We were extremely busy, for a little while, in preparing a box of
presents, and when it was despatched we began seriously to anticipate
our awful, glorious festival; we began to have leisure to contemplate
it. It was a delightful dream, amidst that dream, to reflect that we
should see them all then, for Seraphael sent us word, in his grateful
reply to our enclosures, that both his children and their mother would
accompany him. Meantime, I was very anxious to spread the news abroad,
and most extraordinary appointments were made by all kinds of people
to secure places. I began to think, and had I been in Germany should,
of course, have settled to my own satisfaction, that the performances
must be in the open air, after all, such crowds demanded admittance so
early as early in June. It was for the last week in July that our
triple day was fixed, and in the second week of June the long-expected
treasure, the exclusive compositions, arrived from Lilienstadt. Davy
was one of the committee called immediately, and I awaited, in
unuttered longing, his return, to hear our glorious doom.
He came back almost wild. I was quite alarmed, and told him so.
"Charles," he said, "there is almost reason; so am I, myself, in fact.
Just listen to the contents of the parcel received,--an oratorio for
the first morning (such a subject, 'Heaven and Earth'!); a cantata for
a double choir; an organ symphony, with interludes for voices only; a
sonata for the violin; a group of songs and fancies. The last are for
the evenings; but otherwise the evenings are to be filled with Bach,
Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel,--the programmes already made out. How
is it possible, Charles, that such progress can have been condensed
into a few mere months? Think of the excitement, the unmitigated
stress of such an industry! Three completed works in less than a
quarter of a year, not to speak of the lesser wonders!"
It seemed to affect Davy's brain; as for me, I felt sure the works had
stirred,--as the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters, before the
intermomentary light, long ages, as we reckon in this world's
computation, before they framed themselves into form. Nor was this
conviction lessened when I first became acquainted with the new-born
glories of an imagination on fire of heaven.
Seraphael came to England, and of course northwards, to superintend
the earliest rehearsals; it was his own wish to do so, and every one
felt it necessary to be introduced by him alone to what came alone of
him. Those were strange times,--I do not seem to have lived them,
though in fact I was bodily present in that hall, consecrated by the
passion of a child. But they were wild hours; all tempest-tossed was
my spirit amidst the rush of a manifold enthusiasm.
Seraphael was so anxious to be at his home again that the rehearsals
were conducted daily. He was to return again, having departed, for
their ultimate fulfilment. It appeared very remarkable that he should
not have taken the whole affair at once, have brought his family over
then, and there remained; but upon the subject he was unapproachable,
only saying, with relation to his arduous life just then and then to
be, that he could not be too much occupied to please himself.
He did not stay in our house this time; we could not press him to do
so, for he was evidently in that state to which the claims of
friendship may become a burden instead of a beguiling joy. He was
alone greatly at his hotel, though I can for myself say that in his
intercourse with me, his gentleness towards me was so sweet that I
dare not remind myself of it. Still, in all he said and did there was
something seeming to be that was not; an indescribable want of
interest in the charms of existence which he had ever drawn into his
bosom,--a constant endeavor to rouse from a manifest abstraction.
Notwithstanding, he still wore the air of the most perfect health, nor
did I construe those signs, except into the fact of his being absent
from his new-found, his endeared and delighted home. He left us so
suddenly that I was only just in time to see him off. He would not
permit me to accompany him to London, from whence he should instantly
embark; but it was a letter from Clara that really hastened his
departure,--his babes were ill. I could not gain from him the least
idea of their affection, nor whether there was cause for fear; his
face expressed alarm, but had an unutterable look besides,--a look
which certainly astonished me, for it might have bespoken
indifference, as it might bespeak despair. One smile I caught as he
departed, that was neither indifferent nor desolate; it wrung my heart
with happiness to reflect that smile had been for me.
The feeling I had for those unknown babies was inexplicable after he
was fairly gone. That I should have loved them, though unseen, was
scarcely strange, for they were the offspring of the two I loved best
on earth; but I longed and languished for one glimpse of their baby
faces just in proportion to the haunting certainty which clutched me
that those baby faces I should never see. Their beauty had been
Seraphael's only inspiration when, in conversation with me, he had
fully seemed himself: the one so light and clear, with eyes as the
blue of midnight,--his brow, her eyes; the other soft and roseate,
with her angel forehead and his own star-like gaze,--her smile upon
them both, and the features both of him. As one who reads of the
slaughtered darlings in the days of Herod, as one who pores on
chronicles of the cradle plague-smitten, I felt for them; they seemed
never to have been born, to me.
Oh, that they had never been born, indeed! At least, there was one
while I thought so. We had a heart-rending letter from Clara one
fortnight after her lord returned to her: the twins were both dead,
and by that time both buried in the same grave. With her pure
self-forgetfulness where another suffered, she spoke no word of her
own sorrow, but she could not conceal from us how fearfully the blow
had fallen upon him. The little she said made us all draw close
together and tremble with an emotion we could not confess. But the
letter concluded with an assurance of his supreme and undaunted
intention, undisturbed by the shocks and agonies of unexpected woe, to
undertake the conductorship of the festival. The sorrow that now
shadowed expectations which had been too bright, tempered also our
joy, too keen till then. But after a week or two, when we received no
further tidings, we began absolutely to expect him, and with a
stronger anticipation--infatuation--than ever, built upon a future
which no man may dare to call his own, either for good or evil. The
hottest summer I had ever known interfered not with the industry alike
of band and chorus. The intense beauty of the music and its
marvellous embodiments had fascinated the very country far and wide;
it was as if art stood still and waited even for him who had magnified
her above the trumpery standards of her precedented progress.
We were daily expecting a significant assurance that he was on our
very shores. I was myself beginning to tremble in the air of sorrow
that must necessarily surround them both, himself and his companion,
when, one morning,--I forget the date; may I never remember it!--I was
reflecting upon the contents of a paper which Davy took in every
week,--a chronicle of musical events, which I ransacked
conscientiously, though it was seldom much to the purpose. Strangely
enough, I had been reading of the success of another friend of
mine,--even Laura, who had not denied herself the privilege of
artist-masonry after all, for she was dancing amidst flowers and fairy
elements, and I was determining I would, at the first opportunity, go
to see her. Then I considered I should like her to come to the
festival, and was making up a letter of requests to my ever-generous
friend, Miss Lawrence, that she might bring Laura, as I knew she would
be willing, when a letter came for me, was brought by an unconscious
servant and laid between my hands. It was in Clara's writing, once
again. I was coward enough to spare myself a few moments. There was no
one in the room; I was just on the wing to my band, but I could not
help still sparing myself a little, and a very little, longer. I
believe I knew as well what was in the letter as if I had opened it
before I broke the seal. I believe terror and intense presentiment
lent me that stillness and steadiness of perception which are the very
empyrean of sorrow. Enough! I opened it at last, and found it exactly
as I had expected,--Seraphael himself was ill. The hurry and trouble
of the letter induced me to believe there was more behind her words
than in them, mournful and unsatisfactory as they were. He was, as he
believed himself to be, overwrought; and though he considered himself
in no peril, he must have quiet. This struck me most; it was all over
if he felt he must have quiet. But the stunning point was that he
deputed his friend Lenhart Davy to the conductorship of his own
works,--the concerts all being arranged by himself in preparation, and
nothing but a director being required. Clara concluded by asking me to
come to her if I could. She did not say he wished to see me, but I
knew she wished to see me herself; and even for his sake that call was
enough for me.
My duties, my intentions, all lay in the dust. I considered but how to
make way thither with the speed that one fain would change to wind, to
lightning, or yoke to them as steeds. I packed up nothing, nor did I
leave a single trace of myself behind, except Clara's letter and a
postscript, in pencil, of my own. I was in my mother's house when the
letter came upon me; and flying past Davy's on my way to the railroad,
I saw Millicent with Carlotta looking out of one of the windows, all
framed in roses. It was a sight I merely recall as we recall touches
of pathos to medicine us for deeper sorrow. Two days and nights I
travelled incessantly, without information or help, solitary as a
pilgrim who is wandering from home to heaven; it could be nothing
else, I knew. The burning, glowing summer, the tossing forests, the
corn-fields yet unravished, the glory on the crested lime-trees, the
vines smothering rock and wall and terrace with fruit of life,--all
these I saw, and many other dreams, as a dream myself I passed. I
only know I seemed taking the whole world. So wide the scattered
sensations spread themselves that I dared not call home to myself; for
they did but minister to the perfect appreciation that what I dreamed
was true, and what I yearned to clasp as truth a dream.
The city of his home was before me,--but how can I call it a city? It
was a nest itself in a nest of hills. Below the river rushed, its
music ever in a sleep, and its blue waves softened hyaline by
distance. In the last sunset smile I saw the river and the valley, the
vines at hand crawled over it, and there was not a house around that
was not veiled in flowers. When I entered the valley from below, the
purple evening had drowned the sunset as with a sea, there was no mist
nor cloud, the starlight was all pure, it brightened moment by moment.
And having hurried all along till now, at length I rested. For now I
felt that of all I had ever endured, the approaching crisis was the
consummation. Had I dared, I would have returned; for I even desired
not to advance. My own utter impotence, my unavailing presence,
weighed me down, and the might of my passion ensphered me as did that
distant starlight,--I was as nothing to itself. I had shed no tears.
Tears I have ever found the springs of gladness, and grief most dry.
But who could weep in that breathless expectation? who would not, when
he cannot, rejoice to weep? Brighter than I had ever seen them, the
stars shone on me; and brighter and brighter they seemed to burn
through the crystal clarity of my perception: my ear felt open, I
heard sounds born of silence which, indeed, were no sounds, but
_themselves_ silence. I saw the unknown which, indeed, could not be
seen; and thus I waited, suspended in the midst of time, yearning for
some heaven to open and take me in. Whatever air stirred was soft as
the pulse of sleep; whatever sigh it carried was a sigh of flowers,
late summer sweetness, first autumn sadness, poured into faint
embrace. I saw the church-tower in the valley, it reached me as a
dream. All was a dream round about,--the dark shade of the terraced
houses, the shadier trees; and I myself the dreamer, to whom those
stars above, those heights so unimaginable, were the only waking day.
At midnight I had not moved, and at midnight I dreamed another dream,
still standing there.
The midnight hour had struck, and died along the valley into the
quiet, when a sudden gathering gleam behind a distant rock rose like a
red moonlight and tinged the very sky. But there was no moon, and I
felt afraid and child-like. I was obliged to watch to ascertain. It
grew into a glare, that gleam,--the glare of fire; and slowly, stilly
as even in a dream indeed, wound about the rock and passed down along
the valley a dark procession, bearing torches, with a darker in the
midst of them than they.
Down the valley to the church they came: I knew they were for resting
there. No bell caught up the silence, I heard no tramp of feet, they
might have been spirits for all the sound they made; and when at last
they paused beneath me in the night, the torches streamed all
steadily, and rained their flaming smiles upon the imagery in the
midst.
That bier was carried proudly, as of a warrior called from deadly
strife to death's own sleep. But not as warrior's its ornaments, its
crown. The velvet folds passed beneath into the dark grass as they
paused, as storm-clouds rolling softly, as gloom itself at rest. But
above, from the face of the bier, the darkness fled away,--it was
covered with a mask of flowers. Wreath within wreath lay there, hue
within hue, from virgin white and hopeful azure to the youngest blush
of love. And in the very midst, next the pale roses and their tender
green, a garland of the deepest crimson glowed, leafless, brilliant,
vivid; the full petals, the orb-like glory, gave out such splendors to
the flame-light that the fresh first youth's blood of a dauntless
heart was alone the suggestion of its symbol. Keenly in the distance
the clear vision, the blaze of softness, reached me. I stirred not, I
rushed not forwards; I joined in the dread feast afar. I stood as
between the living and the dead,--the dead below, the living with the
stars above,--and the plague of my heart was stayed.
I waited until the bier, bare of its gentle burden, stood lonely by
the grave. I waited until the wreaths, flung in, covered the treasure
with their kisses that was a jewel for earth to hide. I saw the
torches thrown into the abyss, quenched by the kisses of the flowers,
even as the earthly joy, the beauty, had been quenched in that abyss
of light which to us is only darkness. I watched the black shadows
draw closer round the grave; one suffocating cry arose, as if all
hearts were broken in that spasm, or as if Music herself had given up
the ghost. _But Music never dies._ In reply to that sickening shout,
as if, indeed, a heaven opened to receive me, a burst, a peal, a shock
of transcendent music fell from some distant height. I saw no sign the
while I heard, nor was it a mourning strain. Triumphant, jubilant,
sublime in seraph sweetness, joy immortal, it mingled into the arms of
Night. While yet its echoes rang, another strain made way, came forth
to meet it, and melted into its embrace, as jubilant as blissful, but
farther, fainter, more ineffable. Again it yielded to the echoes; but
above those echoes swelled another, a softer, and yet another and a
softer voice, that was but the mingling of many voices, now far and
far away. Distantly, dyingly, till death drank distance up, the music
wandered. And at length, when the mystic spell was broken, and I could
hear no more, I could only believe it still went on and on, sounding
through all the earth, beyond my ear, and rising up to heaven from
shores of lands untraversed as that country beyond the grave! All
peace came there upon me; as a waveless deep it welled up and upwards
from my spirit, till I dared no longer sorrow: my love was
dispossessed of fear, and the demon Despair, exorcised, fled as one
who wept and fain would hide his weeping. And yet that hope, if hope
it could be, that cooled my heart and cheered my spirit, was not a
hope of earth. My faith had fleeted as an angel into the light, and
that hope alone stayed by me.
It was not until the next morning, and then not early, that I visited
that house and the spirit now within it whose living voice had called
me thither. No longer timidly, if most tenderly, I advanced along the
valley, past the church which guarded now the spot on all this earth
the most like heaven, and found the mansion, now untenanted, that
Heaven itself had robbed. Quiet stillness--not as of death, but most
like new-born wonder--possessed that house. The overhanging balconies,
the sunburst on the garden, the fresh carnations, the carved gateway,
the shaded window, and over all the cloudless sky, and around, all
that breathed and lived,--it was a lay beyond all poetry, and such a
melancholy may never music utter. Thoné took me in, and I believe she
had waited for me at the door. She spoke not, and I spoke not; she led
me only forwards with the air of one who feels all words are lost
between those who understand but cannot benefit each other. She led
me to a room in which she left me; but I was not to be alone. I saw
Clara instantly,--she came to meet me from the window, unchanged as
the summer-land without by the tension or the touch of trouble. I
could not possibly believe, as I saw her, and seeing her felt my
courage flow back, my life resume its current, that she had ever
really suffered. Her face so calm was not pale; her eye so clear was
tearless. Nor was there that writhing smile about her lovely lips that
is more agonizing than any tears. It was entirely in vain I tried to
speak,--had she required comfort, my words would have thronged at my
will; but if any there required comfort, it could not be herself.
Seeing my fearful agitation, which would work through all my silence,
her sweet voice startled me; I listened as to an angel, or as to an
angel I should never have listened.
"If I had known how it would be, I would never have been so rash as to
send for you. But he was so strange--for he did not suffer--that I
could not think he was going to die. I do not call it dying, nor would
you if you had seen it. I wish I could make that darling feel such
death was better than to live."
I put a constraint upon myself which no other presence could have
brought me to exhibit.
"What darling, then?" said I; for I could only think of one who was
darling as well as king.
"Poor Starwood! But you will be able to comfort him,--you are the only
person who could."
"Perhaps it would not be kind to comfort him; perhaps he would rather
suffer. But I will do my best to please you. Where is he now?"
"I will bring him;" and she left the room.
In another moment, all through the sunny light that despite the shaded
windows streamed through the very shade, she entered again with
Starwood. He flew at me and sank upon the ground. I have seen
women--many--weep, and some few men; but I have never seen, and may I
never see! such weeping as he wept. Tears--as if tropic rains should
drench our Northern gardens--seemed dissolving with his very life his
gentle temperament. I could not rouse nor raise him. His sodden hair,
his hands as damp as death, his dreadful sobs, his moans of misery,
his very crushed and helpless attitude, appealed to me not in vain;
for I felt at once it was the only thing to do for him that he should
be suffered to weep till he was satisfied, or till he could weep no
more. And yet his tears provoked not mine, but rather drove them
inwards and froze them to my heart. Nor did Clara weep; but I could
not absolutely say whether she had already wept or not,--for where
other eyes grow dim, hers grew only brighter; and weeping--had she
wept--had only cleared her heaven. We sat for hours in that room
together,--that fair but dreadful room, its brilliant furniture
unworn, its frescos delicate as any dream, its busts, its pictures,
crowding calm lights and glorious colors, all fresh as the face of
Nature, with home upon its every look; save only where the organ
towered, and muffling in dark velvet its keys and pipes, reminded us
that music had left home for heaven, and we might no more find it
there!
And again it was longed-for evening,--the twilight tarried not. It
crept, it came, it fell upon the death-struck, woful valley. O blessed
hour,--the repose alike of passion and of grief! O blessed heaven! to
have softened the mystic change from day to darkness so that we can
bear them both,--never so blessed as when the broken-hearted seek thy
twilights and find refreshment in thy shades! At that hour we two
alone stood together by the glorious grave. For the first time, as the
sun descended, Starwood had left off weeping. I had myself put him in
his bed, and rested beside him till he was asleep; then I had returned
to Clara. She was wrapped in black, waiting for me. We went together
without speaking, without signifying our intentions to each other; but
we both took the same way, and stood, where I have said, together; and
when we had kissed the ground she spoke. She had not spoken all the
day,--most grave and serious had been her air; she yet looked more as
a child that had lost its father than a widowed wife,--as if she had
never been married, she struck me: an almost virgin air possessed her,
an unserene reserve, for now her accents faltered.
"I could not say to you till we were alone," she said,--"and we could
not be alone to-day,--how much I thank you for coming; so many persons
are to be here in a day or two, and I wish to consult with you."
"I will see them all for you, I will arrange everything; but you are
not going away?"
"Going away? And you to say so, too! I will never leave this place
until I die!"
"You love him, then, thank God!"
"Love him! Shall I tell you how? You know best what it was to love
him, for you loved him best,--better than I did; and yet I loved him
with all love. Do I look older, and more like this world, or less?"
She smiled a sweet significance,--a smile she had learned from him.
"I have been thinking how young you look,--too young, almost. You are
so fresh, so child-like, and--may I say it?--so fair."
"You may say anything. I think I have grown fairer myself. Very
strange to confess, is it? But you are my friend,--to you I should
confess anything. I have been with a spirit-angel,--no wonder I am
fresh. I have been in heaven,--no wonder I am fair. I felt myself grow
better hour by hour. After I left you with him, when his arms were
round me, when he kissed me, when his tenderness oppressed me,--I felt
raised to God. No heart ever was so pure, so overflowing with the
light of heaven. I can only believe I have been in heaven, and have
fallen here,--not that he has left me, and I must follow him to find
him. I will not follow yet, my friend! I have much to do that he has
left me."
"Thank God, you will not leave us,--but more, because you love him,
and made him happy!"
"You do not, perhaps, know that he was never anything but happy. When
I think of discontent and envy and hatred and anger and care, and see
them painted upon other faces, I feel that he must have tasted heaven
to have made himself so happy here. I can fancy a single taste of
heaven, sir, lasting a whole life long."
She was his taste of heaven, as a foretaste even to me! But had she,
indeed, never learned the secret of his memory, or had she turned,
indeed, its darkness into light?
"I wish to hear about the last."
"You know nearly as much as I do, or as I can tell you. You remember
the music you heard last night? It was the last he wrote, and I found
it and saved it, and had done with it what you heard."
But I cannot descant on death-beds; it is the only theme which I dare
believe, if I were to touch, would scare me at my dying hour. I will
not tamper with those scenes, but console myself by reminding that if
the time had been, and that, too, lately, when upon that brain fell
the light in fever and the sun in fire, the time was over; and
sightless, painless, deaf to the farewells of dying music, he, indeed,
could not be said to _suffer_ death.
Nor did he _know_ to suffer it, as he had said. The crown that,
piercing with its _fiery thorns_ unfelt, had pressed into his brow the
death-sting, should also crown with its _star-flowers_ the waking unto
life.
* * * * *
"You remember what you said, Mr. Auchester, that he needed a
'companion for his earthly hours:' I tried to be his companion,--he
allowed me to be so; and one of the last times he spoke he said:
'Thank Carl for giving you to me.'"
That echo reaches me from the summer-night of sadness and still
communion, of _passion's slumber by the dead_. It is now some years
ago; but never was any love so fresh to the spirit it enchanted, as is
the enchantment of this sorrow, still mine own. So be it ever mine,
till all shall be forever!
I am in England, and again at home. Great changes have swept the
earth; I know of none within myself. Through all convulsions the music
whispers to me _that music is_. I ought to believe in its existence,
for it is my own life and the life of the living round me. Davy is
still at work, but not alone in hope,--sometimes in the midst of
triumph. They tell me I shall never grow rich, but with my violin I
shall never be poor. I have more than enough for everything, as far
as I myself am concerned; and as for those I love, there is not one
who prospers not, even by means of music.
Starwood has been three years in London. His name, enfolded in another
name, brought the whole force of music to his feet. It is not easy to
procure lessons of the young professor, who can only afford twenty
minutes to the most exacting pupil. It is still less easy to hear him
play in public, for he has a will of his own, and will only play what
he likes, and only what he likes to the people he likes; for he is a
bit of a cynic, and does not believe, half so much as I do, that music
is making way. He married his first feminine pupil,--a girl of almost
fabulous beauty. I believe he gave her half-a-dozen lessons before the
crisis,--not any afterwards; and I know that he was seventeen and she
fifteen years of age at the time they married.[10] His whole nature is
spent upon her; but she is kind enough to like me, and thus I
sometimes receive an invitation, which I should accept did they reside
in the moon.
But I have other London friends. After two seasons, more satisfactory
than brilliant, Laura retired from the stage. During the time she
danced, her name was scarcely whispered,--I believe she was even
feared in her spiritual exaltation of her art; but no sooner had she
left the lights than all critics and contemporaries discovered her
excellences. She was wooed with the white-flower garlands of the
purest honor, with the gold so few despised, to return and resume her
career, now certain fame; but she was never won, and I have since
made clear to myself that she only danced in public until she had
raised a certain capital, for you will only find her now in her
graceful drawing-room where London is most secluded, surrounded by the
most graceful and loveliest of the children of the peerage. No one but
Mademoiselle Lauretta--her stage and professional name--prepares the
little rarities for transplantation into the court-garden, or
rehearses the quadrille for the Prince of Wales's birthnight-ball. I
believe Miss Lemark, as she is known still to me, or even Laura, might
have had many homes if she had chosen,--homes where she could not but
have felt at home. Clara was even importunate that she should live
with her in Germany; Miss Lawrence was excessively indignant at being
refused herself; and there have been worthy gentlemen, shades not to
be invoked or recognized, who would have been very thankful to be
allowed to dream of that pale brow veiled, those clear eyes downcast,
those tapering fingers twined in theirs. But Laura, like myself, will
_never_ marry.
For Miss Lawrence, too, that glorious friend of mine, I must have a
little corner. It was Miss Lawrence who carried to Laura the news of
Seraphael's death,--herself heart-broken, who bound up that bleeding
heart. It is Miss Lawrence whose secretive and peculiar generosity so
permeates the heart of music in London that no true musician is
actually ever poor. It is Miss Lawrence who, disdaining
subscription-lists, steps unseen through every embarrassment where
those languish who are too proud or too humble to complain, and leaves
that behind her which re-assures and re-establishes by the magic of
charity strewn from her artist-hand. It is Miss Lawrence who discerns
the temporality of art to be that which is as inevitable as its
spiritual necessity; who yet ministers to its uttermost spiritual
appreciation by her patronage of the highest only. It is Miss Lawrence
you see wherever music is to be heard, with her noble brow and
sublimely beneficent eyes, her careless costume, and music-beaming
lips; but you cannot know, as I do, what it is to have her for a
friend.
Miss Lawrence certainly lost caste by receiving and entertaining, as
she did, Mademoiselle Lauretta; for both when Laura was dancing before
the public and had done with so dancing, Miss Lawrence would insist
upon her appearing at every party or assembly she gave,--whether with
her father's sanction or without, nobody knew. To be introduced to a
ballet-girl, or even a dancing-lady, at the same table or upon the
same carpet with barristers and baronets, with golden-hearted bankers
and "earnest" men of letters!--she certainly lost caste by her
resolute unconventionalism, did my friend Miss Lawrence. But then, as
she said to me, "What in life does it matter about losing caste with
people who have no caste to lose?" She writes to me continually, and
her house is my home in London. I have never been able to make her
confess that she sent me my violin; but I know she did, for her
interest in me can only be explained on that ground, and there is that
look upon her face, whenever I play, which assures me of something
associated in her mind and memory with my playing that is not itself
music.
Miss Lawrence also corresponds with Clara, and Clara sees us too; but
no one, seeing her, would believe her to be childless and alone. She
is more beautiful than ever, and not less calm,--more loving and more
beloved.
We had Florimond Anastase a concert-player at our very last festival.
He was exactly like the young Anastase who taught me, and I should not
have been able to believe him older but for his companion, a young
lady, who sat below him in the audience, and at whom I could only
gaze. It was Josephine Cerinthia, no longer a child, but still a
prodigy, for she has the finest voice, it is said, in Europe. No one
will hear it, however, for Anastase, who adopted her eight years ago,
makes her life the life of a princess, or as very few princesses' can
be; he works for her, he saves for her, and has already made her rich.
They say he will marry her by and by; it may be so, but I do not
myself believe it.
Near the house in which Seraphael died, and rising as from the ashes
of his tomb, is another house which holds his name, and will ever hold
it to be immortal. Sons and daughters of his own are there,--of his
land, his race, his genius,--those whom music has "called" and
"chosen" from the children of humanity. The grandeur of the
institution, its stupendous scale, its intention, its consummation,
afford, to the imagination that enshrines him, the only monument that
would not insult his name. Nor is that temple without its priestess,
that altar without its angel. She who devoted the wealth of his wisdom
to that work gave up the treasure of her life besides, and has
consecrated herself to its superintendence. At the monumental school
she would be adored, but that she is too much loved as children
love,--too much at home there to be feared. I hold her as my passion
forever; she makes my old years young in memory, and to every new
morning of my life her name is Music. With another name--not dearer,
but as dear--she is indissolubly connected; and if I preserve my
heart's first purity, it is to them I owe it.
I write no more. Had I desired to treat of music specifically, I
should not have written at all; for that theme demands a tongue beyond
the tongues of men and angels,--a voice that is no more heard. But if
one faithful spirit find an echo in my expression, to his beating
heart for music, his inward song of praise, it is not in vain that I
write, that what I have written is written.
CHARLES AUCHESTER.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] Sterndale Bennett married Mary Anne, daughter of Captain James
Wood, R. N.
THE END.