined with extreme nerve-exhaustion, reduced me to a pitiable state of mind and body that only a great physiologist could diagnose.

A martyr to insomnia, I lost all elasticity of brain, all concentration, all taste for my best loved studies, and I wandered aimlessly about the Paris streets and through the country round.[3]

By dint of overtiring my body, I managed, during this wretched time, to get four spells of death-like sleep or torpor, and four only; one night in a field near Ville-Juif, one day near Sceaux; a third in the snow by the frozen Seine near Neuilly, and the last on a table in the Café Cardinal, where I slept five hours, to the great fright of the waiters, who dared not touch me lest I should be dead.

Returning one day from this dreary wandering in search of my lost soul, I noticed Moore’s _Irish Melodies_ open on the table at

“When he who adores thee,”

and, catching up a pen, I wrote the music to that heart-rending farewell straight off. It is the _Elégie_ at the end of my set of songs called _Ireland_. This is the only time I can remember being able to depict a sentiment while actively under its influence, and seldom have I gone so direct to the heart of it.

It is a most difficult song both to sing and to accompany. To do it justice the singer must create his own atmosphere, so must the pianist and only the most sensitive and artistic souls should attempt it.

For this reason, during all the twenty odd years since it was written, I have never asked anyone to try it; but one day Alizard picked it up and began trying it without the piano. Even that upset me so terribly that I had to beg him to stop. He understood. I know he would have interpreted it perfectly, and it was more than I could bear. I did begin to set it to an orchestral accompaniment, but I thought:

“No, this is not for the general public. I could not stand their calm indifference,” and I burnt the score.

Yet some day it may chance, in England or Germany, to find a niche in some wounded breast, some quivering soul--in France and Italy it is a hopeless alien.

Coming away from _Hamlet_, I vowed that never more would I expose myself to Shakespearian temptation, never more singe my scorched wings in his flame.

Next morning _Romeo and Juliet_ was placarded. In terror lest the free list of the Odéon should be suspended by the new management, I tore round to the box-office and bought a stall. I was done for!

Ah! what a change from the dull grey skies and icy winds of Denmark to the burning sun, the perfumed nights of Italy! From the melancholy, the cruel irony, the tears, the mourning, the lowering destiny of Hamlet, what a transition to the impetuous youthful love, the long-drawn kisses, the vengeance, the despairing fatal conflict of love and death in those hapless lovers!

By the third act, half suffocated by my emotion, with the grip of an iron hand upon my heart, I cried to myself: “I am lost--am lost!”

Knowing no English I could but grope mistily through the fog of a translation, could only see Shakespeare as in a glass--darkly. The poetic weft that winds its golden thread in network through those marvellous creations was invisible to me then; yet, as it was, how much I learnt!

An English critic has stated in the _Illustrated London News_ that, on seeing Miss Smithson that night, I said: