quite a simple fashion, and made a slight inclination of her head and
body towards the imperial box, and then to right and left. Her lips and
cheeks were rouged; her dark level eyebrows nearly met at the bridge of
her short high nose. Through her parted lips you could see her large
glistening white teeth; her gray eyes looked straight at Svengali.
Her face was thin, and had a rather haggard expression, in spite of its
artificial freshness; but its contour was divine, and its character so
tender, so humble, so touchingly simple and sweet, that one melted at
the sight of her. No such magnificent or seductive apparition has ever
been seen before or since on any stage or platform--not even Miss Ellen
Terry as the priestess of Artemis in the late Laureate's play, "The
Cup."
The house rose at her as she came down to the front; and she bowed again
to right and left, and put her hand to her heart quite simply and with a
most winning natural gesture, an adorable gaucherie--like a graceful and
unconscious school-girl, quite innocent of stage deportment.
_It was Trilby!_
* * * * *
Trilby the tone-deaf, who couldn't sing one single note in tune! Trilby,
who couldn't tell a C from an F!!
What was going to happen!
Our three friends were almost turned to stone in the immensity of their
surprise.
Yet the big Taffy was trembling all over; the Laird's jaw had all but
fallen on to his chest; Little Billee was staring, staring his eyes
almost out of his head. There was something, to them, so strange and
uncanny about it all; so oppressive, so anxious, so momentous!
The applause had at last subsided. Trilby stood with her hands behind
her, one foot (the left one) on a little stool that had been left there
on purpose, her lips parted, her eyes on Svengali's, ready to begin.
He gave his three beats, and the band struck a chord. Then, at another
beat from him, but in her direction, she began, without the slightest
appearance of effort, without any accompaniment whatever, he still
beating time--conducting her, in fact, just as if she had been an
orchestra herself:
"Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami Pierrot!
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte ...
Je n'ai plus de feu!
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l'amour de Dieu!"
This was the absurd old nursery rhyme with which la Svengali chose to
make her début before the most critical audience in the world! She sang
it three times over--the same verse. There is but one.
The first time she sang it without any expression whatever--not the
slightest. Just the words and the tune; in the middle of her voice, and
not loud at all; just as a child sings who is thinking of something
else; or just as a young French mother sings who is darning socks by a
cradle, and rocking her baby to sleep with her foot.
But her voice was so immense in its softness, richness, freshness, that
it seemed to be pouring itself out from all round; its intonation
absolutely, mathematically pure; one felt it to be not only faultless,
but infallible; and the seduction, the novelty of it, the strangely
sympathetic quality! How can one describe the quality of a peach or a
nectarine to those who have only known apples?
Until la Svengali appeared, the world had only known apples--Catalanis,
Jenny Linds, Grisis, Albonis, Pattis! The best apples that can be, for
sure--but still only apples!
[Illustration: "AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE"]
If she had spread a pair of large white wings and gracefully fluttered
up to the roof and perched upon the chandelier, she could not have
produced a greater sensation. The like of that voice has never been
heard, nor ever will be again. A woman archangel might sing like that,
or some enchanted princess out of a fairy-tale.
Little Billee had already dropped his face into his hands and hid his
eyes in his pocket-handkerchief; a big tear had fallen on to Taffy's
left whisker; the Laird was trying hard to keep his tears back.
She sang the verse a second time, with but little added expression and
no louder; but with a sort of breathy widening of her voice that made it
like a broad heavenly smile of universal motherhood turned into sound.
One felt all the genial gayety and grace and impishness of Pierrot and
Columbine idealized into frolicsome beauty and holy innocence, as though
they were performing for the saints in Paradise--a baby Columbine, with
a cherub for clown! The dream of it all came over you for a second or
two--a revelation of some impossible golden age--priceless--never to be
forgotten! How on earth did she do it?
Little Billee had lost all control over himself, and was shaking with
his suppressed sobs--Little Billee, who hadn't shed a single tear for
five long years! Half the people in the house were in tears, but tears
of sheer delight, of delicate inner laughter.
Then she came back to earth, and saddened and veiled and darkened her
voice as she sang the verse for the third time; and it was a great and
sombre tragedy, too deep for any more tears; and somehow or other poor
Columbine, forlorn and betrayed and dying, out in the cold at
midnight--sinking down to hell, perhaps--was making her last frantic
appeal! It was no longer Pierrot and Columbine--it was Marguerite--it
was Faust! It was the most terrible and pathetic of all possible human
tragedies, but expressed with no dramatic or histrionic exaggeration of
any sort; by mere tone, slight, subtle changes in the quality of the
sound--too quick and elusive to be taken count of, but to be felt with,
oh, what poignant sympathy!
When the song was over the applause did not come immediately, and she
waited with her kind wide smile, as if she were well accustomed to wait
like this; and then the storm began, and grew and spread and rattled and
echoed--voice, hands, feet, sticks, umbrellas!--and down came the
bouquets, which the little page-boys picked up; and Trilby bowed to
front and right and left in her simple _débonnaire_ fashion. It was her
usual triumph. It had never failed, whatever the audience, whatever the
country, whatever the song.
Little Billee didn't applaud. He sat with his head in his hands, his
shoulders still heaving. He believed himself to be fast asleep and in a
dream, and was trying his utmost not to wake; for a great happiness was
his. It was one of those nights to be marked with a white stone!
As the first bars of the song came pouring out of her parted lips (whose
shape he so well remembered), and her dovelike eyes looked straight over
Svengali's head, straight in his own direction--nay, _at_ him--something
melted in his brain, and all his long-lost power of loving came back
with a rush.
It was like the sudden curing of a deafness that has been lasting for
years. The doctor blows through your nose into your Eustachian tube with
a little India-rubber machine; some obstacle gives way, there is a snap
in your head, and straightway you hear better than you had ever heard in
all your life, almost too well; and all your life is once more changed
for you!
At length he sat up again, in the middle of la Svengali's singing of the
"Nussbaum," and saw her; and saw the Laird sitting by him, and Taffy,
their eyes riveted on Trilby, and knew for certain that it was _no_
dream this time, and his joy was almost a pain!
[Illustration:
"OUVRE-MOI TA PORTE
POUR L'AMOUR DE DIEU!"
]
She sang the "Nussbaum" (to its heavenly accompaniment) as simply as she
had sung the previous song. Every separate note was a highly finished
gem of sound, linked to the next by a magic bond.
You did not require to be a lover of music to fall beneath the spell of
such a voice as that; the mere melodic phrase had all but ceased to
matter. Her phrasing, consummate as it was, was as simple as a child's.
It was as if she said: "See! what does the composer count for? Here is
about as beautiful a song as was ever written, with beautiful words to
match, and the words have been made French for you by one of your
smartest poets! But what do the words signify, any more than the tune,
or even the language? The 'Nussbaum' is neither better nor worse than
'Mon ami Pierrot' when _I_ am the singer; for I am _Svengali_; and you
shall hear nothing, see nothing, think of nothing but _Svengali,
Svengali, Svengali_!"
It was the apotheosis of voice and virtuosity! It was "il bel canto"
come back to earth after a hundred years--the bel canto of Vivarelli,
let us say, who sang the same song every night to the same King of Spain
for a quarter of a century, and was rewarded with a dukedom, and wealth
beyond the dreams of avarice.
And, indeed, here was this immense audience, made up of the most
cynically critical people in the world, and the most anti-German,
assisting with rapt ears and streaming eyes at the imagined spectacle of
a simple German damsel, a Mädchen, a Fräulein, just "verlobte"--a future
Hausfrau--sitting under a walnut-tree in some suburban garden--à
Berlin!--and around her her family and their friends, probably drinking
beer and smoking long porcelain pipes, and talking politics or business,
and cracking innocent elaborate old German jokes; with bated breath,
lest they should disturb her maiden dream of love! And all as though it
were a scene in Elysium, and the Fräulein a nymph of many-fountained
Ida, and her people Olympian gods and goddesses.
And such, indeed, they were when Trilby sang of them!
After this, when the long, frantic applause had subsided, she made a
gracious bow to the royal British opera-glass (which had never left her
face), and sang "Ben Bolt" in English!
And then Little Billee remembered there was such a person as Svengali in
the world, and recalled his little flexible flageolet!
"That is how I teach Gecko; that is how I teach la bedite Honorine; that
is how I teach il bel canto.... It was lost, il bel canto--and I found
it in a dream--I, Svengali!"
And his old cosmic vision of the beauty and sadness of things, the very
heart of them, and their pathetic evanescence, came back with a tenfold
clearness--that heavenly glimpse beyond the veil! And with it a crushing
sense of his own infinitesimal significance by the side of this glorious
pair of artists, one of whom had been his friend and the other his
love--a love who had offered to be his humble mistress and slave, not
feeling herself good enough to be his wife!
It made him sick and faint to remember, and filled him with hot shame,
and then and there his love for Trilby became as that of a dog for its
master!
She sang once more--"Chanson de Printemps," by Gounod (who was present,
and seemed very hysterical), and the first part of the concert was over,
and people had time to draw breath and talk over this new wonder, this
revelation of what the human voice could achieve; and an immense hum
filled the hall--astonishment, enthusiasm, ecstatic delight!
But our three friends found little to say--for what _they_ felt there
were as yet no words!
[Illustration: "MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T'EN GUERRE"]
Taffy and the Laird looked at Little Billee, who seemed to be looking
inward at some transcendent dream of his own; with red eyes, and his
face all pale and drawn, and his nose very pink, and rather thicker than
usual; and the dream appeared to be out of the common blissful, though
his eyes were swimming still, for his smile was almost idiotic in its
rapture!
The second part of the concert was still shorter than the first, and
created, if possible, a wilder enthusiasm.
Trilby only sang twice.
Her first song was "Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre."
She began it quite lightly and merrily, like a jolly march; in the
middle of her voice, which had not as yet revealed any exceptional
compass or range. People laughed quite frankly at the first verse:
"Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre....
Ne sais quand reviendra!
Ne sais quand reviendra!
Ne sais quand reviendra!"
The _mironton, mirontaine_ was the very essence of high martial resolve
and heroic self-confidence; one would have led a forlorn hope after
hearing it once!
"Il reviendra-z-à Pâques--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Il reviendra-z-à Pâques....
Ou ... à la Trinité!"
People still laughed, though the _mironton, mirontaine_ betrayed an
uncomfortable sense of the dawning of doubts and fears--vague
forebodings!
"La Trinité se passe--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
La Trinité se passe....
Malbrouck ne revient pas!"
And here, especially in the _mironton, mirontaine_, a note of anxiety
revealed itself--so poignant, so acutely natural and human, that it
became a personal anxiety of one's own, causing the heart to beat, and
one's breath was short.
"Madame à sa tour monte--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Madame à sa tour monte,
Si haut qu'elle peut monter!"
Oh! How one's heart went with her! Anne! Sister Anne! Do you see
anything?
"Elle voit de loin son page--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Elle voit de loin son page,
Tout de noir habillé!"
One is almost sick with the sense of impending calamity--it is all but
unbearable!
"Mon page--mon beau page!--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Mon page--mon beau page!
Quelles nouvelles apportez?"
And here Little Billee begins to weep again, and so does everybody else!
The _mironton, mirontaine_ is an agonized wail of suspense--poor
bereaved duchess!--poor Sarah Jennings! Did it all announce itself to
you just like that?
All this while the accompaniment had been quite simple--just a few
obvious ordinary chords.
But now, quite suddenly, without a single modulation or note of warning,
down goes the tune a full major third, from E to C--into the graver
depths of Trilby's great contralto--so solemn and ominous that there is
no more weeping, but the flesh creeps; the accompaniment slows and
elaborates itself; the march becomes a funeral march, with muted
strings, and quite slowly:
"Aux nouvelles que j'apporte--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Aux nouvelles que j'apporte,
Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer!"
Richer and richer grows the accompaniment. The _mironton, mirontaine_
becomes a dirge--
"Quittez vos habits roses--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Quittez vos habits roses,
Et vos satins brochés!"
Here the ding-donging of a big bell seems to mingle with the score; ...
and very slowly, and so impressively that the news will ring forever in
the ears and hearts of those who hear it from la Svengali's lips:
"Le Sieur Malbrouck est mort--
_Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!_
Le Sieur--Malbrouck--est--mort!
Est mort--et enterré!"
And thus it ends quite abruptly!
And this heart-rending tragedy, this great historical epic in two dozen
lines, at which some five or six thousand gay French people are
sniffling and mopping their eyes like so many Niobes, is just a common
old French comic song--a mere nursery ditty, like "Little Bo-peep"--to
the tune,
"We won't go home till morning,
Till daylight doth appear."
And after a second or two of silence (oppressive and impressive as that
which occurs at a burial when the handful of earth is being dropped on
the coffin-lid) the audience bursts once more into madness; and la
Svengali, who accepts no encores, has to bow for nearly five minutes,
standing amid a sea of flowers....
[Illustration:
"AUX NOUVELLES QUE J'APPORTE,
VOS BEAUX YEUX VONT PLEURER!"
]
Then comes her great and final performance. The orchestra swiftly plays
the first four bars of the bass in Chopin's Impromptu (A flat); and
suddenly, without words, as a light nymph catching the whirl of a double
skipping-rope, la Svengali breaks in, and vocalizes that astounding
piece of music that so few pianists can even play; but no pianist has
ever played it like this; no piano has ever given out such notes as
these!
Every single phrase is a string of perfect gems, of purest ray serene,
strung together on a loose golden thread! The higher and shriller she
sings, the sweeter it is; higher and shriller than any woman had ever
sung before.
Waves of sweet and tender laughter, the very heart and essence of
innocent, high-spirited girlhood, alive to all that is simple and joyous
and elementary in nature--the freshness of the morning, the ripple of
the stream, the click of the mill, the lisp of wind in the trees, the
song of the lark in the cloudless sky--the sun and the dew, the scent of
early flowers and summer woods and meadows--the sight of birds and bees
and butterflies and frolicsome young animals at play--all the sights and
scents and sounds that are the birthright of happy children, happy
savages in favored climes--things within the remembrance and the reach
of most of us! All this, the memory and the feel of it, are in Trilby's
voice as she warbles that long, smooth, lilting, dancing laugh, that
wondrous song without words; and those who hear feel it all, and
remember it with her. It is irresistible; it forces itself on you; no
words, no pictures, could ever do the like! So that the tears that are
shed out of all these many French eyes are tears of pure, unmixed
delight in happy reminiscence! (Chopin, it is true, may have meant
something quite different--a hot-house, perhaps, with orchids and arum
lilies and tuberoses and hydrangeas--but that is neither here nor
there.)
[Illustration: UN IMPROMPTU DE CHOPIN]
Then comes the slow movement, the sudden adagio, with its capricious
ornaments--the waking of the virgin heart, the stirring of the sap, the
dawn of love; its doubts and fears and questionings; and the mellow,
powerful, deep chest notes are like the pealing of great golden bells,
with a light little pearl shower tinkling round--drops from the upper
fringe of her grand voice as she shakes it....
Then back again the quick part, childhood once more, da capo, only
quicker! hurry, hurry! but distinct as ever. Loud and shrill and sweet
beyond compare--drowning the orchestra; of a piercing quality quite
ineffable; a joy there is no telling; a clear, purling, crystal stream
that gurgles and foams and bubbles along over sunlit stones; "a wonder,
a world's delight!"
And there is not a sign of effort, of difficulty overcome. All through,
Trilby smiles her broad, angelic smile; her lips well parted, her big
white teeth glistening as she gently jerks her head from side to side in
time to Svengali's bâton, as if to shake the willing notes out quicker
and higher and shriller....
And in a minute or two it is all over, like the lovely bouquet of
fireworks at the end of the show, and she lets what remains of it die
out and away like the afterglow of fading Bengal fires--her voice
receding into the distance--coming back to you like an echo from all
round, from anywhere you please--quite soft--hardly more than a breath;
but _such_ a breath! Then one last chromatically ascending rocket,
pianissimo, up to E in alt, and then darkness and silence!
And after a little pause the many-headed rises as one, and waves its
hats and sticks and handkerchiefs, and stamps and shouts.... "Vive la
Svengali! Vive la Svengali!"
Svengali steps on to the platform by his wife's side and kisses her
hand; and they both bow themselves backward through the curtains, which
fall, to rise again and again and again on this astounding pair!
Such was la Svengali's début in Paris.
It had lasted little over an hour, one quarter of which, at least, had
been spent in plaudits and courtesies!
The writer is no musician, alas! (as, no doubt, his musical readers have
found out by this) save in his thraldom to music of not too severe a
kind, and laments the clumsiness and inadequacy of this wild (though
somewhat ambitious) attempt to recall an impression received more than
thirty years ago; to revive the ever-blessed memory of that
unforgettable first night at the Cirque des Bashibazoucks.
Would that I could transcribe here Berlioz's famous series of twelve
articles, entitled "La Svengali," which were republished from _La Lyre
Éolienne_, and are now out of print!
Or Théophile Gautier's elaborate rhapsody, "Madame Svengali--Ange, ou
Femme?" in which he proves that one need not have a musical ear (he
hadn't) to be enslaved by such a voice as hers, any more than the eye
for beauty (this he _had_) to fall the victim of "her celestial form
and face." It is enough, he says, to be simply human! I forget in which
journal this eloquent tribute appeared; it is not to be found in his
collected works.
Or the intemperate diatribe by Herr Blagner (as I will christen him) on
the tyranny of the prima donna called "Svengalismus"; in which he
attempts to show that mere virtuosity carried to such a pitch is mere
viciosity--base acrobatismus of the vocal chords, a hysteric appeal to
morbid Gallic "sentimentalismus"; and that this monstrous development of
a phenomenal larynx, this degrading cultivation and practice of the
abnormalismus of a mere physical peculiarity, are death and destruction
to all true music; since they place Mozart and Beethoven, and even
_himself_, on a level with Bellini, Donizetti, Offenbach--any Italian
tune-tinkler, any ballad-monger of the hated Paris pavement! and can
make the highest music of all (even _his own_) go down with the common
French herd at the very first hearing, just as if it were some idiotic
refrain of the café chantant!
So much for Blagnerismus _v_. Svengalismus.
But I fear there is no space within the limits of this humble tale for
these masterpieces of technical musical criticism.
Besides, there are other reasons.
* * * * *
Our three heroes walked back to the boulevards, the only silent ones
amid the throng that poured through the Rue St. Honoré, as the Cirque
des Bashibazoucks emptied itself of its over-excited audience.
They went arm in arm, as usual; but this time Little Billee was in the
middle. He wished to feel on each side of him the warm and genial
contact of his two beloved old friends. It seemed as if they had
suddenly been restored to him, after five long years of separation; his
heart was overflowing with affection for them, too full to speak just
yet! Overflowing, indeed, with the love of love, the love of life, the
love of death--the love of all that is, and ever was, and ever will be!
just as in his old way.
He could have hugged them both in the open street, before the whole
world; and the delight of it was that this was no dream; about that
there was no mistake. He was himself again at last, after five years,
and wide awake; and he owed it all to Trilby!
And what did he feel for Trilby? He couldn't tell yet. It was too vast
as yet to be measured; and, alas! it was weighted with such a burden of
sorrow and regret that he might well put off the thought of it a little
while longer, and gather in what bliss he might: like the man whose
hearing has been restored after long years, he would revel in the mere
physical delight of hearing for a space, and not go out of his way as
yet to listen for the bad news that was already in the air, and would
come to roost quite soon enough.
Taffy and the Laird were silent also; Trilby's voice was still in their
ears and hearts, her image in their eyes, and utter bewilderment still
oppressed them and kept them dumb.
It was a warm and balmy night, almost like mid-summer; and they stopped
at the first café they met on the Boulevard de la Madeleine (_comme
autrefois_), and ordered bocks of beer, and sat at a little table on
the pavement, the only one unoccupied; for the café was already crowded,
the hum of lively talk was great, and "la Svengali" was in every mouth.
The Laird was the first to speak. He emptied his bock at a draught, and
called for another, and lit a cigar, and said, "I don't believe it was
Trilby, after all!" It was the first time her name had been mentioned
between them that evening--and for five years!
"Good heavens!" said Taffy. "Can you doubt it?"
"Oh yes! that was Trilby," said Little Billee.
Then the Laird proceeded to explain that, putting aside the
impossibility of Trilby's ever being taught to sing in tune, and her
well-remembered loathing for Svengali, he had narrowly scanned her face
through his opera-glass, and found that in spite of a likeness quite
marvellous there were well-marked differences. Her face was narrower and
longer, her eyes larger, and their expression not the same; then she
seemed taller and stouter, and her shoulders broader and more drooping,
and so forth.