Part 5

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

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

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

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

One morning Lesueur said:

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

A few hours later in a music shop--

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

At the Odéon people were saying:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is it that they put up with these atrocities?

Mozart assassinated by Lachnith.

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

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

Molière and Corneille chopped up by Théâtre Français demons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

XI

HENRIETTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When he who adores thee,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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_.