Chapter III: Part 3

“I will marry Juliet and will write my greatest symphony on the play.”

I did both, but I never said anything of the kind. I was in far too much perturbation to entertain such ambitious dreams. Only through much tribulation were both ends gained.

After seeing these two plays I had no more difficulty in keeping away from the theatre. I shuddered at the bare idea of renewing such awful suffering, and shrank as if from excruciating physical pain.

Months passed in this state of numb despair, my only lucid moments being dreams of Shakespeare and of Miss Smithson--now the darling of Paris--and dreary comparisons between her brilliant triumphs and my sad obscurity.

As I gradually awoke to life again, a plan began to take shape in my mind. She should hear of me; she should know that I also was an artist; I would do what, so far, no French artist had ever done--give a concert entirely of my own works. For this three things were needed--copies, hall, and performers.

Therefore (this was early in the spring of 1828) I set to work, and, writing sixteen hours out of twenty-four, I copied every single part of the pieces I had chosen, which were the overtures to _Waverley_ and the _Francs-Juges_, an aria and trio from the latter, the scena _Heroic Greek_, and the cantata on the _Death of Orpheus_, that the Conservatoire committee had judged unplayable.

While copying furiously I saved furiously too, and added some hundreds of francs to my store, wherewith to pay the chorus; for orchestra I knew I might count on the friendly help of the staff of the Odéon, with a sprinkling of assistants from the Opera and the Nouveautés.

My chief difficulty was the hall; it always is in Paris. For the only suitable one--the Conservatoire--I must have a permit from M. de Larochefoucauld and also the consent of Cherubini.

The first was easily obtained; not so the second.

At the first mention of my design Cherubini flew in a rage.

“Vant to gif a conchert?” he said, with his usual suavity.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Must ’ave permission of Fine Arts Director first.”

“I have it.”

“M. de Larossefoucauld, ’e consent?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“But me, I not consent. I vill oppose zat you get ze ’all.”

“But, monsieur, you can have no reasonable objection, since the hall is not engaged for the next fortnight.”

“But I tell to you zat I vill not ’ave zat you gif zis conchert. Everyone is avay and no profit vill be to you.”

“I expect none. I merely wish to become known.”

“Zere is no necessity zat you become known. And zen for expense you vill want monee. Vhat ’ave you of monee?”

“Sufficient, monsieur.”

“A-a-ah! But vhat vill you make ’ear at zis conchert?”

“Two overtures, some excerpts from an opera and the _Death of Orpheus_.”

“Zat competition cantata? I vill not ’ave zat! She is bad--bad; she is impossible to play.”

“You say so, monsieur; I judge differently. That a bad pianist could not play it is no reason that a good orchestra should not.”

“Zen it is for insult of ze Académie zat you play zis?”

“No, monsieur; it is simply as an experiment. If, as is possible, the Academy was right in saying my score could not be played, then certainly the orchestra will not play it. If the Academy was wrong, people will only say that I made good use of its judgment and have corrected my score.”

“You can only ’ave your conchert on ze Sunday.”

“Very well, I will take Sunday.”

“But zose poor _employés_--ze doorkeepers--zey ’ave but ze Sunday for repose zem. Vould you take zeir only rest-day? Zey vill die--zose poor folks--zey vill die of fatigue.”

“On the contrary, monsieur. These poor folks are delighted at the chance of earning a few extra francs, and they will not thank you for depriving them of it.”

“I vill not ’ave it; I vill not! And I write to ze Director zat he vizdraw permission.”

“Most hearty thanks, monsieur, but M. de Larochefoucauld never breaks his word. I also shall write and retail our conversation exactly. Then he will be able to weigh the arguments on both sides.”

I did so, and was afterwards told by one of his secretaries that my dialogue-letter made the Director laugh till he cried. He was, above all, touched at Cherubini’s tender consideration for those poor devils of _employés_ whom I was going to kill with fatigue.

He replied, as any man blessed with commonsense would, repeating his authorisation and adding:

“You will kindly show this letter to M. Cherubini, who has already received the necessary _orders_.”

Of course I posted off to the Conservatoire and handed in my letter; Cherubini read it, turned pale, then yellow, and finally green, then handed it back without a word.

This was my first Roland for the Oliver he gave me in turning me out of the library. It was not to be my last.

XII

MY FIRST CONCERT

Having secured orchestra, hall, chorus and parts, I only wanted soloists and a conductor. Bloc, of the Odéon, kindly accepted the latter post, and Alexis Dupont, although very unwell, took under his wing my _Orpheus_, which he had promised to sing before the jury of the Institute, had it been passed.

But unluckily his hoarseness got so much worse that, when the day came, he was unable to sing at all, so I was deprived of the wicked joy of putting on the programme, “_Death of Orpheus_; lyric poem, judged impossible of execution by the Académie des Beaux Arts, performed May 1828.”

A concert at which most of the executants helped for love and not for money naturally came off poorly in rehearsals; still, at the final rehearsal the overtures went fairly well, the _Francs-Juges_ calling forth warm applause from the orchestra; the finale of the cantata being even more successful.

In this, after the _Bacchanal_, I made the wind carry on the motif of Orpheus’ love-song to a strange rushing undertone accompaniment by the rest of the players, while the dying wail of a far-off voice cries:

“Eurydice! Eurydice! hapless Eurydice!”

The wild sadness of my music-picture affected the whole orchestra, and they hailed it with wild enthusiasm. I am sorry now that I burnt it, it was worth keeping for those last pages alone.

With the exception of the _Bacchanal_--the famous piece in which the Conservatoire pianist got hung up--which was given with magnificent verve, nothing else in the cantata went very well and, thanks to Dupont’s illness, it was withdrawn. No doubt Cherubini preferred to say that it was because the orchestra could not play it.

In this cantata I first noticed how impossible conductors, unused to grand opera, find it to give way to the capricious and varied time of the recitative. Bloc, only accustomed to songs interspersed with spoken dialogue, was quite confused and, in some places, never got right at all, which made a learned periwigged amateur, who was at rehearsal, say, as he shook his head at me:

“Give me good old Italian cantatas! Now that’s the music that never bothers a conductor. It plays itself, it runs alone.”

“Yes,” I said dryly, “just as old donkeys plod round and round their treadmill.”

That is how I set about making friends.

Much against the grain I replaced _Orpheus_ by the _Resurrexit_ from my mass, and finally the concert came off.

Duprez, with his sweet, weak voice, did well in the aria; the overtures and _Resurrexit_ were also a success, but the trio with chorus was a regular failure.

Not only was the trio miserably sung, but the chorus missed its entry and never came in at all!

I need hardly say that, after paying expenses, including the chorus that held its tongue in such a masterly manner, I was completely cleaned out.

However, the concert was a most useful lesson to me.

Not only did I become known to artists and public, which (_pace_ Cherubini!) was a necessity, but, by doggedly facing the innumerable difficulties of a composer, I gained most valuable experience.

Several of the papers praised me, and even Fétis--Fétis, who afterwards[4] ... spoke of me, in a drawing-room, as a coming man.

But what of Miss Smithson?

Alas! I found out that, absorbed in her own engrossing work, of me and my concert she never heard a whisper!

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_6th June 1828._--Are you parched with anxiety to know the
result of my concert? I have only waited in order to send you the
papers too. Triumphant success! After the applause at the general
rehearsals of Friday and Saturday I had no more misgivings.

“Our beloved _Pastoral_ was ruined by the chorus that only found
out it had not come in just as the whole thing finished. But oh,
the _Resurrexit_! and oh, the applause! As soon as one round
finished another began until, being unable to stand it all, I
doubled up on the kettle-drum and cried hard.

“Why were you not there, dear friend, faithful champion? I thought
of and longed for you.

“At that wild trombone and ophicleide solo in the _Francs-Juges_,
one of the first violins shouted:

“‘The rainbow is the bow of your
violin, the winds play your organ and the seasons beat time!’

“Whereupon the whole orchestra started applauding a thought of
which they could not possibly grasp the extent. The drummer by my
side seized my arm, ejaculating, ‘Superb--sublime,’ while I tore my
hair and longed to shriek:

“‘Monstrous! Gigantic! Horrible!’

“All the opera people were present, and there was no end to
the congratulations. The most pleased were Habeneck, Dérivis,
Dupont, Mademoiselle Mori, Hérold, etc. Nothing was lacking to my
success--not even the criticisms of Panseron and Brugnières, who
say my style is new and bad, and that such writing is not to be
encouraged.

“My dear, dear fellow! in pity send me an opera. How can I write
without a book? For heaven’s sake finish something!”

“_June._--All day long I have been tearing about the country,
leagues upon leagues, and I still live. I feel so lonely! Send me
something to work at, some bone to gnaw! The country was lovely;
the people all looked happy. In the flooding light the trees
rustled softly; but, oh! I was alone--all alone in that wide plain.
Space, time, oblivion, pain and rage held me in their terrific
grasp. Struggle wildly as I might, life seemed to escape me; I held
but a few pitiful fragments in my trembling hands.

“Oh! the horror, at my age and with my temperament, to have these
harrowing delusions, and, with them, the miserable persecutions
of my family! My father has again stopped my allowance; my sister
writes to-day that he is immovable. Oh, for money! money! Money
_does_ bring happiness.

“Still ... my heart beats as if with joy, the blood courses through
my veins.

“Bah! I am all right. Joy, hang it! I will have joy!”

“_Sunday morning._

“DEAR FRIEND,--Do not worry over my aberrations--the
crisis is past. I cannot explain in a letter, which might go
astray; but I beg you will not breathe a word of my state of mind
to anyone, it might get round to my father and distress him. All
that I can do is suffer in silence until time changes my fate.

“Yesterday’s wild excursion did for me entirely. I can hardly
move.--_Adieu._”

In an artist’s life sometimes wild tempests succeed each other with bewildering rapidity, and so it was with me about this time.

Hardly had I recovered from the successive shocks of Weber and Shakespeare, when above my horizon burst the sun of glorious Beethoven to melt for me that misty inmost veil of the holiest shrine in music, as Shakespeare had lifted that of poetry.

To Habeneck, with all his shortcomings, is due the credit of introducing the master he adored to Paris. In order to found the Conservatoire concerts, now of world-wide fame, he had to face opposition, abuse and irony, and to inspire with his own ardour a set of men who, not being Beethoven enthusiasts, did not see the force of slaving for poor pay at music that, to them, appeared simply eccentric.

Oh! the nonsense I have heard them airing on those miracles of inspiration and learning--the symphonies!

Even Lesueur--honest, but devoted to antiquated dogmas--stood aside with Cherubini, Päer, Kreutzer and Catel, until, one day, I swept him off to hear the great C minor symphony.

I told him it was his duty to know and appreciate personally such a notable fact as this revelation of a new and glorious style to us, the children of the old classicism.

Conscientiously anxious to judge fairly, he would not have me by to distract him, but shut himself up with strangers at the back of a box.

The symphony over, I hurried round to hear his verdict, and found him, with flushed face, striding up and down a passage.

“Ouf!” he cried, “let me get out; I must have air! It’s incredible! Marvellous! It has so upset and bewildered me, that when I wanted to put on my hat I _couldn’t find my head_. Let me go by myself. I will see you to-morrow.”

I felt triumphant, and took care to go round next day. We spoke of nothing but the masterpiece we had heard; yet he seemed to reply to my ravings rather constrainedly. Still I persevered, until, after dragging out of him another acknowledgment of his heart-felt appreciation, he ended, with a curious smile:

“Yes, it’s all very well; but such music ought not to be written.”

“No fear, dear master,” I retorted; “there will never be too much of it!”

Poor human nature! Poor master! How much regret, envy, narrow-mindedness; what a dread of the unknown and confession of incapacity lay beneath your words! “Such music should not be written,” because the speaker knows instinctively that he himself could never write it.

Thus do all great men suffer from their contemporaries.

Haydn said much the same of Beethoven, whom he called a _great pianist_.

Grétry of Mozart, who, he said, had put the statue in the orchestra and the pedestal on the stage.

Handel, who said his cook was more of a musician than Gluck.

Rossini, who vowed that Weber’s music gave him a stomach-ache.

But the antipathy of the two latter to Gluck and Weber I believe to be due to quite another reason--a natural inability in these two comfortable portly gentlemen to understand the point of view of the two men of heart and sensibility.

This deliberately obstinate attitude of Lesueur towards Beethoven opened my eyes to the utter worthlessness of his conservative tenets, and from that moment I left the broad, smooth road wherein he had guided my footsteps, for a hard and thorny way over hedges and ditches, hills and valleys. But I could not hurt the old man by my apostasy, so did my best to dissimulate my change of mind, and he only found it out long after, on hearing a composition I had never shewn him.

It was just at this time that I set out on my treadmill round as critic for the papers.

Ferrand, Cazalès and de Carné--well-known political names--agreed to start a periodical to air their views, which they called _Révue Européenne_, and Ferrand suggested that I should undertake the musical correspondence.

“But I can’t write,” I objected; “my prose is simply detestable. And, besides----”

“No, it is not,” said Ferrand; “have I not got your letters? You will soon be knocked into shape. Besides, we shall revise what you write before it is printed. Come along to de Carné and hear all about it.”

What a weapon this writing for the press would be wherewith to defend truth and beauty in art! So, ignorant of the web of fate I was throwing around my own shoulders, I smiled innocently and walked straight into the meshes.

I was likely to be diffident of my writing powers, for, once before, being furious at the attacks made upon Gluck by the Rossini faction, I asked M. Michaud, of the _Quotidienne_, to let me reply. He consented, and I said to myself, gaily:

“Now, you brutes, I have got you; I’ll smite you hip and thigh!”

But I smote no one and nothing.

My utter ignorance of journalism, of the ways of the world, of press etiquette and my untamed musical passions, landed me in a regular bog. My article went far beyond the bounds of newspaper warfare, and M. Michaud’s hair stood on end.

“But, my dear fellow, you know, I cannot possibly publish a thing like that. You are pulling people’s houses down about their ears. Take it back and whittle it down a bit.”

But I was too lazy and too disgusted, so there it ended.

This laziness of mine does not apply to composition, which comes naturally to me. Hour after hour I labour at a score, sometimes for eight hours at a time; no work is too minute, no pains too great.

Prose, however, is always a burden. Sometimes I go back eight or ten times to an article for the _Journal des Débats_; even a subject I like takes me at least two days. And what blots, what scrawls, what erasures! My first copy is a sight to behold.

Propped up by Ferrand, I wrote for the _Révue Européenne_ appreciative articles on Beethoven, Gluck and Spontini that made a certain mark, and thus began my apprenticeship to the difficult and dangerous work that has taken such a fatal hold on my life.

Never since have I shaken myself free, and strangely diversified have been its influences on my career both in France and abroad.

XIII

AN ACADEMY EXAMINATION

Torn by my Shakespearian love, which seemed intensified instead of diverted by the influence of Beethoven; dreamy, unsociable, taciturn to the verge of moroseness, untidy in dress, unbearable alike to myself and my friends, I dragged on until June 1828 when, for the third time, I tempted fate at the Institute and won a second prize.

This was a gold medal of small value, but it carried with it a free pass to all the lyric theatres, and a fair prospect of the first prize the following year.

The Prix de Rome was much better worth having. It insured three thousand francs a year for five years, of which the two first must be spent in Italy, and the third in Germany. The remaining two might be passed in Paris, after which the winner was left to sink or swim at his own sweet will.

This is how the affair was worked until 1865, when the Emperor revised the statutes. I shall hardly be believed, but, since I won both prizes, I only state what I know to be absolutely true.

The competition was open to any Frenchman under thirty, who must go through the preliminary examination, which weeded out all but the most promising half dozen.

The subject set is always a lyric scena, and by way of finding out whether the candidates have melody, dramatic force, instrumentation, and other knowledge necessary for writing such a scena, they are set down to compose a _vocal fugue_! _Each fugue must be signed._

Next day the musical section of the Academy sits in judgment on the fugues, and, since some of the signatures are those of the Academicians’ pupils, this performance is not entirely free from the charge of partiality.

The successful competitors then have dictated to them the classical poem on which they are to work. It always begins this way:

“And now the rosy-fingered dawn;”

or,

“And now with lustre soft the horizon glows;”

or,

“And now fair Phœbus’ shining car draws near;”

or,

“And now with purple pomp the mountains decked.”

Armed with this inspiring effusion the young people are locked up in their little cells with pens, paper, and piano until their work is done.

Twice a day they are let out to feed, but they may not leave the Institute building. Everything brought in for their use is carefully searched lest outside help should be given, yet every day, from six to eight, they may have visitors and invite their friends to jovial dinners, at which any amount of assistance--verbal or written--might be given.

This lasts for twenty-two days, but anyone who has finished sooner is at liberty to go, leaving his manuscript--_signed as before_--with the secretary.

Then the grave and reverend signors of the jury assemble, having added to their number two members of any other section of the Institute--either engravers, painters, sculptors or architects--anything, in short, but musicians.

You see, they are so thoroughly competent to judge an art of which they know nothing.

There they sit and solemnly listen to these scenas boiled down on a piano. How _could_ anyone profess to judge an orchestral work like that? It might do for simple old-fashioned music, but nothing modern--that is, if the composer knows how to marshal the forces at his command--could by any possibility be rendered on the piano.

Try the Communion March from Cherubini’s great Mass. What becomes of those long-drawn, mystical wind-notes that fill one’s soul with religious ecstasy; of those exquisitely interwoven flutes and clarinets to which the whole effect is due?

They have completely vanished, since the piano can neither hold nor inflate a sound.

Does it not follow, then, that the piano, by reducing every tone-character to one dead level, becomes a guillotine whereby the noblest heads are laid low and mediocrity alone survives?

Well! After this precious performance the prize is awarded, and you conclude that this is the end of it all?

Not a bit! A week later the whole thirty-five Academicians, painters and architects and sculptors and engravers on copper and engravers of medals all turn up to give the final verdict.

They do not shut out the six musicians, although they are going to judge music.

Again the pianists and the singers go through the compositions, then round goes the fatal urn, in order that the judgment of the previous week may be confirmed, modified, or reversed.

Justice compels me to add that the musicians return the compliment by going to judge the other arts, of which they are as blindly ignorant as are their colleagues of music.

On the day of the distribution of prizes the chosen cantata is performed by a full orchestra. It seems just a little late; it might have been more serviceable to get the orchestra before judgment--seeing that after this there is no repeal--but the Academy is inquisitive; it really does wish to know something about the work it has crowned. Laudable curiosity!

* * * * *

In my time there was an old doorkeeper at the Institute whose indignation at all this procedure was most amusing. It was his duty to lock us up and let us out, and, being also usher to the Academicians, he was on the inside track and made some very odd notes.

He had been a cabin boy, which at once enlisted my sympathies; for I always loved sailors, and can listen imperturbably to their long-winded yarns; no matter how far they wander from the point I am always ready with a word to set them right again.

We were the best of friends, Pingard and I. One day, talking of Syria, he mentioned Volney.

“M. le Comte,” he said, “was so good and easy-going that he always wore blue woollen stockings.”

But his respect for me became unbounded enthusiasm when I asked whether he knew Levaillant.

“M. Levaillant!” he cried, “Rather! One day at the Cape I was sauntering along, whistling, when a big sun-burnt man with a beard turned round on me. I suppose he guessed I was French from my whistle. Of course I whistle in French, monsieur.

“‘I say, you young rogue, you’re French?’

“‘I should say I was. Givet is my part of the country.’

“‘Oh, you _are_ French?’

“‘Yes.’

“And he turned his back and strode off. You see I did know M. Levaillant!”

The good old boy made such a friend of me that he told me a lot he would not have dared to repeat to anyone else.

I remember a lively conversation with him the day I got the second prize.

We had a piece of Tasso set that year, towards the end of which the Queen of Antioch invokes the god of the Christians she has contemned. I had the impudence to think that, although the last section was marked _agitato_, this ought to be a prayer, and I wrote it _andante_. I was rather pleased with it on the whole.

When I got to the Institute to hear whether the painters and sculptors, and architects, and engravers of medals, and line-engravers had settled whether I were a good or bad musician, I ran against Pingard on the stairs.

“Well?” I asked, “what have they decided?”

“Oh, hallo, Berlioz! I am glad you have come. I was hunting for you.”

“What have I got? Do hurry up! First? Second? Nothing?”

“Oh, do wait; I’m all of a tremble. Will you believe you were only two votes short of the first prize?”

“The first I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s true, though. The second is all very well, but I call it beastly that you missed the first by two votes. I am neither a painter, nor a sculptor, nor an architect, so of course I know nothing about music, but I’ll be hanged if that _God of the Christians_ of yours didn’t set my heart gurgling and rumbling to such a tune that if I had met you that minute I should have--have--stood you a drink!”

“Thanks awfully, Pingard. I admire your taste. But, I say--you have been on the Coromandel coast?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“To Java?”

“Yes, but----”

“Sumatra?”

“Yes.”

“Borneo?”

“Yes.”

“You are a friend of Levaillant?”

“I should think so. Hand in glove with him.”

“You know Volney?”

“The good Count with the blue woollen stockings? Certainly.”

“Very well, then, you _must_ be a splendid judge of music.”

“But--why? How?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly how or why. But it seems to me that your title is just as good as that of the gentlemen who do judge. Tell me, though, what happened.”

“Oh, my goodness! It’s always the same old game. If I had thirty children, devil take me if one of them should be an artist of any sort. You see, I am on the inside track, and know how they sell their votes. It’s nothing but a blessed old shop. See here! Once I heard M. Lethière asking M. Cherubini for his vote for a pupil.”

“Don’t refuse, my dear fellow,” he said, “we are such old friends, and my pupil really has talent.”

“No, he shall not have my vote,” Cherubini answered. “He promised my wife an album of drawings that she wanted badly. He hasn’t even done her a single tree!”

“That’s rather too bad of you,” said M. Lethière. “I vote for your people, and you might vote for mine. Look here! I’ll do you the album myself. I can’t say more than that.”

“Ah, that’s another pair of boots. What is your pupil’s name and picture? I must not get muddled. Pingard, a pencil and paper!”

“They went off into the window corner and wrote something, then I heard the musician say--

“All right, I will vote for him.”

“Now, isn’t that disgusting? If I had had a son in the competition and they had played him a trick like that, wouldn’t it have been enough to make me chuck myself out of window?”

“Come, Pingard, calm down a bit and tell me about to-day.”

“Well, when M. Dupont had finished singing your cantata they began writing their verdicts, and I brought the hurn” (Pingard always would stick in that “h”). “There was a musician close by whispering to an architect, ‘Don’t give him your vote; he’s no good at all, and never will be. He is gone on that eccentric creature Beethoven, and we shall never get him right again.’ ‘Really!’ said the architect. ‘Yet--’ ‘Well, ask Cherubini. You will take his word, won’t you? He will tell you that Beethoven has turned the fellow’s head--’ I beg pardon,” said Pingard, breaking off his story, “but who is this M. Beethoven? He doesn’t belong to the Academy, and yet everyone seems to be talking of him.”

“No, no! He’s a German. Go on.”

“There isn’t much more. When I passed the hurn to the architect I saw that he gave his vote to No. 4 instead of to you. Suddenly one of the musicians said, ‘Gentlemen, I think you ought to know that, in the second part of the score we have just heard, there is an exceedingly clever and effective piece of orchestration to which the piano cannot do justice. This ought to be taken into consideration.’ ‘Don’t tell us a cock-and-bull story like that,’ cried another musician. ‘Your pupil has broken the rules and written two quick arias instead of one, and he has put in an extra prayer. We cannot allow rules to be set at nought like this; it would be establishing a precedent.’ ‘Oh, this is too ridiculous! What says the secretary?’ ‘I think that we might pardon a _certain_ amount of licence, and that the jury should distinctly understand that passage that you say cannot be properly given by the piano.’ ‘No, no!’ cried Cherubini, ‘it’s all nonsense. There is no such clever piece of work. It is a regular jumble, and would be abominable for the orchestra.’

“Then on all sides rose the architects, painters, sculptors, etc., saying, ‘Gentlemen, for pity’s sake agree somehow! We can only judge by what we hear, and if you will not agree--’ And all began to talk at once, and it became distinctly a bore, so M. Régnault and two others marched out without voting. They counted the votes. You only got second prize.”

“Thanks, Pingard, but, I say--they manage things better at the Cape Academy, don’t they?”

“The Cape? Why, you know they have not got one. Fancy a Hottentot Academy!”

“Well then, Coromandel?”

“None there.”

“Java?”

“None either.”

“What, no Academy at all in the East? Poor Orientals!”

“They manage to get along pretty well without.”

“What outer barbarians!”

I bade the old usher good-bye, thinking what a blessing it would be if I could send the Academy to civilise Borneo.

Two years later the Prix de Rome was mine, but poor old Pingard was dead. It was a pity.

If he had heard my “Burning of the Palace of Sardanapalus” he might have stood me ... two drinks!

XIV

FAUST--CLEOPATRA

Again I relapsed into my habitual gloom and indolence. Like a dead invisible planet I circled round that radiant sun that alas! was doomed so soon to fade into mournful oblivion.

Estelle, star of my dawn, was eclipsed and lost in the noontide brilliance of her mighty rival--my overwhelming and glorious love.

Although I took care never to pass the theatre, never willingly to look at Othelia’s portraits in the shop windows, yet still I wrote--receiving never a sign in reply. My first letters frightened her, and she bade her maid take her no more.

The company was going to Holland, and its last nights were advertised. Still I kept away; to see her again was more than I could bear.

However, hearing that she was to act two scenes from _Romeo and Juliet_ with Abbott, for the benefit of Huet, the actor, I had a sudden fancy to see my own name on a placard beside that of the great actress.

I _might_ be successful under her very eyes!

Full of this childish notion I got permission from the manager and conductor of the Opéra Comique to add an overture of my own to the programme.

On going to rehearsal I found the English company just finishing; broken-hearted Romeo held Juliet in his arms. At sight of the group I gave a hoarse, despairing cry and wringing my hands wildly, I fled from the theatre. Juliet saw and heard me; terror-stricken she pointed me out to those around, begging them to _beware of the gentleman with the wild eyes_.

An hour later I went back to an empty theatre. The orchestra assembled and my overture was run through--like a sleep walker I listened, hearing nothing--when the performers applauded me I wondered vaguely whether Miss Smithson would like it too! Fool that I was!!

It seems impossible that I could, even then, have been so ignorant of the world as not to know that, be the overture what it may, at a benefit, no one in the audience listens. Still less the actors, who only arrive in time for their turns and trouble themselves not at all about the music.

My overture was well played, fairly received--but not encored--Miss Smithson heard nothing of it and left next day for Holland.

By a strange chance (I could never get her to believe it _was_ chance) I had taken lodgings at 96 Rue de Richelieu, opposite her house. Worn out, half dead, I lay upon my bed until three the next afternoon; then, rising, I crawled wearily to the window.

Cruel Fate! At that very minute she came out and stepped into her carriage _en route_ for Amsterdam.

Was ever misery like mine?

Oh God! my deadly, awful loneliness; my bleeding heart! Could I bear that leaden weight of anguish, that empty world; that hatred of life; that shuddering shrinking from impossible death?

Even Shakespeare has not described it; he simply counts it, in _Hamlet_, the cruellest burden left in life.

Could I bear more?

I ceased to write; my brain grew numb as my suffering increased. One power alone was left me--to suffer.

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“GRENOBLE, _Sept. 1828_.

“DEAR FRIEND,--I cannot go to you; come to me at La
Côte! We will read _Hamlet_ and _Faust_ together, Shakespeare
and Goethe! Silent friends who know all my misery, who alone can
fathom my strange wild life. Come, do come! No one here understands
the passion of genius. The sun blinds them, they think it mere
extravagance. I have just written a ballad on the King of Thule,
you shall have it to put in your _Faust_--if you have one.

“‘Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.’

“I am wretched. Do not be so cruel as not to come!”

“PARIS, _November 1828_.[5]

“Forgive me for not writing sooner; I was so ill, so stupid, it was
better to wait.

“La Fontaine might well say: ‘Absence is the greatest of ills.’
She is gone; this time to Bordeaux and I live no more; or rather I
live too acutely, for I suffer, hourly, the agonies of death. I can
hardly drag through my work.

“You know that I am appointed Superintendent of the Gymnase-Lyrique
and have to choose or replace the players and to take care of
instruments, parts and scores.

“Subscribers are coming in; so are malicious anonymous letters.
Cherubini sits on the fence wondering whether to help or to hinder
us, and we go calmly on.

“I have not seen Châteaubriand; he is in the country, but I will
speak of your piece directly I do.”

“_End of 1828._

“Do you know M. d’Eckstein, and can you give me an introduction to
him? I hear that he is connected with a new and powerful paper,[6]
in which Art is to be given prominence. If I am considered good
enough, I should like to be musical correspondent. Help me if you
can.”

Another landmark in my life was the reading of Goethe’s _Faust_; I could not lay it down, but read and read and read--at table, in the streets, in the theatres.

Although a prose translation, songs and rhymed pieces were scattered throughout, and these I set to music, then, without having heard a note of them, was crazy enough to have them engraved. A few copies, under the title of _Eight Scenes from Faust_ were sold in Paris, and one fell into the hands of M. Marx, the great Berlin critic, who wrote most kindly to me about it. This unexpected encouragement from such a source gave me real pleasure, particularly as the writer did not dwell too much on my many and great faults. I know some of the ideas were good, since I afterwards used them for the _Damnation de Faust_, but I know, also, how hopelessly crude and badly written they were. As soon as I realised this, I collected and burnt all the copies I could lay hands on.

Under Goethe’s influence I wrote my _Symphonie Fantastique_--very slowly and laboriously in some parts, incredibly quickly and easily in others. The _Scène aux Champs_ worried me for three weeks, over and over again I gave it up, but the _Marche au Supplice_ was dashed off in a single night. Of course they were afterwards touched and retouched.

Bloc, being anxious that my new symphony should be heard, suggested that I should be allowed to give a concert at the Théâtre des Nouveautés.

The directors, attracted by the eccentricity of my work, agreed, and I invited eighty performers to help, in addition to Bloc’s orchestra. On my making enquiries about accommodation for such an army of executants the manager replied, with the calm assurance of ignorance:

“Oh, that’s all right. Our property man knows his business.” The day of rehearsal arrived, and so did my hundred and thirty musicians--with nowhere to put them!

I just managed to squeeze the violins into the orchestra, and then arose an uproar that would have driven a calmer man than myself out of his senses. Cries for chairs, desks, candles, strings, room for the drums, etc., etc. Scene shifters tore up and down improvising desks and seats, Bloc and I worked like sixty--but it was all useless; a regular rout; a passage of the Bérésina.

However Bloc insisted on trying two movements to give the directors some idea of the whole. So, all in a muddle, we struggled through the _Ball Scene_ and the _Marche au Supplice_, the latter calling forth frantic applause.

But my concert never came off. The directors said that “they had no idea so many arrangements were necessary for a symphony.” Thus my hopes were dashed, and all for want of a few desks. Since then I always look into the smallest details for myself.

Wishing to console me for this disappointment, Girard, conductor of the Théâtre Italien, asked me to write something shorter than my unlucky symphony, that he could have carefully performed at his theatre.

I therefore wrote a dramatic fantasia with choruses on the _Tempest_, but no sooner did he see it than he said:

“This is too big for us; it must go to the opera.”

Without loss of time I interviewed M. Lubbert, director of the Royal Academy. To my relief and delight, he at once agreed to have it played at a concert for the Artists’ Benevolent Fund that was to take place shortly. My name was known to him through my Conservatoire concert, and he had seen notices of me in the papers. He, therefore, believed in me, put me through no humiliating examination, gave me his word, and kept it religiously.

“He was a man, Horatio.”

All went splendidly at rehearsal; Fétis did his best for me, and everything seemed to smile, when, with my usual luck, an hour before the concert there broke over Paris the worst storm that had been known for fifty years. The streets were flooded and practically impassable, and during the first half of the concert, when my _Tempest_--damned tempest!--was being played, there were not more than three hundred people in the place.

_Extracts from Letters to_ H. FERRAND.

“_April 1829._--Here is _Faust_, dear friend. Could you, without
stinting yourself, lend me another hundred francs to pay the
printer? I would rather borrow from you than from anyone else; yet
had you not offered, I should not have dared to ask. Your opera
(_Franc-Juges_) is splendid. You are indeed a poet! That finale of
the Bohemians at the end of the first act is a master stroke. I do
not believe anything so original has ever been done in a libretto
before. And I repeat, it is magnificent.”

“_June._--No word from you for three months. Why is it? Does your
father suppress our letters, or can it be that you, at last,
believe the slanders you hear of me?

“I got a pupil, so have managed to pay the printer.

“I am very happy, life is charming--no pain, no despair, plenty
of day dreams; to crown all, the _Francs-Juges_ has been refused
by the Opera Committee! They find it long and obscure, only the
Bohemian scene pleases them; but Duval thinks it remarkable and
says there is a future for it.

“I am going to make an opera like _Freyschütz_ of it, and if I win
the prize perhaps Spohr (who is not jealous, but is most helpful to
young musicians) will let me try it at Cassel.

“No word have I had from you since I spoke of my hopeless love.
Nothing more has happened. This passion will be my death; how often
one hears that hope alone keeps love alive--am I not a living proof
of the contrary?

“All the English papers ring with her praises; I am unknown! When
I have written something great, something stupendous, I must go to
London to have it performed. Oh for success!--success under her
very eyes.

“I am writing a life of Beethoven for the _Correspondant_, and
cannot find a minute for composition--the rest of my time I copy
out parts. What a life!”

Once more came June, and with it my third attempt on the Prix de Rome. This time I really did hope, for not only had I gained a second prize, but I heard that the musical judges thought well of me.

Being over-confident I reasoned (falsely, as it turned out), “Since they have decided to give me the prize, I need not bother to write exactly in the style that suits them; I will compose a really artistic cantata.”

The subject was Cleopatra after Actium. Dying in convulsions, she invokes the spirits of the Pharaohs, demanding--criminal though she be--whether she dare claim a place beside them in their mighty tombs. It was a magnificent theme, and I had often pondered over Juliet’s--

“But if when I am laid into the tomb,”

which is, at least in terror of approaching death, analogous to the appeal of the Egyptian Queen.

I was fool enough to head my score with those very words--the unpardonable sin to my Voltairean judges--and wrote what seemed to me a weird and dramatic piece, well suited to the words. I afterwards used it, unchanged, for the _Chorus of Shades_ in _Lelio_; I think it deserved the prize. But it did not get it. None of the compositions did. Rather than give it to a “young composer of such revolutionary tendencies” they withheld it altogether.

Next day I met Boïeldieu, who, on seeing me, said:

“My dear boy, what on earth possessed you? The prize was in your hand, and you simply threw it away.”

“But, monsieur, I really did my best.”

“That’s just it! Your _best_ is the opposite of your _good_. How could I possibly approve? I, who like nice gentle music--cradle-music, one might say.”

“But, monsieur, could an Egyptian queen, passionate, remorseful, and despairing, die in mortal anguish of body and soul to the sound of cradle-music?”

“Oh, come! come! I know you have plenty of excuses, but they go for nothing. You might at least have written gracefully.”

“Gladiators could die gracefully, but not Cleopatra. She had not to die in public.”

“There! you _will_ exaggerate so! No one expects her to dance a quadrille. Why need you introduce such odd, queer harmonies into that invocation? I am not well up in harmony, and I must own that those outlandish chords of yours are beyond me.”

I bit my lip, not daring to make the obvious reply:

“Is it my fault that you know no harmony?”

“And then,” he went on, “why do you introduce a totally new rhythm in your accompaniments? I never heard anything like it.”

“I did not understand, monsieur, that we were not to try new modes if we were fortunate enough to find the right place for them.”

“But, my dear good fellow, Madame Dabadie is a capital musician, yet one could see it took all her care and talent to get her through.”

“Really, monsieur, I have yet to learn that music can be sung without either talent or care.”

“Well, well! you will have the last word. But do be warned for next year. Come and see me and we will talk it over like _French gentlemen_.”

And, chuckling over the point he had made (for his last words were a quotation from his own _Jean de Paris_), he walked off.

Yes, Boïeldieu was right. The Parisians liked soothing music, even for the most dramatic and harrowing situations. Pretty, innocent, gentlemanly music, pleasant and making no demand upon one’s deepest feelings.

Later on they wanted something different, and now they do not know what they want, or rather they want nothing at all. Ah me! what was the good God thinking of when He dropped me down in this pleasant land of France?

Yet I love her whenever I can forget her idiotic politics. How gay she is, how dainty in wit, how bright in retort--how she boasts and swaggers and humbugs, royally and republicanly! I am not sure, though, that this last _is_ amusing.

XV

A NEW LOVE

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_July 1829._--I am sorry I did not send your music before, but
I may as well own that I am short of money. My father has taken
another whim and sends me nothing, so I could not afford the
thirty or forty francs for the copying. I could not do it myself,
as I was shut up in the Institute. That abominable but necessary
competition! My only chance of getting the filthy lucre, without
which life is impossible.

‘Auri sacra fames quid non mortalia pectora cogis!’

My father would not even pay my expenses in the Institute. M.
Lesueur did so for me.”

“_August._--Forgive my negligence. My only excuses are the Academy
competition and the new pangs of my despised love. My heart can
be likened only to a virgin forest, struck and kindled by the
thunderbolt; now and again the fire smoulders, then comes the
whirlwind, and in a second the trees are a mass of living, hissing
flame and all is death and desolation.

“I will spare you a description of the latest blows.

“That shameful competition!

“Boïeldieu says I go further than Beethoven, and he cannot even
understand Beethoven; and that, to write like that, _I must have
the most hearty contempt for the Academicians!_ Auber told me much
the same thing, and added, ‘You hate the commonplace, but you need
never be afraid of writing platitudes. The best advice I can give
you is to write as insipidly as you can, and when you have got
something that sounds to you horribly flat, _you will have just
what they want!_’

“That is all very well, but when I go writing for butchers and
bakers and candlestick-makers I certainly shall not go to the
passion-haunted, crime-stained Queen of Egypt for a text.”

_To_ FERDINAND HILLER.

“1829.--What is this overwhelming emotion, this intense power of
suffering that is killing me? Ask your guardian angel, that bright
spirit that has opened to you the gate of Heaven. Oh, my friend!
can you believe that I have burnt the manuscript of my prose elegy?
I have Ophelia ever before me; her tears, her tragic voice; the
fire of her glorious eyes burns into my soul--I am so miserable, so
inexpressibly unhappy, oh, my friend!

“I seem to see Beethoven looking down on me with calm severity;
Spontini--safely cured of woes like mine--with his pitying
indulgent smile; Weber from the Elysian Fields, whispers consoling
words into my ear....

“Mad, mad, mad! is this sense for a student of the Institute; a
domino-player of the Café de la Régence?

“Nay, I _will_ live--live for music--the highest thing in life
except true love! Both make me utterly miserable but at least I
shall have lived! Lived, it is true, by suffering, by passion, by
lamentation and by tears--yet I _shall_ have lived! Dear Ferdinand!
a year ago to-day I saw _her_ for the last time. Is there for us a
meeting in another world?

“Ah, me! miserable! Alone! cursed with imagination beyond my
physical strength, torn by unbounded, unsatisfied love!--still, I
have known the great ones of the heaven of music; I have laughed
as I basked in the radiance of their glory! Immortals, stretch out
your hands, raise me to the shelter of your golden clouds that I
may be at rest!

“Voice of Reason:

“‘Peace, fool! ere many years have
passed your pain will be no more.’

Henriette Smithson and
Hector Berlioz

will rest in the oblivion of the grave and other unfortunates will
also suffer and die!” ...

_To_ H. FERRAND.

“_November 1829._--Oh Ferrand! Ferrand! why were you not here for
my concert? Yesterday I was so ill that I could not crawl; to-day
the fire of hell that inspired my _Francs-Juges_ overture, courses
through my veins.

“All my heart, my passion, my love are in that overture.

“After the crowd had dispersed the performers waited for me in the
courtyard and greeted me with wild applause. At the Opera in the
evening it was the same thing--a regular ferment!

“My friend, my friend! Had you but been there!

“But it was more than I could stand, and now I am a prey to the
most awful depression and despair; tears choke me, I long to die.

“After all, there will be a small profit--about a hundred and fifty
francs, of which I must give two-thirds to Gounet, who so kindly
lent it me--I think he is more in need than you. But my debt to you
troubles me, and as soon as I can get together enough to be worth
sending, you shall have it.” ...

* * * * *

“_December._--I am bored! wretched! That is nothing new, but I get
more and more soul-weary, more utterly bored as time goes on. I
devour time as ducks gobble water, in order to live and, like the
ducks, I find nothing but a few scrubby insects for nourishment.
What will become of me! What shall I do!”

_To_ H. FERRAND.

“_January 1830._--I do not know where to turn for money. I have
only two pupils, they bring me in forty-four francs a month; I
still owe you money besides the hundred francs to Gounet--this
eternal penury, these constant debts, even to such old and tried
friends as you, weigh on me terribly. Then again your father still
nurses the mistaken idea that I am a gambler--I, who never touch a
card and have never set foot in a gaming house--and the thought
that he disapproves of our friendship nearly drives me mad. For
pity’s sake, write soon!”

* * * * *

“_February._--Again, without warning and without reason, my
ill-starred passion wakes. She is in London, yet I feel her
presence ever with me. I listen to the beating of my heart, it is
like a sledge-hammer, every nerve in my body quivers with pain.

“Woe upon her! Could she but dream of the poetry, the infinite
bliss of such love as mine, she would fly to my arms, even though
my embrace should be her death.

“I was just going to begin my great symphony (_Episode in an
Artist’s Life_) to depict the course of this infernal love of
mine--but I can write nothing.”

* * * * *

“_May._--Your letter comforts me, dear friend, how good it is to
be blessed with a friend such as you! A man of heart, of soul, of
imagination! How rare that kindred spirits such as ours should meet
and sympathise.

“Words fail to tell the joy your affection gives me. You need not
fear for me with Henriette Smithson. I am no longer in danger
in that quarter; I pity and despise her. She is nothing but a
commonplace woman with an instinct for expressing the tortures
of the soul that she has never felt; she is quite incapable of
appreciating the noble, all-devouring love with which I honoured
her.

“The rehearsals of my symphony begin in three days; all the parts
are copied--there are two thousand three hundred pages. I hope to
goodness we shall have good receipts to pay for it all. The concert
takes place on the 30th May. And you alone will not be there! Even
my father wishes to come. Ah, my symphony!

“I wish the theatre people would somehow plot to get _her_
there--that wretched woman! But she certainly would not go if she
read my programme. She could not but recognise herself. What will
people say? My story is so well known.”

At this time a new influence came into my life which, for a time, eclipsed my Shakespearian passion.

Hiller, the German composer-pianist, whom I had known intimately ever since his arrival in Paris, fell violently in love with Marie Moke, a beautiful and talented girl, who, later on, became one of our greatest pianists.