V.

In the early months of 1860 the young pianist, Arthur Napoleon, joined

Gottschalk at Havana, and the two gave concerts throughout the West

Indies, which were highly successful. The early summer had been designed

for a tour through Central America and Venezuela, but a severe attack of

illness prostrated Gottschalk, and he was not able to sail before August

for his new field of musical conquest. Our artist did not return to New

York till 1862, after an absence of five years, though his original plan

had only contemplated a tour of two years. It must not be supposed that

Gottschalk devoted his time continually to concert performances and

composition, though he by no means neglected the requirements of

musical labor. As he himself confesses, the balmy climate, the glorious

landscapes, the languid _dolce far niente_, which tended to enervate

all that came under their magic spell, wrought on his susceptible

temperament with peculiar effect. A quotation from an article written by

Gottschalk, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly," entitled "Notes of

a Pianist," will furnish the reader a graphic idea of the influence

of tropical life on such an imaginative and voluptuous character,

passionately fond of nature and outdoor life: "Thus, in succession, I

have visited all the Antilles--Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish,

and Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times, having become

the idol of some obscure _pueblo_, whose untutored ears I had charmed

with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five, six, eight

months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally I began

seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there for evermore.

Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird

sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past,

reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the

ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain

he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields where is garnered the

harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are

yet to be discovered; and the result of my prodigality was that, one

fine morning, I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse

at ebb-tide. Suddenly disgusted with the world and myself, weary,

discouraged, mistrusting men (ay, and women too), I fled to a desert on

the extinct volcano of M------, where, for several months, I lived the

life of a cenobite, with no companion but a poor lunatic whom I had met

on a small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me

everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of

which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was

of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in

the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from

a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone

made his lunacy discernible, too many individuals being affected with

the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind.

My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth

increased periodically, and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw.

Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity,

he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he

applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical

tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope,

his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter

occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself 'the

Prince of Thought,' and exalted me to the dignity of his illustrious

friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one

thing still survived--his love of music. He played the violin; and,

strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the

so-called _music of the future_.

"My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the

mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock

upon which it was built projected over a precipice whose abysses were

concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species

of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing, and

transformed into a terrace on a level with the sleeping-room, by my

predecessor in this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried

there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the

moonlight a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano

out upon the terrace; and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful

landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics,

I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts

with which the scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself

a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans;

right and left, immense virgin forests full of those subdued and distant

harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me,

a prospect of twenty leagues marvelously enhanced by the extreme

transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky: beneath, the

creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the

waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and,

encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocean closing the horizon

with its deep-blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of

melted snow dashed its white foam, and there, diverted from its course,

rushed with a mad leap and plunged headlong into the gulf that yawned

beneath my window.

"Amid such scenes I composed 'Réponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros,'

'Polonia,' 'Columbia,' 'Pastorella e Cavalière,' 'Jeunesse,' and many

other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys,

wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders; while my poor friend,

whom I heeded but little, revealed to me with a childish loquacity the

lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the

contrast produced by this shattered intellect expressing at random its

disjointed thoughts, as a disordered clock strikes by chance any

hour, and the majestic serenity of the scene around me? I felt it

instinctively. My misanthropy gave way. I became indulgent toward myself

and mankind, and the wounds of my heart closed once more. My despair was

soothed; and soon the sun of the tropics, which tinges all things with

gold--dreams as well as fruits--restored me with new confidence and

vigor to my wanderings.

"I relapsed into the manners and life of these primitive countries:

if not strictly virtuous, they are at all events terribly attractive.

Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and

half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a

Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when

a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me

of what I once was, of what I yet might be; and commanded imperatively a

return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to

be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious _far niente_; and

my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before

a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. 'Where was the

object?' I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on

dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas,

listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the

guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the _grillos_ in the

cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself

in a hammock--in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very

heart-blood of a _guajiro_, and out of the sphere of which he can see

but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our

Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of

stock-jobbing, to this Sybarite lord of the wilderness, who can live all

the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts which he

is not even at the trouble of planting; who has the best tobacco in

the world to smoke; who replaces today the horse he had yesterday by a

better one, chosen from the first _calallada_ he meets; who requires no

further protection from the cold than a pair of linen trousers, in that

favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer; who,

more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive

beauties, eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their

ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, 'Yo te quiero.'"