She was born in Chauville-le-Vieux. Her mother gave piano lessons at
the local Lycée de Jeunes Filles, and her father had been "professeur
de violon" at the little Conservatoire. Music was her destiny. As
a hollow-eyed, stunted child, who should have been romping in the
unfrequented park, she had been doomed to hours of piano practice in
the stuffy salon, where during eight months of the year a window was
never opened for longer than it took to shake out the rug. Her name was
Marie Lamande.
She had accepted her fate passively. If it had not been scales and
exercises that made a prisoner of her, she recognised that it would
have been fractions, or zoology. In France, schools actually educate,
but few children have a childhood. On the first day of a term, when the
wan girls reassemble, they sometimes ask one another--curious to hear
what novelty the "holidays" may have yielded, amid the home work--"Did
you have a little promenade during the _vacances_?"
Because its Lycée was widely known, English and American families came
to stay in Chauville--the English pupils discovering what it was to
be taught with enthusiasm--and Marie knew French girls who had been
initiated into the pleasures of tea-parties. Open-mouthed, she heard
that the extravagant anglaise or américaine must have spent at least
five or six francs on the cakes. But all the foreigners successively
grew tired of inviting French children whose astonished mothers sent
them trooping as often as they were asked, and, in no case, gave an
invitation in return, and Marie herself never had the good luck to be
asked.
Like her parents, she had been intended for the groove of tuition, and
in due course tuition became her lot. But she was a gifted pianist, and
ambitious; she dreamed of glory. Some years after she had been left
alone, when her age was twenty-seven, she dared to escape from the
melancholy town that she had grown to execrate. A slight little woman,
without influence or knowledge of life, she aspired to conquer Paris.
She attacked it with a sum sufficient to keep her for twelve months.
Her arrival at once frightened and enraptured her. In Chauville, at
eight o'clock in the evening, a few of the shopkeepers had sat before
their doorways, in the dark, a while; at nine, their crude streets
were as vacant as the boulevards of the professional and independent
classes, whose covert homes signified, even in the daytime, VISITORS
WILL BE PROSECUTED. Behind the shutters of long avenues were over sixty
thousand persons--most of them heroically hard-working--of a race
that the pleasure-seeking English called "frivolous," content with
no semblance of entertainment but the ill-patronised performances
provided by a gloomy theatre, which was unbarred on only two days in
the week. Paris, spirited and sparkling, in the tourist regions, took
her breath away. Music called to her imperiously. She sat, squeezed
among crowds, at the recitals of celebrities; and came out prayerful,
to wonder: "Will crowds ever applaud _me_?" But after the first few
days she reduced her expenses, and her allowance for concert-going was
strict.
She found a lodging now in the rue Honoré-Chevalier, and sought
engagements for Soirées d'Art and Matinées Artistiques, writing to many
people who made no reply, and crossing the bridge to appeal in person
to many others, who were inaccessible, or rude.
Among the few letters of introduction that she had brought from
Chauville, one served its purpose. Madame Herbelin, the Directrice of
the Lycée, always kindly disposed towards her, had recommended her to
an acquaintance as a teacher. Thanks to this, she earned five francs
each Thursday by a lesson.
When nine alarming weeks had slipped away she gained an interview with
a fat man who had much knowledge, and who was interested in hearing
himself talk. He said to her:
"Mademoiselle, it is a question of finances. To rise in the musical
world you must give concerts, and to give concerts you must have money.
Also, you must have the goodwill of pupils in a position to collect
an audience for you, otherwise your concerts will be a heavier loss
still. Further, you must have the usual paragraphs and critiques:
'Triumph! Triumph! What genius is possessed by this divine artist,
whose enchanting gifts revolutionise Paris! Mademoiselle Lamande
is, without question, the virtuosa the most _spirituelle_, the most
_troublante_ of our epoch.' These things do not cost a great deal in
the Paris newspapers, but, naturally, they have to be paid for."
She told him: "I am a poor woman, and the only pupil that I have here
is a child in Montparnasse."