THE LIFE OF BERLIOZ
_All rights reserved._
[Illustration: _Hector Berlioz._]
THE LIFE OF
HECTOR BERLIOZ
AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF
IN HIS
LETTERS AND MEMOIRS
[Illustration]
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
KATHARINE F BOULT
[Illustration]
LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1903
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ 1
II. ESTELLE 5
III. MUSIC AND ANATOMY 10
IV. PARIS 16
V. CHERUBINI 22
VI. MY FATHER’S DECISION 27
VII. PRIVATION 31
VIII. FAILURE 37
IX. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 42
X. WEBER 46
XI. HENRIETTE 50
XII. MY FIRST CONCERT 56
XIII. AN ACADEMY EXAMINATION 64
XIV. FAUST--CLEOPATRA 71
XV. A NEW LOVE 80
XVI. LISZT 91
XVII. A WILD INTERLUDE 96
XVIII. ITALIAN MUSIC 108
XIX. IN THE MOUNTAINS 113
XX. NAPLES--HOME 120
XXI. MARRIAGE 128
XXII. NEWSPAPER BONDAGE 135
XXIII. THE REQUIEM 143
XXIV. FRIENDS IN NEED 152
XXV. BRUSSELS--PARIS OPERA CONCERT 159
XXVI. HECHINGEN--WEIMAR 167
XXVII. MENDELSSOHN--WAGNER 177
XXVIII. A COLOSSAL CONCERT 187
XXIX. THE RAKOCZY MARCH 193
XXX. PARIS--RUSSIA--LONDON 200
XXXI. MY FATHER’S DEATH--MEYLAN 211
XXXII. POOR OPHELIA 216
XXXIII. DEAD SEA FRUIT 222
XXXIV. GATHERING TWILIGHT 230
XXXV. THE TROJANS 241
XXXVI. ESTELLE ONCE MORE 251
XXXVII. THE AFTERGLOW 272
XXXVIII. DARKNESS AND LIGHT 289
ILLUSTRATIONS
BERLIOZ _Frontispiece_
THE VILLA MEDICI[A] _to face page_ 112
MONTMARTRE CEMETERY[A] ” ” 216
GRENOBLE[A] ” ” 257
INTRODUCTION
Autobiography is open to the charge of egoism; somewhat unjustly since,
in writing of oneself, the personal note must predominate and, in the
case of a genius--sure of his goal and of his power to reach it--faith
in himself amounts to what, in a smaller man, would be mere conceit.
This must be condoned and discounted for the sake of the priceless gift
of insight into a personality of exceptional interest.
Berlioz’ Memoir, graphic as it is, cannot be called satisfactory as a
character-study. He says plainly that he is not writing confessions,
but is simply giving a correct account of his life to silence the
many false versions current at the time. Therefore, while describing
almost too minutely some of his difficulties and most of his
conflicts--whereby he gives the impression of living in uncomfortably
hot water--his very real heroism comes out only in his Letters, and
then quite unconsciously.
The Memoir and Letters combined, however, make up an interesting and
fascinating picture of the heights, depths, limitations and curious
inconsistencies of this weird and restless human being.
The music-ridden, brutal, undisciplined creature of the
Autobiography--more a blind, unreasoning force of Nature than an
ordinary being, subject to the restrictions of common humanity--could
not possibly be the man who was rich in the unswerving affection of
such widely different characters as Heine, Liszt, Ernst, Alexandre,
Heller, Hiller, Jules Janin, Dumas and Bertin; there must be something
unchronicled to account for their loyalty and patience. This something
is revealed in the Letters.
There stands the real Berlioz--musician and poet; eager to drain life
to the dregs, be they sweet or bitter, to taste the fulness of being.
There we find a faithful record of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and
a reflection of every passing mood. With one notable exception: even to
Ferrand he never admitted that the poor reception of _The Trojans_ (for
it met with but a _succès d’estime_) broke his heart.
* * * * *
As a record of events the Autobiography is deficient, and after 1848
becomes a mere sketch. Thus, while writing pages of description of
orchestral players and musical institutions in German and Austrian
cities--quite suitable to his newspaper articles, but wearisome in
their iteration, and throwing no light upon himself--he is almost
entirely silent on his later trips to London. And the visits to
Baden--brightest days of his later years--are dismissed in a footnote.
He lingers pathetically over young days, and hurries through the
dreary time close at hand. So, for a record of the daily conflict with
physical pain; of the overshadowed domestic life--none the easier to
bear in that it was partly his own fault; of the grinding, ever-present
shortness of money; of his wild and beautiful dreams; and of the large
place that Ferrand, Morel, Massart, Damcke and Lwoff (many of whom are
not named in the memoir) held in his heart--we turn to the Letters.
The fearless, unbroken affection for his Jonathan--Humbert Ferrand;
the passionate love for his only son, mingled with impatience at
Louis’ youthful instability; the whole-hearted ungrudging appreciation
he extended to young and honest musicians--particularly to Camille
Saint-Saëns--are a grateful contrast to the gloomy defiance,
tornado-like fury, and eternal jeremiads over the hypocrisy and
hollowness of Paris that mar the Memoir.
* * * * *
Of his ill-starred first marriage he says but little, either in Memoir
or Letters.
He and Miss Smithson were far too highly-strung for peaceful life to
be possible, even without the added friction of ill-health, want of
money (which, however, he says never daunted her), and the probable
misunderstandings so likely to arise from their different nationalities.
It may be due to his special form of artistic temperament--that
well-worn apology for everything _déréglé_--that he could find room in
his heart, or head, for more than one love at a time, and could even
analyse and classify each.
Within a month he bounds from the nethermost despair over the
uncertainties of his English divinity to the highest rapture over his
Camille, his Ariel, as he calls Marie Pleyel.
Later on, when Marie is safely disposed of and Henriette is again
in the ascendant, while she vacillates between family and lover, he
seriously contemplates running off to Berlin with a poor girl whom he
has befriended, and whom, when Henriette finally relents, he calmly
hands over to Jules Janin to provide for.
Of his second wife we hear but little, except that even affection did
not blind him to the defects in her musical gifts. For, on his first
German tour, he wrote to Morel:
“Pity me! Marie wished to sing at Stuttgart, Mannheim and Hechingen.
The two first were bearable, but the last!... Yet she would not hear of
my engaging another singer.”
Then he incidentally and whimsically mentions an innocent embryo
love-affair in Russia, and, in 1863, makes such tragic and mysterious
reference to an impossible love, that Ferrand, seriously alarmed,
thinks that Louis must have become more than usually troublesome.
The influence of Estelle Fournier, which pervaded his whole life, comes
under a different category. He was without religion; she supplied
its place. She was his dream-lady, the Beatrice to his Dante, that
necessary worship which no great soul can forego. The proof of this is
that, when he met her again--old, sweet, dignified and still beautiful
to him--his allegiance never wavered; she was still the Mountain Star
of his childhood’s days.
If his capacity for love was unlimited, it was not so with his sense of
humour, which was curiously circumscribed. Occasionally he rivals Heine
in power of seeing the odd side of his own divagations; his account of
his headlong flight from Rome to murder the whole erring Moke family
is inimitable. Yet he never discovers--as a man with a true sense of
humour would have done--that, in sharpening his rapier on Wagner and
the Music of the Future, he is meting out to a struggling composer
precisely the same measure that the Parisians had meted out to himself.
It speaks volumes for the strength of his friendship with Liszt that
even Wagnerism could not divide them.
* * * * *
La Côte Saint-André is a large village some thirty odd miles from
Grenoble; here, in a handsome house in the Rue de la République, Louis
Hector Berlioz was born. His home education and seclusion from healthy
school-life and the society of other children of his age ill-fitted him
for the battle of life, which began with his medical student career in
Paris.
He describes the quarrels with his parents and stoppage of his
allowance in 1826, but passes lightly over the privations and
semi-starvation that undoubtedly laid the foundations of that internal
disease which embittered his latter years. His graphic account of those
early Parisian days is one of the most interesting parts of the Memoir.
He declared that his time in Italy, after gaining the Prix de Rome, was
musically barren. Yet this must be a mistake, since, to the memory of
his mountain wanderings he owed the inspiration of _Harold_. And even
if he apparently gained nothing in music, the experience of what to
avoid and the influence of beautiful scenery--to which he was always
peculiarly sensitive--counted for much in his general development.
With his return to Paris his character took form, and he began his
life-long warfare against shams and empiricism. Newspaper work, hated
as it was, had a great share in moulding him. Each year he grew
more autocratic, and each year more hated for his uncompromising
sledge-hammer speech. But Ferrand was correct in saying that he could
write. His style is clear, incisive, perfect and even elegant French,
although, naturally, owing to the exigencies of its production, it is
often unequal. The first years of his marriage were ideal in spite
of their penury. The young couple had a côterie of choice friends,
amongst whom Liszt took a foremost place, but gradually the clouds
gathered, the rift within the lute widened, until a separation became
inevitable; even then Berlioz does not attempt--as so many men of his
impatient spirit might have done--to shirk responsibility and throw
upon others the burden of his hostage to fortune--an unsympathetic
invalid--but works the harder at his literary tread-mill to provide her
indispensable comforts. Poor Henriette’s side of the story is untold,
and one can but say:
“The pity of it!”
His troubles in Paris and the triumphs abroad that were their antidote
made up the rest of his stormy, restless pilgrimage; yet even in
ungrateful Paris he was not entirely neglected.
He received the Legion of Honour, and although professing to despise
it, he always wore the ribbon. He was also chosen one of the Immortals,
apropos of which M. Alexandre tells a funny story.
Alexandre was canvassing for him and found great difficulty in managing
Adolph Adam, who was from Berlioz as the poles asunder.
First he went to Berlioz, who had flatly refused to make the slightest
concession to Adam’s prejudices.
“Come,” said he, “do at least be amiable to Adam; you cannot deny that
he is a musician, at any rate.”
“I don’t say he is not; but, being a great musician, how can he lower
himself to comic-opera? If he chose he could _write such music as I
do_.”
Undismayed, Alexandre went to Adam.
“You will give your vote to Berlioz, will you not, dear friend?
Although you cannot appreciate each other, you will own that he is a
thorough musician.”
“Certainly, he is a great musician, a really great one, but his
music is awfully tiresome. Why!”--and little Adam straightened his
spectacles--“why, if he chose he could compose ... as well as I do.
But, seriously, he is a man of some importance, and I promise that,
after Clapisson, who already has our votes, Berlioz shall have the next
vacancy.”
By a strange coincidence, the next _fauteuil_ was Adam’s own, to which
Berlioz was elected by nineteen votes.
In his weak state of health, Berlioz was quite unfit to face the
innumerable worries incidental to the production of _The Trojans_. For
seven years it had been his chief object in life, and if, as he said,
he could have had everything requisite at his command, with unlimited
capital to draw upon--as Wagner had with Louis of Bavaria--all might
have been well. But to fight, contrive, temporise and propitiate all at
once was more than his enfeebled frame and irascible spirit could stand.
Hence his great injustice to Carvalho, who, for Art’s sake, sacrificed
money, time and reputation to an extent that crippled him for many
years.
Embittered by the failure of his opera, which ran for about twenty-five
nights, he shut himself up in his rooms with Madame Recio, his devoted
mother-in-law, and an old servant, and from that time visited only a
few intimate friends.
One last shock Fate held in store. Louis died of fever abroad, and
for his lonely father life had no more savour--he simply existed,
with, however, two last flashes of the old bright flame. One when,
at Herbeck’s desire, he went to Vienna to conduct the _Damnation de
Faust_, and the other when the Grand Duchess Helen prevailed on him to
visit St Petersburg again.
That was the real end.
On leaving Russia he wandered drearily to Nice--a ghost revisiting its
old-time haunts--then made one last appearance at Grenoble, and so the
flame went out. He who had never peace in life was at rest at last.
* * * * *
Of his music this is not the place to speak. He has fully described his
own ideas, others have analysed them, and we are now concerned with the
man himself.
To this is due the somewhat disjointed form of the translation--the
mixture of Memoir and Letters. It seemed the only possible way
of showing Berlioz in all his aspects and of keeping the record
chronologically correct.
Yet we could wish that he, who had so much affinity with England and
its literature, could meet with due appreciation here.
He has founded no school (in spite of Krebs’ prophecy), unless the
“programme music” now so much in vogue can be traced back to him, but,
beginning with Wagner, every orchestral composer since his day owes
him a debt of gratitude for his discoveries--his daring and original
combinations of instruments, and his magnificent grouping and handling
of vast bodies of executants.
CHRONOLOGY
1803. Louis Hector Berlioz born.
1822. Medical student in Paris.
1824. Mass failed at Saint-Roch under Masson.
1825. Mass succeeded.
1826. Failed in preliminary examination for Conservatoire
competition.
1827. Passed preliminary and entered for competition. His _Orpheus_
declared unplayable.
1828. Third attempt. _Tancred_ obtained second prize. Saw Miss
Smithson. Gave first concert.
1829. Fourth attempt. _Cleopatra._ No first prize given.
1830. Gained Prix de Rome with _Sardanapalus_. Marie Pleyel.
1831. Rome. _Symphonie Fantastique_ and _Lélio_.
1832. Concert at which Miss Smithson present on 9th December.
1833. Marriage. In November Henriette’s benefit and failure.
1834. Louis born. _Harold_ performed in November.
1835. _Symphonie Funèbre_ begun.
1836. _Requiem._
1837. _Benvenuto Cellini_ finished.
1838. Paganini’s present.
1839. _Romeo and Juliet._
1840. _Funèbre_ performed. First journey to Brussels.
1841. Festival at Paris Opera House.
1842-3. First tour in Germany.
1844. _Carnaval Romain._ Gigantic concert in the Palais de
l’Industrie. Nice.
1845. Cirque des Champs Elysées concert. Marseilles. Lyons. Austria.
1846. Hungary. Bohemia. In December, failure of _Damnation de
Faust_.
1847. Russia. Berlin. In November, London, as conductor at Drury
Lane.
1848. London. In July, Paris. Death of Dr Berlioz.
1849. _Te Deum_ begun.
1850. _Childhood of Christ_ begun.
1851. Member of Jury at London Exhibition.
1852. _Benvenuto Cellini_ given by Liszt at Weimar. In March,
London, _Romeo and Juliet_. May, conducted Beethoven’s _Choral
Symphony_. June, _Damnation de Faust_.
1854. March, Henriette died. Dresden. Marriage with Mdlle. Récio.
1855. North German tour. Brussels. _Te Deum._ In June, London.
_Imperial Cantata._ On Jury of Paris Exhibition.
1856. _The Trojans_ begun.
1858. Concerts in the Salle Herz brought in some thousands of
francs.
1861. Baden.
1862. Marie Berlioz died. _Beatrice and Benedict_ performed at
Baden.
1863. Weimar. _Childhood of Christ_ at Strasburg. In November, _The
Trojans_.
1864. In August, made officer of Legion of Honour. Dauphiny.
Meylan. Estelle Fournier.
1865. Geneva, to see Estelle.
1866. In December to Vienna, to conduct _Damnation de Faust_.
1867. In June Louis died. In November, Russia.
1868. Russia. Paris. Nice. In August, Grenoble.
1869. Died 8th March.
THE LIFE OF BERLIOZ
I
LA CÔTE SAINT-ANDRÉ
Decidedly ours is a prosaic century. On no other grounds can my wounded
vanity account for the humiliating fact that no auspicious omens, no
mighty portents--such as heralded the birth of the great men of the
golden age of poetry--gave notice of my coming. It is strange, but
true, that I was born, quite unobtrusively, at La Côte Saint-André,
between Vienne and Grenoble, on the 11th December 1803.
As its name implies, La Côte Saint-André lies on a hillside overlooking
a plain--wide, green, and golden--of which the dreamy majesty is
accentuated by the mountain belt that bounds it on the southeast, being
in turn crowned by the mystic glory of distant Alpine glaciers and
snowy peaks.
Needless to say, I was brought up in the Catholic faith. This--of all
religions the most charming, since it gave up burning people--was for
seven years the joy of my life, and although we have since fallen out,
I still retain my tender memories of it.
Indeed, so greatly am I in sympathy with its creed that, had I had the
misfortune to be born in the clutches of one of the dreary schisms
hatched by Luther and Calvin, I should certainly, at the first
awakening of my poetic instinct, have thrown off its benumbing grasp
and have flung myself into the arms of the fair Roman.
My sweet remembrance of my first communion is probably due to my having
made it with my elder sister at the Ursuline convent, where she was a
boarder.
At early morn, accompanied by the almoner, I made my way to that holy
house. The soft spring sunlight, the murmuring poplars swaying in
the whispering breeze, the dainty fragrance of the morning air, all
worked upon my sensitive mind, until, as I knelt among those fair white
maidens, and heard their fresh young voices raised in the eucharistic
hymn, my whole soul was filled with mystic passion. Heaven opened
before me--a heaven of love and pure delight, a thousand times more
glorious than tongue has told--and thus I gave myself to God.
Such is the marvellous power of genuine melody, of heart-felt
expression! Ten years later I recognised that air--so innocently
adapted to a religious ceremony--as “When my beloved shall return,”
from d’Aleyrac’s opera _Nina_.
Dear, dead d’Aleyrac! Even your name is forgotten now!
This was my musical awakening.
Thus abruptly I became a saint, and such a desperate saint! Every day I
went to mass, every Sunday I took the communion, every week I went to
confession in order to say to my director:
“Father, I have done nothing.”
“Well, my son,” would the worthy man reply, “continue.”
I followed his advice strictly for many years.
Louis Berlioz, my father, was a doctor. It is not my place to sing his
praises. I need, therefore, only say that he was looked upon as an
honoured friend, not only in our little town, but throughout the whole
country side. Feeling acutely his responsibility as the steward of a
difficult and dangerous profession, every minute he could spare from
his sick people was given to arduous study, and never did the thought
of gain turn him aside from his disinterested service to the poor and
needy.
In 1810, the medical society of Montpellier offered a prize for the
best treatise on a new and important point in medicine, which was
gained by my father’s monograph on Chronic Diseases. It was printed in
Paris, and many of its theories adopted by physicians, who had not the
common honesty to acknowledge their source. This somewhat surprised my
dear, unsophisticated father, but he only said, “If truth prevails,
nothing else matters.”
Now (I write in 1848) he has long since ceased to practise, and spends
his time in reading and peaceful thought.
Of the highest type of liberal mind, he is entirely without social,
political, or religious prejudices; for instance, having promised
my mother to leave my faith undisturbed, I have known him carry his
tolerance so far as to hear me my catechism. This is considerably more,
I must own, than I could do were my own son in question.
For many years my father has suffered from an incurable disease of
the stomach. He scarcely eats at all, and nothing but constant and
increasing doses of opium keep him alive. He has told me that, years
ago, worn out by the prolonged agony, he took thirty-two grains at once.
“It was not as a cure that I took it,” he said, significantly.
But, strange to say, this terrific dose of poison, instead of killing
him, gave him for some time a respite from his sufferings.
When I was ten years old he sent me to a priest’s school in the town
to learn Latin, but the result not proving satisfactory he resolved to
teach me himself.
And with the most untiring patience, the most intense care, my father
became my instructor in history, literature, languages, geography--even
in music.
Yet I must own that I do not think a solitary education like mine
half as good for a boy as ordinary school life. Children brought up
among relations, servants, and specially chosen friends only, do not
get accustomed to the rough-and-tumble that best fits them to face
the world. Real life is to them a dosed book, their angles are not
rubbed off, and I know that, in my own case, at twenty-five I was still
nothing but an awkward, ignorant child.
Indulgent as my father was over my work, yet, for a long while, he
was unable to make me love the classics. It seemed impossible to me
to concentrate my thoughts long enough to learn by heart a few lines
of Horace and Virgil; impatient of the beaten track my wayward mind
flew off to the entrancing unknown world of the atlas, roving gaily
through the labyrinth of islands, capes, and straits of the Pacific and
the Indian Archipelago. This was the origin of my love for travel and
adventure.
My father truly said of me:
“He knows every isle of the South Seas, but cannot tell me how many
departments there are in France!”
Every book of travel in the library was pressed into my service, and
I should most certainly have run away to sea if we had lived in a
seaport. My son inherits my taste. He chose the navy for his profession
long ere he saw the sea. May he do honour to his choice!
However, in the end the love of poetry and appreciation of its
beauty awoke in me. The first spark of passion that fired my heart
and imagination was kindled by Virgil’s magnificent epic, and I well
remember how my voice broke as I tried to construe aloud the fourth
book of the Æneid. One day, stumbling along, I came to the passage
where Dido--the presents of Æneas heaped around her--gives up her life
upon the funeral pyre; the agony of the dying queen, the cries of her
sister, her nurse, her women; the horror of that scene that struck pity
even to the hearts of the Immortals, all rose so vividly before me that
my lips trembled, my words came more and more indistinctly, and at the
line--
“Quæsivit cœlo lucem ingemuitque reperta,”
I stopped dead.
Then my dear father’s delicate tact stepped in. Apparently noticing
nothing, he said, gently:
“That will do for to-day, my boy; I am tired.”
And I tore away to give vent to my Virgilian misery unmolested.
II
ESTELLE
Will it be credited that when I was only twelve years old, and even
before I fell under the spell of music, I became the victim of that
cruel passion so well described by the Mantuan?
My mother’s father, who bore a name immortalised by
Scott--Marmion--lived at Meylan, about seven miles from Grenoble. This
district, with its scattered hamlets, the valley of the winding Isère,
the Dauphiny mountains that here join a spur of the Alps, is one of the
most romantic spots I know. Here my mother, my sisters, and I usually
passed three weeks towards the end of summer.
Now and then my uncle, Felix Marmion, who followed the fiery track of
the great Emperor, would pay a flying visit during our stay, wreathed
with cannon smoke and ornamented with a fine sabre cut across the face.
He was then only adjutant-major in the Lancers; but young, gallant,
ready to lay down his life for one look from his leader, he believed
the throne of Napoleon as stable as Mont Blanc. His taste for music
made him a great addition to our gay little circle, for he both sang
and played the violin well.
High over Meylan, niched in a crevice of the mountain, stands a small
white house, half-hidden amidst its vineyards and gardens, behind which
rise the woods, the barren hills, a ruined tower, and St Eynard--a
frowning mass of rock.
This sweet secluded spot, evidently predestined to romance, was the
home of Madame Gautier, who lived there with two nieces, of whom the
younger was called Estelle. Her name at once caught my attention from
its being that of the heroine of Florian’s pastoral _Estelle and
Némorin_, which I had filched from my father’s library, and read a
dozen times in secret.
Estelle was just eighteen--tall, graceful, with large, grave,
questioning eyes that yet could smile, hair worthy to ornament the
helmet of Achilles, and feet--I will not say Andalusian, but pure
Parisian, and on those little feet she wore ... pink slippers!
Never before had I seen pink slippers. Do not smile; I have forgotten
the colour of her hair (I fancy it was black), yet, never do I recall
Estelle but, in company with the flash of her large eyes, comes the
twinkle of her dainty pink shoes. I had been struck by lightning. To
say I loved her comprises everything. I hoped for, expected, knew
nothing but that I was wretched, dumb, despairing. By night I suffered
agonies, by day I wandered alone through the fields of Indian corn, or
sought, like a wounded bird, the deepest recesses of my grandfather’s
orchard.
Jealousy--dread comrade of love--seized me at the least word spoken
by a man to my divinity; even now I shudder at the clank of a spur,
remembering the noise of my uncle’s while dancing with her.
Every one in the neighbourhood laughed at the piteously precocious
child, torn by his obsession. Perhaps Estelle laughed too, for she soon
guessed all.
One evening, I remember, there was a party at Madame Gautier’s, and we
played prisoner’s base. The men were bidden choose their partners, and
I was purposely told to choose first. But I dared not, my heart-beats
choked me; I lowered my eyes unable to speak. They were beginning to
tease me when Estelle, smiling down from her beauteous height, caught
my hand, saying:
“Come! I will begin; I choose Monsieur Hector.”
But ah! she laughed!
Does time heal all wounds; do other loves efface the first? Alas, no!
With me time is powerless. Nothing wipes out the memory of my first
love.
I was thirteen when we parted. I was thirty when, returning from Italy,
I passed near St Eynard again. My eyes filled with tears at the sight
of the little white house--the ruined tower. I loved her still!
On reaching home I heard that she was married; but even that could not
cure me. A few days later my mother said:
“Hector, will you take this letter to the coach-office. It is for a
lady who will be in the Vienne diligence. While they change horses ask
the guard for Madame F., give her this letter, and look carefully at
her. You may recognise her, although you have not met for seventeen
years.”
Without suspicion I went on my errand and asked for Madame F. “I am
she, Monsieur,” said a voice that thrilled my heart. “It is Estelle,”
said my heart. Estelle! still lovely, still the nymph, the hamadryad
of Meylan’s green slopes. Still lovely with her proud carriage, her
glorious hair, her dazzling smile. But ah! where were the little pink
shoes? She took the letter. Did she know me? I could not tell, but I
returned home quite upset by the meeting. My mother smiled at me.
“So Némorin has not forgotten his Estelle,” she said. _His_ Estelle!
Mother! mother! was that trick quite fair?
* * * * *
With love came music; when I say music I mean composition, for of
course I had long since been able to sing at sight and to play two
instruments, thanks, needless to say, to my father’s teaching.
Rummaging one day in a drawer, I unearthed a flageolet, on which I at
once tried to pick out “Malbrook.” Driven nearly mad by my squeaks, my
father begged me to leave him in peace until he had time to teach me
the proper fingering of the melodious instrument, and the right notes
of the martial song I had pitched on. At the end of two days I was able
to regale the family with my noble tune.
Now, how strikingly this shows my marvellous aptitude for wind
instruments. What a fruitful subject for a born biographer!
My father next taught me to read music, explaining the signs
thoroughly, and soon after he gave me a flute. At this I worked so hard
that in seven or eight months I could play quite fairly.
Wishing to encourage my talent, he persuaded several well-to-do
families of La Côte to join together and engage a music-master from
Lyons. He was successful in getting a second violin, named Imbert, to
leave the Théâtre des Célestins and settle in our outlandish little
town to try and musicalise the inhabitants, on condition that we
guaranteed a certain number of pupils and a fixed salary for conducting
the band of the National Guard.
I improved fast, for I had two lessons a day; having also a pretty
soprano voice I soon developed into a pleasant singer, a bold reader,
and was able to play Drouet’s most intricate flute concertos. My master
had a son a few years older than myself, a clever horn-player, with
whom I became great friends. One day, as I was leaving for Meylan, he
came to see me.
“Were you going without saying good-bye?” he asked. “You may never see
me again.”
His gravity struck me at the moment, but the joy of seeing Meylan and
my glorious _Stella montis_ quite put him out of my head. But on my
return home my friend was gone; he had hanged himself the very day
I left, and no one has ever been able to discover why. It was a sad
home-coming for me!
Among some old books I found d’Alembert’s edition of Rameau’s
_Harmony_, and how many weary hours did I not spend over those laboured
theories, trying vainly to evolve some sense out of the disconnected
ideas. Small wonder that I did not succeed, seeing that one needs to
be a past master of counterpoint and acoustics before one can possibly
grasp the author’s meaning. It is a treatise on harmony for the use of
those only who know all about it already.
However, I thought I could compose, and began by trying arrangements of
trios and quartettes that were simply chaos, without form, cohesion,
or common sense. Then, quite undaunted, I listened carefully to the
quartettes by Pleyel, that our music-lovers performed on Sundays, and
studied Catel’s _Harmony_, which I managed to buy. Suddenly I rent
asunder the veil of the inmost temple, and the mystery of form and of
the sequence of chords stood revealed. I hurriedly wrote a pot-pourri
in six parts on Italian airs, and, as the harmony seemed tolerable, I
was emboldened to compose a quintette for flute, two violins, viola,
and ’cello, which was played by three amateurs, my master, and myself.
This was indeed a triumph though, unfortunately, my father did not seem
as pleased as my other friends. Two months later another quintette was
ready, of which he wished to hear the flute part before we performed it
in public. Like most provincial amateurs, he thought he could judge the
whole by a first-violin part, and at one passage he cried:
“Come now! That is something like music.”
But alas! this elaborate effusion was too much for our
performers--particularly the viola and ’cello--they meandered off at
their own sweet will. Result--confusion. As this happened when I was
twelve and a half, the writers who say I did not know my notes at
twenty are just a little out. Later on I burnt[1] the two quintettes,
but it is strange that, long afterwards in Paris, I used the very
_motif_ that my father liked for my first orchestral piece. It is the
air in A flat for the first violin in the allegro of my overture to the
_Francs-Juges_.
III
MUSIC AND ANATOMY
After the death of his son, poor Imbert went back to Lyons; his place
was taken by Dorant, a man of far higher standing. He was an Alsacian,
and played almost every instrument, but he excelled in clarinet,
’cello, violin, and guitar. My elder sister--who had not a scrap of
musical instinct, and could never read the simplest song, although she
had a charming voice and was fond of music--learnt the guitar with
Dorant and, of course, I must needs share her lessons. But ere long our
master, who was both honest and original, said bluntly to my father:
“Monsieur, I must stop your son’s guitar lessons.”
“But why? Is he rude to you or so lazy that you can do nothing with
him?”
“Certainly not. Only it is simply absurd for me to pretend to teach
anyone who knows as much as I do myself.”
So behold me! Past master of those three noble instruments--flageolet,
flute, and guitar!
Can anyone doubt my heaven-sent genius or that I should be capable of
writing the most majestic orchestral works, worthy of a musical Michael
Angelo! Flute, guitar, flageolet!!! I never was any good at other
instruments. Oh yes! I am wrong, I am not at all bad at the side-drums.
My father would never let me learn the piano--if he had, no doubt I
should have joined the noble army of piano thumpers, just like forty
thousand others. Not wishing me to be a musician, he, I believe, feared
the effect of such an expressive instrument on my sensitive nature.
Sometimes I regret my ignorance, yet, when I think of the ghastly
heap of platitudes for which that unfortunate piano is made the daily
excuse--insipid, shameless productions, that would be impossible if
their perpetrators had to rely, as they ought, on pencil and paper
alone--then I thank the fates for having forced me to compose silently
and freely by saving me from the tyranny of finger-work--that grave of
original thought.
As with most young folks, my early work was downright gloomy, it simply
grovelled in melancholy. Minor keys were rampant. I knew it was a
mistake, but it seemed impossible to escape from the black crape folds
that had enshrouded my soul ever since the Meylan affair.
The natural result of constantly reading Florian’s _Estelle_ was that I
ended by setting parts of that mawky pastoral to music.
The faded old-time poetry comes back to me as I write here in London,
in the pale spring sunshine. Torn as I am by anxiety, worried by
sordid, petty obstacles, by stupid opposition to my plans, it is
strange to recall the sickly-sentimental words of a song I wrote
in despair at leaving the Meylan woods, which were “lighted by the
eyes”--and, may I add, by the little pink slippers of my cruel lady
love.
“I am going to leave forever
This dear land and my sweet love,
So alas! must fond hearts sever,
As my tears and grief do prove!
River, that has served so gaily
To reflect her lovely face,
Stop your course to tell her, daily,
I no more shall see this place!”
Although it joined the quintettes in the fire before I went to Paris,
yet in 1829, when I planned my _Symphonie Fantastique_, this little
melody crept humbly back into my mind; it seemed to me to voice so
perfectly the crushing weight of young and hopeless love that I
welcomed it home and enshrined it, without any alteration, for the
first violins in the largo of the opening movement--_Rêveries_.
But the fatal hour of choosing a profession drew rapidly nearer. My
father made no secret of his intention that I should follow in his
footsteps and become a doctor, since this he considered the finest
career in the world; I, on the other hand, made no secret of my opinion
that it was, to me, the most repulsive.
Without knowing exactly what I did want, I was absolutely certain that
I did _not_ want to be tied to the bedsides of sick people, to pass my
days in hospitals and operating theatres, and I determined that no
power on earth should turn me into a doctor.
My resolve was intensified by the lives of Gluck and Haydn that I read
about this time in the “Biographie Universelle.” “How glorious,” I
cried, “to live for Art, to spend one’s life in her beautiful service!”
and then came a mere trifle which threw open the gates of that paradise
for which I had been so blindly groping.
As yet I had never seen a full score; all I knew of printed music was a
few scraps of solfeggi with figured bass or bits of operas with a piano
accompaniment. But one day I stumbled across a piece of paper ruled
with twenty-four staves, and, in a flash, I saw the splendid scope this
would give for all kinds of combinations.
“What orchestration I might get with that!” I said, and from that
minute my music-love became a madness equalled only in force by my
aversion to medicine.
As I dared not tell my parents, it happened that by means of this very
passion for music, my father tried decisive measures to cure me of what
he called my “babyish antipathy” to his loved profession.
Calling me into his study where Munro’s _Anatomy_, with its life-size
pictures of the human framework, lay open on the table, he said:
“See, my boy, I want you to work hard at this. I cannot believe that
you will let unreasoning prejudice stand in the way of my wishes. If
you will do your best, I will order you the very finest flute to be got
in Lyons, with all the new keys.”
What could I say? My father’s gravity, my love and respect for him, the
temptation of the long-coveted flute, were altogether too much for me.
Muttering a strangled “Yes,” I rushed away to throw myself on my bed in
the depths of misery.
Be a doctor! Learn to dissect! Help in horrible operations! Bury
myself in the hideous realities of hospitals, wounds, and death, when I
might tread the clouds with the immortals!--when music and poetry wooed
me with open arms and divine songs.
No, no, no! Such a tragedy _could_ not happen!
Yet it did.
My cousin, A. Robert--now one of the first doctors in Paris--was to
share my father’s lessons. Unluckily he played the violin well, being a
member of my quintette party, and, of course, we spent more time over
music than over osteology. Still he worked so hard at home that he was
always ready with his demonstrations, and I was not. Hence frequent
scoldings and the vials of my father’s wrath poured out on my poor
head. Nevertheless, by hook or by crook, I managed to learn all that my
father could teach me without dissections, and when I was nineteen, I
consented to go with Robert to Paris to embark on a medical career.
* * * * *
Before beginning to tell of the deadly conflict that, almost
immediately on my arrival in Paris, I began with ideas, people and
things generally, and which has continued unremittingly up to this day,
I must have a short breathing space.
Moreover, to-day--the 10th April 1848--has been chosen for the great
Chartist demonstration. Perhaps, in a few hours, these two hundred
thousand men will have upset England, as the revolutionists have upset
the rest of Europe, and this last refuge will have failed me. I shall
know soon.
8 P.M.--Chartists are rather a decent sort of
revolutionists. Those powerful orators--big guns--took the chair, and
their mere presence was so convincing that speech was superfluous. The
Chartists quite understood that the moment was not propitious for a
revolution, and they dispersed quietly and in order. My good folks,
you know as much about organising an insurrection as the Italians do
about composing symphonies.
_12th July._--No possibility of writing for the last three months, and
now I am going back to my poor France--mine own country, after all!
I am going to see whether an artist can live there, or how long it
will take him to die amid those ruins beneath which Art lies--crushed,
bleeding, dead!
Farewell, England!
_France, 16th July._--Home once more. Paris has buried her dead. The
paving-stones, torn up for barricades, are replaced; but for how long?
The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is one mass of desolation and ruin; even
the Goddess of Liberty on the Bastille column has a bullet through
her. Trees, maimed and uprooted; houses tottering to a fall; squares,
streets, quays, still palpitating from the riot--all bear witness to
the horrors they have suffered.
Who could think of Art at such a time! Theatres are closed, artists
undone, professors idle, pupils fled, pianists become street musicians,
painters sweep the gutters, and architects mix mortar in the national
work-sheds.
Although the National Assembly has voted a subsidy to the theatres, and
some help to the poorest of the artists, what is that among so many?
Take a first violin of the opera, for instance; his pay is nine hundred
francs a year, which is eked out by private lessons. What chance has he
of saving? Transportation would be a boon to him and his colleagues,
for they might earn a living in America, Sydney, or the Indies. But
even this is denied them. They fought _for_ the Government and against
the insurgents, and being only deserving poor instead of malefactors,
they cannot even claim this last favour--it is reserved for criminals.
Surely this way--in this awful, hideous confusion of just and unjust,
of good and evil, of truth and untruth--this way doth madness lie!
I must write on and try to forget.
IV
PARIS
When Robert and I got to Paris in 1822, I loyally kept my promise to
my father by studying nothing but medicine. My first trial came when
my cousin, telling me that he had bought a _subject_, took me to the
hospital dissecting room.
But the foul air, the grinning heads, the scattered limbs, the bloody
cloaca in which we waded, the swarms of ravenous rats and sparrows
fighting for the debris of poor humanity, overwhelmed me with such a
paroxysm of wild terror that, at one bound, I was through the nearest
window, and tearing home as if Death and the Devil were at my heels.
The following night and day were indescribable. Hell seemed let loose
upon me, and I felt that no power on earth should drag me back to that
Gehenna. The wildest schemes for evading my horrible fate--each madder
than the last--chased each other through my burning brain; but finally,
worn out and despairing, I yielded to Robert’s persuasion, and went
back to the charnel house.
Strange to say, this time I felt nothing but cold, impersonal disgust,
worthy of an old soldier in his fiftieth battle. I actually got to the
point of ferretting in some poor dead creature’s chest for scraps of
lung to feed the sparrow-ghouls of this unsavoury den, and when Robert
said, laughing:
“Hallo! you are getting quite civilised. Giving the birds their meat in
due season!”
I retorted: “And filling all things living with plenteousness,” as I
threw a blade-bone to a wretched famished rat that sat up watching me
with anxious eyes.
Life, however, had some compensations.
Some secret affinity drew me to my anatomy demonstrator, Professor
Amussat, probably because he, like myself, was a man of one idea,
and was as passionately devoted to his science--medicine--as I to
my beloved art, music. His marvellous discoveries have brought him
world-wide fame, but, insatiable searcher after truth as he is, he
takes no rest. He is a genius, and I am honoured in being allowed to
call him friend.
I also enjoyed the chemistry lectures of Gay-Lussac, of Thénard
(physics) and, above all, the literature course of Andrieux, whose
quiet humour was my delight.
Drifting on in this sort of dumb quiescence, I should probably have
gone to swell the disastrous list of commonplace doctors, had I not,
one night, gone to the Opera. It was Salieri’s _Danaïdes_.
The magnificent setting, the blended harmonies of orchestra and chorus,
the sympathetic and beautiful voice of Madame Branchu, the rugged force
of Dérivis, Hypermnestra’s air--which so vividly recalled Gluck’s
style, made familiar to me by the scraps of _Orpheus_ I had found in
my father’s library--all this, intensified by the sad and voluptuous
dance-music of Spontini, sent me up to fever-pitch of excitement and
enthusiasm.
I was like a young man, who, never having seen any boat but the
cockle-shells on the mountain tarns of his homeland, is suddenly put
on board a great three-decker in the open ocean. I could not sleep, of
course, and consequently my next day’s anatomy lesson suffered, and
to Robert’s frenzied expostulations I responded with airs from the
_Danaïdes_, humming lustily as I dissected.
Next week I went to hear Méhul’s _Stratonice_ with Persuis’ ballet
_Nina_. I did not think much of the music, with the exception of the
overture, but I was greatly affected by hearing Vogt play on the _cor
anglais_ the very air sung, years before, by my sister’s friends at my
first communion in the Ursuline chapel. A man sitting near told me that
it was taken from d’Aleyrac’s opera _Nina_.
In spite of this double life of mine and the hours spent in brooding
over my hard fate, I stuck doggedly to my promise for some time longer.
But, hearing that the Conservatoire library, with its wealth of scores,
was open to the public, I could not resist the temptation to go and
learn more of my adored Gluck. This gave the death-blow to my promise;
music claimed me for her own.
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!