Chapter 44

Delsarte's Beginnings.

"The artist, a traveller on this earth, leaves behind imperishable traces of his being."--_François Delsarte._

We would fain prolong the faintest rays of all that glitters and fades too soon, and if intense light is generated in a human brain, we strive to retain its every reflection. Nothing is indifferent which concerns the nature of the chosen few; great men belong to the annals of their nation, and history should be informed regarding them.

François Delsarte left this life at the moment when misfortune had crushed France beneath her iron heel for some ten years. The date of his death--July 20, 1871--partially explains the silence of the press on the occasion of so vast a social loss.

The circumstance of an artistic education, which was carried on in my presence, gave me opportunity to collect a mass of incidents and observations in regard to the great artist who is the object of this sketch.

I collected ideas in regard to his instruction, his method and his discovery of the laws of æsthetics, which are the more precious that nothing, or almost nothing, was published by him touching upon subjects of such supreme importance. It is my duty to tell what I know.

I have already established the bases of the work which I now undertake, in a pamphlet containing several articles published in various newspapers. These articles were written under the inspiration of the moment; they won the master's approval. I shall have frequent recourse to them to correct the errors of memory and give more vivid life to that now distant past.

Delsarte was born at Solesmes (Department of the North), November 9, 1811. His father was a practicing physician; but tormented by a genius for invention, he spent his time and money in studies and experiments. Then, when he succeeded in producing some mechanical novelty, some capitalist more used to trade and rich enough to start the affair, usually reaped all the profits. This condition of things, of course, produced great poverty in the family of the inventor, and the children's education suffered in consequence, and yet young François even then showed signs of superior endowments. A missionary, passing through Solesmes, said to him: "As for you, I don't know what you will turn out, but you will never be an ordinary man!" In spite of this, his parents intended him for trade, being unable to direct his talents toward science and the liberal arts.

Before proceeding farther, I must consider a question often asked in regard to the great artist, and concerning which his family have kindly informed me.

For a long time Delsarte signed his name in a single word, as I write it now; why, then, should we ever see it written with the separate particle, which seems to aim at nobility and which gives us the form, del Sarte? I will give you the tradition as it is told in Solesmes, and as the artist heard it during a visit to his native place. If it be fiction, it is not without interest, and I take pleasure in telling it.

The natives of Solesmes say that at a very remote period a great painter, coming from a distance, spent some time in their town. The good inhabitants of the place know nothing of the pictures which this master must have produced; perhaps they are quite as wide from his name! But Delsarte, struck by the probability of this poetic origin, filled with brotherly sympathy for the pure and graceful talent of Vannuchi del Sarto, doubted not that the latter was the artist whose memory is held sacred in Solesmes. Out of respect and veneration for the Italian master, he divided the syllables, but still retained the French termination of his name.

We can readily see that an imaginative spirit, such as we now have to deal with, would be carried away by the legendary side of this story, and that he would put full faith in his own commentaries:--he believed so many things!

To return to prose and to reality, I must add that Delsarte based his sentiment upon partial proof. Before the Revolution, the family did indeed sign themselves del Sarte; but an ancestor--imbued with the principles of 1789, and anxious to efface all suspicion of noble origin--effected a fusion of the two parts of the word, and left us the name as we have known it and as, perhaps, we regret it.

Those who regard this change of family name as mere vanity seem to me wide of the truth. A strange nobility, moreover, that of Vannuchi, surnamed _del Sarto!_ Sarto may be translated as _tailor;_ therefore Vannuchi _del Sarto_ would mean: Vannuchi _of the tailor_, short for Vannuchi, _son of the tailor_.

What need had he of empty honors, he who was on equal terms with the great men of letters, science and the arts, who was surrounded by the incense of the most legitimate enthusiasm, and who received the homage of kings as of less value than the praises of Spontini and Réber!

I return to my sketch which will, I hope, justify these last remarks.

At the time of which we speak, the poor child was not treated as the predestined favorite of art, He had been entrusted to people who ill fulfilled their mission. He was scolded and abused; he was left destitute of the most necessary things. He felt this injustice, and, gifted with a precocious sensibility, he suffered greatly from it.

François had as a companion in misfortune, one of his brothers, who could not bear the hard life; born feeble, he soon succumbed. This was a severe trial to the future artist! When he saw his only friend buried in the common grave, he could not contain his grief.

"I rebelled," he tells us, "at the idea of losing all trace of this tomb. I shrieked aloud. I would not leave the mournful place!"

The grave-diggers took pity on his despair; they promised to mark the spot. The child resigned himself to fate and departed. I will let him speak for himself:

"I crossed the plain of St. Denis (it was in December); I had eaten little or nothing, and I had wept much. Great weakness combined with the dazzling light of the snow, made me dizzy. The fatigue of walking being added to this, I fell upon the damp earth and fainted dead away."

What followed may be explained by the ecstatic state often experienced on coming out of a fainting-fit.

"Everything seemed to smile into my half-open eyes; the vault of heaven and the iridescent snow made magical visions about me; the slight roaring in my ears lulled me like a confused melody; the wind, as it blew over the deserted plain, brought me distant, vague harmonies."

Delsarte interpreted what he saw in the light of Christian ideas: it seemed to him that the angels made this delightful concert to console him in his misery and to strengthen him to bear his hard lot.

Rising up, the child felt himself a musician. He soon evinced an utter contempt for the china painting to which he had been bound apprentice. That too was an art; but of that art, the angels had said nothing.

How was he to learn music?

He knew that by a knowledge of a very small number of signs, one could sing and play on instruments. He talked of this to all who would listen; he questioned and inquired:--

"Do you know music, you fellows?" he asked some school boys of his own age.

"A little," said some.

"Well! what do they teach you?"

"They teach us to know our notes."

"What notes?"

"Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si."

"What else?"

"That is all."

"Are there no more notes?"

"Not one!"

"How happy I am! I know music!" cried the delighted Delsarte.

"Cries of joy have their sorrows," said a poet. The child had uttered his cry of joy, and his torments were about to begin. Seven notes! It was a whole world; but what was he to do with them? He scarcely knew, although he was enchanted to possess the treasure. Could he foresee the revelations which art had in store for him? Still less could he predict those conquests in the realm of the ideal which cost him so many sleepless nights.

It must be confessed, superior talents bring suffering to their fortunate possessor. They console him on his journey, along the rough road down which they drag him; they sometimes reward one of the elect, but it is their nature to cause suffering.

And so François Delsarte was tempest-tossed while yet a child. He soon saw that his scientific baggage was but small; he felt that something unknown, something infinite, barred his passage, so soon as he strove to approach the goal which, in an outburst of joy, he fancied within his grasp. What hand would guide him to enter on the dazzling career which he had dimly foreseen? Where should he get books? Who would advise him?

Well! these _impossible things_ were all found--in scanty measure, no doubt, and somewhat capriciously; but still the means for learning were provided for his greed of knowledge.

At first, his stubborn will had only the seven notes of the scale to contend with. He combined them in every possible way. He derived musical phrases from them; at the same time, he listened with all his ears to church music, to street musicians, to church organs and hand-organs.

In these first struggles with knowledge--we cannot call it science yet,--instead of bowing to the method of some master, Delsarte made a method for himself. Had it any resemblance to that which--with the progress of time,--his genius revealed to him? I cannot say, and probably the thought never occurred to him. However it may be, Delsarte said that he learned a great deal by this _autonomic_ process: in fact, one who is restrained by nothing, who satisfies a passion instead of accomplishing a mere act of obedience, may enlarge his horizon and dig to whatever depth he sees fit. In this case, study is called _research_; if, by this method, one loses the benefit of the experience of others, he becomes more quick at discovery. Is not the puzzle which we work out for ourselves more readily remembered than the ideas which are merely learned by heart?

A wise man, a disciple of Socrates--who has been greatly ridiculed, but by whose lessons the science of pedagogy has greatly profited,--Jacotot, gave similar advice to teachers: "Put your questions, but let the scholar think and work out his answers instead of putting them into his mouth."

The talent of young François once established, he left the inhospitable house where he had been so misunderstood, and was taken into the family of an old musician, "Father Bambini," as Delsarte loved to call him.

Here, finding it in the order of facts, I must repeat almost literally a page from the little work quoted before.

Father Bambini was one of those old-fashioned masters, who treat their art with love and veneration. He gave concerts at which he was at once performer and audience, judge and client. Delsarte was sometimes present. He saw the good man take up a Gluck score as one handles a sacred book; he surprised him pressing it to his heart, or to his head, as if to win a blessing from the great soul which poured itself forth in these immortal compositions.

Here we most assuredly have the foundation of the unlimited admiration which our great artist felt for the author of "Alcestis" and of "Iphigenia." Everyone knows that it was Delsarte who drew Gluck from the oblivion in which he had languished since the beginning of the century. Delsarte alone could have revived him, his assured and majestic talent being amply capable of correctly interpreting those colossal works. Delsarte is the equivalent of Gluck, and, if we may say so, the _incarnation of his thought_. When the artist sang a part in those lyric tragedies of which Grétry says: "They are the very expression of truth," it seemed as if the illustrious chevalier lived again in him to win better comprehension than ever before and to be avenged at last for all the injustice and bad taste from which he had suffered.

Delsarte received no very regular musical education from Father Bambini. The lesson was often given while the teacher was shaving, which did not distract the attention of either party. The master, having no hand at liberty to hold a book, made his pupil explain all the exercises aloud, sing every composition, and read at sight the authors with whom he wished him to be familiar. Great progress can be made where there is such mutual good will. They had faith in each other: the child, because he saw that his master really loved his art; the old musician, because he realized that his scholar had a genuine vocation and would be a great artist.

One evening they were walking together in the Champs Elysées. Carriages rolled by filled with fashionable people. The humble pedestrians were surrounded by luxury. Suddenly Father Bambini turned toward his scholar:

"You see," said he, "all these people who have their carriages, their liveried lackeys and their fine clothes; well, the day will come when they will be only too glad to hear you, and they will envy you because you are so great a singer."

The child was deeply moved; not by this promise of future glory; not by the thought, that by fame he should gain wealth; but he seemed to see his dream realized in a remote future. That dream was the complete mastery of his art; it was his ideal attained, or closely approached. This mode of feeling already justified the prediction.

Delsarte retained a grateful memory of another teacher. M. Deshayes, he said, spurred him on to scientific discovery, as Bambini directed his attention and his taste to the works of the great masters.

One day, as the young man was studying a certain rôle, M. Deshayes, busily talking with some one else and not even glancing toward his pupil, exclaimed:

"Your gesture is incorrect!"

When they were alone Delsarte expressed his astonishment.

"You said my gesture was incorrect," he exclaimed, "and you could not see me."

"I knew it by your mode of singing."

This explanation set the young disciple's brain in a whirl. Were there, then, affinities, a necessary concordance between the gesture and the inflections of the voice? And, from this slight landmark, he set to work, searching, comparing, verifying the principle by the effects, and _vice versa_.

He gave himself with such vigor to the task that, from this hint, he succeeded little by little in establishing the basis of his system of æsthetics and its complete development.

After these beginnings, which Delsarte considered as a favorable initiation, Father Bambini--his faithful patron--thought that he required a more thorough musical education, and chose the Conservatory school. There, that broad and impulsive spirit in its independence ran counter to classic paths, to rigid processes; there, that exceptional nature, that potent personality, which was already a marked one, that vivid intuition--which already went beyond the limits of the traditional holy of holies--had little chance of appreciation. Moreover, Delsarte was timid; his genius had not yet acquired the audacity which dares. Competition followed competition; would he win a prize? In answer to this question which he had asked himself throughout the year, he saw mediocrity crowned; his soul of light and fire was forced to bow before will-o'-the-wisps, most of whom were soon extinguished in merited oblivion.

The artist's regret was the more acute because he did not yet know the course of human life. He had not proved the strange fatality--which seeks to make itself a law--that, in general, success falls to the lot of those who servilely follow in the ruts of routine. Happy are the worshippers of art and poetry, those who have devoted their lives to this sacred cult, if ambition and intrigue--with their attendant train of flattery, party rings, and illegal speculation--do not invade the stage whence the palms and the crowns are awarded!

Delsarte must also have learned in the course of his life, that genius, a rare exception, is more rarely still judged by its peers; and yet, the genius of this student was already revealed by various tokens; and for his consolation, these premonitory symptoms were noted by other than the official judges.

After one of these scholastic contests, Delsarte withdrew confused and heavy-hearted: he had received but one vote in the competition; and even that exception roused a sort of cheer, as if it were given to some contemptible competitor.

The defeated youth walked slowly away, dragging at his heels all the sorrow of his discomfiture, when two persons approached him; one was the famous Marie Malibran, the other the brilliant tenor, Adolph Nourrit.

"Courage!" said the prima donna, pressing his hand. "I enjoyed hearing you very much. You will be a great artist!"

"My friend," added Nourrit, "it was I who cast my vote for you: to my mind, you are an incomparable singer. When I have my children taught music, you shall certainly be their teacher."

Delsarte blessed the defeat which had brought him such precious compensations. These voices which sounded so sweetly in his ear, were soon extinguished by death; but they vibrated long in the heart which they had comforted. The artist associated their dear memory with every success which recalled to him their sympathetic accents and their clear-sighted prediction.