the room, after passing through the bar in the front. The _bal_ was
conducted in a large hall at the back of the _maison_. In the doorway
lounged an _agent de service_, always a guest at one of these
functions, I found out later. There were rows of tables, long tables,
with long wooden benches placed between them. One corner of the floor
was cleared--not so large a corner either--for dancing, and on a small
platform sat the strangest looking youth, like Peter Pan never to grow
old, like the _Monna Lisa_ a boy of a thousand years, without emotion
or expression of any sort. He was playing an accordion; the bag-pipe,
symbol of the _bal_, hung disused on the wall over his head. His
accordion, manipulated with great skill, was augmented by sleigh-bells
attached to his ankles in such a manner that a minimum of movement
produced a maximum of effect; he further added to the complexity of
sound and rhythm by striking a cymbal occasionally with one of his
feet. The music was both rhythmic and ordered, now a waltz, now a tune
in two-four time, but never faster or slower, and never ending ...
except in the middle of each dance, for a brief few seconds, while the
_patronne_ collected a _sou_ from each dancer, after which the dance
proceeded. All the time we remained never did the musician smile,
except twice, once briefly when I sent word to him by the waiter to
order a _consommation_ and once, at some length, when we departed. On
these occasions the effect was almost emotionally illuminating, so
inexpressive was the ordinary cast of his features. A strange lad; I
like to think of him always sitting there, passively, playing the
accordion and shaking his sleigh-bells. He suggested a static picture,
a thing of always, but I know it is not so, for even the next summer
he had disappeared along with the _bal_ and now he may have been shot
in the Battle of the Marne or he may have murdered his _gigolette_ and
been transported to one of the French penal colonies.... An _apache,
en musicien!_ ... black cloth around his throat, hair parted in the
middle, _velours_ trousers; a _vrai apache_ I tell you, a cool,
cunning creature, shredded with cocaine and absinthe, monotonous in
his virtuosity, playing the accordion. He had begun before we arrived
and he continued after we left. I like to think of him as always
playing, but it is not so....
As for the dancers, they were of various kinds and sorts. The women
had that air which gave them the stamp of a quarter; they wore loose
_blouses_, tucked in plaid skirts, or dark blue skirts, or
multi-coloured calico skirts (if you have seen the lithographs of
Steinlen you may reconstruct the picture with no difficulty) and they
danced in that peculiar fashion so much in vogue in the Northern
outskirts of Paris. The men seized them tightly and they whirled to
the inexorable music when it was a waltz, whirled and whirled, until
one thought of the Viennese and how they become as dervishes and
Japanese mice when one plays Johann Strauss. But in the dances in
two-four time their way was more our way, something between a
one-step, a mattchiche, and a tango, with strange fascinating steps of
their own devising, a folk-dance manner.... Yes, under their feet, the
dance became a real dance of the people and, when we entered into it,
our feet seemed heavy and our steps conventional, although we tried
to do what they did. (How they did laugh at us!) And the strange
youth emphasized the effect of folk-dancing by playing old _chansons
de France_ which he mingled with his repertory of _cafe-concert_ airs.
And there was achieved that wonderful thing (to an artist) a mixture
of _genres_--intriguing one's curiosity, awakening the most dormant
interest, and inspiring the dullest imagination.
This was my first night at a _bal musette_ and my last in that year,
for shortly afterwards I left for Italy and in Italy one does not
dance. But the next season found me anxious to renew the adventure, to
again enjoy the pleasures of the _bal musette_. I have said I was
perhaps wrong in recalling the street as the Rue Jessaint, or perhaps
the old _maison_ had disappeared. At any rate, when I searched I could
not find the _bal_, not even the bar. So again I appealed for help,
this time to a chauffeur, who drove me to the opposite side of the
city, to the _quartier_ of the _Halles_.... And I was beginning to
think that the man had misunderstood me, or was stupid. "He will take
me to a cabaret, l'Ange Gabriel or"--and I rapidly revolved in my mind
the possibilities of this quarter where the _apaches_ come to the
surface to feel the purse of the tourist, who buys drinks as he
listens to stories of murders, some of which have been committed, for
it is true that some of the real _apaches_ go there (I know because my
friend Fernand did and it was in l'Ange Gabriel that he knocked all
the teeth down the throat of Angelique, _sa gigolette_. You may find
the life of these creatures vividly and amusingly described in that
amazing book of Charles-Henry Hirsch, "Le Tigre et Coquelicot" It is
the only book I have read about the _apaches_ of modern Paris that is
worth its pages). But the idea of l'Ange Gabriel was not amusing to me
this evening and I leaned forward to ask my chauffeur if he had it in
mind to substitute another attraction for my desired _bal musette_.
His reply was reassuring; it took the form of a gesture, the waving of
a hand towards a small lighted globe depending over the door of a
little _marchand de vin_. On this globe was painted in black letters
the single word, _bal_. We were in the narrow Rue des Gravilliers--I
was there for the first time--and the _bal_ was the Bal des
Gravilliers.
The bar is so small, when one enters, that there is no intimation of
the really splendid aspect of the dancing room. For here there are two
rooms separated by the dancing floor, two halls filled with tables,
with long wooden benches between them. Benches also line the walls,
which are white with a grey-blue frieze; the lighting is brilliant.
The musicians play in a little balcony, and here there are two of
them, an accordionist and a guitarist. The performer on the accordion
is a _virtuoso_; he takes delight in winding florid ornament, after
the manner of some brilliant singer impersonating Rosina in _Il
Barbiere_, around the melodies he performs. As in the Rue Jessaint a
_sou_ is demanded in the middle of each dance. But there comparison
must cease, for the life here is gayer, more of a character. The types
are of the _Halles_.... There are strange exits....
A short woman enters; "_elle s'avance en se balancant sur ses hanches
comme une pouliche du haras de Cordoue_"; she suggests an operatic
Carmen in her swagger. She is slender, with short, dark hair, cropped
_a la_ Boutet de Monvel, and she flourishes a cigarette, the smoke
from which wreathes upward and obscures--nay makes more subtle--the
strange poignancy of her deep blue eyes. Her nose is of a snubness. It
is the _mome_ Estelle, and as she passes down the narrow aisle,
between the tables, there is a stir of excitement.... The men raise
their eyes.... Edouard, _le petit_, flicks a _louis_ carelessly
between his thumb and fore-finger, with the long dirty nails, and
then passes it back into his pocket. Do not mistake the gesture; it
is not made to entice the _mome_, nor is it a sign of affluence; it is
Edouard's means of demanding another _louis_ before the night is up,
if it be only a "_louis de dix francs_." Estelle looks at him boldly;
there is no fear in her eyes; you can see that she would face death
with Carmen's calm if the Fates cut the thread to that effect.... The
music begins and Estelle dances with Carmella, _l'Arabe_. Edouard
glowers and pulls his little grey cap down tower.... It is a waltz....
Suddenly he is on the floor and Estelle is pressed close to his
body.... Carmella sits down. She smiles, and presently she is dancing
with Jean-Baptiste.... Estelle and Edouard are now whirling, whirling,
and all the while his dark eyes look down piercingly into her blue
eyes. The music stops. Estelle fumbles in her stocking for two _sous_.
Edouard lights a _Maryland_.
There is a newcomer tonight. (I am talking to the _agent de service_.)
She is of a youth and she is certainly from Brittany. I see her
sitting in a corner, waiting for something, trying to know. "She will
learn," says my friend, "She will learn to pay like the others." That
is the _gros_ Pierre who regards her. He twirls his moustache and
considers, and in the end he lumbers to her and asks her to dance.
She is willing to do so, but the intensity of Pierre frightens her,
frightens and intrigues.... There is a sign on the wall that one must
not stamp one's feet, but no other prohibition.... He twists her
finger purposely as they whirl ... and whirl. She cowers. _Gros_
Pierre is very big and strong. "_T'es bath, mome_," I hear him say, as
they pass me by.... The dance over, he towers above her for a brief
second before he swaggers out.... Estelle smiles. Her lips move and
she speaks quickly to Edouard, _le petit_.... He does not listen. Why
should he listen to his _gigolette_? She is wasting her time here
anyway. He becomes impatient.... Carmella smiles across the room in a
brief second of chance and Estelle answers the smile. Carmella holds
up three fingers (it is now 1.30). Estelle nods her head quickly. The
musicians are always playing, except in the middle of the dance when
_madame, la patronne_, gathers in the _sous_.... Only from one she
takes nothing.... He is twenty and very blonde and he is dancing with
_Madame_.... Between dances she pays his _consommations_.... Estelle
rises slowly and walks out while Carmella, _l'Arabe_, follows her with
his eyes. Edouard, _le petit_, lights a _Maryland_ and poises a
_louis_ between his thumb and fore-finger, the nails of which are
long and dirty.... The music is always playing.... The little girl
from Brittany is again alone in the corner. There is fear in her face.
She is beginning to know. She summons her courage and walks to the
door, on through.... The _agent de service_ twirls his moustache and
points after her. "She soon will know." I follow. She hesitates for a
second at the street door and then starts towards the corner.... She
reaches the corner and passes around it.... I hear a scream ... the
sound of running footsteps ... the beat of a horse's hoofs ... the
rolling of wheels on the cobble stones....
_November 11, 1915._
Music and Cooking
_"Give me some music,--music, moody food
Of us that trade in love."_
Shakespeare's _Cleopatra_.
Music and Cooking
It is my firm belief that there is an intimate relationship between
the stomach and the ear, the saucepan and the crotchet, the mysteries
of Mrs. Rorer and the mysteries of Mme. Marchesi. It has even occurred
to me that one of the reasons our American composers are so barren in
ideas is because as a race we are not interested in cooking and
eating. Those countries in which music plays the greater part in the
national life are precisely those which are the most interested in the
culinary art. The food of Italy, the cooking, is celebrated; every
peasant in that sunny land sings, and the voices of some Italians have
reverberated around the world. The very melodies of Verdi and Rossini
are inextricably twined in our minds around memories of _ravioli_ and
_zabaglione_. _Vesti la Giubba_ is _spaghetti_. The composers of these
melodies and their interpreters alike cooked, ate, and drank with joy,
and so they composed and sang with joy too. Men with indigestion may
be able to write novels, but they cannot compose great music.... The
Germans spend more time eating than the people of any other country
(at least they did once). It is small occasion for wonder, therefore,
that they produce so many musicians. They are always eating, mammoth
plates heaped high with Bavarian cabbage, _Koenigsberger Klopps_,
_Hasenpfeffer_, noodles, sauerkraut, _Wiener Schnitzel_ ... drinking
seidels of beer. They escort sausages with them to the opera. All the
women have their skirts honeycombed with capacious pockets, in which
they carry substantial lunches to eat while Isolde is deceiving King
Mark. Why, the very principle of German music is based on a theory of
well-fed auditors. The voluptuous scores of Richard Wagner, Richard
Strauss, Max Schillings and Co. were not written for skinny,
ill-nourished wights. Even Beethoven demands flesh and bone of his
hearers. The music of Bach is directly aimed against the doctrine of
asceticism. "The German capacity for feeling emotion in music has
developed to the same extent as the capacity of the German stomach for
containing food," writes Ernest Newman, "but in neither the one case
nor the other has there been a corresponding development in refinement
of perceptions. German sentimental music is not quite as gross as
German food and German feeding, but it comes very near to it
sometimes.... 'The Germans do not taste,' said Montaigne, 'they gulp.'
As with their food, so with the emotions of their music. So long as
they get them in sufficient mass, of the traditional quality, and with
the traditional pungent seasoning, they are content to leave piquancy
and variety of effect to others."... Once in Munich in a second
storey window of the Bayerischebank I saw a small boy, about ten years
old, sitting outside on the sill, washing the panes of glass. Opposite
him on the same sill a dachshund reposed on her paws, regarding her
master affectionately. Between the two stood a half-filled toby of
foaming Lowenbrau, which, from time to time, the lad raised to his
lips, quaffing deep draughts. And when he set the pot down he whistled
the first subject of Beethoven's _Fifth Symphony_. On Sunday
afternoons, in the gardens which invariably surround the Munich
breweries, the happy mothers, who gather to listen to the band play
while they drink beer, frequently replenish the empty nursing bottles
of their offspring at the taps from which flows the deep brown
beverage.... The food of the French is highly artificial, delicately
prepared and served, and flavoured with infinite art: _vol au vent a
la reine_ and Massenet, _petits pois a l'etuvee_ and Gounod, _oeuf
Ste. Clotilde_ and Cesar Franck, all strike the tongue and the ear
quite pleasantly. Des Esseintes and his liqueur symphony were the
inventions of a Frenchman.... Hungarian goulash and Hungarian
rhapsodies are certainly designed to be taken in conjunction....
Russian music tastes of _kascha_ and _bortsch_ and vodka. The happy,
hearty eaters of Russia, the drunken, sodden drinkers of Russia are
reflected in the scores of _Boris Godunow_ and _Petrouchka_.... In
England we find that the great English meat pasties and puddings
appeared in the same century with the immortal Purcell.... But in
America we import our cooks ... and our music. As a race we do not
like to cook. We scarcely like to eat. We certainly do not enjoy
eating. We will never have a national music until we have national
dishes and national drinks and until we like good food. It is
significant that our national drinks at present are mixed drinks, the
ingredients of which are foreign. It is doubly significant that that
section of the country which produces chicken _a la Maryland_, corn
bread, beaten biscuit, mint juleps, and New Orleans fizzes has
furnished us with the best of such music as we can boast. Maine has
offered us no _Suwanee River_; we owe no _Swing Low, Sweet Chariot_ to
Nebraska. The best of our ragtime composers are Jews, a race which
regards eating and cooking of sufficient importance to include rules
for the preparation and disposition of food in its religious tenets.
Most musicians and those who enjoy listening to music, like to eat
(this does not mean that people who like to eat always desire to
listen to music at the same time, but nowadays one has little choice
in the matter); what is more pregnant, most of them like to cook. We
may include even the music critics, one of whom (Henry T. Finck) has
written a book about such matters. The others eat ... and expand.
James Huneker devotes sixteen pages of "The New Cosmopolis" to the
"maw of the monster." And as H. L. Mencken has pointed out, "The
Pilsner motive runs through the book from cover to cover." Dinners are
constantly being given for the musicians and critics to meet and talk
over thirteen courses with wine. You may read Mr. Krehbiel's glowing
accounts of the dinner given to Adelina Patti (a dinner referred to in
Joseph Hergesheimer's lyric novel, "The Three Black Pennys") on the
occasion of her twenty-fifth anniversary as a singer, of the dinner to
Marcella Sembrich to mark her retirement from the opera stage, and of
a dinner to Teresa Carreno when she proposed a toast to her three
husbands.... Go to the opera house and observe the lady singers, with
their ample bosoms and their broad hips, the men with their expansive
paunches ... and use your imagination. Why is it, when a singer is
interviewed for a newspaper, that she invariably finds herself tired
of hotel food and wants an apartment of her own, where she can cook to
her stomach's content? Why are the musical journals and the Sunday
supplements of the newspapers always publishing pictures of contralti
with their sleeves rolled back to the elbows, their Poiret gowns
(cunningly and carefully exhibited nevertheless) covered with aprons,
baking bread, turning omelettes, or preparing clam broth Uncle Sam?
You, my reader, have surely seen these pictures, but it has perhaps
not occurred to you to conjure up a reason for them.
Edgar Saltus says: "A perfect dinner should resemble a concert. As the
_morceaux_ succeed each other, so, too, should the names of the
composers." Few dinners in New York may be regarded as concerts and
still fewer restaurants may be looked upon as concert halls, except,
unfortunately, in the literal sense. However, if you can find a
restaurant where opera singers and conductors eat you may be sure it
is a good one. Huneker describes the old Lienau's, where William
Steinway, Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli
Lehmann, Max Heinrich, and Victor Herbert used to gather. Follow
Alfred Hertz and you will be in excellent company in a double sense.
Then watch him consume a plateful of Viennese pastry. If you have ever
seen Emmy Destinn or Feodor Chaliapine eat you will feel that justice
has been done to a meal. I once sat with the Russian bass for twelve
hours, all of which time he was eating or drinking. He began with six
plates of steaming onion soup (cooked with cheese and toast). The old
New Year's eve festivities at the Gadski-Tauschers' resembled the
storied banquets of the middle ages.... Boars' heads, meat pies,
_salade macedoine_, _coeur de palmier_, _hollandaise_ were washed down
with magnums and quarts of Irroy brut, 1900, Pol Roger, Chambertin,
graceful Bohemian crystal goblets of Liebfraumilch and Johannisberger
Schloss-Auslese. Mary Garden once sent a jewelled gift to the _chef_
at the Ritz-Carlton in return for a superb fish sauce which he had
contrived for her. H. E. Krehbiel says that Brignoli "probably ate as
no tenor ever ate before or since--ravenously as a Prussian dragoon
after a fast." _Peche Melba_ has become a stable article on many menus
in many cities in many lands. Agnes G. Murphy, in her biography of
Mme. Melba, says that one day the singer, Joachim, and a party of
friends stopped at a peasant's cottage near Bergamo, where they were
regaled with such delicious macaroni that Melba persuaded her friends
to return another day and wait while the peasant taught her the exact
method of preparing the dish. In at least one New York restaurant
_oeuf Toscanini_ is to be found on the bill. I have heard Olive
Fremstad complain of the cooking in this hotel in Paris, or that hotel
in New York, or the other hotel in Munich, and when she found herself
in an apartment of her own she immediately set about to cook a few
special dishes for herself.
Two musicians I know not only keep restaurants in New York, but
actually prepare the dinners themselves. One of them is at the same
time a singer in the Metropolitan Opera Company. Have you seen Bernard
Begue standing before his cook stove preparing food for his patrons?
His huge form, clad in white, viewed through the open doorway
connecting the dining room with the kitchen, almost conceals the great
stove, but occasionally you can catch sight of the pots and pans, the
_casseroles_ of _pot-au-feu_, the roasting chicken, the filets of
sole, all the ingredients of a dinner, _cuisine bourgeoise_ ... and
after dining, you can hear Begue sing the Uncle-priest in _Madama
Butterfly_ at the Opera House.
Or have you seen Giacomo (and have not Meyerbeer and Puccini been
bearers of this name?) Pogliani turning from the _spaghetti_ theme
chromatically to that of the _risotto_, the most succulent and
appetizing _risotto_ to be tasted this side of Bonvecchiati's in
Venice ... or the _polenta_ with _funghi_.... But, best of all, the
roasts, and were it not that the Prince Troubetskoy is a vegetarian
you would fancy that he came to Pogliani's for these viands. And it
must not be forgotten that this supreme cook is--or was--a bassoon
player of the first rank, that he is a graduate of the Milan
Conservatory. The bassoon is a difficult instrument. It is sometimes
called the "comedian of the orchestra," but there are few who can play
it at all, still fewer who can play it well. Bassoonists are highly
paid and they are in demand. Walter Damrosch used to say that when he
was engaging a bassoon player he would ask him to play a passage from
the bassoon part in _Scheherazade_. If he could play that, he could
play anything else written for his instrument. Pogliani gave up the
bassoon for the fork, spoon, and saucepan. Like Prospero he buried his
magic wand and in Viafora's cartoon the instrument lies idle in the
cobwebs.
Charles Santley's "Reminiscences" and "Student and Singer" are full of
references to food: "ox-hearts, stuffed with onions," "a joint of
meat, well cooked, with a bright brown crust which prevented the
juices escaping," "a splendid shoulder of mutton, a picture to behold,
and a _peas pudding_," and "whaffles" are a few of the dishes referred
to with enthusiasm. In America a newspaper gravely informed its
readers that "Santley says squash pie is the best thing to sing on he
knows!" Santley was a true pantophagist, but he was worsted in his
first encounter with the American oyster: "I had often heard of the
celebrated American oyster, which half a dozen people had tried to
swallow without success, and was anxious to learn if the story were
founded on fact. Cummings conducted me to a cellar in Broadway, where,
upon his order, a waiter produced two plates, on which were half a
dozen objects, about the size and shape of the sole of an ordinary
lady's shoe, on each of which lay what appeared to me to be a very
bilious tongue, accompanied by smaller plates containing shredded
white cabbage raw. I did not admire the look of the repast, but I
never discard food on account of looks. I took up an oyster and tried
to get it into my mouth, but it was of no use; I tried to ram it in
with the butt-end of the fork, but all to no purpose, and I had to
drop it, and, to the great indignation of the waiter, paid and left
the oysters for him to dispose of as he might like best. I presume
those oysters are eaten, but I cannot imagine by whom; I have rarely
seen a mouth capable of the necessary expansion. I soon found out that
there were plenty of delicious oysters in the States within the
compass of ordinary jaws."
J. H. Mapleson says in his "Memoirs" that at the Opera at Lodi, where
he made his debut as a tenor, refreshments of all kinds were served to
the audience between the acts and every box was furnished with a
little kitchen for cooking macaroni and baking or frying pastry. The
wine of the country was drunk freely, not out of glasses, but "in
classical fashion--from bowls." Mapleson also tells us that Del Puente
was a "very tolerable cook." On one trying occasion he prepared
macaroni for his impressario. Michael Kelly declares that the sight of
Signor St. Giorgio entering a fruit shop to eat peaches, nectarines,
and a pineapple, was really what stimulated him to study for a career
on the stage. "While my mouth watered, I asked myself why, if I
assiduously studied music, I should not be able to earn money enough
to lounge about in fruit-shops, and eat peaches and pineapples as
well as Signor St. Giorgio...."