Testament--idylls of Naomi, Ruth, Rachel--and I shared his taste. The
calm of the unchanging East, the mysterious grandeur of its ruins,
its majestic history, its legends--these were the magnetic pole of my
imagination. He often allowed me to join him in his walks, telling
me of his early struggles, his triumphs and the favour of Napoleon.
He even let me, up to a certain point, discuss his theories, but
we usually ended on our common meeting-ground of Gluck, Virgil and
Napoleon. After these long talks along the edge of the Seine or under
the leafy shade of the Tuileries gardens, I would leave him to take the
solitary walks which had become to him a necessity of daily life.
Some months after I had become his pupil, but before my admission
to the Conservatoire, I took it into my head to write an opera,
and nothing would do but that I must get my witty literary master,
Andrieux, to write me a libretto. I cannot remember what I wrote to
him, but he replied:
“MONSIEUR,--Your letter interests me greatly. You cannot
but succeed in the glorious art you have chosen, and it would
afford me the greatest pleasure to be your collaborateur. But,
alas! I am too old, my studies and thoughts are turned in quite
other directions. You would call me an outer barbarian if I told
you how long it is since I set foot in the Opera. At sixty-four I
can hardly be expected to write love songs, a requiem would be
more appropriate. If only you had come into the world thirty years
earlier, or I thirty years later, we might have worked together.
With heartiest good wishes,
“ANDRIEUX.”
“_17th June 1823._”
M. Andrieux kindly brought his own letter, and stayed a long time
chatting. As he was leaving he said:
“Ah! I, too, was an ardent lover of Gluck ... and of Piccini,[2] too!!”
This failure discouraged me, so I turned to Gerono, who was something
of a poetaster, and asked him (innocent that I was) to dramatise
_Estelle_ for me. Luckily no one ever heard this lucubration, for my
ditties were a fair match for his words.
This pink-and-white namby-pamby effusion was followed by a dark and
dismal thing called _The Gamester_. I was really quite enamoured of
this sepulchral dirge, which was for a bass voice with orchestral
accompaniment, and I set my heart on getting Dérivis to sing it.
Just then the Theatre-Français advertised a benefit for
Talma--_Athalie_, with Gossec’s choruses. “With a chorus,” said I,
“they must have an orchestra. My scena is not difficult, and if only I
can persuade Talma to put it on the programme Dérivis will certainly
not refuse to sing it.”
Off I posted to Talma, my heart beating to suffocation--unlucky omen!
At the door I began to tremble, and desperate misgivings seized me.
Dared I beard Nero in his own palace? Twice my hand went up to the
bell, twice it dropped, then I turned and fled up the street as hard as
I could pelt.
I was but a half-tamed young savage even then!
V
CHERUBINI
A short time after this M. Masson, choirmaster of St Roch, suggested
that I should write a mass for Innocents’ Day.
He promised me a month’s practice, a hundred picked musicians, and a
still larger chorus. The choir boys of St Roch should copy the parts
carefully, so that that would cost me nothing.
I started gaily. Of course the whole thing was nothing but a
milk-and-water copy of Lesueur, and--equally of course--when I showed
it to him he gave most praise to those parts wherein my imitation was
the closest.
Masson swore by all his gods that the execution should be unrivalled,
the one thing needful being a good conductor, since neither he nor I
was used to handling such _vast masses of sound_. However, Lesueur most
kindly induced Valentino, conductor of the opera, to take the post,
dubious though he was of our vocal and instrumental legions.
The day of the general rehearsal came, and with it our _vast
masses_--twenty choristers (fifteen tenors and five basses), twelve
children, nine violins, one viola, one oboe, one horn, one bassoon.
My rage and despair at this treatment of Valentino--one of the first
conductors in the world--may be imagined.
“It’s all right,” quoth Master Masson, “they will all turn up on the
day.”
Valentino shrugged his shoulders resignedly, raised his baton, and they
started.
In two seconds all was confusion; the parts were one mass of mistakes,
sharps and flats left out, ten-bar pauses omitted, a little further on
thirty bars clean gone.
It was the most appalling muddle ever heard, and I simply writhed in
torment. There was nothing for it but to give up utterly my fond dream
of a grand orchestral performance.
Still, it was not lost time as far as I was concerned, for, in spite
of the shocking execution, I saw where my worst faults lay, and, by
Valentino’s advice, I rewrote the whole mass--he generously promising
to help me when I should be ready for my revenge.
But alas! while I worked my parents heard of the fiasco, and made
another determined onslaught by ridiculing my chosen vocation, and
laughing my hopes to scorn. Those were the bitter dregs of my cup of
shame; I swallowed them and silently persevered.
Unable, for lack of money, to employ professional copyists, and being
justly afraid of amateurs, when my score was finished I wrote out every
part myself. It took me three months. Then, like Robinson Crusoe with
the boat he could not launch, I was at a stand-still. How should I get
it performed? Trust to M. Masson’s musical phalanx? That would be too
idiotic. Appeal to musicians myself? I knew none. Ask the help of the
Chapel Royal? My master had distinctly told me that was impossible, no
doubt because, had he allowed me such a privilege, he would have been
bombarded with similar requests from my fellow-students.
My friend, Humbert Ferrand, came to the rescue with a bold proposal.
Why not ask M. de Châteaubriand to lend me twelve thousand francs? I
believe that, on the principle of it being as well to be hanged for a
sheep as a lamb, I also asked for his influence with the Ministry. Here
is his reply:
“PARIS, _31st Dec. 1824_.
“MONSIEUR,--If I had twelve thousand francs you should
have them. Neither have I any influence with the ministers. I am
indeed sorry for your difficulties, for I love art and artists.
However, it is through trial that success comes, and the day of
triumph is a thorough compensation for past sufferings. With most
sincere regret,
“CHÂTEAUBRIAND.”
Thus I was completely disheartened, and had no plausible answer to make
when my parents wrote threatening to stop the modest sum that alone
made life in Paris possible.
Fortunately I met, at the opera, a young and clever music-lover,
Augustin de Pons, belonging to a Faubourg St Germain family, who,
stamping with impotent rage, had witnessed my disaster at St Roch. He
was fairly well off then, but, in defiance of his mother, he later
on married a second-rate singer, who left him after long wanderings
through France and Italy.
Entirely ruined he returned to Paris to vegetate by giving singing
lessons. I was able to be of some use to him when I was on the staff of
the _Journal des Débats_, and I greatly wish I could have done more,
for his generous and unasked help was the turning-point of my career,
and I shall never forget it.
Even last year he found life very hard; I tremble to think what may
have become of him since the February revolution took away his pupils.
Seeing me one day in the foyer, he shouted:
“I say, what about your mass? When shall we have another go at it?”
“It is done,” I answered, “but what chance have I of getting it
performed?”
“Chance? Why, confound it all, you have only got to pay the performers.
How much do you want? Twelve or fifteen hundred francs? Two thousand?”
“Hu-s-s-sh, don’t roar so, for heaven’s sake! If you really mean it I
shall be most grateful for twelve hundred francs.”
“All right. Hunt me up to-morrow and we’ll engage the opera chorus and
a real good orchestra. We must give Valentino a good innings this time.”
And we did. The mass was grandly performed at St Roch, and was well
spoken of by the papers. Thus, thanks to that blessed de Pons, I got
my first hearing and my foot in the stirrup--as it were--of all things
most difficult and most important in Paris.
I boldly undertook to conduct the rehearsals of chorus and orchestra
myself, and, with the exception of a slip or two, due to excitement, I
did not do so badly. But alas! how far I was from being an accomplished
conductor, and how much labour and pains it has cost me to become even
what I am.
After the performance, seeing exactly how little my mass was worth,
I took out the Resurrexit--which seemed fairly good--and held an
_auto-da-fé_ of the rest, together with the _Gamester_, _Estelle_, and
the _Passage of the Red Sea_. A calm inquisitorial survey convinced me
of the justice of their fate.
* * * * *
Mournful coincidence! After writing these lines I met a friend at the
Opéra Comique, who asked:
“When did you come back?”
“Some weeks ago.”
“Then you know about de Pons? No? He poisoned himself last week. He
said he was tired of living, but I am afraid that, really, he was
unable to live since the Revolution scattered his pupils.”
Horrible! horrible! most horrible!
I must rush out and work off this horror in the fresh air.
* * * * *
Lesueur, seeing how well I got on, thought it best for me to become a
regular Conservatoire student and, with the consent of Cherubini, the
director, I was enrolled.
It was a mercy I had not to appear before the formidable author of
_Medea_, for the year before I had put him into one of his white rages
by thwarting him.
Now the Conservatoire had not been run on precisely Puritanic lines,
so, when Cherubini succeeded Perne as director, he thought proper to
begin by making all sorts of vexatious rules. For instance, men must
use only the door into the Faubourg Poissonière and women that into the
Rue Bergère--which were at opposite ends of the building.
One day, knowing nothing of the new rule, I went in by the feminine
door, but was stopped by a porter in the middle of the courtyard and
told to go back and all round the streets to the masculine door. I told
the man I would be hanged if I did, and calmly marched on.
I had been buried in _Alcestis_ for a quarter of an hour, when in burst
Cherubini, looking more wicked and cadaverous and dishevelled even than
usual. With my enemy, the porter, at his heels, he jerked round the
tables, narrowly eyeing each student, and coming at last to a dead stop
in front of me.
“That’s him,” said the porter.
Cherubini was so furious that, for a time, he could not speak, and,
when he did, his Italian accent made the whole thing more comical than
ever--if possible.
“Eh! Eh! Eh!” he stuttered, “so it is you vill come by ze door I vill
not ’ave you?”
“Monsieur, I did not know of the new rule; next time----”
“Next time? Vhat of zis next time? Vhat is it zat you come to do ’ere?”
“To study Gluck, Monsieur, as you see.”
“Gluck! and vhat is it to you ze scores of Gluck? Vhere get you
permission for enter ze library?”
“Monsieur” (I was beginning to lose my temper too), “the scores of
Gluck are the most magnificent dramatic works I know, and I need no
permission to use the library since, from ten to three, it is open to
all.”
“Zen I forbid zat you return.”
“Excuse me, I shall return whenever I choose.”
That made him worse.
“Vha-Vha-Vhat is your name?” he stammered.
“My name, Monsieur, you shall hear some day, but not now.”
“Hotin,” to the porter, “catch ’im and make ’im put in ze prison.”
So off we went, the two--master and servant--hot foot after me round
the tables. We knocked over desks and stools in our headlong flight, to
the amazement of the quiet onlookers, but I dodged them successfully,
crying mockingly as I reached the door:
“You shan’t have either me or my name, and I shall soon be back here
studying Gluck.”
That was my first meeting with Cherubini, and I rather wondered whether
he would remember it when I met him next in a less irregular manner. It
is odd that, twelve years later, in spite of him, I should have been
appointed first curator, then librarian of that very library. As for
Hotin, he is now my devoted slave and a rabid admirer of my music. I
have many other Cherubini stories to tell. Any way, if he chastised me
with whips, I certainly returned the compliment with scorpions.
VI
MY FATHER’S DECISION
The hostility of my people had somewhat died down, thanks to the
success of my mass, but, naturally another reverse started it with
renewed fury.
In the 1826 preliminary examination of candidates for admission to
the Institute I was hopelessly plucked. Of course my father heard of
it, and promptly wrote that, if I persisted in staying on in Paris, my
allowance would stop.
My dear master kindly wrote asking him to reconsider his letter, saying
that my eventual success was certain, since I _oozed music at every
pore_. But, by ill luck, he brought in religious arguments--about the
worst thing he could have done with my free-thinking father, whose
blunt--almost rude--answer could not but wound Lesueur on his most
susceptible side. From the beginning:
“Monsieur, I am an atheist,” the rest may be guessed. The forlorn hope
of gaining my end by personal pleading sent me back to La Côte, where
I was received frostily and left to my own reflections for some days,
during which I wrote to Ferrand:
“No sooner away from the capital than I want to talk to you. My
journey was tiresome as far as Tarare, where I began a conversation
with two young men, whom I had, so far, avoided, thinking they looked
_dilettanti_. They told me they were artists, pupils of Guérin and
Gros, so I told them I was a pupil of Lesueur. They said all sorts of
nice things of him, and one of them began humming a chorus from the
_Danaïdes_.
“The _Danaïdes_!” I cried, “then you are not a mere trifler?”
“Not I,” he answered; “have I not heard Dérivis and Madame Branchu
thirty-four times as Danaüs and Hypermnestra?”
“O-o-oh!” and we fell upon each other’s neck.
“I know Dérivis,” said the other man.
“And I Madame Branchu.”
“Lucky fellows!” I said. “But how is it that, since you are not
professional musicians, you have not caught Rossini fever and turned
your backs on nature and common sense?”
“Well, I suppose it is because, being used to seeking all that is
grandest and best in nature for our pictures, we recognise the same
spirit in Gluck and Salieri, and so turn our backs on fashionable
music.”
“Blessed people! Such as they are alone worthy of being allowed to
listen to _Iphigenia_!”
* * * * *
Again my parents returned to the charge, telling me to choose my
profession, since I refused to be a doctor. Again I replied that I
could and would only be a musician and must return to Paris to study.
“Never,” said my father, “you may give up that idea at once.”
I was crushed; with paralysed brain I sank into a torpor from which
nothing roused me. I neither ate nor spoke nor answered when spoken to,
but spent part of the day wandering in the woods and fields and the
rest shut up in my own room. I was mentally and morally dying for want
of air. Early one morning my father came to my bedside:
“Get up and come to my study,” he said, “I want to talk to you.” He was
grave and sad, not angry.
“I have decided, after many sleepless nights, that you shall go back
to Paris, but only for a time. If you should fail on further trial,
I think you will do me the justice to own that I have done all that
can be expected, and will consent to try some other career. You
know my opinion of second-rate poets--every sort of mediocrity is
contemptible--and it would be a deadly humiliation to feel that you
were numbered among the failures of the world.”
Without waiting to hear more, I promised all he wished. “But,” he
continued, “since your mother’s point of view is diametrically opposed
to mine, I desire, in order to avoid trouble, that you do not mention
this, and that you start for Paris secretly.”
But it was impossible to hide this sudden bound from utter despair to
delirious joy and Nanci, my sister, with many promises not to tell,
wormed my secret out of me. Of course she kept it as well as I did, and
by nightfall, everyone, including my mother, knew my plans.
Now it will hardly be believed that there are still people in France
who look upon anyone connected with theatres or theatrical art as
doomed to everlasting perdition, and since, according to French ideas,
music hardly exists outside a theatre, it, too, shares the same fate.
Apropos of this I nearly made Lesueur die of laughing over a reply of
one of my aunts.
We were arguing on this very point, and I said at last:
“Come, Auntie, I believe you would object to have even Racine a member
of your family!”
“Well, Hector,” she said seriously, “we _must_ be respectable before
everything.”
Lesueur insisted that such sentiments could only emanate from an
elderly maiden aunt, in spite of my asseverations that she was young
and as pretty as a flower.
Needless to say, my mother believed I was setting my feet in the broad
road that led not only to destruction in the next world, but to social
ruin in this. I quickly saw by her wrathful face that she knew all, and
did my best to slink out of her way, but it was useless. Trembling with
rage and using “you” instead of the old familiar “thou,” she said:
“Hector, since your father countenances your folly I must speak and
save you from this mortal sin. You shall not go; I forbid it. See, here
I--your mother--kneel at your feet to beg you humbly to give up this
mad design and----”
“Mother! mother!” I interrupted, “I cannot bear it! For pity’s sake
don’t kneel to me.”
But she knelt on, looking up at me as I stood in miserable silence, and
finally she said:
“You refuse, wretched boy? Then go! Drag our honoured name through the
fetid mud of Paris; kill your parents with shame and disgrace. Curses
on you! You are no more my son, and never again will I look upon your
face.”
Could narrow-mindedness towards Art and provincial prejudice go
farther? I truly believe that my hatred of these mediæval doctrines
dates from that horrible day.
But that was not the end of the trial.
My mother hurried off to our little country house, Le Chuzeau, and when
the time of my departure came my father begged me to make one final
effort at reconciliation. We all went to Le Chuzeau, where we found her
reading in the orchard. As we drew near she fled. We waited, we hunted,
my father called her, my sisters and I cried bitterly, but all in vain.
Without a kind word or look from my mother, with her curse upon my
head, I started on my life’s career.
VII
PRIVATION
Once back in Paris, and fairly started in Lesueur’s class, I began to
worry about my debt to de Pons.
It would certainly never be paid off out of my monthly allowance of a
hundred and twenty francs. I therefore got some pupils for singing,
flute and guitar, and, by dint of strict economy, in a few months I
scraped together six hundred francs, with which I hurried off to my
kind creditor.
How could I save out of such a sum? Well, I had a tiny fifth-floor
room at the corner of the Rue de Harley and the Quai des Orfèvres, I
gave up restaurant dinners and contented myself with a meal of dry
bread with prunes, raisins or dates, which cost about fourpence.
As it was summer time I took my dainties, bought at the nearest
grocer’s, and ate them on that little terrace on the Pont Neuf at the
foot of Henry IV.’s statue; watching the while the sun set behind Mont
Valerien, with its exquisite reflections in the murmuring river below,
and pondering over Thomas Moore’s poems, of which I had lately found a
translation.
But de Pons, troubled at my privations--which, since we often met, I
could not hide from him--brought fresh disaster upon me by a piece
of well-meant but fatal interference. He wrote to my father, telling
him everything, and asking for the balance of his debt. Now my father
already repented bitterly his leniency towards me; here had I been five
months in Paris without in the least bettering my position. No doubt he
thought that I had nothing to do but present myself at the Institute to
carry all before me: win the Prix de Rome, write a successful opera,
get the Legion of Honour, and a Government pension, etc., etc.
Instead of this came news of an unpaid debt. It was a blow and
naturally reacted on me.
He sent de Pons his six hundred francs, and told me that, if I refused
to give up my musical wild-goose chase, I must depend on myself alone,
for he would help me no more.
As de Pons was paid, and I had my pupils, I decided to stay in
Paris--my life would be no more frugal than heretofore. I was really
working very steadily at music. Cherubini, of the orderly mind, knowing
I had not gone through the regular Conservatoire mill to get into
Lesueur’s class, said I must go into Reicha’s counterpoint class,
since that should have preceded the former. This, of course, meant
double work.
I had also, most happily, made friends some time before with a young
man named Humbert Ferrand--still one of my closest friends--who had
written the _Francs-Juges_ libretto for me, and in hot haste I was
writing the music.
Both poem and music were refused by the Opera committee and were
shelved, with the exception of the overture; I, however, used up the
best _motifs_ in other ways. Ferrand also wrote a poem on the Greek
Revolution, which at that time fired all our enthusiasm; this too I
arranged. It was influenced entirely by Spontini, and was the means of
giving my innocence its first shock at contact with the world, and of
awakening me rudely to the egotism of even great artists.
Rudolph Kreutzer was then director of the Opera House, where, during
Holy Week, some sacred concerts were to be given. Armed with a letter
of introduction from Monsieur de Larochefoucauld, Minister of Fine
Arts, and with Lesueur’s warm commendations, I hoped to induce Kreutzer
to give my scena.
Alas for youthful illusions!
This great artist--author of the _Death of Abel_, on which I
had written him heaven only knows what nonsense some months
before--received me most rudely.
“My good friend” (he did not know me in the least), he said shortly,
turning his back on me, “we can’t try new things at sacred concerts--no
time to work at them. Lesueur knows that perfectly well.”
With a swelling heart I went away.
The following Sunday Lesueur had it out with him in the Chapel Royal,
where he was first violin. Turning on my master in a temper, he said:
“Confound it all! If we let in all these young folks, what is to become
of us?”
He was at least plain spoken!
Winter came on apace. In working at my opera I had rather neglected my
pupils, and my Pont Neuf dining-room, growing cold and damp, was no
longer suitable for my feasts of Lucullus.
How should I get warm clothes and firewood? Hardly from my lessons at a
franc a piece, since they might stop any day.
Should I write to my father and acknowledge myself beaten, or die
of hunger in Paris? Go back to La Côte to vegetate? Never. The mere
idea filled me with maddening energy, and I resolved to go abroad to
join some orchestra in New York or Mexico, to turn sailor, buccaneer,
savage, anything, rather than give in.
I can’t help my nature. It is about as wise to sit on a gunpowder
barrel to prevent it exploding as it is to cross my will.
I was nearly at my wits’ end when I heard that the Théâtre des
Nouveautés was being opened for vaudeville and comic opera. I tore
off to the manager to ask for a flautist’s place in the orchestra.
All filled! A chorus singer’s? None left, confound it all! However
the manager took my address and promised to let me know if, by any
possibility there should be a vacancy. Some days later came a letter
saying that I might go and be examined at the Freemason’s Hall, Rue
de Grenelle. There I found five or six poor wights in like case with
myself, waiting in sickening anxiety--a weaver, a blacksmith, an
out-of-work actor and a chorister. The management wanted basses, my
voice was nothing but a second-rate baritone; how I prayed that the
examiner might have a deaf ear.
The manager appeared with a musician named Michel, who still belongs to
the Vaudeville orchestra. His fiddle was to be our only accompaniment.
We began. My rivals sang, in grand style, carefully prepared songs,
then came my turn. Our huge manager (appropriately blessed with the
name of St Leger) asked what I had brought.
“I? Why nothing.”
“Then what do you mean to sing?”