twittering little airs at the top of the key-board, exactly like wrens
preening themselves on a sunny wall in winter!
Again, hearing great things of the Corpus Christi music in Rome, I
hurried there in company with several Italians bent on the same errand.
They raved all the way of the wonders we should see, dangling before my
eyes tiaras, mitres, chasubles, etc., etc.
“But the music?” I asked.
“Oh, signor, there will be an immense choir,” then they went back to
their crosses and incense, and bell-ringing and cannon.
“But the music?” I repeated.
“Oh, there will be a gigantic choir.”
“Well, anyway,” I thought, “things will be on a magnificent scale,”
and my vivid imagination raced off to the glories of Solomon’s Temple
and the colossal pageants of ancient Egypt. Cruel gift of Nature that
clothes dull life in a golden veil! It simply made more appalling
and impossible the shrill nasal voices of the singers, the quacking
clarinets, the bellowing trombones, and the rampant vulgarity of the
big drums. It was brutal unadulterated cacophony.
Rome calls this military music!
Then, behold me once more safe at the Villa Medici, welcomed by the
director and my comrades, who most kindly and tactfully hid their
curiosity concerning my crazy journey. I had gone off having good
reason to go; I had come back--so much the better. No remarks, no
questions.
_To_ GOUNET, HILLER, ETC.
“_6th May 1831._--I have made acquaintance with Mendelssohn;
Monfort knew him before.
“He is a charming fellow; his execution is as perfect as his
genius, and that is saying a good deal. All I have heard of his is
splendid, and I believe him to be one of the great musicians of his
time.
“He has been my cicerone. Every morning I hunt him up; he plays me
Beethoven; we sing _Armida_; then he takes me to see ruins that,
I must candidly own, do not impress me much. His is one of those
clear pure souls one does not often come across; he believes firmly
in his Lutheran creed, and I am afraid I shocked him terribly by
laughing at the Bible.
“I have to thank him for the only pleasant moments I had during the
anxious days of my first stay in Rome.
“You may imagine what I felt like when I received that astonishing
letter from Madame Moke announcing her daughter’s marriage. She
calmly said that she never agreed to our engagement, and begs me,
dear kind creature! not to kill myself.
“Hiller knows the whole story, and how I left Paris with her ring
upon my finger, given in exchange for mine. However, I am quite
recovered and can eat as usual. I am saved, they are saved! I threw
myself into the arms of music, and felt how blessed it is to have
friends.
“I am working hard at _King Lear_.
“Write to me, each of you, a particular and separate and individual
letter.”
_To_ F. HILLER.
“Has Mendelssohn arrived yet? His talent is wonderful,
extraordinary, sublime. You need not suspect me of partiality
in saying this, for he frankly owns that he cannot in the least
understand my
[Illustration: THE VILLA MEDICI, ROME]
music. Greet him for me; he does not think so, but I truly like him
thoroughly.”
XIX
IN THE MOUNTAINS
I quickly fell into the Academy routine. A bell called us to meals,
and we went as we were--with straw hats, blouses plastered with clay,
slippered feet, no ties--in fact, in studio undress.
After breakfast we lounged about the garden at quoits, tennis, target
practice, shooting the misguided blackbirds who came within range, or
trained our puppies; in all of which amusements M. Horace often joined
us.
In the evening, at that everlasting Café Greco, we smoked the pipe of
peace with the “men down below,” as we dubbed artists not attached to
the Academy. After which we dispersed; those who virtuously returned
to the Academy barracks gathering in the garden portico, where my
bad guitar and worse voice were in great request, and where we sang
_Freyschütz_, _Oberon_, _Iphigenia_ or _Don Giovanni_, for, to the
credit of my messmates be it spoken, their musical taste was far from
low.
On the other hand, we sometimes had what we called English concerts. We
each chose a different song and sang it in a different key, beginning
by signal one after another; as this concert in twenty-four keys went
on crescendo, the frightened dogs in the Pincio kept up a howling
obligato and the barbers on the Piazza di Spagna down below winked at
each other, saying slyly, “French music!”
On Thursdays we went to Madame Vernet’s receptions, where we met the
best society in Rome; and on Sundays we usually went long excursions
into the country. With the director’s permission, longer journeys
might be undertaken and usually several of our number were absent.
As for me, since Rome never appealed to me, I took refuge in the
mountains; had I not done so, I doubt whether I could have lived
through that time. It may seem strange that the mighty shade of old
Rome should not impress me, but I had come from Paris, the centre of
civilisation, and was at one blow severed from music, from theatres
(they were only open for four months), from literature, since the
Papal censor excluded almost everything that I cared to read, from
excitements, from everything that, to me, meant real life.
Balls, evening parties, shooting days in the Campagna, and rides made
up the inane mill-round in which I turned. Add to that the scirocco,
the incessant yearning for my beloved art, my sorrowful memories, the
misery of being for two years exiled from the musical world, and the
utter impossibility of composing in that stagnating atmosphere, and it
will hardly be wondered at that I was as savage as a trained bull-dog,
and that the well-meant efforts of my friends to divert me only drove
me to the verge of madness.
I remember in one of my Campagna rides with Mendelssohn expressing
my surprise that no one had ever written a scherzo on Shakespeare’s
sparkling little poem _Queen Mab_. He, too, was surprised, and I was
very sorry I had put the idea into his head. For years I lived in dread
that he had used it, for he would have made it impossible--or, at any
rate, very risky--for anyone to attempt it after him. Luckily he forgot.
My usual remedy for spleen was a trip to Subiaco, which seemed to put
new life into me.
An old grey suit, a straw hat, a guitar, a gun and six piastres were
all my stock-in-trade. Thus I wandered, shooting or singing, careless
where I might pass the night; sometimes hurrying, again stopping to
investigate some ancient tomb, to listen silently to the distant bells
of St Peter’s, far away in the plain; interrupting my hunt for a flock
of lapwing to jot down a note for a symphony, and, in short, enjoying
to the full my absolute freedom.
Sometimes--a glorious landscape spread before me--I chanted, to the
guitar accompaniment, long-remembered verses of the Æneid, the death of
Pallas, the despair of Evander, the sad end of Amata, and the death of
Lavinia’s noble lover, and worked myself up to an incredible pitch of
excitement that ended in floods of tears. Elicited originally by the
woes of these mythical beings, my overwhelming grief ended by becoming
personal, and my tears flowed in self-pity for my sorrows, my doubtful
future, my broken career.
The odd thing was that, all the time, I was quite able to analyse
my feelings, although I ended by collapsing under these chaotic
miseries, murmuring a mixture of Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare--“Nessun
maggior dolore--che ricordarsi--O poor Ophelia!--good-night, sweet
ladies--vitaque cum gemitu--sub umbras--” and so fell fast asleep.
How crazy, you say? Yes, but how happy. Sensible people cannot
understand this intensity of being, this actual joy in existing, in
dragging from life the uttermost it has to give in height and depth.
Here, in the Parisian whirlpool, how well I recall the wild Abruzzi
country where I spent so long.
Bitter-sweet memories of days now passed for ever. Days of utter
irresponsible freedom to abolish time, to scorn ambition, to forget
love and glory.
Oh strong, grand Italy! Wild Italy! Heedless of that sister Italy--the
Italy of Art!
In time I became friendly with many of the villagers; one in
particular, named Crispino, grew very fond of me; he not only got me
perfumed pipe-stems (I had not then found out that I disliked the
sort of excitement produced by tobacco) but balls, powder and even
percussion caps. I first won his affection by helping to serenade
his mistress and by singing a duet with him to that untameable young
person; then fixed them by a present of two shirts and a pair of
trousers. Crispino could not write, so when he had anything to tell me
he came to Rome. What were thirty leagues to him?
At the Academy we usually left our doors open; one January
morning--having left the mountains in October I had had three months’
boredom--on turning over in bed, I found, standing over me, a great
sun-burnt scamp with pointed hat and twisted leggings, waiting quite
quietly till I woke.
“Hallo, Crispino! What brings you here?”
“Oh, I have just come to--see you.”
“Yes; what next?”
“Well--just now----”
“Just now?”
“To tell the truth--I’ve got no money.”
“Now come! That’s something like the truth. You have no money; what
business is that of mine, oh mightiest of scamps?”
“I’m no scamp. If you call me a scamp because I have no money, you are
right, but if it is because I was two years at Civita Vecchia, you are
wrong. I wasn’t sent to the galleys for stealing, but just for good
honest shots at strangers in the mountains.”
It was all nonsense, of course, I don’t believe he ever shot so much
as a monk. However, he was hurt in his feelings and would only accept
three piastres, a shirt and a neckerchief.
The poor fellow was killed two years ago in a brawl. Shall I meet him
in a better world?
* * * * *
In the miserable oblivion and dishonour into which music has sunk in
Rome I found but one small sign of honest life. It was among the
pfifferari, players of a little popular instrument, a surviving relic
of antiquity. They were strolling musicians who, at Christmastide, came
down from the mountains in groups of four or five armed with bagpipes
and _pfifferi_, a kind of oboe, to play before the images of the Virgin.
I used to spend hours in watching them, there was something so quaintly
mysterious in their wild aspect as they stood--head slightly turned
over one shoulder, their bright dark eyes fixed devoutly on the holy
figure, almost as still as the image itself.
At a distance the effect is indescribable and few escape its spell.
When I heard it in its native haunts, among the volcanic rocks and dark
pine forests of the Abruzzi, I could almost believe myself transported
back through the ages to the days of Evander, the Arcadian.
Of this time, musically, I have little to tell. I wrote a long and
incoherent overture to _Rob Roy_, which I burnt immediately after
its performance in Paris; the _Scène aux Champs_ of the _Symphonie
Fantastique_, which I rewrote entirely in the Borghese gardens; the
_Chant de Bonheur_ for _Lelio_, and lastly a little song called _La
Captive_, inspired by Victor Hugo’s lovely poem.
One day I was at Subiaco with Lefebvre, the architect. As he drew, he
knocked over a book with his elbow; it was _Les Orientales_. I picked
it up and it opened at that particular page. Turning to Lefebvre I said:
“If I had any paper I would write music to this exquisite poem; I can
_hear it_.”
“That is soon done,” said he, and he ruled a sheet whereon I wrote my
song. A fortnight later I remembered it and shewed it to Mademoiselle
Vernet, saying:
“I wish you would try this, for I have quite forgotten what it is
like.”
I scribbled a piano accompaniment, and it took so well that, by the end
of the month, M. Vernet, driven nearly mad by its reiteration, said:
“Look here, Berlioz. Next time you go up to the mountains don’t evolve
any more songs; your _Captive_ is making life in the Villa impossible.
I can’t go a yard without hearing it sung or snored or growled. It is
simply distracting! I am going to discharge one of the servants to-day,
and I shall only engage another on condition that he does not sing the
_Captive_.”
The only other thing I did was the _Resurrexit_ that I sent as my
obligatory work to Paris. The Powers said that I had made _great
progress_. As it was simply a piece of the mass performed at St Roch
several years before I got the prize, it does not say much for the
judgment of the Immortals!
_To_ HUMBERT FERRAND.
“_January 1832._--Why did you not tell me of your marriage? Of
course, I believe, since you say so, that you did not get my
letters, but--even so--how could you keep silence?
“Your _Noce des Fées_ is exquisite; so fresh, so full of dainty
grace, but I cannot make music to it yet. Orchestration is not
sufficiently advanced; I must first educate and dematerialise it,
then perhaps I may think of treading in Weber’s footsteps. But
here is my idea for an oratorio--the mere carcase, that you must
vitalise:
“‘The World’s Last Day.’
“The height of civilisation, the depth of corruption, under a
mighty tyrant, throughout the earth.
“A faithful handful of God’s people, left alive by the tyrant’s
contempt, under a prophet, Balthasar, who confronts the ruler
and announces the end of the world. The tyrant, in amused scorn,
forces him to be present at a travesty of the Last Day, but during
its performance, the earth quakes, angels sound gigantic trumpets,
the True Christ appears, the Judgment has come.
* * * * *
“That is all. Tell me if the subject appeals to you. Do not attempt
detail, it is lost in the Opera House. And, if possible, do not be
tied down by the absurd bond of rhyme--use it or not, as seem best.
“I want to leave here in May; if possible, I will get the whole of
my pension; if I cannot I must just go on a tour here. I have just
finished an important article on the state of music in Italy for
the _Revue Européenne_.
* * * * *
“_March._--Many thanks for your confession of colossal idleness.
Will you never be cured?
“You have read me a fine homily, but you are entirely out in your
conjecture.
“I shall never admire ugliness in art. What I said about rhyme was
only to make things easier for you. I could not bear you to waste
time and talent over unnecessary difficulties. You know as well as
I do that, in hundreds of cases, in verses set to music the rhymes
disappear entirely--then why bother about them?
“As for the literary side of the question, I am quite sure it is
only custom and education that make you dislike blank verse.
“Just think! Three quarters of Shakespeare is so written, so
is Klopstock’s _Messiah_. Byron used it, and lately I read a
translation of _Julius Cæsar_ that ran perfectly, although you had
prepared me to be utterly shocked.
“So my subject appeals to you? It is new, grand and fertile, so
imagine into it all that you like. As far as the music is concerned
I am exploring a virgin Brazilian forest and great are the
treasures I hope to find.”
XX
NAPLES--HOME
Again did that wretched malady--call it moral, nervous, imaginary, what
you will, _I_ call it spleen--which is really the fever of loneliness,
seize upon me.
I had first felt it at La Côte Saint-André, when I was sixteen. One
lovely May morning I was sitting in a meadow, under the shade of a
spreading oak, reading Montjoie’s _Manuscript found at Posilippo_.
Engrossed in my story, I only gradually became aware of sweet
and plaintive songs trembling in the breeze. It was the Rogation
procession; in the old time-honoured way, that has always seemed to me
most poetical and touching, the peasants were going round the fields,
praying for the blessing of heaven on their crops. I watched them kneel
before a green-wreathed wooden cross, while the priest blessed the
land, then they passed on, and the sweet voices died in the distance.
Silence--the gentle rustling of the flowering wheat, the faint cry
of the quail to his mate, a dead leaf floating from an oak, the deep
throbbing of my own heart. Life seemed so very far away!
On the horizon the Alpine glaciers shone in the rising sun. Here was
Meylan; far over those mountains lay Italy, Naples, Posilippo--the
whole world of my story. Oh! for the wings of a dove, to leave this
clogging earth-bound body! Oh! for life at its highest and best; for
love, for rapture, for ecstasy; for the clinging clasp of hot embraces!
Love! glory! where is my bright particular star, O my heart? my Stella
Montis? Gone for ever?
Then came the crisis with crushing force. I suffered horribly, rolling
on the earth, spreading wide my empty arms, tearing up handfuls of
grass and daisies--that opened wide their innocent eyes--as I fought my
awful sense of oppression and desolation and bereavement.
Yet what was all this compared to the agony I have suffered since, to
the torment of my soul that increases daily?
I never thought of death; suicide had no place in my mind. I
wanted life, life in its fullest capacity of love and joy and
happiness--furious and all-devouring--life that would use to the
uttermost my superabundant energies.
That is not spleen. Spleen follows upon it; it is the mental, moral and
physical exhaustion that is the inevitable sequence to such a crisis.
* * * * *
One day as I slept, worn out by this reaction, in the laurel wood of
the Villa, rolled up like a hedgehog in a heap of dry leaves, two of my
comrades woke me.
“Now then, Silenus, get up and come to Naples. We’re off.”
“Off to the devil! You know I have no money.”
“Idiot! Can’t we lend you some? Come, Dantan, help me to heave him up
or we shall get no sense out of him. There you are! Brush him down a
bit. Now be off and get a month’s leave from Monsieur Horace.”
And I went.
What shall I say of Naples? Clear bright sky, fecund earth, dazzling
sunlight!
So many have described this lovely land that I need not do it again. I
wandered in the grounds of the Villa Reale, pondering on the woes of
Tasso, and rowed to Nisita to watch the sun go down behind Capo Miseno
to the accompaniment of the thousand minor chords of the rippling sea.
As I stood, a soldier, who spoke very fair French, came up and offered
to show me the curiosities of the island. I accepted gratefully, and
after an hour’s stroll together I took out my purse. Drawing back, he
put my hand aside, saying:
“Monsieur, I want nothing. I ask nothing but--but--that you will pray
God for me.”
“Indeed I will,” I said; “it’s an odd notion, but I will do it.”
And that night I seriously did say a Paternoster for him after I got to
bed. I was beginning a second when I went into fits of laughter. So I
am afraid that, as far as my intervention is concerned, the poor man is
still a plain sergeant.
Next day the wind had freshened, and our passage back was stormy.
However, we landed at last, and my sailors, overjoyed at the thirty
francs I had promised them, insisted on my dining with them. They
were such ruffianly-looking creatures that, when they led me through
a lonely poplar wood, I began to doubt them, poor lazzaroni! However,
we soon came to a cottage where my amphitryons gave orders for the
feast--a mountain of macaroni, into which I plunged my hand with them;
a great pot of Posilippo wine, from which we drank in turn--I after
a toothless old man, the eldest of the family, for, with these good
fellows, respect for age comes before even courtesy to guests.
Then the old man began discussing politics, and talking of King
Joachim, who was very near his heart, until he got so deeply affected
that, to turn his thoughts, his children made him tell me of a long
and dangerous voyage he had once made when, after _three days and
two nights_ at sea, he had been thrown on a far-off island which the
aborigines called Elba, and where it was rumoured Napoleon had once
been kept prisoner. Of course I sympathised, and congratulated the old
man on his wonderful escape.
The young men were greatly delighted at my interest and attention; they
whispered together, there was a mysterious hurrying to and fro, and I
gathered that some surprise was in store.
As I rose to leave, the tallest of the lazzaroni, with shy politeness,
begged me to accept a present, the best they had to offer, calculated
to make the most callous of men weep.
It was a gigantic--onion! which I received with modest dignity worthy
of the occasion, and which I carried off in triumph, after a thousand
vows of eternal friendship.
That night I went to San Carlo, and, for the first time, heard music
in Italy. It was at least meritorious, though the noise made by the
conductor tapping his desk bothered me greatly. I was assured, however,
that without this support, the musicians _could not possibly keep in
time_!
The musical attractions of Naples could not rival those of the
surrounding country, so I passed most of my time in exploring until one
day, breakfasting at Castellamare with Munier, the marine painter, whom
we had christened Neptune, he said:
“What shall we do? I am sick of Naples. Don’t let us go back.”
“Shall we go to Sicily?”
“By all means. Give me time to finish a study I have begun, and I can
catch the five o’clock boat.”
“All right. Let’s see how much money we have.”
Upon investigation there turned out to be enough to take us to Palermo,
but for coming back we should have had to trust to Providence, as the
monks say. So we separated, he to paint the sea, I to walk back to Rome
over the mountains, in company with two Swedish officers whom I knew.
Thus by way of Isola di Sora, Alatri, Subiaco, and Tivoli, and with
but few adventures we got back to the Eternal City, and my life of
stagnation began once more.
I dreamed of Paris, finished my monodrama, and revised the _Symphonie
Fantastique_, then, considering that the time had come to have them
performed, I obtained M. Vernet’s permission to go back to France
before my two years expired. I sat for my portrait, took a last trip
to Tivoli, Albano, and Palestrina; sold my gun, broke my guitar, wrote
in several albums, gave a punch-party to my fellow-students, spent a
lot of time stroking M. Vernet’s two dogs--faithful companions of my
shooting excursions--had an attack of profound sorrow at the thought
that I might see this poetic land no more; climbed into a wretched old
chaise, and then--good-bye to Rome!
I went by Florence, Milan, and Turin, and at last, on the 12th May
1832, coming down the slopes of Mont Cenis, I beheld at my feet that
smiling Grésivaudan valley, where my happiest hours and brightest
dreams of childhood had passed. There was St Eynard, there the house
where shone my Stella Montis; there, through the shimmering blue haze,
my grandfather’s place bade me welcome. Surely Italy had naught to show
as lovely as this! Yet what is this strange oppression on my heart?
Afar I hear the dull and ominous murmur of Paris commanding my presence.
_To_ FERDINAND HILLER.
“FLORENCE, _May 1832_.--I arrived yesterday, and found
your letter. Why do you not say whether the sale of my medal
realised enough to pay the two hundred francs I owe you?
“I left Rome without regret. The Academy life had grown
intolerable, and I spent all my evenings with the Director’s
family, who have been most kind. Mademoiselle Vernet is prettier,
and her father younger than ever.
“I am glad to be here, yet my sensations are so curiously confused
that I cannot explain them even to myself. I know no one, have no
adventures, am utterly alone. Perhaps that is what affects me so
oddly. I seem to be not myself but some stranger--some Russian or
Englishman--sauntering along the Lung ‘Arno. Berlioz is merely a
distant acquaintance.
“This cursed throat of mine is still troublesome; it would be the
death of me if I would allow it.
“I shall not be in Paris till November or December, as I go
straight home from here. Many thanks for your invitation to
Frankfort; sooner or later I mean to accept it.”
_To_ MADAME HORACE VERNET.
“LA CÔTE ST ANDRÉ, _July 1832_.--You have set me, Madame,
a new and most agreeable task.
“An intellectual woman not only desires that I should write her my
musings, but undertakes to read them without emphasizing too much
their ridiculous side.
“It is hardly generous of me to take advantage of your kindness,
but are we not all selfish?
“For my part, I must own that whenever such a temptation comes I
shall fall into it with the utmost alacrity.
“I should have done so sooner had I not, on my descent from the
Alps, been caught like a ball on the bound and tossed from villa to
villa round Grenoble.