Institute building. Everything brought in for their use is carefully
searched lest outside help should be given, yet every day, from six
to eight, they may have visitors and invite their friends to jovial
dinners, at which any amount of assistance--verbal or written--might be
given.
This lasts for twenty-two days, but anyone who has finished sooner is
at liberty to go, leaving his manuscript--_signed as before_--with the
secretary.
Then the grave and reverend signors of the jury assemble,
having added to their number two members of any other section
of the Institute--either engravers, painters, sculptors or
architects--anything, in short, but musicians.
You see, they are so thoroughly competent to judge an art of which they
know nothing.
There they sit and solemnly listen to these scenas boiled down on
a piano. How _could_ anyone profess to judge an orchestral work
like that? It might do for simple old-fashioned music, but nothing
modern--that is, if the composer knows how to marshal the forces at his
command--could by any possibility be rendered on the piano.
Try the Communion March from Cherubini’s great Mass. What becomes
of those long-drawn, mystical wind-notes that fill one’s soul with
religious ecstasy; of those exquisitely interwoven flutes and clarinets
to which the whole effect is due?
They have completely vanished, since the piano can neither hold nor
inflate a sound.
Does it not follow, then, that the piano, by reducing every
tone-character to one dead level, becomes a guillotine whereby the
noblest heads are laid low and mediocrity alone survives?
Well! After this precious performance the prize is awarded, and you
conclude that this is the end of it all?
Not a bit! A week later the whole thirty-five Academicians, painters
and architects and sculptors and engravers on copper and engravers of
medals all turn up to give the final verdict.
They do not shut out the six musicians, although they are going to
judge music.
Again the pianists and the singers go through the compositions, then
round goes the fatal urn, in order that the judgment of the previous
week may be confirmed, modified, or reversed.
Justice compels me to add that the musicians return the compliment by
going to judge the other arts, of which they are as blindly ignorant as
are their colleagues of music.
On the day of the distribution of prizes the chosen cantata is
performed by a full orchestra. It seems just a little late; it might
have been more serviceable to get the orchestra before judgment--seeing
that after this there is no repeal--but the Academy is inquisitive;
it really does wish to know something about the work it has crowned.
Laudable curiosity!
* * * * *
In my time there was an old doorkeeper at the Institute whose
indignation at all this procedure was most amusing. It was his duty to
lock us up and let us out, and, being also usher to the Academicians,
he was on the inside track and made some very odd notes.
He had been a cabin boy, which at once enlisted my sympathies; for I
always loved sailors, and can listen imperturbably to their long-winded
yarns; no matter how far they wander from the point I am always ready
with a word to set them right again.
We were the best of friends, Pingard and I. One day, talking of Syria,
he mentioned Volney.
“M. le Comte,” he said, “was so good and easy-going that he always wore
blue woollen stockings.”
But his respect for me became unbounded enthusiasm when I asked whether
he knew Levaillant.
“M. Levaillant!” he cried, “Rather! One day at the Cape I was
sauntering along, whistling, when a big sun-burnt man with a beard
turned round on me. I suppose he guessed I was French from my whistle.
Of course I whistle in French, monsieur.
“‘I say, you young rogue, you’re French?’
“‘I should say I was. Givet is my part of
the country.’
“‘Oh, you _are_ French?’
“‘Yes.’
“And he turned his back and strode off. You see I did know M.
Levaillant!”
The good old boy made such a friend of me that he told me a lot he
would not have dared to repeat to anyone else.
I remember a lively conversation with him the day I got the second
prize.
We had a piece of Tasso set that year, towards the end of which the
Queen of Antioch invokes the god of the Christians she has contemned. I
had the impudence to think that, although the last section was marked
_agitato_, this ought to be a prayer, and I wrote it _andante_. I was
rather pleased with it on the whole.
When I got to the Institute to hear whether the painters and sculptors,
and architects, and engravers of medals, and line-engravers had settled
whether I were a good or bad musician, I ran against Pingard on the
stairs.
“Well?” I asked, “what have they decided?”
“Oh, hallo, Berlioz! I am glad you have come. I was hunting for you.”
“What have I got? Do hurry up! First? Second? Nothing?”
“Oh, do wait; I’m all of a tremble. Will you believe you were only two
votes short of the first prize?”
“The first I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s true, though. The second is all very well, but I call it beastly
that you missed the first by two votes. I am neither a painter, nor a
sculptor, nor an architect, so of course I know nothing about music,
but I’ll be hanged if that _God of the Christians_ of yours didn’t set
my heart gurgling and rumbling to such a tune that if I had met you
that minute I should have--have--stood you a drink!”
“Thanks awfully, Pingard. I admire your taste. But, I say--you have
been on the Coromandel coast?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“To Java?”
“Yes, but----”
“Sumatra?”
“Yes.”
“Borneo?”
“Yes.”
“You are a friend of Levaillant?”
“I should think so. Hand in glove with him.”
“You know Volney?”
“The good Count with the blue woollen stockings? Certainly.”
“Very well, then, you _must_ be a splendid judge of music.”
“But--why? How?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly how or why. But it seems to me that your
title is just as good as that of the gentlemen who do judge. Tell me,
though, what happened.”
“Oh, my goodness! It’s always the same old game. If I had thirty
children, devil take me if one of them should be an artist of any sort.
You see, I am on the inside track, and know how they sell their votes.
It’s nothing but a blessed old shop. See here! Once I heard M. Lethière
asking M. Cherubini for his vote for a pupil.”
“Don’t refuse, my dear fellow,” he said, “we are such old friends, and
my pupil really has talent.”
“No, he shall not have my vote,” Cherubini answered. “He promised my
wife an album of drawings that she wanted badly. He hasn’t even done
her a single tree!”
“That’s rather too bad of you,” said M. Lethière. “I vote for your
people, and you might vote for mine. Look here! I’ll do you the album
myself. I can’t say more than that.”
“Ah, that’s another pair of boots. What is your pupil’s name and
picture? I must not get muddled. Pingard, a pencil and paper!”
“They went off into the window corner and wrote something, then I heard
the musician say--
“All right, I will vote for him.”
“Now, isn’t that disgusting? If I had had a son in the competition and
they had played him a trick like that, wouldn’t it have been enough to
make me chuck myself out of window?”
“Come, Pingard, calm down a bit and tell me about to-day.”
“Well, when M. Dupont had finished singing your cantata they began
writing their verdicts, and I brought the hurn” (Pingard always would
stick in that “h”). “There was a musician close by whispering to an
architect, ‘Don’t give him your vote; he’s no good at all, and never
will be. He is gone on that eccentric creature Beethoven, and we shall
never get him right again.’ ‘Really!’ said the architect. ‘Yet--’
‘Well, ask Cherubini. You will take his word, won’t you? He will tell
you that Beethoven has turned the fellow’s head--’ I beg pardon,” said
Pingard, breaking off his story, “but who is this M. Beethoven? He
doesn’t belong to the Academy, and yet everyone seems to be talking of
him.”
“No, no! He’s a German. Go on.”
“There isn’t much more. When I passed the hurn to the architect I saw
that he gave his vote to No. 4 instead of to you. Suddenly one of the
musicians said, ‘Gentlemen, I think you ought to know that, in the
second part of the score we have just heard, there is an exceedingly
clever and effective piece of orchestration to which the piano cannot
do justice. This ought to be taken into consideration.’ ‘Don’t tell us
a cock-and-bull story like that,’ cried another musician. ‘Your pupil
has broken the rules and written two quick arias instead of one, and he
has put in an extra prayer. We cannot allow rules to be set at nought
like this; it would be establishing a precedent.’ ‘Oh, this is too
ridiculous! What says the secretary?’ ‘I think that we might pardon
a _certain_ amount of licence, and that the jury should distinctly
understand that passage that you say cannot be properly given by the
piano.’ ‘No, no!’ cried Cherubini, ‘it’s all nonsense. There is no such
clever piece of work. It is a regular jumble, and would be abominable
for the orchestra.’
“Then on all sides rose the architects, painters, sculptors, etc.,
saying, ‘Gentlemen, for pity’s sake agree somehow! We can only judge
by what we hear, and if you will not agree--’ And all began to talk at
once, and it became distinctly a bore, so M. Régnault and two others
marched out without voting. They counted the votes. You only got second
prize.”
“Thanks, Pingard, but, I say--they manage things better at the Cape
Academy, don’t they?”
“The Cape? Why, you know they have not got one. Fancy a Hottentot
Academy!”
“Well then, Coromandel?”
“None there.”
“Java?”
“None either.”
“What, no Academy at all in the East? Poor Orientals!”
“They manage to get along pretty well without.”
“What outer barbarians!”
I bade the old usher good-bye, thinking what a blessing it would be if
I could send the Academy to civilise Borneo.
Two years later the Prix de Rome was mine, but poor old Pingard was
dead. It was a pity.
If he had heard my “Burning of the Palace of Sardanapalus” he might
have stood me ... two drinks!
XIV
FAUST--CLEOPATRA
Again I relapsed into my habitual gloom and indolence. Like a dead
invisible planet I circled round that radiant sun that alas! was
doomed so soon to fade into mournful oblivion.
Estelle, star of my dawn, was eclipsed and lost in the noontide
brilliance of her mighty rival--my overwhelming and glorious love.
Although I took care never to pass the theatre, never willingly
to look at Othelia’s portraits in the shop windows, yet still I
wrote--receiving never a sign in reply. My first letters frightened
her, and she bade her maid take her no more.
The company was going to Holland, and its last nights were advertised.
Still I kept away; to see her again was more than I could bear.
However, hearing that she was to act two scenes from _Romeo and Juliet_
with Abbott, for the benefit of Huet, the actor, I had a sudden fancy
to see my own name on a placard beside that of the great actress.
I _might_ be successful under her very eyes!
Full of this childish notion I got permission from the manager and
conductor of the Opéra Comique to add an overture of my own to the
programme.
On going to rehearsal I found the English company just finishing;
broken-hearted Romeo held Juliet in his arms. At sight of the group I
gave a hoarse, despairing cry and wringing my hands wildly, I fled from
the theatre. Juliet saw and heard me; terror-stricken she pointed me
out to those around, begging them to _beware of the gentleman with the
wild eyes_.
An hour later I went back to an empty theatre. The orchestra assembled
and my overture was run through--like a sleep walker I listened,
hearing nothing--when the performers applauded me I wondered vaguely
whether Miss Smithson would like it too! Fool that I was!!
It seems impossible that I could, even then, have been so ignorant
of the world as not to know that, be the overture what it may, at a
benefit, no one in the audience listens. Still less the actors, who
only arrive in time for their turns and trouble themselves not at all
about the music.
My overture was well played, fairly received--but not encored--Miss
Smithson heard nothing of it and left next day for Holland.
By a strange chance (I could never get her to believe it _was_ chance)
I had taken lodgings at 96 Rue de Richelieu, opposite her house. Worn
out, half dead, I lay upon my bed until three the next afternoon; then,
rising, I crawled wearily to the window.
Cruel Fate! At that very minute she came out and stepped into her
carriage _en route_ for Amsterdam.
Was ever misery like mine?
Oh God! my deadly, awful loneliness; my bleeding heart! Could I bear
that leaden weight of anguish, that empty world; that hatred of life;
that shuddering shrinking from impossible death?
Even Shakespeare has not described it; he simply counts it, in
_Hamlet_, the cruellest burden left in life.
Could I bear more?
I ceased to write; my brain grew numb as my suffering increased. One
power alone was left me--to suffer.
_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.
“GRENOBLE, _Sept. 1828_.
“DEAR FRIEND,--I cannot go to you; come to me at La
Côte! We will read _Hamlet_ and _Faust_ together, Shakespeare
and Goethe! Silent friends who know all my misery, who alone can
fathom my strange wild life. Come, do come! No one here understands
the passion of genius. The sun blinds them, they think it mere
extravagance. I have just written a ballad on the King of Thule,
you shall have it to put in your _Faust_--if you have one.
“‘Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man
As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.’
“I am wretched. Do not be so cruel as not to come!”
“PARIS, _November 1828_.[5]
“Forgive me for not writing sooner; I was so ill, so stupid, it was
better to wait.
“La Fontaine might well say: ‘Absence is the greatest of ills.’
She is gone; this time to Bordeaux and I live no more; or rather I
live too acutely, for I suffer, hourly, the agonies of death. I can
hardly drag through my work.
“You know that I am appointed Superintendent of the Gymnase-Lyrique
and have to choose or replace the players and to take care of
instruments, parts and scores.
“Subscribers are coming in; so are malicious anonymous letters.
Cherubini sits on the fence wondering whether to help or to hinder
us, and we go calmly on.
“I have not seen Châteaubriand; he is in the country, but I will
speak of your piece directly I do.”
“_End of 1828._
“Do you know M. d’Eckstein, and can you give me an introduction to
him? I hear that he is connected with a new and powerful paper,[6]
in which Art is to be given prominence. If I am considered good
enough, I should like to be musical correspondent. Help me if you
can.”
Another landmark in my life was the reading of Goethe’s _Faust_; I
could not lay it down, but read and read and read--at table, in the
streets, in the theatres.
Although a prose translation, songs and rhymed pieces were scattered
throughout, and these I set to music, then, without having heard a note
of them, was crazy enough to have them engraved. A few copies, under
the title of _Eight Scenes from Faust_ were sold in Paris, and one fell
into the hands of M. Marx, the great Berlin critic, who wrote most
kindly to me about it. This unexpected encouragement from such a source
gave me real pleasure, particularly as the writer did not dwell too
much on my many and great faults. I know some of the ideas were good,
since I afterwards used them for the _Damnation de Faust_, but I know,
also, how hopelessly crude and badly written they were. As soon as I
realised this, I collected and burnt all the copies I could lay hands
on.
Under Goethe’s influence I wrote my _Symphonie Fantastique_--very
slowly and laboriously in some parts, incredibly quickly and easily in
others. The _Scène aux Champs_ worried me for three weeks, over and
over again I gave it up, but the _Marche au Supplice_ was dashed off in
a single night. Of course they were afterwards touched and retouched.
Bloc, being anxious that my new symphony should be heard, suggested
that I should be allowed to give a concert at the Théâtre des
Nouveautés.
The directors, attracted by the eccentricity of my work, agreed, and I
invited eighty performers to help, in addition to Bloc’s orchestra. On
my making enquiries about accommodation for such an army of executants
the manager replied, with the calm assurance of ignorance:
“Oh, that’s all right. Our property man knows his business.” The day
of rehearsal arrived, and so did my hundred and thirty musicians--with
nowhere to put them!
I just managed to squeeze the violins into the orchestra, and then
arose an uproar that would have driven a calmer man than myself out of
his senses. Cries for chairs, desks, candles, strings, room for the
drums, etc., etc. Scene shifters tore up and down improvising desks and
seats, Bloc and I worked like sixty--but it was all useless; a regular
rout; a passage of the Bérésina.
However Bloc insisted on trying two movements to give the directors
some idea of the whole. So, all in a muddle, we struggled through the
_Ball Scene_ and the _Marche au Supplice_, the latter calling forth
frantic applause.
But my concert never came off. The directors said that “they had no
idea so many arrangements were necessary for a symphony.” Thus my hopes
were dashed, and all for want of a few desks. Since then I always look
into the smallest details for myself.
Wishing to console me for this disappointment, Girard, conductor of the
Théâtre Italien, asked me to write something shorter than my unlucky
symphony, that he could have carefully performed at his theatre.
I therefore wrote a dramatic fantasia with choruses on the _Tempest_,
but no sooner did he see it than he said:
“This is too big for us; it must go to the opera.”
Without loss of time I interviewed M. Lubbert, director of the Royal
Academy. To my relief and delight, he at once agreed to have it played
at a concert for the Artists’ Benevolent Fund that was to take place
shortly. My name was known to him through my Conservatoire concert, and
he had seen notices of me in the papers. He, therefore, believed in
me, put me through no humiliating examination, gave me his word, and
kept it religiously.
“He was a man, Horatio.”
All went splendidly at rehearsal; Fétis did his best for me, and
everything seemed to smile, when, with my usual luck, an hour before
the concert there broke over Paris the worst storm that had been known
for fifty years. The streets were flooded and practically impassable,
and during the first half of the concert, when my _Tempest_--damned
tempest!--was being played, there were not more than three hundred
people in the place.
_Extracts from Letters to_ H. FERRAND.
“_April 1829._--Here is _Faust_, dear friend. Could you, without
stinting yourself, lend me another hundred francs to pay the
printer? I would rather borrow from you than from anyone else; yet
had you not offered, I should not have dared to ask. Your opera
(_Franc-Juges_) is splendid. You are indeed a poet! That finale of
the Bohemians at the end of the first act is a master stroke. I do
not believe anything so original has ever been done in a libretto
before. And I repeat, it is magnificent.”
“_June._--No word from you for three months. Why is it? Does your
father suppress our letters, or can it be that you, at last,
believe the slanders you hear of me?
“I got a pupil, so have managed to pay the printer.
“I am very happy, life is charming--no pain, no despair, plenty
of day dreams; to crown all, the _Francs-Juges_ has been refused
by the Opera Committee! They find it long and obscure, only the
Bohemian scene pleases them; but Duval thinks it remarkable and
says there is a future for it.
“I am going to make an opera like _Freyschütz_ of it, and if I win
the prize perhaps Spohr (who is not jealous, but is most helpful to
young musicians) will let me try it at Cassel.
“No word have I had from you since I spoke of my hopeless love.
Nothing more has happened. This passion will be my death; how often
one hears that hope alone keeps love alive--am I not a living proof
of the contrary?
“All the English papers ring with her praises; I am unknown! When
I have written something great, something stupendous, I must go to
London to have it performed. Oh for success!--success under her
very eyes.
“I am writing a life of Beethoven for the _Correspondant_, and
cannot find a minute for composition--the rest of my time I copy
out parts. What a life!”
Once more came June, and with it my third attempt on the Prix de Rome.
This time I really did hope, for not only had I gained a second prize,
but I heard that the musical judges thought well of me.
Being over-confident I reasoned (falsely, as it turned out), “Since
they have decided to give me the prize, I need not bother to write
exactly in the style that suits them; I will compose a really artistic
cantata.”
The subject was Cleopatra after Actium. Dying in convulsions, she
invokes the spirits of the Pharaohs, demanding--criminal though she
be--whether she dare claim a place beside them in their mighty tombs.
It was a magnificent theme, and I had often pondered over Juliet’s--
“But if when I am laid into the tomb,”
which is, at least in terror of approaching death, analogous to the
appeal of the Egyptian Queen.
I was fool enough to head my score with those very words--the
unpardonable sin to my Voltairean judges--and wrote what seemed to me
a weird and dramatic piece, well suited to the words. I afterwards
used it, unchanged, for the _Chorus of Shades_ in _Lelio_; I think it
deserved the prize. But it did not get it. None of the compositions
did. Rather than give it to a “young composer of such revolutionary
tendencies” they withheld it altogether.
Next day I met Boïeldieu, who, on seeing me, said:
“My dear boy, what on earth possessed you? The prize was in your hand,
and you simply threw it away.”
“But, monsieur, I really did my best.”
“That’s just it! Your _best_ is the opposite of your _good_. How could
I possibly approve? I, who like nice gentle music--cradle-music, one
might say.”
“But, monsieur, could an Egyptian queen, passionate, remorseful, and
despairing, die in mortal anguish of body and soul to the sound of
cradle-music?”
“Oh, come! come! I know you have plenty of excuses, but they go for
nothing. You might at least have written gracefully.”
“Gladiators could die gracefully, but not Cleopatra. She had not to die
in public.”
“There! you _will_ exaggerate so! No one expects her to dance a
quadrille. Why need you introduce such odd, queer harmonies into that
invocation? I am not well up in harmony, and I must own that those
outlandish chords of yours are beyond me.”
I bit my lip, not daring to make the obvious reply:
“Is it my fault that you know no harmony?”
“And then,” he went on, “why do you introduce a totally new rhythm in
your accompaniments? I never heard anything like it.”
“I did not understand, monsieur, that we were not to try new modes if
we were fortunate enough to find the right place for them.”
“But, my dear good fellow, Madame Dabadie is a capital musician, yet
one could see it took all her care and talent to get her through.”
“Really, monsieur, I have yet to learn that music can be sung without
either talent or care.”
“Well, well! you will have the last word. But do be warned for next
year. Come and see me and we will talk it over like _French gentlemen_.”
And, chuckling over the point he had made (for his last words were a
quotation from his own _Jean de Paris_), he walked off.
Yes, Boïeldieu was right. The Parisians liked soothing music, even
for the most dramatic and harrowing situations. Pretty, innocent,
gentlemanly music, pleasant and making no demand upon one’s deepest
feelings.
Later on they wanted something different, and now they do not know what
they want, or rather they want nothing at all. Ah me! what was the good
God thinking of when He dropped me down in this pleasant land of France?
Yet I love her whenever I can forget her idiotic politics. How gay
she is, how dainty in wit, how bright in retort--how she boasts and
swaggers and humbugs, royally and republicanly! I am not sure, though,
that this last _is_ amusing.
XV
A NEW LOVE
_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.