Part 9

I found one. We stopped to change horses at a little Sardinian village--Ventimiglia, I believe[11]--and, begging five minutes from the guard, I hurried into a café, seized a scrap of paper, and wrote to M. Vernet, praying him to keep me on the roll of students, if I were not already crossed off, assuring him that I had not yet broken the rule, and promising not to cross the frontier until I received his answer at Nice, where I would await it.

Temporarily safeguarded by my word of honour, yet free to take up my Red Indian scheme of vengeance again, should I be excluded from the Academy, I got quietly into the carriage and suddenly discovered that ... I was hungry, having eaten nothing since leaving Florence.

Oh, good, gross Nature! I was positively reviving!

I got to Nice, still growling at intervals; but, after a few days came M. Vernet’s answer--a friendly paternal letter that touched me deeply.

Though ignorant of the reason of my trouble, the great artist gave me the best advice, showing me that hard work and love of art were the sovereign remedies for a mind diseased; telling me that the Minister knew nothing of my escapade, and that I should be received with open arms in Rome.

“They are saved!” I sighed. “Suppose I live too?--live quietly, happily, musically? Why not? Let’s try!”

So for a month I dwelt alone at Nice, writing the _King Lear_ overture, bathing in the sea, wandering through orange groves, and sleeping on the healthy slopes of the Villefranche hills.

Thus passed the twenty happiest days of my life.

Oh, Nizza!

But the King of Sardinia’s police put an end to this idyllic life. I had spoken to one or two officers of the garrison, and had even played billiards with them. This was sufficient to rouse the darkest suspicions.

“This musician cannot have come to hear _Mathilde de Sabran_” (the only opera given just then), “since he never goes near the theatre. He wanders alone on the hills, no doubt expecting a signal from some revolutionary vessel; he never dines at _table d’hôte_ in order to avoid spies; he is ingratiating himself with our officers in order to start negotiations with them in the name of Young Italy. It is a flagrant conspiracy!”

I was summoned to the police office.

“What are you doing here, sir?”

“Recruiting after a terrible illness. I compose, I dream, I thank God for the glorious sun, the sea, the flower-clothed hillsides----”

“You are not an artist?”

“No.”

“Yet you wander about with a book in your hand. Are you making plans?”

“Yes, the plan of an overture to _King Lear_--at least the instrumentation is nearly finished, and I believe its reception will be tremendous.”

“What do you mean by reception? Who is this King Lear?”

“Oh, a wretched old English king.”

“English king?”

“Yes; according to Shakespeare he lived about eighteen hundred years ago, and was idiotic enough to divide his kingdom between two wicked daughters, who kicked him out when he had nothing more to give them. You see, there are few kings that----”

“Never mind kings now. What do you mean by instrumentation?”

“It is a musical term.”

“Same excuse again! Sir, I know that you cannot possibly compose wandering about the beach with only a pencil and paper, and no piano, so tell me where you wish to go, and your passport shall be made out. You cannot remain here.”

“Then I will go back to Rome, and, by your leave, continue to compose without a piano.”

Next day I left Nice, greatly against the grain, but I was brisk and light-hearted, well and thoroughly cured. Thus once more loaded pistols missed fire.

Never mind. My little drama was interesting, and I cannot help regretting it--just a little!

_To_ H. FERRAND.

“_11th May 1831._--Well, Ferrand, I am getting on. Rage, threats of vengeance, grinding of teeth, tortures of hell--all over and done with!

“If your silence means laziness on your part, it is too bad of you. When one comes back to life, as I have done, one feels the need of a friendly arm, of an outstretched hand.

“Yes, Camille has married Pleyel, and I am glad of it. I see now the perils that I have escaped.

“What meanness! what shabbiness! what apathy! what infinite--almost sublime--villainy, if sublime can agree with ignobility (I have stolen that newly coined word from you).

“_P.S._--I have just finished a new overture--to _King Lear_.”

XVIII

ITALIAN MUSIC

I did not hurry back to Rome, but spent some time in Genoa, where I heard Paër’s _Agnese_, and where I could find no trace of bust or statue or tradition of Columbus. I also tried in vain to hear something of Paganini, who at that moment was electrifying Paris, while I--with my usual luck--was kicking my heels in his native town.

Thence I went back to Florence, which of all Italian cities appeals to me most. There the spleen that devours me in Rome and Naples takes flight. With barely a handful of francs--since my little excursion had made a big hole in my income, knowing no one and being consequently entirely free--I passed delicious days visiting odd corners, dreaming of Dante and Michael Angelo, and reading Shakespeare in the shady woods on the Arno bank.

Knowing, however, that the Tuscan capital could not compare with Naples and Milan in opera, I took no thought for music until I heard people at _table d’hôte_ talking of Bellini’s _Montecchi_, which was soon to be given. Not only did they praise the music, but also the libretto. Italians, as a rule, care so little for the words of an opera that I was surprised, and thought:

“At last I shall hear an opera worthy of that glorious play. What a subject it is! Simply made for music. The ball at Capulet’s house, where young Romeo first sees his dazzling love; the street fight whereat Tybalt presides--patron of anger and revenge; that indescribable night scene at Juliet’s balcony; the witty sallies of Mercutio; the prattle of the nurse; the solemnity of the friar trying to soothe these conflicting elements; the awful catastrophe and the reconciliation of the rival families above the bodies of the ill-fated lovers.”

I hurried to the Pergola Theatre.

What a disappointment! No ball, no Mercutio, no babbling nurse, no balcony scene, no Shakespeare!

And Romeo sung by a small thin _woman_, Juliet by a tall stout one. Why--in the name of all things musical--why?

Do they think that women’s voices sound best together? Then why not do away with men’s entirely?

Why should Juliet’s lover be deprived of all virility? Could a woman or a child have slain Tybalt, having burst the gates of Juliet’s tomb and stretched County Paris a corpse at his feet?

Surely Othello and Moses with high women’s voices would not be more utterly incongruous.

In justice, I must say that Bellini has got a most beautiful effect in a really powerful incident. The lovers, dragged apart by angry parents, tear themselves free and rush into each other’s arms, crying: “We meet again in heaven.”

He has used a quick, impassioned _motif_, sung in unison, that expresses most eloquently the idea of perfect union.

I was unwontedly moved, and applauded heartily. Thinking that I had better know the worst that Italian opera could perpetrate, had better--as it were--drink the cup to the dregs, I went to hear Paccini’s _Vestal_. Although I knew it had nothing in common with Spontini’s opera, I little dreamed of the bitterness of the cup I had to face. Licinius, again, was a woman.... After a few minutes’ painfully strained attention I cried, with Hamlet, “Wormwood! wormwood!” and fled, feeling I could swallow no more, and stamping so hard that my great toe was sore for three days after.

Poor Italy!

At least, thought I, it will be better in the churches. This was what I heard.

A funeral service for the elder son of Louis Bonaparte and Queen Hortense was being held.

What thoughts crowded into my mind as I stood amid the flaming torches in the crape-hung church! A Bonaparte! _His_ nephew, almost his grandson, dead at twenty; his mother, with his only brother, an exile in England.

I thought of the gay creole child dancing on the deck of the ship that carried her to France, untitled daughter of Madame Beauharnais, adopted daughter of the master of Europe, Queen of Holland, exiled, forgotten, bereft, without a kingdom, without a home!

Oh, Beethoven! Great soul! Titan, who couldst conceive the _Eroica_ and the _Funeral March_, is not this a meet subject for thy genius?...

The organist pulled out the small flute stops and fooled about over twittering little airs at the top of the key-board, exactly like wrens preening themselves on a sunny wall in winter!

Again, hearing great things of the Corpus Christi music in Rome, I hurried there in company with several Italians bent on the same errand.

They raved all the way of the wonders we should see, dangling before my eyes tiaras, mitres, chasubles, etc., etc.

“But the music?” I asked.

“Oh, signor, there will be an immense choir,” then they went back to their crosses and incense, and bell-ringing and cannon.

“But the music?” I repeated.

“Oh, there will be a gigantic choir.”

“Well, anyway,” I thought, “things will be on a magnificent scale,” and my vivid imagination raced off to the glories of Solomon’s Temple and the colossal pageants of ancient Egypt. Cruel gift of Nature that clothes dull life in a golden veil! It simply made more appalling and impossible the shrill nasal voices of the singers, the quacking clarinets, the bellowing trombones, and the rampant vulgarity of the big drums. It was brutal unadulterated cacophony.

Rome calls this military music!

Then, behold me once more safe at the Villa Medici, welcomed by the director and my comrades, who most kindly and tactfully hid their curiosity concerning my crazy journey. I had gone off having good reason to go; I had come back--so much the better. No remarks, no questions.

_To_ GOUNET, HILLER, ETC.

“_6th May 1831._--I have made acquaintance with Mendelssohn; Monfort knew him before.

“He is a charming fellow; his execution is as perfect as his genius, and that is saying a good deal. All I have heard of his is splendid, and I believe him to be one of the great musicians of his time.

“He has been my cicerone. Every morning I hunt him up; he plays me Beethoven; we sing _Armida_; then he takes me to see ruins that, I must candidly own, do not impress me much. His is one of those clear pure souls one does not often come across; he believes firmly in his Lutheran creed, and I am afraid I shocked him terribly by laughing at the Bible.

“I have to thank him for the only pleasant moments I had during the anxious days of my first stay in Rome.

“You may imagine what I felt like when I received that astonishing letter from Madame Moke announcing her daughter’s marriage. She calmly said that she never agreed to our engagement, and begs me, dear kind creature! not to kill myself.

“Hiller knows the whole story, and how I left Paris with her ring upon my finger, given in exchange for mine. However, I am quite recovered and can eat as usual. I am saved, they are saved! I threw myself into the arms of music, and felt how blessed it is to have friends.

“I am working hard at _King Lear_.

“Write to me, each of you, a particular and separate and individual letter.”

_To_ F. HILLER.

“Has Mendelssohn arrived yet? His talent is wonderful, extraordinary, sublime. You need not suspect me of partiality in saying this, for he frankly owns that he cannot in the least understand my

music. Greet him for me; he does not think so, but I truly like him thoroughly.”

XIX

IN THE MOUNTAINS

I quickly fell into the Academy routine. A bell called us to meals, and we went as we were--with straw hats, blouses plastered with clay, slippered feet, no ties--in fact, in studio undress.

After breakfast we lounged about the garden at quoits, tennis, target practice, shooting the misguided blackbirds who came within range, or trained our puppies; in all of which amusements M. Horace often joined us.

In the evening, at that everlasting Café Greco, we smoked the pipe of peace with the “men down below,” as we dubbed artists not attached to the Academy. After which we dispersed; those who virtuously returned to the Academy barracks gathering in the garden portico, where my bad guitar and worse voice were in great request, and where we sang _Freyschütz_, _Oberon_, _Iphigenia_ or _Don Giovanni_, for, to the credit of my messmates be it spoken, their musical taste was far from low.

On the other hand, we sometimes had what we called English concerts. We each chose a different song and sang it in a different key, beginning by signal one after another; as this concert in twenty-four keys went on crescendo, the frightened dogs in the Pincio kept up a howling obligato and the barbers on the Piazza di Spagna down below winked at each other, saying slyly, “French music!”

On Thursdays we went to Madame Vernet’s receptions, where we met the best society in Rome; and on Sundays we usually went long excursions into the country. With the director’s permission, longer journeys might be undertaken and usually several of our number were absent.

As for me, since Rome never appealed to me, I took refuge in the mountains; had I not done so, I doubt whether I could have lived through that time. It may seem strange that the mighty shade of old Rome should not impress me, but I had come from Paris, the centre of civilisation, and was at one blow severed from music, from theatres (they were only open for four months), from literature, since the Papal censor excluded almost everything that I cared to read, from excitements, from everything that, to me, meant real life.

Balls, evening parties, shooting days in the Campagna, and rides made up the inane mill-round in which I turned. Add to that the scirocco, the incessant yearning for my beloved art, my sorrowful memories, the misery of being for two years exiled from the musical world, and the utter impossibility of composing in that stagnating atmosphere, and it will hardly be wondered at that I was as savage as a trained bull-dog, and that the well-meant efforts of my friends to divert me only drove me to the verge of madness.

I remember in one of my Campagna rides with Mendelssohn expressing my surprise that no one had ever written a scherzo on Shakespeare’s sparkling little poem _Queen Mab_. He, too, was surprised, and I was very sorry I had put the idea into his head. For years I lived in dread that he had used it, for he would have made it impossible--or, at any rate, very risky--for anyone to attempt it after him. Luckily he forgot.

My usual remedy for spleen was a trip to Subiaco, which seemed to put new life into me.

An old grey suit, a straw hat, a guitar, a gun and six piastres were all my stock-in-trade. Thus I wandered, shooting or singing, careless where I might pass the night; sometimes hurrying, again stopping to investigate some ancient tomb, to listen silently to the distant bells of St Peter’s, far away in the plain; interrupting my hunt for a flock of lapwing to jot down a note for a symphony, and, in short, enjoying to the full my absolute freedom.

Sometimes--a glorious landscape spread before me--I chanted, to the guitar accompaniment, long-remembered verses of the Æneid, the death of Pallas, the despair of Evander, the sad end of Amata, and the death of Lavinia’s noble lover, and worked myself up to an incredible pitch of excitement that ended in floods of tears. Elicited originally by the woes of these mythical beings, my overwhelming grief ended by becoming personal, and my tears flowed in self-pity for my sorrows, my doubtful future, my broken career.

The odd thing was that, all the time, I was quite able to analyse my feelings, although I ended by collapsing under these chaotic miseries, murmuring a mixture of Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare--“Nessun maggior dolore--che ricordarsi--O poor Ophelia!--good-night, sweet ladies--vitaque cum gemitu--sub umbras--” and so fell fast asleep.

How crazy, you say? Yes, but how happy. Sensible people cannot understand this intensity of being, this actual joy in existing, in dragging from life the uttermost it has to give in height and depth. Here, in the Parisian whirlpool, how well I recall the wild Abruzzi country where I spent so long.

Bitter-sweet memories of days now passed for ever. Days of utter irresponsible freedom to abolish time, to scorn ambition, to forget love and glory.

Oh strong, grand Italy! Wild Italy! Heedless of that sister Italy--the Italy of Art!

In time I became friendly with many of the villagers; one in particular, named Crispino, grew very fond of me; he not only got me perfumed pipe-stems (I had not then found out that I disliked the sort of excitement produced by tobacco) but balls, powder and even percussion caps. I first won his affection by helping to serenade his mistress and by singing a duet with him to that untameable young person; then fixed them by a present of two shirts and a pair of trousers. Crispino could not write, so when he had anything to tell me he came to Rome. What were thirty leagues to him?

At the Academy we usually left our doors open; one January morning--having left the mountains in October I had had three months’ boredom--on turning over in bed, I found, standing over me, a great sun-burnt scamp with pointed hat and twisted leggings, waiting quite quietly till I woke.

“Hallo, Crispino! What brings you here?”

“Oh, I have just come to--see you.”

“Yes; what next?”

“Well--just now----”

“Just now?”

“To tell the truth--I’ve got no money.”

“Now come! That’s something like the truth. You have no money; what business is that of mine, oh mightiest of scamps?”

“I’m no scamp. If you call me a scamp because I have no money, you are right, but if it is because I was two years at Civita Vecchia, you are wrong. I wasn’t sent to the galleys for stealing, but just for good honest shots at strangers in the mountains.”

It was all nonsense, of course, I don’t believe he ever shot so much as a monk. However, he was hurt in his feelings and would only accept three piastres, a shirt and a neckerchief.

The poor fellow was killed two years ago in a brawl. Shall I meet him in a better world?

* * * * *

In the miserable oblivion and dishonour into which music has sunk in Rome I found but one small sign of honest life. It was among the pfifferari, players of a little popular instrument, a surviving relic of antiquity. They were strolling musicians who, at Christmastide, came down from the mountains in groups of four or five armed with bagpipes and _pfifferi_, a kind of oboe, to play before the images of the Virgin.

I used to spend hours in watching them, there was something so quaintly mysterious in their wild aspect as they stood--head slightly turned over one shoulder, their bright dark eyes fixed devoutly on the holy figure, almost as still as the image itself.

At a distance the effect is indescribable and few escape its spell. When I heard it in its native haunts, among the volcanic rocks and dark pine forests of the Abruzzi, I could almost believe myself transported back through the ages to the days of Evander, the Arcadian.

Of this time, musically, I have little to tell. I wrote a long and incoherent overture to _Rob Roy_, which I burnt immediately after its performance in Paris; the _Scène aux Champs_ of the _Symphonie Fantastique_, which I rewrote entirely in the Borghese gardens; the _Chant de Bonheur_ for _Lelio_, and lastly a little song called _La Captive_, inspired by Victor Hugo’s lovely poem.

One day I was at Subiaco with Lefebvre, the architect. As he drew, he knocked over a book with his elbow; it was _Les Orientales_. I picked it up and it opened at that particular page. Turning to Lefebvre I said:

“If I had any paper I would write music to this exquisite poem; I can _hear it_.”

“That is soon done,” said he, and he ruled a sheet whereon I wrote my song. A fortnight later I remembered it and shewed it to Mademoiselle Vernet, saying:

“I wish you would try this, for I have quite forgotten what it is like.”

I scribbled a piano accompaniment, and it took so well that, by the end of the month, M. Vernet, driven nearly mad by its reiteration, said:

“Look here, Berlioz. Next time you go up to the mountains don’t evolve any more songs; your _Captive_ is making life in the Villa impossible. I can’t go a yard without hearing it sung or snored or growled. It is simply distracting! I am going to discharge one of the servants to-day, and I shall only engage another on condition that he does not sing the _Captive_.”

The only other thing I did was the _Resurrexit_ that I sent as my obligatory work to Paris. The Powers said that I had made _great progress_. As it was simply a piece of the mass performed at St Roch several years before I got the prize, it does not say much for the judgment of the Immortals!

_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.

“_January 1832._--Why did you not tell me of your marriage? Of course, I believe, since you say so, that you did not get my letters, but--even so--how could you keep silence?

“Your _Noce des Fées_ is exquisite; so fresh, so full of dainty grace, but I cannot make music to it yet. Orchestration is not sufficiently advanced; I must first educate and dematerialise it, then perhaps I may think of treading in Weber’s footsteps. But here is my idea for an oratorio--the mere carcase, that you must vitalise:

“‘The World’s Last Day.’

“The height of civilisation, the depth of corruption, under a mighty tyrant, throughout the earth.

“A faithful handful of God’s people, left alive by the tyrant’s contempt, under a prophet, Balthasar, who confronts the ruler and announces the end of the world. The tyrant, in amused scorn, forces him to be present at a travesty of the Last Day, but during its performance, the earth quakes, angels sound gigantic trumpets, the True Christ appears, the Judgment has come.

* * * * *

“That is all. Tell me if the subject appeals to you. Do not attempt detail, it is lost in the Opera House. And, if possible, do not be tied down by the absurd bond of rhyme--use it or not, as seem best.

“I want to leave here in May; if possible, I will get the whole of my pension; if I cannot I must just go on a tour here. I have just finished an important article on the state of music in Italy for the _Revue Européenne_.

* * * * *

“_March._--Many thanks for your confession of colossal idleness. Will you never be cured?

“You have read me a fine homily, but you are entirely out in your conjecture.

“I shall never admire ugliness in art. What I said about rhyme was only to make things easier for you. I could not bear you to waste time and talent over unnecessary difficulties. You know as well as I do that, in hundreds of cases, in verses set to music the rhymes disappear entirely--then why bother about them?

“As for the literary side of the question, I am quite sure it is only custom and education that make you dislike blank verse.

“Just think! Three quarters of Shakespeare is so written, so is Klopstock’s _Messiah_. Byron used it, and lately I read a translation of _Julius Cæsar_ that ran perfectly, although you had prepared me to be utterly shocked.

“So my subject appeals to you? It is new, grand and fertile, so imagine into it all that you like. As far as the music is concerned I am exploring a virgin Brazilian forest and great are the treasures I hope to find.”

XX

NAPLES--HOME

Again did that wretched malady--call it moral, nervous, imaginary, what you will, _I_ call it spleen--which is really the fever of loneliness, seize upon me.