voice was sympathetic and well in tune, and the sentiment simple,
tender, and sincere.
Or else, with a good rolling jingo bass, it was,
"'Earts o' hoak are our ships; 'earts o' hoak are our men;
And we'll fight and we'll conkwer agen and agen!"
And no imperfection of accent, in Little Billee's estimation, subtracted
one jot from the manly British pluck that found expression in these
noble sentiments--nor added one tittle to their swaggering, blatant, and
idiotically aggressive vulgarity!
Well, the song finishes with general applause all round. Then the
chairman says, "Your 'ealth and song, sir!" And drinks, and all do the
same.
Then Mr. Vice asks, "What shall we 'ave the pleasure of saying, sir,
after that very nice 'armony?"
[Illustration: THE CHAIRMAN]
And the blushing vocalist, if he knows the ropes, replies, "A roast
leg o' mutton in Newgate, and nobody to eat it!" Or else, "May 'im as is
going up the 'ill o' prosperity never meet a friend coming down!" Or
else, "'Ere's to 'er as shares our sorrers and doubles our joys!" Or
else, "'Ere's to 'er as shares our joys and doubles our expenses!" and
so forth.
More drink, more applause, and many 'ear, 'ears. And Mr. Vice says to
the singer: "You call, sir. Will you be so good as to call on some other
gen'l'man for a 'armony?" And so the evening goes on.
And nobody was more quickly popular at such gatherings, or sang better
songs, or proposed more touching sentiments, or filled either chair or
vice-chair with more grace and dignity than Little Billee. Not even
Dodor or l'Zouzou could have beaten him at that.
And he was as happy, as genial, and polite, as much at his ease, in
these humble gatherings as in the gilded saloons of the great, where
grand-pianos are, and hired accompanists, and highly-paid singers, and a
good deal of talk while they sing.
So his powers of quick, wide, universal sympathy grew and grew, and made
up to him a little for his lost power of being specially fond of special
individuals. For he made no close friends among men, and ruthlessly
snubbed all attempts at intimacy--all advances towards an affection
which he felt he could not return; and more than one enthusiastic
admirer of his talent and his charm was forced to acknowledge that, with
all his gifts, he seemed heartless and capricious; as ready to drop you
as he had been to take you up.
He loved to be wherever he could meet his kind, high or low; and felt as
happy on a penny steamer as on the yacht of a millionaire--on the
crowded knife-board of an omnibus as on the box-seat of a nobleman's
drag--happier; he liked to feel the warm contact of his fellow-man at
either shoulder and at his back, and didn't object to a little honest
grime! And I think all this genial caressing love of his kind, this
depth and breath of human sympathy, are patent in all his work.
On the whole, however, he came to prefer for society that of the best
and cleverest of his own class--those who live and prevail by the
professional exercise of their own specially trained and highly educated
wits, the skilled workmen of the brain--from the Lord Chief-Justice of
England downward--the salt of the earth, in his opinion: and stuck to
them.
There is no class so genial and sympathetic as _our own_, in the
long-run--even if it be but the criminal class! none where the welcome
is likely to be so genuine and sincere, so easy to win, so difficult to
outstay, if we be but decently pleasant and successful; none where the
memory of us will be kept so green (if we leave any memory at all!).
So Little Billee found it expedient, when he wanted rest and play, to
seek them at the houses of those whose rest and play were like his
own--little halts in a seeming happy life-journey, full of toil and
strain and endeavor; oases of sweet water and cooling shade, where the
food was good and plentiful, though the tents might not be of cloth of
gold; where the talk was of something more to his taste than court or
sport or narrow party politics; the new beauty; the coming match of the
season; the coming ducal conversion to Rome; the last elopement in high
life--the next! and where the music was that of the greatest
music-makers that can be, who found rest and play in making better music
for love than they ever made for hire--and were listened to as they
should be, with understanding and religious silence, and all the fervent
gratitude they deserved.
There were several such houses in London then--and are still--thank
Heaven! And Little Billee had his little billet there--and there he was
wont to drown himself in waves of lovely sound, or streams of clever
talk, or rivers of sweet feminine adulation, seas! oceans!--a somewhat
relaxing bath!--and forget for a while his everlasting chronic plague of
heart-insensibility, which no doctor could explain or cure, and to which
he was becoming gradually resigned--as one does to deafness or blindness
or locomotor ataxia--for it had lasted nearly five years! But now and
again, during sleep, and in a blissful dream, the lost power of
loving--of loving mother, sister, friend--would be restored to him; just
as with a blind man who sometimes dreams he has recovered his sight; and
the joy of it would wake him to the sad reality: till he got to know,
even in his dream, that he was only dreaming, after all, whenever that
priceless boon seemed to be his own once more--and did his utmost not to
wake. And these were nights to be marked with a white stone, and
remembered!
And nowhere was he happier than at the houses of the great surgeons and
physicians who interested themselves in his strange disease. When the
Little Billees of this world fall ill, the great surgeons and physicians
(like the great singers and musicians) do better for them, out of mere
love and kindness, than for the princes of the earth, who pay them
thousand-guinea fees and load them with honors.
* * * * *
And of all these notable London houses none was pleasanter than that of
Cornelys the great sculptor, and Little Billee was such a favorite in
that house that he was able to take his friends Taffy and the Laird
there the very day they came to London.
First of all they dined together at a delightful little Franco-Italian
pothouse near Leicester Square, where they had bouillabaisse (imagine
the Laird's delight), and spaghetti, and a poulet rôti, which is _such_
a different affair from a roast fowl! and salad, which Taffy was allowed
to make and mix himself; and they all smoked just where they sat, the
moment they had swallowed their food--as had been their way in the good
old Paris days.
That dinner was a happy one for Taffy and the Laird, with their Little
Billee apparently unchanged--as demonstrative, as genial, and caressing
as ever, and with no swagger to speak of; and with so many things to
talk about that were new to them, and of such delightful interest! They
also had much to say--but they didn't say very much about Paris, for
fear of waking up Heaven knows what sleeping dogs!
And every now and again, in the midst of all this pleasant foregathering
and communion of long-parted friends, the pangs of Little Billee's
miserable mind-malady would shoot through him like poisoned arrows.
He would catch himself thinking how fat and fussy and serious about
trifles Taffy had become; and what a shiftless, feckless, futile duffer
was the Laird; and how greedy they both were, and how red and coarse
their ears and gills and cheeks grew as they fed, and how shiny their
faces; and how little he would care, try as he might, if they both fell
down dead under the table! And this would make him behave more
caressingly to them, more genially and demonstratively than ever--for he
knew it was all a grewsome physical ailment of his own, which he could
no more help than a cataract in his eye!
Then, catching sight of his own face and form in a mirror, he would
curse himself for a puny, misbegotten shrimp, an imp--an abortion--no
bigger, by the side of the herculean Taffy or the burly Laird of
Cockpen, than six-pennorth o' half-pence: a wretched little overrated
follower of a poor trivial craft--a mere light amuser! For what did
pictures matter, or whether they were good or bad, except to the
triflers who painted them, the dealers who sold them, the idle,
uneducated, purse-proud fools who bought them and stuck them up on their
walls because they were told!
And he felt that if a dynamite shell were beneath the table where they
sat, and its fuse were smoking under their very noses, he would neither
wish to warn his friends nor move himself. He didn't care a d----!
And all this made him so lively and brilliant in his talk, so
fascinating and droll and witty, that Taffy and the Laird wondered at
the improvement success and the experience of life had wrought in him,
and marvelled at the happiness of his lot, and almost found it in their
warm, affectionate hearts to feel a touch of envy!
[Illustration: A HAPPY DINNER]
Oddly enough, in a brief flash of silence, "entre la poire et le
fromage," they heard a foreigner at an adjoining table (one of a very
noisy group) exclaim: "Mais quand je vous dis que j'l'ai entendue, moi,
la Svengali! et même qu'elle a chanté l'Impromptu de Chopin absolument
comme si c'était un piano qu'on jouait! voyons!..."
"Farceur! la bonne blague!" said another--and then the conversation
became so noisily general it was no good listening any more.
"Svengali! how funny that name should turn up! I wonder what's become of
_our_ Svengali, by-the-way?" observed Taffy.
"I remember _his_ playing Chopin's Impromptu," said Little Billee; "what
a singular coincidence!"
There were to be more coincidences that night; it never rains them but
it pours!
So our three friends finished their coffee and liqueured up, and went to
Cornelys's, three in a hansom--
"Like Mars,
A-smokin' their poipes and cigyars."
Sir Louis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden
Hill, a house of many windows; and whichever window he looks out of, he
sees his own garden and very little else. In spite of his eighty years,
he works as hard as ever, and his hand has lost but little of its
cunning. But he no longer gives those splendid parties that made him
almost as famous a host as he was an artist.
[Illustration: "A-SMOKIN' THEIR POIPES AND CIGYARS"]
When his beautiful wife died he shut himself up from the world; and
now he never stirs out of his house and grounds except to fulfil his
duties at the Royal Academy and dine once a year with the Queen.
It was very different in the early sixties. There was no pleasanter or
more festive house than his in London, winter or summer--no lordlier
host than he--no more irresistible hostesses than Lady Cornelys and her
lovely daughters; and if ever music had a right to call itself divine,
it was there you heard it--on late Saturday nights during the London
season--when the foreign birds of song come over to reap their harvest
in London Town.
It was on one of the most brilliant of these Saturday nights that Taffy
and the Laird, chaperoned by Little Billee, made their début at Mechelen
Lodge, and were received at the door of the immense music-room by a
tall, powerful man with splendid eyes and a gray beard, and a small
velvet cap on his head--and by a Greek matron so beautiful and stately
and magnificently attired that they felt inclined to sink them on their
bended knees as in the presence of some overwhelming Eastern
royalty--and were only prevented from doing so, perhaps, by the simple,
sweet, and cordial graciousness of her welcome.
And whom should they be shaking hands with next but Antony, Lorrimer,
and the Greek--with each a beard and mustache of nearly five years'
growth!
But they had no time for much exuberant greeting, for there was a sudden
piano crash--and then an immediate silence, as though for pins to
drop--and Signor Giuglini and the wondrous maiden Adelina Patti sang the
Miserere out of Signor Verdi's most famous opera--to the delight of all
but a few very superior ones who had just read Mendelssohn's letters (or
misread them) and despised Italian music; and thought cheaply of "mere
virtuosity," either vocal or instrumental.
When this was over, Little Billee pointed out all the lions to his
friends--from the Prime Minister down to the present scribe--who was
right glad to meet them again and talk of auld lang syne, and present
them to the daughters of the house and other charming ladies.
Then Roucouly, the great French barytone, sang Durien's favorite song,
"Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment;
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie...."
with quite a little drawing-room voice--but quite as divinely as he had
sung "Noël, noël," at the Madeleine in full blast one certain Christmas
Eve our three friends remembered well.
Then there was a violin solo by young Joachim, then as now the greatest
violinist of his time; and a solo on the piano-forte by Madame Schumann,
his only peeress! and these came as a wholesome check to the levity of
those for whom all music is but an agreeable pastime, a mere emotional
delight, in which the intellect has no part; and also as a well-deserved
humiliation to all virtuosi who play so charmingly that they make their
listeners forget the master who invented the music in the lesser master
who interprets it!
For these two--man and woman--the highest of their kind, never let you
forget it was Sebastian Bach they were playing--playing in absolute
perfection, in absolute forgetfulness of themselves--so that if you
weren't up to Bach, you didn't have a very good time!
But if you were (or wished it to be understood or thought you were), you
seized your opportunity and you scored; and by the earnestness of your
rapt and tranced immobility, and the stony, gorgon-like intensity of
your gaze, you rebuked the frivolous--as you had rebuked them before by
the listlessness and carelessness of your bored resignation to the
Signorina Patti's trills and fioritures, or M. Roucouly's pretty little
French mannerisms.
And what added so much to the charm of this delightful concert was that
the guests were not packed together sardinewise, as they are at most
concerts; they were comparatively few and well chosen, and could get up
and walk about and talk to their friends between the pieces, and wander
off into other rooms and look at endless beautiful things, and stroll in
the lovely grounds, by moon or star or Chinese-lantern light.
And there the frivolous could sit and chat and laugh and flirt when Bach
was being played inside; and the earnest wander up and down together in
soul-communion, through darkened walks and groves and alleys where the
sound of French or Italian warblings could not reach them, and talk in
earnest tones of the great Zola, or Guy de Maupassant and Pierre Loti,
and exult in beautiful English over the inferiority of English
literature, English art, English music, English everything else.
For these high-minded ones who can only bear the sight of classical
pictures and the sound of classical music do not necessarily read
classical books in any language--no Shakespeares or Dantes or Molières
or Goethes for _them_. They know a trick worth two of that!
And the mere fact that these three immortal French writers of light
books I have just named had never been heard of at this particular
period doesn't very much matter; they had cognate predecessors whose
names I happen to forget. Any stick will do to beat a dog with, and
history is always repeating itself.
Feydeau, or Flaubert, let us say--or for those who don't know French and
cultivate an innocent mind, Miss Austen (for to be dead and buried is
almost as good as to be French and immoral!)--and Sebastian Bach, and
Sandro Botticelli--that all the arts should be represented. These names
are rather discrepant, but they made very good sticks for dog-beating;
and with a thorough knowledge and appreciation of these (or the
semblance thereof), you were well equipped in those days to hold your
own among the elect of intellectual London circles, and snub the
philistine to rights.
Then, very late, a tall, good-looking, swarthy foreigner came in, with a
roll of music in his hands, and his entrance made quite a stir; you
heard all round, "Here's Glorioli," or "Ecco Glorioli," or "Voici
Glorioli," till Glorioli got on your nerves. And beautiful ladies,
ambassadresses, female celebrities of all kinds, fluttered up to him
and cajoled and fawned;--as Svengali would have said, "Prinzessen,
Comtessen, Serene English Altessen!"--and they soon forgot their
Highness and their Serenity!
For with very little pressing Glorioli stood up on the platform, with
his accompanist by his side at the piano, and in his hands a sheet of
music, at which he never looked. He looked at the beautiful ladies, and
ogled and smiled; and from his scarcely parted, moist, thick, bearded
lips, which he always licked before singing, there issued the most
ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or woman or
boy! He could sing both high and low and soft and loud, and the
frivolous were bewitched, as was only to be expected; but even the
earnestest of all, caught, surprised, rapt, astounded, shaken, tickled,
teased, harrowed, tortured, tantalized, aggravated, seduced,
demoralized, corrupted into naturalness, forgot to dissemble their
delight.
And Sebastian Bach (the especially adored of all really great musicians,
and also, alas! of many priggish outsiders who don't know a single note
and can't remember a single tune) was well forgotten for the night; and
who were more enthusiastic than the two great players who had been
playing Bach that evening? For these, at all events, were broad and
catholic and sincere, and knew what was beautiful, whatever its kind.
[Illustration: "BONJOUR, SUZON!"]
It was but a simple little song that Glorioli sang, as light and pretty
as it could well be, almost worthy of the words it was written to, and
the words are De Musset's; and I love them so much I cannot resist the
temptation of setting them down here, for the mere sensuous delight of
writing them, as though I had just composed them myself:
"Bonjour, Suzon, ma fleur des bois!
Es-tu toujours la plus jolie?
Je reviens, tel que tu me vois,
D'un grand voyage en Italie!
Du paradis j'ai fait le tour--
J'ai fait des vers--j'ai fait l'amour....
Mais que t'importe!
Mais que t'importe!
Je passe devant ta maison:
Ouvre ta porte!
Ouvre ta porte!
Bonjour, Suzon!
"Je t'ai vue au temps des lilas.
Ton coeur joyeux venait d'éclore,
Et tu disais: 'je ne veux pas,
Je ne veux pas qu'on m'aime encore.'
Qu'as-tu fait depuis mon départ?
Qui part trop tôt revient trop tard.
Mais que m'importe?
Mais que m'importe?
Je passe devant ta maison:
Ouvre ta porte!
Ouvre ta porte!
Bonjour, Suzon!"
And when it began, and while it lasted, and after it was over, one felt
really sorry for all the other singers. And nobody sang any more that
night; for Glorioli was tired, and wouldn't sing again, and none were
bold enough or disinterested enough to sing after him.
Some of my readers may remember that meteoric bird of song, who, though
a mere amateur, would condescend to sing for a hundred guineas in the
saloons of the great (as Monsieur Jourdain sold cloth); who would sing
still better for love and glory in the studios of his friends.
For Glorioli--the biggest, handsomest, and most distinguished-looking
Jew that ever was--one of the Sephardim (one of the Seraphim!)--hailed
from Spain, where he was junior partner in the great firm of Moralés,
Peralés, Gonzalés & Glorioli, wine-merchants, Malaga. He travelled for
his own firm; his wine was good, and he sold much of it in England. But
his voice would bring him far more gold in the month he spent here; for
his wines have been equalled--even surpassed--but there was no voice
like his anywhere in the world, and no more finished singer.
Anyhow, his voice got into Little Billee's head more than any wine, and
the boy could talk of nothing else for days and weeks; and was so
exuberant in his expressions of delight and gratitude that the great
singer took a real fancy to him (especially when he was told that this
fervent boyish admirer was one of the greatest of English painters); and
as a mark of his esteem, privately confided to him after supper that
every century two human nightingales were born--only two! a male and a
female; and that he, Glorioli, was the representative "male rossignol of
this soi-disant dix-neuvième siècle."
"I can well believe that! And the female, your mate that should be--_la
rossignolle_, if there is such a word?" inquired Little Billee.
"Ah! mon ami ... it was Alboni till la petite Adelina Patti came out a
year or two ago; and now it is _la Svengali_."
"La Svengali?"
"Oui, mon fy! You will hear her some day--et vous m'en direz des
nouvelles!"
"Why, you don't mean to say that she's got a better voice than Madame
Alboni?"
"Mon ami, an apple is an excellent thing--until you have tried a peach!
Her voice to that of Alboni is as a peach to an apple--I give you my
word of honor! but bah! the voice is a detail. It's what she does with
it--it's incredible! it gives one cold all down the back! it drives you
mad! it makes you weep hot tears by the spoonful! Ah! the tear, mon fy!
tenez! I can draw everything but _that_! Ça n'est pas dans mes cordes!
_I_ can only madden with _love_! But la Svengali!... And then, in the
middle of it all, prrrout!... she makes you laugh! Ah! le beau rire!
faire rire avec des larmes plein les yeux--voilà qui me passe!... Mon
ami, when I heard her it made me swear that even _I_ would never try to
sing any more--it seemed _too_ absurd! and I kept my word for a month at
least--and you know, je sais ce que je vaux, moi!"
"You are talking of la Svengali, I bet," said Signor Spartia.
"Oui, parbleu! You have heard her?"
"Yes--at Vienna last winter," rejoined the greatest singing-master in
the world. "J'en suis fou! hélas! I thought _I_ could teach a woman how
to sing till I heard that blackguard Svengali's pupil. He has married
her, they say!"
[Illustration: A HUMAN NIGHTINGALE]
"That _blackguard_ Svengali!" exclaimed Little Billee ... "why, that
must be a Svengali I knew in Paris--a famous pianist! a friend of mine!"
"That's the man! also une fameuse crapule (sauf vot' respect); his real
name is Adler; his mother was a Polish singer; and he was a pupil at the
Leipsic Conservatorio. But he's an immense artist, and a great
singing-master, to teach a woman like that! and such a woman! belle
comme un ange--mais bête comme un pot. I tried to talk to her--all she
can say is 'ja wohl,' or 'doch,' or 'nein,' or 'soh'! not a word of
English or French or Italian, though she sings them, oh! but _divinely_!
It is '_il bel canto_' come back to the world after a hundred years...."
"But what voice is it?" asked Little Billee.
"Every voice a mortal woman can have--three octaves--four! and of such a
quality that people who can't tell one tune from another cry with
pleasure at the mere sound of it directly they hear her; just like
anybody else. Everything that Paganini could do with his violin she does
with her voice--only better--and what a voice! un vrai baume!"
"Now I don't mind petting zat you are schbeaking of la Sfencali," said
Herr Kreutzer, the famous composer, joining in. "Quelle merfeille, hein?
I heard her in St. Betersburg, at ze Vinter Balace. Ze vomen all vent
mat, and pulled off zeir bearls and tiamonts and kave zem to her--vent
town on zeir knees and gried and gissed her hants. She tit not say vun
vort! She tit not efen schmile! Ze men schnifelled in ze gorners, and
looked at ze bictures, and tissempled--efen I, Johann Kreutzer! efen ze
Emperor!"
"You're joking," said Little Billee.
"My vrent, I neffer choke ven I talk apout zinging. You vill hear her
zum tay yourzellof, and you vill acree viz me zat zere are two classes
of beoble who zing. In ze vun class, la Sfencali; in ze ozzer, all ze
ozzer zingers!"
"And does she sing good music?"