The pensioners of the Conservatoire lived at Rome in the Villa Medici,
and the illustrious painter, Horace Vernet, was the director, though
he exercised but little supervision over the studies of the young men
under his nominal charge. Berlioz did very much as he pleased--studied
little or much as the whim seized him, visited the churches, studios,
and picture-galleries, and spent no little of his time by starlight
and sunlight roaming about the country adjacent to the Holy City in
search of adventures. He had soon come to the conclusion that he had
not much to learn of Italian music; that he could teach rather than be
taught. He speaks of Roman art with the bitterest scorn, and Wagner
himself never made a more savage indictment of Italian music than does
Berlioz in his _Mémoires_. At the theatres he found the orchestra,
dramatic unity, and common sense all sacrificed to mere vocal display.
At St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel religious earnestness and
dignity were frittered away in pretty part-singing, in mere frivolity
and meretricious show. The word "symphony" was not known except to
indicate an indescribable noise before the rising of the curtain.
Nobody had heard of Weber and Beethoven, and Mozart, dead more than a
score of years, was mentioned by a well-known musical connoisseur as a
young man of great promise! Such surroundings as these were a species
of purgatory to Berlioz, against whose bounds he fretted and raged
without intermission. The director's receptions were signalised by the
performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his
companions' revels, in which he would sometimes indulge with the
maddest debauchery as if to kill his own thoughts, he would escape to
wander in the majestic ruins of the Coliseum and see the magic Italian
moonlight shimmer through its broken arches, or stroll on the lonely
Campagna till his clothes were drenched with dew. No fear of the
deadly Roman malaria could check his restless excursions, for, like a
fiery horse, he was irritated to madness by the inaction of his life.
To him the _dolce far niente_ was a meaningless phrase. His comrades
scoffed at him and called him "_Père la Joie_," in derision of the
fierce melancholy which despised them, their pursuits and pleasures.
At the end of the year he was obliged to present something before the
Institute as a mark of his musical advancement, and he sent on a
fragment of his "Mass" heard years before at St. Roch, in which the
wise judges professed to find the "evidences of material advancement,
and the total abandonment of his former reprehensible tendencies."
One can fancy the scornful laughter of Berlioz at hearing this
verdict. But his Italian life was not altogether purposeless. He
revised his "Symphonie Fantastique," and wrote its sequel, "Lelio," a
lyrical monologue, in which he aimed to express the memories of his
passion for the beautiful Miss Smithson. These two parts comprised
what Berlioz named "An Episode in the Life of an Artist." Our composer
managed to get the last six months of his Italian exile remitted, and
his return to Paris was hastened by one of those furious paroxysms of
rage to which such ill-regulated minds are subject. He had adored Miss
Smithson as a celestial divinity, a lovely ideal of art and beauty,
but this had not prevented him from basking in the rays of the earthly
Venus. Before leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain
Mdlle. M----, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had
bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz
heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to
marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his
mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he considered
such perfidy! His one thought was to avenge himself. He provided
himself with three loaded pistols--one for the faithless one, one for
his rival, and one for himself--and was so impatient to start that he
could not wait for passports. He attempted to cross the frontier in
women's clothes, and was arrested. A variety of _contretemps_ occurred
before he got to Paris, and by that time his rage had so cooled, his
sense of the absurdity of the whole thing grown so keen, that he was
rather willing to send Mdlle. M---- his blessing than his curse.
About the time of Berlioz's arrival, Miss Smithson also returned to
Paris after a long absence, with the intent of undertaking the
management of an English theatre. It was a necessity of our composer's
nature to be in love, and the flames of his ardour, fed with fresh
fuel, blazed up again from their old ashes. Berlioz gave a concert, in
which his "Episode in the Life of an Artist" was interpreted in
connection with the recitations of the text. The explanations of
"Lelio" so unmistakably pointed to the feeling of the composer for
herself, that Miss Smithson, who by chance was present, could not be
deceived, though she never yet had seen Berlioz. A few days afterwards
a benefit concert was arranged, in which Miss Smithson's troupe was to
take part, as well as Berlioz, who was to direct a symphony of his own
composition. At the rehearsal the looks of Berlioz followed Miss
Smithson with such an intent stare, that she said to some one, "Who is
that man whose eyes bode me no good?" This was the first occasion of
their personal meeting, and it may be fancied that Berlioz followed up
the introduction with his accustomed vehemence and pertinacity, though
without immediate effect, for Miss Smithson was more inclined to fear
than to love him.
The young directress soon found out that the rage for Shakespeare,
which had swept the public mind under the influence of the romanticism
led by Victor Hugo, Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Balzac, and others, was
spurious. The wave had been frothing but shallow, and it ebbed away,
leaving the English actress and her enterprise gasping for life. With
no deeper tap-root than the Gallic love of novelty and the infectious
enthusiasm of a few men of great genius, the Shakespearean mania had a
short life, and Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders over their own
folly, in temporarily preferring the English barbarian to Racine,
Corneille, and Molière. The letters of Berlioz, in which he scourges
the fickleness of his countrymen in returning again to their "false
gods," are masterpieces of pointed invective.
Miss Smithson was speedily involved in great pecuniary difficulty,
and, to add to her misfortunes, she fell down stairs and broke her
leg, thus precluding her own appearance on the stage. Affairs were in
this desperate condition, when Berlioz came to the fore with a
delicate and manly chivalry worthy of the highest praise. He offered
to pay Miss Smithson's debts, though a poor man himself, and to marry
her without delay. The ceremony took place immediately, and thus
commenced a connection which hampered and retarded Berlioz's career,
as well as caused him no little personal unhappiness. He speedily
discovered that his wife was a woman of fretful, imperious temper,
jealous of mere shadows (though Berlioz was a man to give her
substantial cause), and totally lacking in sympathy with his high-art
ideals. When Mdme. Berlioz recovered, it was to find herself unable
longer to act, as her leg was stiff and her movements unsuited to the
exigencies of the stage. Poor Berlioz was crushed by the weight of the
obligations he had assumed, and, as the years went on, the peevish
plaints of an invalid wife, who had lost her beauty and power of
charming, withered the affection which had once been so fervid and
passionate. Berlioz finally separated from his once beautiful and
worshipped Harriet Smithson, but to the very last supplied her wants
as fully as he could out of the meagre earnings of his literary work
and of musical compositions, which the Paris public, for the most
part, did not care to listen to. For his son, Louis, the only
offspring of this union, Berlioz felt a devoted affection, and his
loss at sea in after-years was a blow that nearly broke his heart.