Part 3

I read and re-read, I copied, I learnt Gluck’s scores by heart, I forgot to eat, drink, or sleep, and when at last I managed to hear _Iphigenia in Tauris_, I swore that, despite father, mother, relations and friends, a musician I would be and nothing else.

Without waiting till my courage oozed away, I wrote to my father telling him of my decision, and begging him not to oppose me. At first he replied kindly, hoping that I should see the error of my ways; but, as time went on, he realised that I was not to be persuaded, and our letters grew more and more acrimonious, until they ended in a perfect bombardment of mutual passion and recrimination.

In the midst of the storm I started composing, and wrote, amongst other things, an orchestral cantata on Millevoye’s poem _The Arab Horse_.

I also, in the Conservatoire library, made friends with Gerono, a pupil of Lesueur, and, to my great joy, he offered to introduce me to his master, in the hope that I might be allowed to join his harmony class. Armed with my cantata, and with a three-part canon as a sort of aide-de-camp, I appeared before him. Lesueur most kindly read through the cantata carefully, and said: “You have plenty of dramatic force, plenty of feeling, but you do not know how to write yet. The whole thing is so crammed with mistakes that it would be simply waste of time for me to point them out. Get Gerono to teach you harmony--just enough to make my lectures intelligible--then I will gladly take you as a pupil.”

Gerono readily agreed, and, in a few weeks, I had mastered Lesueur’s theory, based on Rameau’s chimera--the resonance of the lower chords, or what he was pleased to call the bass figure--as if thick strings were the only vibrating bodies in the world, or rather as if their vibrations could be taken as the fundamental basis of vibration for all sonorous bodies!

However, I saw from Gerono’s manner of laying down the law that I must swallow it whole, since it was religion and must be blindly followed, or else say good-bye to my chance of joining Lesueur’s class. And such is the force of example that I ended by believing in it so thoroughly and honestly that Lesueur considered me one of his most promising and fervent disciples.

Do not think me ungrateful for his kindliness and for the affection he shewed me up to his last hour, but, oh! the precious time wasted in learning and unlearning his mouldy, antediluvian theories.

At one time I really did admire his little oratories, and it grieved me sorely to find my admiration fading, slowly and surely. Now I can hardly bear to look at one of his scores; it is to me as the portrait of a dear friend, long loved, lost and lamented.

When I compare to-day with that far-off time when, regularly each Sunday, I went to the Tuileries chapel to hear them, how old, how tired, how bereft of illusions I feel. That was the day of great enthusiasms, of rich musical passions, of beautiful dreams, of ineffable, infinite joys.

As I usually arrived early at the Chapel Royal, my master would spend the time before service began in explaining the meaning of his composition. It was as well, for the music had no earthly connection with the words of the mass!

Lesueur inclined mostly to the sweet pastorals of the Old Testament--idylls of Naomi, Ruth, Rachel--and I shared his taste. The calm of the unchanging East, the mysterious grandeur of its ruins, its majestic history, its legends--these were the magnetic pole of my imagination. He often allowed me to join him in his walks, telling me of his early struggles, his triumphs and the favour of Napoleon. He even let me, up to a certain point, discuss his theories, but we usually ended on our common meeting-ground of Gluck, Virgil and Napoleon. After these long talks along the edge of the Seine or under the leafy shade of the Tuileries gardens, I would leave him to take the solitary walks which had become to him a necessity of daily life.

Some months after I had become his pupil, but before my admission to the Conservatoire, I took it into my head to write an opera, and nothing would do but that I must get my witty literary master, Andrieux, to write me a libretto. I cannot remember what I wrote to him, but he replied:

“MONSIEUR,--Your letter interests me greatly. You cannot but succeed in the glorious art you have chosen, and it would afford me the greatest pleasure to be your collaborateur. But, alas! I am too old, my studies and thoughts are turned in quite other directions. You would call me an outer barbarian if I told you how long it is since I set foot in the Opera. At sixty-four I can hardly be expected to write love songs, a requiem would be more appropriate. If only you had come into the world thirty years earlier, or I thirty years later, we might have worked together. With heartiest good wishes,

“ANDRIEUX.”

“_17th June 1823._”

M. Andrieux kindly brought his own letter, and stayed a long time chatting. As he was leaving he said:

“Ah! I, too, was an ardent lover of Gluck ... and of Piccini,[2] too!!”

This failure discouraged me, so I turned to Gerono, who was something of a poetaster, and asked him (innocent that I was) to dramatise _Estelle_ for me. Luckily no one ever heard this lucubration, for my ditties were a fair match for his words.

This pink-and-white namby-pamby effusion was followed by a dark and dismal thing called _The Gamester_. I was really quite enamoured of this sepulchral dirge, which was for a bass voice with orchestral accompaniment, and I set my heart on getting Dérivis to sing it.

Just then the Theatre-Français advertised a benefit for Talma--_Athalie_, with Gossec’s choruses. “With a chorus,” said I, “they must have an orchestra. My scena is not difficult, and if only I can persuade Talma to put it on the programme Dérivis will certainly not refuse to sing it.”

Off I posted to Talma, my heart beating to suffocation--unlucky omen! At the door I began to tremble, and desperate misgivings seized me. Dared I beard Nero in his own palace? Twice my hand went up to the bell, twice it dropped, then I turned and fled up the street as hard as I could pelt.

I was but a half-tamed young savage even then!

V

CHERUBINI

A short time after this M. Masson, choirmaster of St Roch, suggested that I should write a mass for Innocents’ Day.

He promised me a month’s practice, a hundred picked musicians, and a still larger chorus. The choir boys of St Roch should copy the parts carefully, so that that would cost me nothing.

I started gaily. Of course the whole thing was nothing but a milk-and-water copy of Lesueur, and--equally of course--when I showed it to him he gave most praise to those parts wherein my imitation was the closest.

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.