Part 16

But it is true. Now there are two other sovereigns who share his interest--the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar and the blind young King of Hanover.

* * * * *

On returning to France I took my boy to see his relations at La Côte Saint-André. Poor Louis! how happy he was; petted by relations and old servants and wandering about the fields, his little hand thrust in mine.

In a letter I had yesterday he says that that fortnight was the happiest of his life. And now he is at the blockade of the Baltic, on the eve of a naval battle--that hell upon the sea! The mere thought of it maddens me; yet he chose it himself--this noble profession. But we did not expect war then.

Dear noble boy! at this minute they may be bombarding Bomarsund--it will not bear thinking of, I must turn to other things--I can write no more.

* * * * *

From Paris and its usual weary round of jealousy and intrigue, it was a comfort to turn to London, whence I received the offer of an engagement to conduct the grand English Opera for Jullien. In his usual rôle of madman he got together orchestra, chorus, principals and theatre, merely forgetting a repertoire. To cover expenses he would have had to take ten thousand francs a night and this he expected to net out of an English version of _Lucia di Lammermoor_!

_To_ TAJAN ROGÉ of St Petersburg.

“LONDON, _November 1847_.--Dear Rogé,--Your letter should have been answered sooner had it not been for the thousand and one worries that overwhelmed me the minute I set foot in Paris.

“You can have no idea of my existence in that infernal city that thinks itself the home of Art.

“Thank heaven I have escaped to England and am, financially, more independent than I dared to hope.

“Jullien, the manager here, is a most intrepid spirit and seems to understand English people; he has made his fortune and is going to make mine, he says. I let him have his own way since he does nothing unworthy of art and good taste--but I have my doubts.

“I have come _alone_ to London; you may guess my reasons. I badly needed a little freedom which, so far, I have never been able to get. Not one _coup d’état_ but a whole series was necessary before I succeeded in shaking off my bonds. Yet now, although I am so busy with rehearsals, my loneliness seems very odd.

“Since I am in a confidential mood, will you believe that I had a queer little love affair in St Petersburg with a girl--now don’t laugh like a full orchestra in C major! It was poetic, heart-rending, and perfectly innocent.

“Oh, our walks! oh, the tears I shed when, like Faust’s Marguerite, she said: ‘What can you see in me--a poor girl so far beneath you?’ I thought I should die of despair when I left St Petersburg, and was really ill when I found no letter from her in Berlin. She _did_ promise to write, probably by now she is married.

“I can picture it all again--the Neva banks, the setting sun. In a maze of passion I pressed her hand to my heart, and sang her the Love Song from _Romeo_.

“Ah me! not two lines since I left her.

“Good-bye; you at least will write to me.”

_To_ AUGUSTE MOREL.

“76 HARLEY STREET, LONDON, _31st November 1847_.--Jullien asks me confidentially to get your report on the success of Verdi’s new opera.[23] We begin next week with the _Bride of Lammermoor_, which can hardly help going well with Madame Gras and Reeves. He has a beautiful voice, and sings as well as this awful English language will allow.

“I had a warm reception at one of Jullien’s concerts, but shall not begin my own until January.

“Your friend, M. Grimblot, has given me the _entrée_ to his club, but heaven only knows what amusement is to be found in an English club. Macready gave a magnificent dinner in my honour last week; he is charming and most unassuming at home, though they say he is terrible at rehearsal. I have seen him in a new tragedy, _Philip van Artevelde_; he is grand, and has mounted the piece splendidly.

“No one here understands the management and grouping of a crowd as he does. It is masterly.”

* * * * *

“_8th December._--The opening of our season was a success. Madame Gras and Reeves were recalled frantically four or five times, and they both deserved it.

“Reeves is a priceless discovery for Jullien; his voice is exquisite in quality, he is a good musician, has an expressive face, and plays with judgment.”

* * * * *

“_14th January._--Jullien has landed us all in a dreadful bog, but don’t mention it in Paris, as we must not spoil his credit. It is not the Drury Lane venture that has ruined him; that was done before; now he has gone off to the provinces and is making a lot of money with his promenade concerts, while we take a fair amount each night at the theatre, none of which goes into our pockets, for _we are not paid at all_. Only the orchestra, chorus, and work-people are paid every week in order to keep the thing going somehow.

“If Jullien does not pay me on his return, I shall arrange with Lumley to give some concerts in Her Majesty’s Theatre, for there is a good opening here since poor Mendelssohn’s death.”

* * * * *

“_12th February 1848._--My music has taken with the English as fire to gunpowder. The _Rakoczy_ and _Danse des Sylphes_ were encored. Everyone of importance, musically, was at Drury Lane for my concert, and most of the artists came to congratulate me. They had expected something diabolic, involved, incomprehensible. Now we shall see how they agree with our Paris critics. Davison himself wrote the _Times_ critique; they cut half of it out from want of space; still the remainder has had its effect. Old Hogarth of the _Daily News_ was truly comical: ‘My blood is on fire,’ said he; ‘never have I been excited like this by music.’ ”

Jullien, coming finally to the end of his resources, was obliged to call a council of war. It consisted of Sir Henry Bishop, Sir George Smart, Planché, Gye, Marezeck, and myself.

He talked wildly of the different operas he proposed to mount, and finally came to _Iphigenia in Tauris_, which, like many others, is promised yearly by the London managers. Impatient at my silence he turned upon me:

“Confound it all! surely you know that?”

“Certainly I know it. What do you want me to tell you?”

“How many acts there are, how many characters, what voices and, above all, the style of setting and costume.”

“Take a pen and paper and I will tell you. Four acts, three men: Orestes, baritone; Pylades, tenor; Thoas, high bass; a grand woman’s part, Iphigenia, soprano; a small one, Diana, mezzo-soprano. The costumes you will not like, unfortunately; the Scythians are ragged savages on the shores of the Black Sea; Orestes and Pylades are shipwrecked Greeks. Pylades alone has two dresses--in the fourth act he comes in in a helmet----”

“A helmet!” cried Jullien, excitedly; “we are saved! I’ll write to Paris for a golden helmet with a pearl coronet, and an ostrich plume as long as my arm. We’ll have forty performances.”

“Prodigious!” as good Dominie Sampson says.

Needless to say, nothing happened. Reeves, the divine tenor, laughed at the bare idea of singing Pylades, and Jullien quitted London shortly after, leaving his theatre to go to pieces.

XXXI

MY FATHER’S DEATH--MEYLAN

Already saddened on my return to Paris by the havoc and ruin caused by the Revolution, it was but my usual fate to suffer in addition, the terrible sorrow of losing my father.

My mother had died ten years before, and, bitter as was that blow, it was but light in comparison with the wrench of parting with this dearly loved and sympathetic friend.

We had so much in common, our tastes were similar in so many ways, and, since he had gladly acknowledged himself in the wrong over my choice of a profession, we had been so entirely at one.

Ah! that I could have gratified his ardent wish to hear my _Requiem_, but it was not to be.

I pass over the sorrow of my home-coming, the meeting with my grief-worn sisters, the sight of his empty chair, of his watch--still living, though he was dead!

A strange wish to indulge the luxury of grief crept over me; I must drink this wormwood cup to the dregs; I must revisit Meylan--the early home of my Mountain Star--and live over again my early love and sorrow.

Even now my heart beats faster as I recall my journey. Thirty-three years ago and I, a ghost, come back to my early haunts! As I climb through the vineyards the thoughts, the aspirations, the desires of my childish days crowd in upon me.

Here did I sit with my father, playing _Nina_ to him on my flute; there did Estelle stand.

I turn and take in the whole picture; that blessed house, the garden, the valley, the river, and the far-off Alpine glaciers.

Once more I am young; life and love--a glorious poem--lie before me; on my knees I cry to the hills, the valleys, the heavens: “Estelle! Estelle!”

Bleed, my heart, bleed! but leave me still the power to suffer!

I rise and wander on, noting each familiar point. Here is her cherry tree; there still flowers the plant of everlasting pea from which she plucked blossoms. Sweet plant! bloom on in thy solitude! Good-bye! good-bye!

Good-bye to my childhood, to my lost love--Time sweeps me on; Stella! Stella!

The cold hand of Death lies heavy on my heart, yet around me are soft sunlight, solitude, and silence.

* * * * *

Next day I asked my cousin Victor:

“Do you know Madame F----?”

“The lovely Estelle D----, do you mean?”

“Yes, I loved her so when I was twelve--I love her yet.”

“You idiot,” said Victor, laughing, “she is fifty-one, and has a son of twenty-two.”

He laughed again, and I laughed too, but mine was the cry of despair, an April gleam through the rain.

“Nevertheless I want to see her.”

“Hector, I beg you will do no such thing. You will make a fool of yourself and upset her.”

“I want to see her,” I repeated doggedly, with clenched teeth.

“Fifty-one!” he cried again, “you had much better keep your bright, fresh, youthful memory of her.”

“Well, then, I will write.”

He gave me a pen, and subsided into an armchair in fits of laughter, while my incoherent, despairing letter was composed. I sent it, but no reply came. When next I go to Grenoble I mean to see her.

* * * * *

In May 1851 I was commissioned by Government to judge instruments at the London Exhibition, and wrote to Joseph d’Ortigue in June 1851--

“I want to tell you of the extraordinary impression made on me by the singing of six thousand Charity School children in St Paul’s Cathedral. It is an annual affair, and is, beyond compare, the most imposing, the most _Babylonian_ ceremony I ever witnessed.

“It was a realisation of part of my dreams, and proof positive of the unknown power of vast musical masses.

“This fact is no more understood on the Continent than is Chinese music.

“By-the-bye, France is easily first in the manufacture of musical instruments. Erard, Sax and Vuillaume lead; all the others are of the reed-pipe and tin-kettle tribe.”

_To_ LWOFF.

“_January 1852._--It is impossible to do anything in Paris, so next month I shall go back to England, where, at least, the _wish to love music_ is real and persistent. If I can be of the least use to you in my newspaper articles, commend me, dear master. It will be a pleasure to tell our few earnest French readers of the great and good things that are done in Russia. It is a debt I shall gladly pay, since I never shall forget the warmth of my reception and the kindness of your Empress and your great Emperor’s family.

“What a pity he himself does not like music!”

_To_ J. D’ORTIGUE.

“LONDON, _March 1852_.--Just a line to tell you of my colossal success. Recalled I know not how often, and applauded both as composer and conductor. This morning, in the _Times_, the _Morning Post_, the _Advertiser_, and others, such effusions as never were written before about me! Beale is wild with joy, for it really is an event in the musical world. The orchestra at times surpassed all that I have heard in _verve_, delicacy and power.

“All the papers except the _Daily News_ puff me, and now I am preparing Beethoven’s _Choral Symphony_, which, so far, has been sadly mutilated here.

“But can you believe that all the critics are against the _Vestal_, of which we performed the first part yesterday?

“I am utterly cast down at this _lapsus judicii_--am I not weak?--and am ashamed of having succeeded at such a cost. Why can I not remember that the good, the beautiful, the true, the false, the ugly, are not the same to everyone?”

* * * * *

“_May 1852._--You speak of the expenses of our concerts; they are enormous. Every impresario in London expected to lose this year. In fact Beale, in the programme of the last concert, actually told the public that the _Choral Symphony_ rehearsals had swallowed more than a third of the subscription.

“However, it has had a miraculous effect, and my success as conductor was great also; indeed, it was such an event in the musical world that people greatly doubted whether we should carry it through.”

* * * * *

“_June 1852._--I leave to-morrow. How I shall regret my glorious chorus and orchestra! Those beautiful women’s voices!

“If only you had been here to hear our second performance of the _Choral Symphony_. The effect in that enormous Exeter Hall was most imposing.

“Paris once more! where I must forget these melodious joys in my daily task of critic--the only one left me in my precious native land!

“A naïf Birmingham amateur was heard the other day regretting that I had not been engaged for the Birmingham Festival. ‘For I hear,’ said he, ‘that Berlioz really is better than Costa!!!’ ”

_To_ LOUIS BERLIOZ.

“1852.--You say you are going mad! You must actually _be_ mad to write me such letters in the midst of the strenuous fatigue of my present life.

“In your last letter from Havana you say you will arrive home with a hundred francs. Now you say you owe forty. Now remember! I shall take no notice in future of the nonsense you talk.

“You chose your own profession--a hard one, I grant you, but the hardest part is over. Only five more months, and you will be in port for six months studying, after which you will be able to earn your own living.

“I am putting aside money for your expenses during those six months. I can do no more.

“What is this about torn shirts? Six weeks in Havana, and all your clothes ruined! At that rate you will want dozens of shirts every five months. You must be laughing at me.

“Please weigh your language in writing to me. I do not like your present style. Life is not strewn with roses, and I can give you no career but _that which you yourself chose_. It is too late to alter now.”

_To_ J. D’ORTIGUE.

“_January 1854._--Yes, dear d’Ortigue, you are right. It is my ungovernable passion for Art that is the cause of all my trouble, all my real suffering. Forgive me for letting you read between the lines. I knew it would hurt you, and yet I could not hold back the words that burnt me, although I might have known that your opinions on Art would be in accord with your religious feelings.

“You know that I love the beautiful and the true, but I have another love quite as ardent--the love of love.

“And when for some idea, some misunderstanding, I feel that my love may be lessened, something within me bursts asunder, and I cry like a child with a broken toy.

“I know it is puerile, but it is true, although I do my best to cure myself. Like a true Christian, you have punished me by returning good for evil.

“Your notes are capital, and I think I shall be able to use them, though never did I feel less in the mood for writing.

“I cannot make a beginning. And I am sad--so sad! Life is slipping away. I long to _work_, and am obliged to _drudge_ in order to live. Adieu, adieu.”

XXXII

POOR OPHELIA

I would I were done with these wearisome reminiscences! When I have written a few pages more I shall have said enough to give a fair sketch of the mill-round of thought, work and sorrow wherein I am fated to turn, until I cease to turn for ever. However long may still be the days of my pilgrimage, they can but resemble those that are past. The same stony roads, the same Slough of Despond, with here and there a blessed oasis of

rest or a mighty rock that I may painfully climb, thereon to forget, in the evening sunshine, the cold rains of the plain beneath. So slow are changes in men and things that one would need to live two hundred years to mark any difference.

Nanci, my sister, died of cancer, after six months’ frightful suffering. Adèle, worn out with the fatigue and anxiety of nursing, nearly followed her.

Why had no doctor the humanity to put an end to that awful martyrdom with a little chloroform? They administer it to avoid the pain of an operation that lasts, perhaps, an hour, and they refuse it when they know cure to be impossible, to spare months of torture, when death would be the supreme good. Even savages are more humane.

But no doubt my sister would have refused the boon had it been offered. She would have said, “God’s will be done!” Would not God’s will have been as well interpreted by a calm, swift death as by these months of useless agony?

* * * * *

My wife, too, died--mercifully without much suffering.

After four years’ death-in-life, unable to speak or move, she passed quietly away at Montmartre on the 3rd March 1854. Her last hours were sweetened by Louis’ presence. He was home on leave from Cherbourg four days before she died.

I had been out for two hours when one of her nurses came to tell me all was over, and I returned but to draw aside the shroud and kiss her pale forehead.

Her portrait, painted in the days of her radiant beauty, and which I had given her the year before, hung above her bed, looking calmly down on the poor shell that had once enshrined her brilliant genius.

My sufferings were indescribable. They were intensified by one feeling that has always been the hardest for me to bear--that of pity.

Again and again I went over Henriette’s troubles and their crushing weight bore me to the earth. Her losses before our marriage, her accident, the fiasco of her second appearance, her lost beauty and renown, our home quarrels, her jealousy--not, in the end, without cause--our separation, her son’s absence, her helplessness and dreary years of retrospection, of contemplating approaching death and oblivion.

Oh, the pity of it! It turns my brain.

Shakespeare! Shakespeare! Thou alone couldst have understood us both, thou alone couldst have pitied us--poor children of Art--loving, yet wounding each other through our love! Thou art our God, if that other God sits aloof in sublime indifference to our torments. Thou art our father. Help us! Save us!

De profundis ad te clamo!

Alone I went about my sorrowful task.

The Protestant pastor lived at the other side of Paris and I went to him that evening. As my cab passed the Odéon I thought of how, in that theatre twenty-six years before, my poor dead wife had burst like a meteor upon Paris and had come forward, trembling and awed at her own success, to receive the plaudits of all that was best and brightest in France. Ophelia! Ophelia!

Through that door I saw her pass to a rehearsal of _Othello_. I was nothing to her then. She would have thought the prophet mad who pointed out a worn, distraught, unknown youth and said:

“Behold your husband!”

Yet he it is, my poor Ophelia, he who loved and suffered with you, who tends you on this last long journey.

“... Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.”

Shakespeare! Shakespeare! The waters have gone over me. Father! Father! where art thou?

* * * * *

Next day, out of love for me, came d’Ortigue, Brizeux, Léon de Wailly, some artists brought by good Baron Taylor and other kind friends to accompany Henriette to her last rest. Twenty-five years earlier all intellectual Paris would have been there--now, he, who loved her and had not the courage to go with her to the little Montmartre God’s-acre, sits and weeps alone in her deserted garden, and her young son wanders afar on the dreary ocean.

They turned her face towards the north, to that England she never saw again, and her humble grave bears only--

Henriette Constance Berlioz-Smithson, born at Ennis, Ireland, died at Montmartre, 3rd March 1854.

The papers barely noticed her death, but Jules Janin remembered and wrote in the _Débats_:

“These stage divinities how soon they pass!

“How short a time it seems since we sat with Juliet on that balcony above the Verona road. Juliet, so fair, so ethereal, listening dreamily as Romeo speaks, her golden voice vibrating with the undying poetry of Shakespeare, the whole world bound by her magic spells!

“She was barely twenty, this Miss Smithson, and, without knowing it, she was a poem, a passion, a revolution--By her absolute truth she conquered.

“She it was who gave the lead to Dorval, Malibran, Victor Hugo and Berlioz. To her Delacroix owed his conception of sweet Ophelia.

“Now she is dead and her dream of glory--that glory which passes so rapidly--is over and done.

“In my young days they used to sing a funeral dirge to Juliet, wherein recurred, like an old Greek chorus, the heart-breaking refrain, ‘Throw flowers! Throw flowers!’

“‘Juliet is dead. Throw flowers! Death lies upon her, softly as frost on April grass. Throw flowers! Her love song is a funeral knell. Throw flowers! Her marriage feast the feast of Death. Throw flowers! Her marriage blossoms deck her tomb. Throw flowers!’”

Liszt wrote from Weimar as only he can write:

“She inspired you, you loved and sang of her. Her work is done!”

_To_ LOUIS BERLIOZ.

“_6th March 1854._--My poor dear Louis,--You know all. I am alone and writing to you in the large sitting-room next to her deserted bedroom. I have just been to the cemetery where I laid two wreaths upon her grave--one for you and one for myself. The servants are still here and are arranging things for the sale; I want to realise as much as possible for you.

“I have kept her hair.

“You will never know how much we made each other suffer; our very suffering bound us one to the other. I could neither live with her nor without her.

“Alexis and I talked much of you yesterday. How I wish you were more rational! It would make me so happy to feel that you were sure of yourself.

“I shall be able to do more for you now than has hitherto been possible, but I shall take every precaution to prevent your squandering money. Alexis agrees that I am right.

“At present I am penniless and shall be for at least six months; I must pay the doctor and the sale will bring in but little. The King of Saxony’s director wishes me to be in Dresden next month and I shall have to borrow money for my journey.”

* * * * *